CAPED FEAR
By Doc. Klein's LabRat <labrat@blueyonder.co.uk>
Rated PG-13
Submitted October 1999
_____________


Edited and proofed by Becky, Elaine, Kath, LadyBiker and Leapfrog. And
special guest proofer, Wendy. ;) Edited for the Archive in pg13 format by
Jeanne.


Notes: Feedback welcome as always. Thanks to the Usual Suspects for their able
assistance in proofing above and beyond the call of duty with this one and to
Wanda and Nan, who helped out with medical jargon and kept me right on
hospital and ER procedure.

The poem quoted is "The Lady of Shalott" by Tennyson.

DISCLAIMER: The United Church of Salvation is an entirely fictitious
organization and completely unrelated to any other religious group - corrupt
or honest. No inference should be made that it is connected to any actual
group or persons.


CAPED FEAR


It had already gone ten minutes past seven when Lois Lane reached the
townhouse.

Laden with grocery bags, she juggled the door keys awkwardly from the pocket
of her coat. Negotiating the lock was a little more difficult, necessitating
several muttered curses before she was able to push the door aside with one
thrust of a judicious elbow. Ignoring its thump against the wall in her wake,
she dumped the bags onto the coat-rack shelf seconds before losing them
entirely. She shrugged quickly out of her coat, kicked the door shut, and
dragged a hand through her hair with a sigh before she turned to switch on the
living room lights.

She paused, surveying the tidy, comfortable room. Their home had a curiously
abandoned air this evening. Of course, most evenings, she and Clark arrived
home together after their day spent at the Planet offices. On those few
occasions when they didn't, her husband would be waiting for her when she
arrived, usually with the enticing scents of whatever was on the evening's
menu already wafting through the townhouse from the kitchen.

If it were early enough, the local news would probably be on the TV. If not,
Clark's favorite piano music would be playing softly on the CD player. If, by
chance, she made it home first; some light jazz, a little touch of blues...a
soft ballad or two, depending on her mood (and whether she was keen to
influence his)...and she'd be in the kitchen or working at her laptop, half of
her listening for the sound of his key in the lock or his steps on the stairs
or the faint swish of displaced air as he alighted on the windowsill of the
living room.

Either way, their home had never presented her with this air of slightly
sterile and cheerless welcome.

This evening, though, was different. This evening, Clark was in Boston, one of
a handful of guest speakers invited by the Boston Association of Young
Journalists to attend its annual conference. The Kerth award-winning,
internationally renowned, Daily Planet journalist. Lois smiled.

So, Clark was in Boston. And she was alone.

Something she found curiously disconcerting all at once, considering how many
years she'd maintained the fiction - even to herself - that she preferred
things that way and how long she'd kept to that creed. Strange how just a few
months of marriage could change a girl, she reflected, standing in the middle
of the empty living room, with those silent hours stretching before her.
Tonight, there'd be no companionable laughter or playful banter as they cooked
dinner together. No discussion of the day's events or mulling over their
latest story as they ate, or watched TV or snuggled together on the sofa, or
even forgot about all of the above in the sheer pleasure of being together and
---

"Oh, for heaven's sake, Lane!" she chided herself aloud. "It's only *two*
nights! And Boston's hardly New Krypton!"

The sound of her voice, breaking scornfully into the room's quiet and overly
loud, unnerved rather than soothed her as she'd intended. She moved quickly
across the room to switch on the TV, turning the volume control up a notch or
so higher than would normally suit her. Katie Chang's cheerful voice pervaded
the room, like the gossip of an old friend. Lois paused for a moment,
attention reflexively fixed on the LNN city news report - one newswoman to
another - and then went to retrieve her groceries as the subject matter began
to bore her.

"And, don't forget," she reminded herself, with even more asperity, as she
headed for the kitchen, "that Clark did want you to go along. You were the one
who said you didn't want to risk leaving the Valley Vale investigation right
now. Not when it *could* be close to breaking. Not when some trashy little
hotshot from the Metropolis Star could come along scooping us at the last
minute. 'Boston is out', you said. 'It's only two nights', *you* said."

She paused, one hand on the kitchen's swing door. "Idiot!" she condemned
herself scathingly and, half a wail as she passed through, "Why didn't you
just go?!"

Katie had made way for Brock Thompson. Lois quickly tuned out his sympathetic
murmurs in the other room as she set about putting away the groceries.

With everything neatly stored, she turned her thoughts to dinner, but she
wasn't hungry enough to make any effort at cooking worthwhile. After a deal of
fruitless rummaging, she finally settled for a Continental Chicken Surprise TV
dinner, and Saran-Wrapped the unused portion. There were no longer any dinners
for one among the contents of Lois Lane's refrigerator. It took seven minutes
out of the evening as it cooked in the microwave and she ate it sitting at the
kitchen counter, still set in its plastic tray. She followed it with a
listless half carton of Cherry Crunch ice cream, which was, perhaps more than
anything else, some indication of the maudlin levels to which her mood had
sunk.

Resorting to Cherry Crunch ice-cream didn't make her half as mad however as
the sudden despondent thought that occurred to her as she washed up the
utensils she'd used and dealt with the remains of her meal. Namely, that she
was going to miss their nightly ritual of washing up together - her washing,
Clark drying with heat vision - a process which never failed to amuse her.
And, in truth, often gave her a sense of quiet enjoyment too; one of the
daily, small and trivial ways in which she was reminded of her husband's
uniqueness.

She paused, foot balanced on the pedal of the trashcan, frozen over its open
lid in the act of dropping in the foil tray, and was so struck by the sheer
absurdity of the thought that she quite appalled herself. She was missing
washing dishes now? She shook her head sharply. Something, she told herself
sternly, removing her foot and letting the trashcan lid drop with a decisive
snap, was going to have to be done if Clark wasn't going to return to a slack-
jawed heap of wallowing marshmallow in place of the wife he'd left behind.

She just didn't understand what had gotten into her. It was hardly the first
time they'd been separated since their marriage. He'd been gone longer when
Perry had sent him out to cover Superman's International Peace Prize Award in
Stockholm - and on other occasions since. This was no different.

But, somehow, it *was* different, though she'd have been at a loss to explain
how if called to it. She'd been fighting against this maudlin mood all day.
He'd been on her mind to the point where her lapses in concentration had
culminated in Perry's scathing demand to know why she'd just WAN'd her story
to the Berlin office, instead of the duty copy editor, and...

...and she was acting like some lovesick kid, she told herself irritably, as
the run of her thoughts began to depress her again.

After a couple of minute's thought spent searching for something which might
distract her a time, she decided to make almond and cherry pound cake for
Clark's homecoming. It would be the first time she'd used the recipe Martha
had given her and she knew it was one of Clark's favorite treats whenever they
visited his folks in Smallville. If she tapped into the special store of
culinary lore that Katie had left with her, the result should be an appetizing
mix of good old Mom Home-baked and Lois Lane Special. Just what a hungry
superhero needed to welcome him home.

She set to work. As a trick to keeping her mind occupied with matters other
than her husband's absence, it seemed successful. She was quickly engrossed as
she set out ingredients, bowls and utensils. Mixing and sifting, she began to
hum softly to herself, an old, sultry torch song, which lulled her even
further. She did think to wonder how Clark was getting on, but the thought
failed to dampen her mood this time.

A quick glance at the clock on the kitchen wall showed that, if things were
going to plan, he would be just about starting his introductory speech by now:
one down and two lectures to go. Lois smiled and sent out a faint 'break a
leg' wish to him through whatever psychic links might lie between Metropolis
and Boston that evening. She had given him a more tangible good luck message,
of course, before he'd left. A message which had gotten somewhat more tangible
than either of them had planned, and if Clark had been a trifle flushed and
flustered when he'd finally left for the airport, it was not entirely because
he was, by then, running almost twenty minutes behind schedule to meet his
flight into Boston.

Lois chuckled and then, as thoughts of that early morning farewell overtook
her, leaned absently against the counter, oblivious to the liberal dusting of
flour that coated her arms and blouse...until the sharp trill of the oven
timer announced its readiness to receive her offering and jerked her rudely
from her daydream.


~@*****@~


With the faintly tantalizing scent of baking cherries and apples already
beginning to fill the townhouse, Lois changed into casual, linen pants and a
well-worn, U-Met sweatshirt and sat cross-legged before the coffee table. She
took a sip of the strong coffee she favored before she set herself to making
sense of the jumble of papers, diagrams and police reports piled haphazardly
before her.

"Okay, Mr. Valley Vale, where are you this evening?" she murmured, picking up
the first of the notes in the open file.

Valley Vale was a big case all right. She and Clark had been nibbling at it
for months. Superman had even tried to lend a helping hand, but not even X-ray
vision had been able to track down the elusive grave robber who'd been
terrorizing Metropolis for over a year now. Actually, grave robber, Lois
thought distastefully, was something of a misnomer. She examined a batch of
glossy ten by eights, stamped 'Property of the Office of Metropolis Medical
Examiner', with a grimace. Valley Vale never actually took anything away with
him from the scene of his violations. If you discounted the contents of his
stomach, of course.

The Metropolis PD, out of some misguided sense of public duty, had, in the
first instance, tried to keep a tight lid on the true nature of the midnight
attacks on the city's cemeteries. At first, the only facts that even the most
feisty and determined of reporters could pry from them had been that graves
had been dug open and their contents spread liberally around the desecrated
sites. None of them had been recent interments - a small grace that one, those
involved in the clearing up considered. Most had been plots at least half a
century old.

Well-known and long held internal rivalries between the various police
departments had also taken its toll on the emerging truth. The initial report
from the forensic lab of visible teeth-marks on the long bones of the first
corpse had been scathingly dismissed out of hand by Darren Peters, the
detective in charge of the case, as being nothing more than rat bites.

There had been more than one very public disagreement between the forensic
technician heading the investigation and the detective before the evidence
obtained from Valley Vale's second and third visits to other cemeteries had
revealed the awful truth beyond questioning. That, somewhere at large in the
city, someone was spending his occasional evenings, when the urge struck him,
digging up graves and feasting liberally on the long dead bones of their
interred corpses before making off into the night.

Their ghoulish diner's first port of call, on that winter's evening over a
year previously, had been Valley Vale Cemetery down in Northside. It hadn't
taken long for the less salubrious members of Metropolis' press to term him
the Valley Vale Vampire, a name that had stuck, despite Peters' attempts to
shake it loose. And that wasn't the only thing these days that the detective
was having trouble shaking. There were the increasingly frequent and
hysterical calls for his resignation, for one. Charges of incompetence and
mismanagement of the case flew at him like sharp beaked birds, whenever he
showed his face. Others muttered ominously about paying local taxes for
nothing, calls for the case to be turned over to out of town law enforcement
agencies mounted, and, Lois heard through her own local police sources, Peters
spent more time these days fielding butt-shredding calls from the mayor and
the D.A. than he did actually investigating Valley Vale.

Lois sympathized, to a certain extent. She knew Peters fairly well, had had a
couple of run ins with him over the years, found him unbearably pompous and a
bully to boot and she'd often been heard to liken his investigative skills to
the lumbering progress of a dinosaur in the mating season, but he didn't
really deserve the crucifixion. There were, at the last count, over ninety
cemeteries within Metropolis city limits. Peters could hardly stake out all of
them, waiting for his vampire to show. Valley Vale was smart enough not to hit
the same cemetery twice and his attacks, only nine in all of those months,
were few and far enough between to be wholly unpredictable. Valley Vale left
few clues, other than an imperfect dental impression and one solitary
footprint in mud that had proved inconclusive to furthering the investigation.
A common enough sports shoe, worn by millions in the city, let alone bringing
in out of town statistics.

In the absence of any real evidence, experts had rushed to give their theories
on Valley Vale's motivations. Psychologists, canvassed both by the city and by
the more unscrupulous newspapers, had vouched forth their own pet analysis and
criminal profiles - many of them conflicting. The Metropolis Star had even
hired a psychic at one point, all to no avail. In fact, the psychic, to Lois'
eternal amusement, had concluded that the perpetrator was in fact a genuine
'soul of the undead', the reincarnation of a historically infamous tenth
century English vampire. Lois had seen a lot that was strange and weird in the
past four years but even she wasn't prepared to believe that one.

Nope, Valley Vale, to Lois, was no vampire. What he was was intriguing,
slightly unnerving, but, more than that, he was *news*. Real news. The sort of
news a reporter could get her teeth into. No pun intended. The biggest story
she'd had in months (they'd had in months) and she was determined to be the
one to break it - with her partner or without him.

She put down the gruesome photographs with a sigh. Only breaking this one was
looking less like a certainty with each day that passed and she was aware that
her assertion to Clark that that breaking point was close had been nothing
more than sheer wishful thinking, when you got right down to it. Nothing about
the case made any sense. And she was sure, through her contacts at the twenty-
sixth precinct, that she had, at least, all of the information available to
Peters and his task force.

She spent the next two hours trudging through all the old ground of the file.
Everything was examined in detail, just as though she hadn't gone over it a
hundred times already, both alone and with her partner. Still, she worried at
it like a rat with a ---

She broke off the thought, with another glance for the nearest photograph, and
picked up a scale map of Metropolis instead. Each of Valley Vale's previous
hits was circled in red marker, a scattering of sites that spread across the
city like a chickenpox rash. Though his attacks were irregular, he always
struck on the full moon.

Lois cast a brief, thoughtful glance out of the townhouse window. The
darkening sky was cloudy, but above them, she knew, that moon rode in full
sail. One more reason for Valley Vale to be high on her mind this evening,
prompting yet another futile and fruitless search.

The connection with the full moon had lead to several theories concerning
Satanic practices, even theories that Valley Vale was more than one
person... a
whole witches' coven stalking the innocent metropolis. Lois wasn't convinced.
But, no successful reporter ever left even the slightest of chance stones
unturned, so they'd practically denuded the public library of all reference
books on the subject. Not to mention the Planet's reference section. Many of
them were spread in disarray on the table now, jostling cheek by jowl with
coldly sparse reports in the jargon of forensic science.

"Valley Vale...Valley Vale...Valley Vale..." she repeated it absently under
her breath like a superstition as she studied the jigsaw puzzle data spread
around her. "Come on...come *on*..."

It was there. She knew it was there. Why couldn't she see it?

She was drawn to the map again: those red circles. As always, they meant
nothing. She supposed, if you squinted just right, you could just about form
them into a loose ring, with the attack on St. Luke's in December forming a
central pivot. She narrowed her eyes still further, holding the map at a
slight angle. She put it down on the table again. On impulse she took a sheet
of trace paper and placed it on top, then began to connect those morbid dots
with a sweeping line of the marker, forming her imagined arc. Halfway to
completing the circle, however, she paused, suddenly and inexplicably drawn to
finish the task in a series of straight lines rather than curved. She stared
at the mismatched route her pen had taken and then, almost absently, pulled
the paper higher to begin again. This time she made all of the connecting
lines between each red dot straight. Nor did she connect them in the obvious
arc, as she had before. The pen moved, almost of its own violation, in a
series of sharp triangles and pointed angles to produce...

Lois stared at the design she'd created. Her eyes snapped back to one of the
reference books laid open on the table: 'Satanism and Satanic Rites in the
Twentieth Century'. Halfway up the page a diagram, remarkably similar to the
one she'd just created, had been inserted into the text. A pentacle? Lois
lifted a brow. Was it really that simple? Her eyes traveled between map and
book for a moment and a rising tide of excitement swept over her as she
realized what she had before her. Valley Vale was hitting cemeteries on the
nearest course he could to forming a pentacle. It was an imperfect
representation, of course, no two cemeteries were on the required direct line,
but it was darned close! Too darned close to be coincidence.

And something more.

The pentacle was incomplete. One line stayed blank, between two points; one
line only. One last hit? One last hit, from the mind of a twisted soul, to
form a blazing signal to the world of his intentions and beliefs?

Lois tugged the trace paper clear with an inarticulate cry of discovery and
dragged the map close, almost unable to look. There. Only one cemetery lay on
a direct line between those two unconnected points: St. Bartholomew's Garden
of Eternal Rest in City Heights.

She whacked her left knee soundly on the under-edge of the table as she surged
to her feet, sending half the table's contents to the floor in a wild scatter
of papers. She didn't even pause to register the jolt of pain that swarmed up
her leg as she swept the living room like a whirlwind, thrusting objects into
her large, canvas purse as she went. She was halfway to the door when she
remembered the cake. Cursing, she hared through to the kitchen and twisted the
oven dial to the off position before reversing course, snapping out lights as
she went.

The slam of the outer lobby door coincided with the sudden sharp ring from the
phone by the stairs. It rang until the answering machine cut in and then it
was silent.


~@*****@~


Clark Kent hated flying.

It was perhaps one of life's more ludicrous ironies, true. But to a man who
could circumnavigate the world in a matter of moments, who passed through the
petty borders which nations bound themselves with as though they were of no
import, who had been known to visit thirty different countries in a day and
without working up much of a sweat besides, modern commercial air travel was
an exercise in frustration and exasperation, too unendurable to be borne, with
its boarding controls and regulations and its interminably slow passage. Clark
had once likened it, in an uncharacteristic fit of pique after a particularly
fractious flight, to trying to make an important appointment, way across town,
in a Metrocab that was being driven by a blind cripple at three miles per hour
in a rush hour gridlock.

Lois had sympathized. Thanks to a brief, unexpected interlude one year before
when she had found ephemeral fame as UltraWoman and been in possession, albeit
briefly, of Superman's powers herself, she'd even understood his resentment.
Just a little. Not that that made him feel any the better about it. Mostly, he
was able to shrug off his irritation with the knowledge that commercial flight
was an occasionally necessary evil in his life, but, every now and then, such
immutable logic counted as zilch against his frustrations.

The eleven-forty commuter flight from Metropolis to Boston had been just such
an irritation: a series of disasters and delays from beginning to end.

Now, standing before the cream draped Georgian windows of Boston's prestigious
Astoria hotel, Clark yawned massively and scrubbed a hand through hair still
dripping from the reviving shower that had been his first port of call on
returning to his suite. Theoretically speaking, his muscles didn't record any
discomfort, but his mind still recalled the grueling flight, cramped into the
narrow Access American Airlines seat, even if they didn't, and - as always -
his mind won the toss. He ached all over.

He rubbed fitfully at the tight, corded muscle at the back of his neck and
thought, wistfully, of the soothing hands of his wife. He sighed and, more to
get himself off *that* track than out of any genuine concern, frowned briefly
and scanned the streets below him. His thoughts drifted into the background
haze of his mind as he focused all of his attention out into the night for the
briefest of instants; force of habit. But there wasn't anything stirring out
there that shouldn't be. Probably fortunately, he thought, as he turned away
with another yawn. It wouldn't do for Superman to be visibly seen to be
helping out in Boston when so many people familiar with both of them knew
Clark Kent was attending a convention in the city.

Discarding the towel wrapped around his waist, he reached for the fresh
clothes he'd already laid out and began to dress. Tugging with an absent hand
at the knot in his tie, he sat on the edge of the generously proportioned
king-sized bed, intending to dial up some room service.

Instead, as he reached for the elegant twenties style phone, he paused, eyes
drifting over the empty pillow beside him. A smile softened his lips as he
thought about his wife, remembering how she'd been with him that morning, the
softness of her in his arms as they'd made love. He forgot about dialing room
service. His smile widened to a rueful chuckle. There weren't many people on
this planet that could pin Superman down to a bed and prevent him from
leaving, but his wife had pulled off that particular trick more than once
since they'd been married, he thought, amused, and no doubt would again.

In just a few, short months she'd turned his world upside down and he hadn't
regretted a moment of it. But then, she'd been doing that since the first
moment he'd met her. It was a source of constant wonderment to him that just
one glance from her, one word, one simple embrace, even the small, soft
whispering of his name, could render him as powerless as any man on Earth; his
strength, his powers, counting as nothing against hers.

His hand rested briefly on the embossed hotel emblem, silk-embroidered into
the pillow, and his smile faded. That he missed her already didn't surprise
him any, he could miss the woman from one end of a room with her on the other:
nothing new there. Nor that he already regretted their decision that she
wouldn't accompany him to the conference.

At the time, the arguments against it had seemed simple enough and whereas
he'd been less than convinced by her seemingly absolute confidence that the
Valley Vale case was about to break, it *could* have been close. Years of
investigative journalism had taught him never to underestimate a story's
potential to blow wide open on the one day in the year you chose to be looking
elsewhere for a lead. And in the one place you hadn't thought to go looking.
Losing the take to another reporter now, after all their months of hard work,
just didn't bear thinking about. And it was only two nights away from home,
after all.

Two nights without her warmth settled next to him in the small hours of
darkness. Two nights without her companionship. Two nights without her.

He glanced over the bed again with a sigh.

"Idiot," he told himself. "She would have come along if you'd asked hard
enough."

More tempting thoughts of his beautiful, vivacious wife drifted through his
mind, which seemed to be in agreement with that verdict.

He glanced at his watch, then, grinning, hooked the receiver from the phone.
He dialed quickly.

The soft burr of the call tone was replaced by his own voice as the answering
machine kicked in.

Clark sighed again. He waited for the beep and then left a brief message. On
consideration, as he cut the connection, he dialed a second number, but her
cellphone was switched off and he found himself listening to another automated
message. Frowning now, he thought for a moment and then dialed for a third
time. It was late of course, but that had never stopped Lois before. If she'd
gotten the bit between her teeth on some story or other she was likely to
forget time existed. And, as Perry was fond of saying, breaking news didn't
keep office hours, so why should his journalists? She *could* have been called
in. That's what Perry maintained beepers had been invented for - snagging
reporters in subways and on highways before they could escape his reach.

But she wasn't at the Planet either.

"You've reached the desk of Lois Lane. If you want to leave a message..."

He took her advice, though he was sure she'd pick up the message at home
first. She probably had been working late on something, was just now en route
home.

He thought about that, frown deepening.

Maybe he'd just try their brownstone again in the next quarter hour, he
decided as he put down the receiver.

Just to be sure.


~@*****@~


St. Bartholomew's Garden of Eternal Rest consisted of three acres of softly
rolling hillside and soothingly arranged oaks and elms. It commanded an
imperious position above the sprawling downtown area of City Heights, which
had sprung up around its serene parkland in the past eighty years. Urban decay
had taken its toll of the cemetery's once stately calm. Its shrubs were
overgrown, tangled over years of neglect into dense jungle, pitted here and
there with broken toothed gravestones, many of them toppled into the weed-
choked ground, or leaning at crazed angles. Many others had bonded into the
vegetation over the years where they, and the seekers after eternal peace they
commemorated, were slowly forgotten and left to decay.

It held an air, to the casual eye, of a sober Victorian matron, now in her
dotage, who slept fitfully in a dark, forgotten corner. Given no more than a
fleeting glance and less attention than that by those who passed her by.

Heavy rain had swept the green slopes earlier in the evening, leaving the
grasslands lush with droplets of moisture, sparkling like hidden jewels now
under the moonlight. Rivulets of murky water still trickled steadily from the
half furled wings of praying angels and trailed tears from the chubby cheeked
faces of putti who turned soulful eyes to the dark sky overhead. But the storm
had been brief, nothing more than a squall, already passed and gone and
forgotten. Nothing was permanent or long remembered in this silent, atrophic
world, save death.

In the darkness, the faint bell-like chimes of a monument clock broke the
silence somewhere to the west. A tinkling, ethereal melody, punctuated by a
single, mournful strike, before it too faded.

The cloud cover lifted for a moment's grace, letting through a weak beam of
light from the moon sailing overhead. In the darkness it was as unwelcome as a
spotlight, pinning the dark clothed figure that was currently shimmying its
way up the high, cast-iron railings on the cemetery's east side with all the
grace and expertise of a cat burglar.

Lois let out an explosive, irritated burst of air as one pants leg caught hard
on the barb of spiked wire woven into the railings, just as she successfully
reached the summit. She jerked the cuff free, muttering a brief imprecation
against the absurdity of such security measures. Who did they think was going
to break in? Or out? Reason asserted itself in another moment. She knew only
too well why such ridiculous security measures were necessary to guard the
recently and unrecently departed. She was breaking in, after all. And she knew
it was likely - if her luck was good and her perception of recent events
correct - that someone had very probably broken in before her too.

She glanced quickly around her with the thought, from her lofty position,
perched precariously some six feet above the ground. But there was no sign
that she had company.

Immediately below her, a wide, graveled path curved in a right hand arc into a
tasteful screening of lilac bushes. Where it ran straight before the railings
it was bordered on its opposite side by a gently sloping hillside, dotted with
the monuments and stone-faced angels that guarded the slumber of its
residents. Nothing moved in that serene landscape, beneath the pale, often
clouded glow of the moon. Nothing broke the silence.

Lois warily adjusted her grip on the railing crossbar, avoiding the razorsharp
barbs of wire, and hitched her leg over before lowering herself to dangle for
an instant. She dropped to the ground with a jolt, crouching momentarily as
she took her bearings. Then she reached into her purse. The Maglite felt
secure in her hand, more weapon than flashlight, as she held it close against
her thigh. She didn't switch it on, using the moonlight instead to track her
way in weaving progress through the silent graves.

The boundary fence vanished quickly behind her, lost behind a tangled and
twisted screen of spiked bushes and half-submerged and crumbling grave
markers. She kept off the path for as long as she could, but the chaotic
undergrowth grew denser and eventually she was forced out and onto the gravel.
Progress was more difficult here, the gravel slick and half flooded in places.
She negotiated streams she considered deeper than the Mississippi and was in
the middle of tip-toeing through one of the deepest, muttering under her
breath about new suede boots bought only the week before and already half
ruined, when the throaty, treacle-thick chuckle floated through the still air
towards her.

Straight out of a Bela Lugosi, fifties B movie.

Lois froze like a rabbit in headlights.

...Son of the Valley Vale Ripper...

...Graveyard Vampires at Dawn...

...Fangs of the Blood-Spattered Teenage Scream Queen...

Lois grimaced.

...Fangs of the Blood-Spattered Daily Planet Reporter...?

She gripped the Maglite against her thigh until her fingers numbed and sternly
told her wildly leaping imagination to cut it out.

The sound came again, punctuated by a low burbling of incoherent words. Lois
drew in a tight breath and headed for its source, easing her way between the
stone markers to her right. One of them, a huge, monolithic slab in monument
to Edwardian one-upmanship, provided ample cover for her to crouch behind. She
peered around its marble edge.

It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the deeper shadows under the clutch
of trees ahead. The figure crouched over the grave, only a few dozen yards
away,
was dark clothed as she was, nothing more than a small mound against the
ground. Then the Valley Vale Vampire lifted his head briefly, scanning the
landscape around him with the wary, darting motions of a hunted beast and the
washed out light caught the pale, angular planes of his face as it turned in
her direction. Moonlight shone like silver pennies on the hollowed eyes.
Noting it purely for the fact that it further confirmed that her hunch had
panned out, Lois' mind simply refused to take any more notice than that of the
long thighbone that Valley Vale was currently clutching in his left hand. Nor
did it feel inclined to linger overlong on the scatter of other bones and
scraps of tattered rag that littered the area around the open grave.

The flat, shiny stare swept over her and Lois shrank closer to the stone, sure
that she'd been seen. But Valley Vale ducked his head again, his attention
taken by his grisly task. Lois grinned humorlessly from between clenched
teeth, exhilaration rising in her as she ducked back into hiding, setting her
back to the solid stone. She sent a brief glance skywards, in thanks to
whatever guide had lead her to her quarry, and then clenched congratulatory
fists against her thighs.

"Yes...! I knew it...I *knew* it...!"

She cut off the hiss of delighted breath, sharply. Congratulations could wait.
First things first, she fumbled in her purse for her cellphone and hit the
pre-dial button for her local police source, before setting it close to her
lips. The soft burring tone of the connected line murmured at her ear and was
picked up as Lois shifted position to cast another quick glance around the
gravestone.

"26th Precinct. Herrera."

"Herrera? Herrera, it's Lois - " the soft hiss choked off as Lois' eyes
widened.

The site ahead of her was empty.

A laboring puff of breath exploded against her right ear.

Lois ducked sharply, all that saved her from having her skull caved in like a
ripe watermelon by the shovel Valley Vale aimed at her head. The shovel struck
the stone a millimeter shy of her left ear as she jerked out of its path. Her
head came up hard against the sharp corner of the gravestone. She cried out as
a flashlight exploded behind her eyes and for an instant, she was blind. Then
she was looking up into the twisted rage in the podgy face above her as Valley
Vale hoisted the shovel over his head for a second try. He was expecting her
to try a frantic scrabble away from him, of course. But Lois Lane was made of
sterner stuff. Instead of breaking sideways, as he'd figured she would, she
rolled quickly onto her left hip, brought herself up on her elbow and swung
her legs in a sweep that cut the legs out from under her attacker and landed
him hard on his side with an explosive grunt of breath.

She was up and running an instant later. But he was quick, unbelievably quick,
at her back. She could hear him panting as he closed on her. The cellphone was
lost, squawking faintly in the mud behind her. A frustrated grunt of
impatience - frighteningly close - gave her another bearing, enough to avoid
another sweep of the shovel as it was swung viciously after her. Ducking, she
tripped over something lying in her path and went sprawling. She spun onto her
back as he came at her again, heels skating wildly in the churned up mud as
she kicked her way clear of him. It only registered that she was backing up
against the edge of the torn open grave Valley Vale had been feasting at when
she realized she was treading mud and slime uphill as she retreated. She
froze, eyeing Valley Vale warily, resisting the urge to glance behind her into
that dark and gaping pit.

Valley Vale lunged forward, like a pouncing beast, and bellowed his
frustration like one too as Lois avoided him with an ungraceful slide sideways
in the treacherous surface. As she came level with him, her eyes fell on
something, whitely gleaming in the fickle light and among the mud. What had
tripped her, she realized. She grimaced, revulsion rising sour in her mouth,
but it was no time for a fit of the vapors. Grimly closing off her mind to
anything but escape, she grabbed out at the length of long bone half buried in
the churned up mud. Slick as candle-wax, it rolled clear of her frantic
fingers, setting her heart to jolting heavily as it missed a beat, then her
scrabbling lunge for it brought it into her grasp. Clutching it tightly, she
aimed it in a straight-armed blow at Valley Vale, with the full weight of her
strength and a sudden flashflood of rage behind it.

Valley Vale shrieked like a castrated bull as the makeshift weapon slammed
into his thigh and sent him sprawling to his knees and halfway over the edge
of the pit in front of him. The prospect of tumbling headfirst into that
darkness seemed to terrify him. It animated him in a screeching, scrabbling
rush to his feet, legs kicking a frantic dance until he found purchase again.

Lois struck out at him a second time and missed as he skated in the mud,
almost ending nose-deep in the dirt herself before she recovered. Regaining
tentative balance, Valley Vale whirled to face her. His balance wavered; he
stepped back an uncertain pace. The mud slope beneath him crumbled and he
shifted stance desperately to keep his footing, straddling the slope. In that
sudden moment of stillness, balance restored, crisis narrowly averted, he
looked up bullishly from beneath heavy brows at the woman facing him and
grinned, triumphant. Lois smiled back sweetly, right into the piggish little
eyes, and then aimed high, coming up onto her knees and swinging the bone in a
sudden, sharp arc to bury it with some degree of not inconsiderable force
between the now chuckling monster's legs.

With a squeal that would have outdone a whole sty full of pigs, Metropolis'
only vampire collapsed in a writhing heap beside her, curling himself around
the throbbing center of his hurt as his entire world filled with bright
starbursts of agonizing pain. Lois lay balanced on her elbows for a moment,
breathing hard. Then she made her way painfully to her feet. She staggered
back a pace, instinctively out of reach of Valley Vale's threshing feet. She
stared at the howling figure blankly and then, glancing downwards, peeled her
fingers distastefully one by one from the bone and dropped it to the muddy
ground. She scrubbed one palm violently against the other with a shudder.

After a moment or so, she remembered the cellphone, still shrilling faintly to
itself a few yards away. Confident that Valley Vale wasn't going anywhere for
a time or two, she turned her back on him contemptuously. She straightened her
sodden, mud-spattered jacket with two quick and violent tugs of her hands,
raked the dripping mess of her hair back from her face with fingers that shook
only marginally, and retrieved the squawking instrument.

"Herrera? Lois Lane."

Something warm was trickling down the back of her ear and beneath the collar
of her jacket. She put up a hand, grimacing as she touched the stickiness
there and then moved the hand up to her skull. She winced and felt a moment's
blackening of her vision as she met the soggy patch of matted hair. A dark
drumming far back behind her eyes heralded a full-blown headache to come. She
put the hand behind her, groping for the steadying edge of the gravestone, and
held on tight. When she was sure her voice wasn't going to waver any, she went
on, enunciating slowly and carefully, "Herrera? You still there?"

Her conversation with the detective was brief, though twice as long as it need
have been as she worked her way through the frequent, interrupting bursts of
indignant disbelief her announcement provoked. She was smiling when she cut
the connection.

She glanced over at Valley Vale. He'd curled himself tighter into a fetal
position and was whimpering from between clenched teeth.

"Oh, quit that," she snapped irritably.

Valley Vale stopped whimpering just long enough to blink up at her in myopic
shock, obviously hurt to the quick by her lack of empathy, before he went back
to his dirge.

Lois sighed and then stalked determinedly forward. She put her hands on her
knees and bent over the Vampire with a friendly smile. "Okay, how about we do
a deal here? *You* quit and *I* don't kick you into that hole there and fill
it in. What do you say?"

The howl stopped, cut off as though by a knife. Valley Vale's eyes flickered
>from her to the open grave beside him and back again. In the sudden silence
left in the wake of his wailing, his ragged breathing sounded harsh and rough.
He studied Lois, as though trying to figure if she was serious about that
threat. Lois brightened her smile a notch. Her tone sweetened. "If I think
you've been a good boy, I might just tell the cops you're in there when they
arrive. But, if I *don't*..."

Valley Vale's lower lip began to tremble. His eyes filled. His fingers clawed
slowly in the mud beside him until they turned up a long bone buried there. He
pulled it to his chest, wrapping his arms around it like a child with a
favorite teddy bear as he began to slowly rock and croon below his breath.

Lois made a small sound of disgust and straightened. She hit the second pre-
dial button. This time the call was answered less quickly and by someone only
half as alert.

"Jimmy? Lois. Listen, grab your camera, I need you at St. Bartholomew's
Cemetery. City Heights. Right now. We don't have much - what? Oh, I don't -
hang on..." She snagged the phone between ear and shoulder and plucked at the
metal strap on one upturned wrist. She squinted at the dimly glowing face of
her wristwatch and then returned her attention to the cellphone. "Two-oh-four.
You think you can -- " she broke off again, listening intently. She raised a
slow, measuring brow.

"Jimmy, you want to be the Kerth award-winning photographer who took the first
photos of the Valley Vale Vampire before his arrest, or not? I mean because I
can call Giles, or even Annabel...I know they'd be only too happy to get in on
the ground floor on this, whether they've just crawled into bed after a wild
night's partying or --- "

Her self-satisfied smile spread like cream as she realized she was talking to
a dial tone.


~@*****@~


Clark replaced the telephone receiver, lips puckered into a tight line as
though he'd just bitten into something sour.

Ralph Pereira usually had that effect on him.

He beat down the soft pulse of annoyance talking with the man had risen in him
and scrubbed a hand across the back of his neck. He found, not entirely to his
surprise, that the hand that hadn't been holding the receiver had clenched
into an unconscious fist against his thigh at some point during the
conversation. He eased the fingers steadily apart with a grimace.

Throughout the evening, he'd tried calling their brownstone several times
more, the Planet another three. But he got nothing but answering machines.
Lois' cellphone remained stubbornly unconnected. As an afterthought, he'd
tried Perry's private office line and Jimmy's desk without much hope of
success, and in that, at least, he'd been rewarded. No one answered. It had
taken his final call to the newsroom before he'd found himself unexpectedly
connected to an unrecorded human voice. Unfortunately, that voice had belonged
to Ralph and he had hardly been any the more welcome to listen to.

Ralph hadn't known where Lois might be or where she could have gone, other
than that she'd left the Planet just after six: six-oh-three, to be precise.
She hadn't been intending to go out anywhere, certainly not to a movie or out
to dinner, and had planned to spend a quiet evening at home. This somewhat
more detailed than he'd expected answer to his query had shown an
exceptionally vivid interest in his wife's movements that had risen Clark's
eyebrows sharply before he filed it away for future consideration.

Right then, though, he'd had more immediate matters than Ralph to worry him.

And, as it happened, it seemed that Ralph had other things on his mind too,
things that could only be described as 'Clark's Adventures in Convention-
Land'. In short, just how many of Boston's babes he'd been able to hit on
since he'd arrived. Clark's startled protests that there was nothing to relate
had been brushed aside as just so much pussyfooting around. Ralph knew all
about out of town conventions. Ralph had even been to one. And, just buddy to
buddy, Clark could confide in him some, he wasn't gonna tell. Hey, as far as
he was concerned, when the cat was away, the mouse back home didn't need to
know what it'd been up to, right?

Clark had been halfway to telling him smartly that, actually, this particular
cat was much more interested in what the mouse might be up to right then,
before common sense cut in. Ralph had been almost duty bound to put a spin on
that one which Clark had never intended to convey. He'd tried to keep a hold
on patience. But by the time Ralph had given up on dragging out some true
confessions from him and gotten around to confiding some lurid and none too
believable anecdotes concerning his own past adventures (delivered in hushed
and conspiratorial, all guys together tones) Clark had pretty much given up on
him completely.

He'd left a brief message for Lois to call him when she could, which was
innocuous enough that even Ralph couldn't make any capital out of it, but he
had more confidence in the answering machine to deliver it.

He sat for a moment, mulling over that conversation, then reached for the
phone again, punched in his home number and listened to a voice he was rapidly
becoming very bored with. He hung up, got abruptly to his feet and wandered
restlessly to stand before the black sheen of the window.

"Lois..." he murmured. "Where *are* you?"

He closed his eyes, a stillness coming over him, every muscle in his body
tightening, every nerve straining to listen. Then he grunted, shaking his head
ruefully at himself. Was he really expecting an answer?

Well...yeah, maybe he was. He couldn't deny that there was something inside
him that was attuned to his wife on a level he could neither fathom nor
explain. Something that went beyond instinct, beyond his powers, surpassing
anything and everything he'd ever known or experienced before. Something he'd
felt with no other person on Earth. Not even his parents.

It had overtaken him gradually, the awareness of that link between them. At
first tentative, then growing, expanding, deepening in him in rhythm with his
burgeoning feelings for his partner and entwining its way around his heart in
much the same way. He had always held her on the periphery of his awareness,
even from the first, but he was aware right from the first moment he became
attuned to it that this was something more than the instinctive way every
nerve-end in him seemed to leap to attention and come alert whenever Lois
walked into the room. More than the way his skin tingled when she leaned
across him to point out some obvious 'error' in the story he'd just written or
placed an easy hand against his shoulder to get his attention as he sat at his
desk, or the way in which her voice sent ripples of slow warmth coursing
through him.

The unconscious awareness of her that settled itself deep in his soul, that
was something else again. Increasingly, with the barest of flickering thought,
he found himself able to pinpoint her location at any given time and no matter
where she was. As though some vital compass point stretched between them. He
could close his eyes and there she would be, on a straight line out from his
thoughts of her and the image of her held in his mind's eye.

For the longest time, perhaps naively but understandably so given that he had
never felt such strong feelings for any woman before, he had simply thought it
a natural extension of being in love. An instinctive byproduct of being
mentally attuned to another, of holding them close, of knowing someone so
completely and of being completely known. He remembered how surprised he
had been when it had finally dawned on him that not everyone shared that
bond with their life partner, how awed that revelation had made him.

He remembered too, as clearly as if it had happened just that morning, the
moment when he had focused sharply on that awareness for the first time,
rather than simply accepting it at some subconscious level. When he had
realized that it was real and not merely some romantic notion he had
conjured up out of his fantasies.

He had been sunk in despair and desperate, sitting morosely in the middle of
the cage in which the Lakes had trapped him. He had looked across the gap -
so small and yet as unbridgeable as the deepest chasm - that separated him
from Lois. And he had called her name. Not overloud, certainly not a yell,
he had simply spoken commandingly, in a way that demanded she listen. And
she had woken instantly from the deep, miserable sleep into which she'd
drifted with no more prompting than that. As though she'd heard him call
her at a level beyond hearing, from somewhere unconsciously tuned to him
and from deep within.

Events had overtaken him at that point and it had only been days later that it
had occurred to him that he had witnessed something at that moment that was
extraordinary and awe inspiring and perhaps just a little frightening.

It had been later that day that he had first, consciously, tried out this
mysterious, ethereal and fragile new power. From the other side of the
newsroom he would murmur her name and sometimes she would look up from where
she was pouring herself coffee or engaged in conversation with one of their
colleagues, to give him a questioning look or tentative, half puzzled smile.

Sometimes she didn't though and he was unable to decide whether she ever
really heard him or whether it was simply that primitive human instinct to
become aware that it was being watched intently.

But the revelation had come that afternoon. He had been sitting at his desk,
impatient and frustrated. Lois had vanished almost twenty minutes earlier on
some errand she hadn't deemed important enough to let him in on and he wanted
to get her input on the story he'd just finished getting down on screen.
Hardly thinking, he'd reached out, determined to track her down - and to his
absolute shock had succeeded where he'd never been able to before.

Lois ducked out on him frequently and finding her was sometimes the biggest
challenge in his day. He'd tried other ways to find her in the past, but those
were mostly doomed to failure from the first.

His hearing was no good. How did you isolate one human heartbeat, one familiar
breath, out of the jumble and clamor of a busy newsroom? Expanding his hearing
meant he caught everything surrounding him at an increased level, not just the
heartbeat he was hoping to find. Consequently, unless she was within what he'd
established as a limit of about a hundred paces of him, tracking her among the
glassy jangle of ringing phones, clanking copiers, the hum of a hundred
conversations, was impossible, no matter how deeply the unique collection of
breath and heat and pulse that formed her was imprinted on his mind and
heart.  There were just too many distractions.

He could isolate some. Old Mr. Jeffers up in the penthouse suite above them
had a latent heart murmur that caused an odd little double hitch in every
second breath. Gillian, down in Marketing, suffered from asthma, which made
her prone to a slightly breathy whistle when she spoke, inaudible to any
except any covertly listening superhero. There were others too. But Lois,
thankfully, was healthy and therefore indistinguishable at a distance and
among the thundering roar of background static surrounding her.

His sense of smell could pinpoint her often, but it was a lesser sense, and
capable of distinguishing that particular concoction of enticing scents which
formed his partner only to a limited range. His enhanced vision could find her
wherever she was in the building in the - literal - blink of an eye, but he
used that sparingly. Lois had once, jokingly, told him that she'd assumed his
frequent fussing with his glasses had been the signs of astigmatism. She
hadn't entirely been serious, he knew, but if she had noted how frequently he
played with them, then others could too. And Clark, as always, fought hard to
maintain an air of almost banal normality when among his colleagues, fighting
the urge to do anything on a regular basis which might be noted, filed away
and consequently remarked on as a curiosity or something out of the ordinary.

So, despite his other-worldly powers, he was mostly as helpless as any normal
man to find her at such times, his super advantage no advantage at all. The
bond between them though...that pinpointed her accurately and unfailingly and
from distances greater than he could ever have imagined, more so if her
emotions were kicking out strongly, if she was excited or scared or furious
enough to spit. He had been able to sense her distress and loneliness, the
small, soft whimpering of a breaking heart, even on board the ship speeding
him unwillingly towards New Krypton. And, incredibly, he now knew that Lois
had heard his reassurances that he would return, though he'd had little hope
at the time that she would.

And on *that* particular day at the Planet, beyond question, it had led him
unerringly into the bowels of the building, where Lois was poring over a batch
of old records. Nor had she looked surprised to see him when he joined her.

But, it seemed now that whatever invisible threads bound them together,
whichever inner senses held her close within his heart, they were transmitting
nothing between Boston and Metropolis this evening.

Perhaps Lois wasn't distressed right now?

He didn't know whether the thought cheered him or made him worry more. Right
now, she was probably tied to railway tracks, watching the lights of the
approaching train and cheerfully confident that she wasn't in any serious
trouble.

*Was* she in trouble?

He couldn't sense cheerful confidence from her either, which might have been
more worrying still.

There was, simply, nothing at all.

Should that make him feel better?

Or worse?

He sighed and pressed a forearm against the window's cool glass, laying his
forehead against the ridge of bone as he closed his eyes, wearily.

At one time, Superman had briefly considered asking those amazingly inventive
guys at S.T.A.R. Labs to see if they couldn't employ their talents to finding
some means of enabling Lois to contact him when all others failed. She
couldn't always scream for his help, he'd realized, when she was kidnapped, or
tied to barrels of explosives or thrown into rivers. Sometimes, Metropolis'
Villain of the Month had the foresight to gag his captive...a sure fire and
simple method of preventing Superman's involvement in proceedings, and one
which, when pushed to it, he preferred as the restraining method of choice. It
beat knocking her over the head again. There was only so much the human skull
could stand to take. And Lois' had already taken more than most.

Still, a solution would be even better. He'd thought about the Superman Signal
Watch some bright spark had come up with before and wondered about adapting
it. He was sure that Klein and his buddies could make something that would fit
discreetly into some piece of jewelry for Lois to wear. A bracelet perhaps,
something that could be easily activated and which would out-decibel her
screams if the need arose - a difficult task, certainly (Lois could scream
pretty loud), but not insurmountable. He'd been so enamoured of the idea that
he'd even begun to elaborate on it, wondering about whether they could,
perhaps, incorporate some kind of tracking device in there too. Then he'd
always be able to find her, no matter where she'd gone. Or been taken.

He'd had the idiot lack of good judgement to mention the idea only once to
Lois. After which he'd wisely never mentioned it again. Not even to his
subconscious. It had been near enough a full week before she'd forgiven him
and longer than that before she'd let him forget the lapse. He'd spent the
greater part of the remainder of that week fielding her ferocious glances and
listening to her low growls under her breath. There had been lots of dark
mutterings about 'belling the cat' and 'husbands who think that signing a
little bitty piece of paper gives them the right to go tagging their wives
like they were stray puppies fresh out of the pound and liable to wander under
the nearest bus'. Together with lots more which he, quite frankly, hadn't had
the nerve to tune his hearing into.

He opened his eyes. A steady flicker in the darkness gave testament to the
fact that the heavy snowfall that had begun to blanket the city earlier in the
evening hadn't lessened any. The approaching blizzard from the north seemed to
have little respect for the opinions of the LNN weathercaster, who'd earlier
been cheerfully confident that the unseasonable and unexpected squall would
have blown itself out long before midnight.

His fingers fisted into the velvet brocade of the flounced drapes as he stared
blindly into the snow-frosted street. Snow provided good cover though. Few
people would be out in the streets tonight, braving the chill.

He sighed. It was the first admission he'd made to himself that he intended to
go searching for Lois. Even if it did mean breaking the promise he'd given her
before he'd left Metropolis. In reality, he was honest enough to recognize, it
was a decision he'd been working his way up to all evening. Since the first
time that brownstone phone had rung out, unanswered. For a moment though, the
memory of the solemn concern in his wife's eyes just before he'd left her held
him from acting on it. Guilt could be a more powerful restraint than any
physical bonds.

He understood, very well, why she'd been concerned enough to make him
reiterate the promise they'd made to each other only a few short months
before. He shared it. After a brief moment of indiscretion and a lapse of
judgement had almost brought them to the brink of discovery and disaster, they
hadn't made that vow to be more careful in future lightly. He knew how much
their security depended on his being careful. How risky it was for Superman to
be seen in the skies above Boston. How one, small moment, taken recklessly
without thought, could destroy the lives they'd both worked so hard to gain;
could put at risk the fragile security on which those lives depended and
shatter it in an instant.

Secret rendezvous were out.

They'd agreed on that.

But then, he hadn't expected her to vanish on him as soon as he'd left
Metropolis' city limits.

And he couldn't just sit in his hotel room, wondering where she'd gotten to
and what disaster might have overtaken her between office and brownstone. He
knew she could look after herself, but even the feistiest of reporters could
find herself in more trouble than she could handle, now and then - or more
often than that - and, if she *was* in trouble...This far out he'd never hear
her call for him. Never hear her scream for his help. Never --

He shoved aside the sudden flood of bloody images that had flashed into his
mind with those thoughts.

He had to find out what had happened to her.

But he was in Boston and bound by the promise that he wouldn't take to the air
in anything that didn't have two wings and a tail until he was safely within
Metropolis city limits. Lois had been very specific about it. Determined
enough that he had been amused by her insistence at the time. An amusement his
wife hadn't been impressed with as she'd pointed out snippily that the Astoria
was, after all, just four blocks clear of Logan Airport and what with all
those high-tech scanning and radar machines they had these days...

He had teased her out of her concerns at the time - there was no real danger
of him being tracked by airport radar; he could fly fast enough to beat it
here or anywhere else, and he knew that she was really simply finding reasons
to feed her own anxiety, but...

...but he wasn't amused now.

He *was* thinking hard.

And finding the glimmer of a loophole.

He had promised. But had he promised for Superman...or only for Clark? For a
moment, reviewing the conversation he'd had with his wife before he'd left for
the airport, he couldn't remember. But increasingly, he was certain: In fact,
during the entire conversation, Superman had never actually been mentioned at
all.

Q.E.D. Clark Kent was in Boston. But that didn't mean Superman couldn't go
looking for Lois.

Of course, it was a fine line in semantics that Lois was bound to be less than
impressed with, if he ever had to defend the decision. But he had to know. And
nothing less than flying back to Metropolis to find out was going to settle
him tonight. Besides, he salved his conscience with logical sophistry, if she
was in trouble then she'd doubtless forgive him the lapse. And, if she
wasn't...

Well, they'd work on that.

Anyway, he could keep his distance. She'd never have to know he'd been
anywhere near.

Decision made, he straightened, loosening his grip on the drapes to snick the
latch clear and open up the tall windows to the night's chill air.


~@*****@~


They loaded Valley Vale into the ambulance by stretcher, still whimpering,
still jerking spasmodically. He'd refused to walk; had expressed shrill
disbelief that anyone would expect him to try. Long before they got him there
though, he'd come out of his self-induced trance and recovered breath and wits
enough to begin ranting about lawsuits for unprovoked assault and wrongful
arrest. Considering the weight of evidence scattered behind him in the mud, no
one took much notice of these ravings.

On the edge of the bustle of activity that had invaded the cemetery's calm a
bare thirty minutes after Lois' call to him, Detective Herrera watched the
performance. He beckoned one of the uniforms keeping watch over the grave, now
swathed with streamers of yellow ribbon marked 'Police line - do not cross',
and murmured a few brisk words in his ear. The officer nodded and strode,
hard-faced and narrow-eyed, for the ambulance, hitching himself into the
interior just before the EMTs slammed the doors shut. The ambulance shrieked a
trail into the night.

Herrera glanced across his shoulder at the dark pit behind him. As always, he
was struck by the snapshot unreality that took over a crime scene once it was
discovered. High banks of arc lights towered on stick-insect tripods over the
grave. Beneath their sterile, unforgiving light, all sins were blasted into
white-hot discovery, no smallest detail left unknown. Figures in white
coveralls bustled here and there; uniformed cops stood guard behind the lines
of fluttering tape, steely eyes on the handful of spectators who clustered on
the barrier's other side. What always spooked Herrera though was the silence.
With this many people around, it should never be this silent, he thought
soberly, as he always did. But his somber, heavy-jowled features - which, in
the past, one of his more astute girlfriends had once likened to resembling 'a
Basset Hound on Prozac' - showed none of the emotions that flitted through his
mind as he surveyed the makeshift lab and its kneeling acolytes.

Valley Vale had been interrupted before he'd gotten down properly to his
midnight feast. This time. He'd left enough mementos however to convince
anyone beyond doubt that they did - finally - have their man. The similarity
to other sites he'd visited was marked and Herrera carried images darkly in
his mind of those other sites, other feeding places, where grisly leftovers
had been scattered plentifully around graves cleft open by the cannibalistic
little pervert. His lips twisted, forming a thin line of distaste.

He turned his back on the forensic team, shrugging the collar of his coat up
against the back of his neck as he shivered. He swept the hillside until his
steady, unperturbed gaze fixed on the small tableau of figures over to the
right of the crowd. His look soured. Lois Lane was perched on the table top of
a crumbling Victorian monument. One hand held an antiseptic soaked pad to the
right side of her head as she absently fended off the ministrations of a green
coated figure with EMT stenciled on its back and kept her attention on the
burly cop facing her. The wound didn't appear to be slowing her down any as
she exchanged heated comments with both men. Herrera recognized the cop right
off. Detective Darren Peters had been in charge of tracking down Valley Vale
>from the start - and making a poor job of it.

Caught between the scowling cop, the increasingly frustrated EMT, and the
righteous, holy wrath of his colleague, a youngster wearing a camera slung
around his neck and an expression that hovered between intense excitement,
flashing anger, and the wary wish to be elsewhere, stood watching the
proceedings. His head swiveled like a spectator at a tennis match as he tried
to keep all of them in view at once, looking increasingly out of his depth.
Herrera recognized him vaguely as a Planet photographer he'd seen before,
mostly in the company of either Lois or her partner, Clark Kent. But the kid's
name currently escaped him. Herrera sighed and began to make his way carefully
up the slippery slope.

"Hey, Herrera, can't you call off the dogs?" Lois flashed him an irritated
glance as he reached them and then turned it on Peters.

"Not my case, Lois."

"Just doing my job, Lane," Peters said as a quick punctuation to that, with a
dark, warning 'butt out' glance for his colleague. "Like I told you, you give
me a statement, you get outta here. Simple as that."

"And, like I've told *you*, I've already given a statement!"

"So you did." Peters glanced sourly at a notepad in his hand. "If we published
this instead of putting it in the Valley Vale file it'd get you a Doug Lyndsay
Fellowship Award for Original Fiction."

A brief, upward flicker of Lois' left brow was her only comment on this
remarkable showing of literary awareness, from a guy she'd been confident up
till then could barely read...not counting the funnies.

"Well, it's the only statement you're getting. And, talking of stories, if
you'll excuse me..." Lois hitched herself abruptly from her perch and gathered
up her purse and coat. The EMT made a reaching movement in her direction and
then held up abrupt, surrendering hands as she flashed him a single, dark
glance. He picked up his kit and walked off stiffly with a shake of his head.
Lois dismissed him instantly to continue, "I've got a deadline to -- "

"Forget the deadline." Peters shifted his weight, which wasn't inconsiderable,
effectively blocking her as she tried to pass him. "I wanna know how you
figured this out."

Something flickered in the eyes of the Planet's finest reporter. Lois slumped
back against the support of the stone tablet, putting a hand abruptly to her
head and closing her eyes. She moaned softly and then looked around anxiously,
after the retreating EMT.

"You know...this headache's getting worse. Maybe I *should* do like that EMT
said and take a ride to the hospital. I'm feeling kinda...woozy."

Peters' lips twisted. "Sure. Let's go. I'll tag along. You can give me a
statement while you're waiting in ER for three hours to get seen."

Lois scowled, gave up the diversion, making a remarkably swift recovery, and
opened her mouth on a protest that was pre-empted by the detective.

"Either way - here or down at St. Luke's - you tell me what went down here,
tonight, Lane. Or you and whatever story you think you got ain't hitting the
presses."

"I *told* you - "

"The truth! Not some dumb-assed fairy story!" Peters roared, losing patience.

Over by the crime scene, several heads turned in their direction. The EMT,
halfway to the police barrier, didn't join them. He'd already dealt with the
woman. In fact, he considered it a miracle he wasn't the one doing the
yelling. Back at the graveside, Lois fixed Peters with an imperious Medusan
glare that might have made lesser men than a hard-nosed Metropolis cop back
off rapidly. And frequently had. Peters, however, was immune. He lifted a brow
and then his arm, one flick of his wrist showing off a cheap Timex, dressed in
a threadbare brown strap.

"Time's ticking, Lane. Don't know how long we can keep the lid on this one and
I'm almost sure I heard the words 'Metropolis Star' on the other side of that
perimeter line when I came through. Whadda ya say? Still thinking about that
deadline...?"

Lois' scowl deepened on him. "Like I said, I had a hunch."

"A hunch? Lady, we been tailing this creep for near enough a year an' he never
left us jack one of a clue yit. An' you're trying to tell me *you* figured it
out all on your own?"

"Hey, what can I say? My mother fed me a lot of fish as a kid." Lois gave him
a sharp smile and then, as he stared her down coldly, "Oh, what? Can I help it
if my brains work without the benefit of a paid vacation? I had a hunch, okay?
You know...just like the cops on TV?"

"Oh." Peters nodded. "Gee, I love those TV cops too. You ever see that bit
where they arrest a witness for failure to co-operate with an ongoing homicide
investigation? That's the part I like best."

Lois folded her arms. "Homicide? Far as I know Boris Karloff back there hasn't
killed anyone..." she let it trail, an implicit question in the words,
dangling like bait.

Peters' face clenched. "No comment."

Lois' eyes lit. "So, he *did* - "

"I said 'no comment' an' that's what I meant, Lane."

"Oh, come on, just one little attributable quote, detective. Or
unattributable, if you like." She rummaged in her purse, producing a tape
recorder, which she thrust forward almost into his chest as she eyed him
interrogatively. "Who'd Boris kill?"

Peters' confident, bullying air had melted in a fraction of an instant to the
chagrined, hunched shouldered stance of a man who realized he'd put his foot
in it big time. Herrera hid a smile. "Darren, I think the Doc wants a word."

"Huh?" Peters glanced around at him and then grasped the thrown lifeline like
a drowning man. "Oh! Oh, yeah! I'll be right back. Keep her here," he added
the rough warning over his shoulder as he strode hastily away from them. "I
ain't finished with you yit, Lane."

Herrera watched him go.

"What's his problem anyway?" asked Lois, tightly.

"Guess he's none too keen on civilians breaking his big case," Herrera said
dryly. He turned back to face her. "How's the head?"

"What? Oh, it's nothing." She took away the antiseptic pad distastefully.
"Just a scrape. So, tell me, Herrera, who did Valley Vale kill?"

Herrera chuckled. "Uh-uh, more than my life's worth. Try calling Information."

Lois stared at him sourly.

"Palmer!" Herrera yelled, glancing around. "Palmer, get over here! Escort Miss
Lane and her...friend here to the gates, will you?" he added as a young
uniformed cop hurried over in response to the summons.

"But, wait a minute - "

"Bye, Lois."

"Herrera!"

"This way, Miss Lane. Sir." Palmer ushered them before him, ignoring her
protests.

"Wait a minute." Lois balked and shook off the lightly restraining grip he
took on her arm as she turned back. "Hey, Herrera!"

He was already halfway down the slope. He stopped, turned back wearily. He
knew it. He *never* got off that lightly. Not with Lois Lane. He gave her a
smile set in concrete for all that it was sweet as ten-year-old syrup. "Yes,
Lois?"

She smiled winsomely back at him. "I guess a lift uptown's out of the
question?" She waved the tape recorder at him. "Deadlines...? And, since
Peters did hold us here...I mean, you wouldn't want the Planet to raise
questions about obstructing the press in legal pursuit of their
constitutionally held rights to - "

"You didn't bring your car?" Herrera quirked a brow at her, "How'd you get way
up here without your car?"

"Oh, please, what'd you think I am, a few dozen rungs short of a ladder?" Lois
snorted. "Sure, I'm gonna run up here in a pale silver Jeep and park it right
outside some locked cemetery gates, where any passing nosy cop could see it."

Herrera looked just a little sheepish. Admittedly, she had a point.

Lois might just have had a hint of color staining her cheeks now too. She
ducked her head as she stuffed her tape recorder firmly into her purse and
busied herself in its depths for a long moment. Actually, she did feel pretty
dumb about that Jeep. Silver? What on earth had possessed her? What had she
been thinking? A silver Jeep - for a woman who spent half her life on stakeout
or tailing down suspects to interrogate - could she have picked a color more
unlikely to blend into the background? Only if she'd fitted it with a portable
spotlight. Now a nice, dark green would have been better. Wouldn't it? Or
black. Black was good. Except...well, she'd liked the silver. It was flashy.
Smart. It said things. Yeah, Lane, a snide inner voice (which had a curiously
deep masculine depth to its tone) snorted. It says, 'Hey, look, we're being
tailed!' Lois shook her head slightly, dislodging that mocking echo.

"You walked all the way up here from uptown?" Jimmy was looking curiously at
her.

Lois rolled her eyes. "No, I took a bus up to Lexington and walked the last
few miles. Are we going to stand here all night discussing my travel
arrangements?" she demanded, zipping the purse decisively and slinging it
across one shoulder. She folded her arms tight.

Herrera looked pointedly to her companion. Jimmy looked discomfited. "I
brought my car," he said defensively. He glanced at Lois and then back at the
detective, suddenly looking uncertain as to which direction he should be
defending the decision from. He shrugged. "It's just blocked in by all those
emergency vehicles."

Herrera followed his pointing finger to where the red Mustang was backed up
against the fence and pretty much surrounded. He sighed. "Palmer."

"Yes, sir." Palmer nodded smartly. "Right away, sir. Uh, your car, sir?"

"My car." He tossed him the keys and frowned sternly at the reporter. "You owe
me one, Lane."

Lois waggled her fingers at him before grabbing her photographer by one arm
and hustling him on at a run for the gates as Palmer hurried to catch up.

Herrera chuckled before he went to break the news to Peters that his star
witness had ducked out on him.

As he came down the slope and saw the bulky cop arguing with the medical
examiner's assistant he laughed even harder. Sometimes, it seemed like there
just weren't any perks to his job at all. But now and then...

He schooled his face to something approximating solemnity as Peters, catching
his soft laughter, looked up at him and scowled.


~@*****@~


High above the city, the Man of Steel flew steadily.

It was a cold night, colder still on the city heights, with frost on the air
and an unsteady, there-and-then-not drizzle that would have chilled most
anyone else to the bone. Superman, of course, registered no discomfort, and
might well not have done even if his strengthened body could. He had other,
more immediate things on his mind.

The towers and spires of the city's skyscape whipped past him in blurs and
streaks, like the markers on a slalom ski-slope as he wound his way through
and between them. He barely noticed the familiar landmarks as they flashed by
and fell behind him. His head turned in a slow arc, in tune with his enhanced
vision as the X-ray sweep steadily quartered the city below him, section by
methodical section.

As it turned out, leaving his hotel room hadn't been that much of a risk after
all. A careful scan of the area surrounding the building for a range of five
blocks had confirmed his suspicions that the unfriendly weather would help him
out there. Boston's residents had abandoned her streets. Nevertheless, he'd
taken off from the ledge of his room window at a speed that would have shown
as nothing more than a fading blur to any watching human eyes.

His first port of call had been their townhouse. His habitual scan of the
street below him had satisfied him that there was no one walking past the
building, nor any idle eyes watching the street from the windows of the
buildings opposite the townhouse. No one to see him enter the home of Mr. and
Mrs. Clark Kent from the vantage point of the living room window, should he
choose to. Instead, he scanned the house itself. And found only darkened,
unoccupied rooms and an empty bed that showed no signs of having been slept
in.

The fact that Lois' silver Jeep Cherokee had been parked outside hadn't given
him cause for concern. In fact, it had been a small solace. At least she'd
reached home safely and hadn't been ambushed on her way back from the Planet,
which had begun to be his concern. Wherever she had vanished to, it seemed
likely that she'd gone of her own free will and, wherever it had been, it had
been somewhere where taking the Jeep was a bad idea.

Which could mean she'd gone practically anywhere, he'd thought dryly and he'd
smiled quietly to himself as he'd lifted higher, beginning to widen his
search. The Jeep's complete impracticality was still a source of lightweight
tension between them, something he rarely passed up the chance to tease her
about. His smile widened as he remembered their very first argument on the
subject.

It had been in his first week at the Planet. Lois had...mildly irritated him.
Again. About what he couldn't quite recall now. But, whatever the source, it
had made it a matter of pride to get back at her. He'd thought he'd spotted
his opportunity when he'd followed her down to the underground parking area
and seen the Jeep. A silver Jeep. He'd raised a brow. Didn't she think a
silver Jeep was a little...well, ostentatious for an investigative reporter
who spent a major part of her time either on stakeout or undercover, trying to
get the bad guys? Lois, clearly taken aback as she slid into the driver's
seat, had immediately been on the defensive. The Jeep was...stylish. It said
something.

"Yeah, it says, 'Hey, look, guys, we're being tailed!'" Clark had snorted
derisively.

Lois had protested that with a diatribe which had lasted a full ten minutes.
Clark had counted it to the second on his internal clock as he stared out of
the side window and pretended disinterest.

"And vanity plates, Lois?" he'd interjected recklessly into her first pause.
"I mean, come on, you might as well just hang flags from the rear windows! No
wonder half the villains in this city track you down!"

Lois had spluttered valiantly, but clearly had no answer for that one. She'd
contented herself with a frosty glare in his direction and a few of the vilest
epithets in her repertoire, hurled at an unsuspecting elderly gent in a beat
up Zodiac who had had the temerity to signal his intention to enter the same
lane as she was in. Then she'd settled into a sullen silence for much of the
remainder of the afternoon.

Clark chuckled softly with the memory and then sobered as he settled into his
careful watch of the city below him.

He was in luck. He'd barely begun to scan the city when he found his quarry in
a dark colored car, being driven by a uniformed cop. He frowned, drifting
lower. Recognizing the vehicle license plates though, he figured that it was
probable that his wife hadn't gone and gotten herself arrested, poking into
something she wasn't supposed to, after all. Herrera was no fool. He'd have
called for backup first. A flicker of a smile passed the Man of Steel's lips.
And would have needed it too. Lois Lane didn't lightly let anything get in the
way of the press' need to know.

The interior of the car was in darkness, but his enhanced vision made it
brighter. Lois was in the back seat, huddled up against the side and hunched
over the notepad resting on her knees as she wrote feverishly. Superman
recognized the set look in her face only too well. His partner was getting
down a take. Beside her, Jimmy dozed fitfully, chin on chest, hands clutching
protectively at the camera slung around his neck. Superman let his gaze linger
on Lois again. She looked just fine. A bit disheveled, maybe...actually pretty
grubby, which was unusual enough in itself, but unhurt, certainly.

They'd been working on a story. That much was obvious. And Lois had obviously
been in the thick of it to judge by the state of her. Another smile. Why was
he not surprised? With concern now on the wane, reassured, a reporter's
natural curiosity overtook him. What story?

A faint wail of sirens caught at the edge of his hearing and he lifted his
head. He quickly picked out the fire truck as it negotiated the narrow
alleyways on Curtis Avenue. Heading for the waterfront. He caught the thick
plume of smoke. Warehouse fire. That was it, of course. Bound to be. And, if
he knew his partner, she'd been crawling around right in the thick of that
smoke and heat. Which explained her appearance some. He shook his head as he
listened intently for a moment to the urgent splutter of radio talk that was
reaching him faintly from the alley. The fire was already well in hand by the
fire crews in attendance. It was coded as CNPR - a Commercial blaze with No
Persons Reported on site. In other words, the building had been confirmed as
empty and no one needed rescuing from the blaze. And, with a third truck
already on its way, there was little need for Superman to lend a hand.
Everything was under control.

Turning his back on the docks, he followed the car instead, on its circular
route through the empty city streets. He quickly guessed its destination. He
increased his speed marginally to overtake it and landed lightly on the high
ledge of the Planet building to watch as it drew into the curb below the
famous iron globe. Briefly, as Lois left the car and began to hustle Jimmy
impatiently into the building, he willed her to look up and see him. One
small, shared glance, one brief meeting of their eyes, would have gone a long
way to dispelling the distance that Boston had put between them and the
longing for her that distance had seeded in him.

She didn't.

A soft sigh escaped him as she vanished into the lobby, Jimmy in tow.

But he'd found what he'd come looking for, after all, and there was no reason
to linger. He turned, on his way to lifting off the ledge, and found himself
eye to baleful eye with the glowering figure crouching at his side. He smiled.

"Well, anyway," he told the gap-toothed gargoyle watching him, "she looked
just fine to me. How about you?"

It appeared that the gargoyle held no opinion on the matter. Or, if it did, it
wasn't willing to share it with him any.

Superman's smile widened as he gave it a brief pat against its flat-eared head
and then rose smoothly into the air above it. He freewheeled lazily around and
out on a heading for Boston and then paused, turning his head to where the
rosy glow of dancing flames cast a rippling reflection on the waterfront.

The third truck had been misdirected. It was on the other side of town now,
would take another thirty minutes to reach the scene, and, meantime, that fire
was sparking its way towards other buildings in the area, fanned by a sudden,
stiff rising breeze coming off the water.

A splutter of radio talk reached his ears and abruptly upped the ante. Control
had just been in contact with the owner of the warehouse. The stock was toxic,
highly flammable paint and decorating supplies. Caution was advised and the
fire code had been upgraded to MUHAZ. MUtual aid required - HAZardous
materials on site. If any of those supplies blew before the blaze could be
safely doused, a lot of Metropolis' fire heroes were going to be directly in
the line of greatest risk.

Superman glanced back across one shoulder briefly before he sighed.

Lois was just going to kill him when she found out he'd been in Metropolis
fighting warehouse fires this evening.

He shrugged. And then grinned. But...he guessed a little misdirection wouldn't
hurt any. A touch of sleight-of-hand to persuade folks Superman was still in
town.

He headed for the warehouse.


~@*****@~


At just a moment or so past three fifty five a.m., the Astoria's main bar was
near enough deserted.

At the far end of the service counter, the bartender polished glasses to a
pristine clarity with a judicious cloth and kept a weather eye on his solitary
customer, just in case he needed a refill.

He hadn't for a while though.

Nor did he seem in the market for that other mainstay of the bartender's
bible: sympathetic conversation.

Clark sat on the barstool, idly staring into the tall, frosted glass cradled
in one hand and wishing he were somewhere else.

Acres of gleaming chrome and steel banisters and stair-rails in swirling, art
deco curves linked the bar's three levels. Classical Muzak tinkled discreetly
off in the distance. The hotel's owners had worked hard at creating the right
ambiance of quiet congeniality. Clark had other words for it. Sterile and
soul-less were just two of them. He hated hotel bars; counted himself
fortunate he rarely had to spend time in them.

Right then, he could think of several other places he'd rather have been
spending time in. All of them had Lois in them.

Freed from his concern over her, he'd still found himself restless and unready
for sleep on his return to the hotel. The shower he'd needed to rid himself of
the grime he'd picked up at the fire had only chased tiredness further from
him and his mind was over occupied with the story his wife and Jimmy were
working on. It hadn't been the warehouse after all, he'd established. None of
the fire crews in attendance had spoken to or seen any reporters at the scene,
and he knew that Lois would have gotten an interview with at least one of them
if she'd been there.

Intrigued, he'd considered calling to find out what they were working on. But
he knew that they'd be working under pressure of the morning deadline to get
the story out and how unwelcome a call from a mildly curious partner would be.
Still, his mind wouldn't let it go. Finally, he'd gone downstairs to the hotel
lobby in search of a cafe that might be persuaded to serve him up a half
decent cup of coffee and a quiet corner where he could wind down a touch
before trying for sleep again. But the bistro was shuttered and only the neon-
coated calm of the bar provided an escape from his room and a coffee maker
that, he'd already discovered, turned most brands of coffee into something
approximating swamp-mud.

At such a late hour, he'd been surprised to find even that still in business,
but the bartender - who'd cheerfully owned up, with a half-abashed, college-
kid smile, to the name of Jordan - had confided that, with the Astoria playing
host to three conventions that weekend, the management would've been crazy not
to keep the bar open round the clock. Sure, it was abandoned now, Jordan had
gone on, in response to Clark's skeptical glance around the deserted bar; most
of the convention guests were out hitting the local hotspots back in town. But
when they closed around four thirty...and if the Illinois Union of Stationary
& Office Accessories Reps. proved as thirsty as they had the previous
year...well, things were going to be heating up pretty soon. Considering the
shuttered bistro, Clark concluded wryly that the management figured the
Illinois USOAR weren't going to be much interested in drinking coffee.

He glanced at his watch and noted that he had around twenty-five minutes to
make himself scarce. Sharing a bar in the early hours with a tall glass was
depressing enough. Sharing it with around a hundred exuberant sales reps. was
something even worse.

He took another sip of his drink, aware that his uncharacteristically critical
and anti-social mood was more a product of his wishing he were back in
Metropolis than anything else.

"Hey, Kent...never would've figured you for a barfly."

Clark turned his head at the sudden, deep boom of a recognizable voice from
behind him and smiled, genuinely pleased to see the tall, chubby figure of
Mike Atwell join him at the bar. Atwell, a graying African-American in his
late sixties, was Director of the BAYJ. He reminded Clark - and more than a
few others who'd met him over the years, even when he'd been a good few years
younger and carrying less poundage to boot - of a kindly grandfather straight
out of a Hans Christian Anderson story, with his twinkling eyes set in round,
Pillsbury-dough cheeks and his chunky, lumbering body. But the outward
softness of his frame hid a hard-nosed bloodhound when it counted. Retired
now, he'd been an astute and brutally honest journalist in his day, with an
impressive pedigree to match his outgoing, easy manner and Clark already
counted him a friend. So, he took no offense as Atwell went on, cheerfully
laying an elbow to the bar and tilting his head to study the tall glass by
Clark's hand.

"So, what's all this? Late nightcap? Early hair of the dog? Secret vices you
didn't declare on your resume?"

"Spritzer and lime." Clark held up the glass briefly in mock salute. He didn't
ask Atwell any similar questions. The man drank bourbon like another would
drink mineral water - and with about as much effect. A legacy from a reprobate
youth spent in the Navy, Atwell had confessed with a grin as he'd taken note
of Clark's curious glance at their first meeting, during which he'd downed six
doubles in the space of thirty minutes. Given his habits, finding him sharing
the solitude of the bar with him in the graveyard hours of the morning was
probably one of the least surprising things Clark could think of. In fact, if
he were going to be surprised at anything, it would be that Mike hadn't turned
up sooner.

Atwell gave him a sour glance. "Something suspicious about a man that haunts a
hotel bar in the early hours and doesn't drink liquor," he judged with a
sniff. He beckoned the bartender and glanced Clark's way as Jordan approached
with professional celerity. "Another?"

"No, I'm okay, thanks."

"Bourbon, thanks." Atwell told Jordan. "Make it a double. Hold the rocks. Hold
the water. Hold everything but the bourbon. So," he returned his attention to
his prize speaker as Jordan nodded and went to attend to his order, "what's
the story then? Out of town blues?"

He paused, gave Clark another speculative look and then nodded his head in
ponderous thought, as though a puzzle had just been solved. "Ah...still
haven't hooked up with that wife of yours yet, huh?" He shrugged as Clark
glanced at him. "Front desk says you haven't had any calls incoming. Doesn't
have you making any calls back to the big city that last any longer than it
takes to hook up to a message service either. Except for one - to the Daily
Planet and you made one more answerphone call home after that, so I figure it
wasn't your wife you were talking to there and that whoever you *were* talking
to didn't know where she'd gotten to. Hey, I used to be one of the best this
old town could muster, remember?" He shrugged again as Clark raised a brow.
"I'm curious, so sue me. It's a natural hazard of the profession. Wait till
you get to retirement age and see if your pitbull instincts fade out. Anyway,
I just figured I'd ask when I was passing, since you seemed a
touch...concerned, earlier."

Clark paused, but he could hardly tell Atwell that his concerns on that score
had been taken care of. "No, no calls, yet," he agreed simply. "I'm sure she's
okay though. Your seminar go okay?" he asked, changing the subject. The
sleight of hand was helped by the arrival of Jordan with Atwell's order.

Atwell took his first sip of the whiskey and nodded. "Sure. Actually, they
paroled us early," he confided. He cast a brief glance out into the blackness
pressed up against the high picture windows on the far side of the room. Dull
thumps of whirling gray snow hit briefly against the panes before swirling off
into the dark.

"Half the attendees failed to show anyway. Main Street was jammed tight for
half the afternoon, I hear. Most of 'em probably just gave up and turned back
for home instead. Should pick up tomorrow though. I called the Weather Center
this afternoon; they're expecting it to ease up sometime early tomorrow
morning. This morning," he corrected himself, with a glance at the clock
behind the bar.

"Good," Clark murmured, casting a look at the windows too.

Atwell eased himself around on his bar-stool to face him and quirked a brow
upwards. "Now, why do I get the feeling that wasn't entirely expressing
concern that the BAYJ get enough numbers in to justify this little jaunt
instead of being bankrupted by rain checks?"

"What?"

Atwell grinned. "Those flights looking likely to be cancelled starting to bug
you, huh?"

Clark gave him a troubled look. "Well - "

Atwell's grin widened. "Triple A say they got no plans to re-schedule. Not
just yet anyway. I called them too. Figured you'd want to know."

Clark looked even more uncomfortable. "Thanks."

"Hey, don't mention it. I know how much of a rush you're in to get back to the
bright lights. Guess being stuck in a 'backwater' like this one is tame for a
big city reporter."

"Mike - "

Atwell chuckled, waving him down. "Ah, forget it, Kent, I'm just foolin'. Hey,
I know the drill. Used to be a proud new husband myself way back when." He
flashed that wide grin at his friend again and then added, genially, "So, what
about...Lois? Lois," he pursed his lips as Clark nodded affirmation, "cute
name. So, you reckon she's pining for a reunion, same as you are, huh? Betting
she's sitting at home ticking down the hours till your plane gets in?"

Clark smiled, thinking again of his earlier visit to Metropolis. "Lois?
Doubtful. Right now she's probably chasing down leads on some hot breaking
story."

"Ah." Atwell nodded sagely into his glass. "Jealous, huh?"

Clark laughed. "Green like Kryptonite," he confessed.


~@*****@~


No truly great metropolitan newspaper ever really sleeps. At whatever hour for
others might herald the close of their business day, its lights may dim, the
clatter of its tickertape fade to a listless tick, its offices empty, its
computers run on downtime, but it never really slips into slumber. Like a
sleeping dragon, it keeps one hot, suspicious eye on the world and its tail
lashes gently as it dozes, eager for battle and keen to respond to the clarion
call to arms.

The offices of the Daily Planet, viewed in the after midnight hours, were no
exception. Though activity was muted, far from the bustling, oft-times
frenzied, clamor of the day, the stillness was illusionary. In the bowels of
the building, perpetual in their motion, the great, heavy printing presses
rumbled smoothly and relentlessly towards another dawn, another day and
another early edition.

On the upper levels, in the newsroom itself, where copy was typed and
editorial decisions made, there was darkness. But even here, light broke
shallow pools in the shadows and studious phantoms flitted back and forth
among the bookcases and conference rooms. Occasionally they even passed by the
slim figure that sat pertly at its desk and tapped vigorous prose on the
computer keyboard before it. But for all the attention that Lois gave those
infrequent visitors, she might as well have been alone.

A faint crease of concentration furrowed her brow and her eyes never left the
blue illumination of her screen. She hadn't even paused to remove her jacket
on entering the office; had simply swept in, all rush and bustle, dumped her
purse at her feet and launched into her take, with barely an absently grunted
greeting at a departing colleague who passed her en route to the elevator.

She had taken a moment out of the frenzied capture of her story only once when
she'd collared Jimmy for an update on the progress of the prints he was
developing. One glance at his grinning face as he'd sped past her desk, intent
on his own private frenzy of activity, had been enough to reassure her that
the Planet's early edition would carry pictures of the most wanted man in
Metropolis to accompany her take. She'd flashed the photographer an answering
grin and then sunk back into her own world.

She was oblivious to the slow shifting of gears as the Planet warmed up to
another day, as the activity around her became more intense, as the offices
filled and darkness lifted and coffee began to percolate in the tireless
rituals of the paper's world.

"Whoa, The King save us...Lois! I thought mud monsters from the Black Lagoon
had invaded us! Is there really one of my best reporters under all that gunk?"

"Hi, Chief." Lois barely took her eyes from the computer screen to acknowledge
the arrival of a curious Perry White at her shoulder. He looked her over again
and then shook his head. It was probably wiser not to ask. He wasn't sure he
wanted to know.

"Well, assuming you haven't gone and taken up mud wrestling as a hobby...there
some reason you're in this early? Aside from the fact that Clark's outta town
and you got nothing better to do with your nights?" he added, wryly.

The question might just have held the merest hint of complaint. These days the
any hour, all hours, dedication Lois Lane had once focused on her career had
slipped some. Where, once, the sight of her hammering at her keyboard in the
dawn's early hours would have provoked no comment, it was now rare enough to
be remarked upon. Not that White blamed her much for that attitude change, but
- just sometimes - an Editor in Chief with his mind more on his paper than his
employees and friends could regret its passing.

"Maybe I should arrange for Kent to work more out of town assignments," he
murmured and then, as Lois gave him a dry sideways glance, "What's so all fire
important anyhow? We got a scoop?" He leaned forward to peer hopefully at the
developing story on the screen. "Valley Vale?" He scanned further, eyes
widening. "Jumping Jehosaphat! You snared the Vampire? Well, how in the King's
name you manage that?"

Lois shrugged. "Staked him out."

White snapped her a glance and saw, to his amusement, that she had offered the
explanation in all seriousness.

"I see." He leaned closer, tone turning dry. "An' did he, you know," he
flapped his fingers in a flying motion, "try turnin' into a bat first? Or did
you string some raw onions round his neck and get a white horse to dance on
his grave?"

That got her full attention. "What?" She frowned up on him.

Perry chuckled. "Never mind."

"Here we go! Hot out the soup and looking good!"

Jimmy fairly bounced down the stairs to Lois' desk and dumped a pile of eight
by ten color prints beside her.

"This him?" White picked up one as Lois took another. "Doesn't look like much,
does he?"

Lois grimaced. "In the flesh. And he wasn't. These are good, Jimmy," she added
thoughtful praise.

"Worth getting dragged out of bed at two in the morning for," he agreed with a
grin.

Perry studied the photo another moment and then frowned, bringing it closer to
peer at it intently. He tilted it to catch the light on a different angle.
"What is that he's holding there?" he asked finally.

Jimmy's pleased grin slipped a notch. He caught Lois' sudden glance and then
met his boss' enquiring eyes. "Uh...well..."

"Near as we can tell, left female femur," Lois rescued him, nonchalantly. She
frowned at the line she'd just typed and then deleted half of it.

Perry took his eyes from the print abruptly to stare at her. "And you included
it in the shot?" He deepened the stare, reproving. "Hell's bells! Jimmy...!"

"He wouldn't let go!" Lois protested, keying down to a new paragraph. "What
were we supposed to do? Forget about the picture?"

"Well..." Perry sighed.

"Anyway, Jimmy blurred it best he could." She turned her head briefly, tilted
it to view the print in his hands with narrow eyes. "No one'll even notice it,
trust me." She patted him confidently against the arm and returned to her
take.

Perry sighed again. He put down the print with a shake of his head. "Course,
you know, Clark's gonna be greener than five week old chili you broke this one
while he was gone. Heard from him yet?"

"He left a message on my machine last night. Just to let me know he'd arrived
at his hotel safely." She allowed herself a small inward smile at that.
Arriving safely at his destination was something Clark never really had to
concern himself with; something she never had to worry about either. "I
haven't had a chance to get back to him yet."

"Oh. Well, I'm sure he went down a storm." Perry straightened, an editor's
priorities suddenly more important. "You gonna make the morning edition with
this? You only got half an hour till the presses roll."

"Sure, Chief. Sending it down now."

"That's my girl," Perry said as she leapt to her feet and then, concerned, as
she paused to clutch at the edge of her desk, head lowered and a crease
marring her forehead, "Lois? You okay?"

"Yeah, sure, I'm fine." She drew in a deep breath and lifted her head to smile
at him. "Got a headache, that's all. Listen, I gotta change out of these
clothes, so - "

"Lois?" Perry's face tightened a touch as she turned away, giving him a good
view of the matted hair and blood soaked collar of her jacket for the first
time. "Honey, what happened? Shouldn't you be down at Emergency getting that
seen to?"

"Look, Perry, I appreciate the concern. Really. But it's nothing, just a
scratch. Honestly. I got it checked out at the SOC by one of the EMTs. He said
it was just fine."

"Actually, he said - "

"It was fine." A sharp glance silenced Jimmy's correction in its tracks. The
photographer shared a look with the Planet's editor. Perry grimaced.

"What is this, some kinda guy thing?" Lois demanded scathingly, catching it
and scowling between them. "Hubby's out of town so it's down to the rest of
the frat house to look out for the little woman till he gets back?"

Perry sighed. "Lois - "

"Well, *this* little woman can look out for herself. Now, if you two *don't*
*mind*, I'd like to get my take in the early edition and go get some of
this...gunk washed off!"

She reached down to snag her purse with one hand. Another of those semaphore
glances passed between the two men standing beside her. Perry rolled his eyes
ceilingward. Jimmy shrugged.

"Well, if you got it checked out, I guess..." Perry murmured, doubtfully as
Lois straightened up again to glare at them fiercely.

"I did. And I'd like to drop the subject now," she told him firmly. "If anyone
wants me for the next hour I'll be down in the locker room getting showered
and changed."

She headed for the elevator.

Perry shrugged as Jimmy glanced at him. "Don't look at me, I'm just the guy
with his name on the letterhead," he grumbled as he made for his office.
"Sometimes, I wonder if my voice even gits heard in here these days. Uh,
Jimmy?" He turned back as Jimmy eyed him attentively. "Just outta interest,
what *did* that EMT say?"

"That he thought it was fine, but that she should get it checked out to be on
the safe side," Jimmy said promptly. "He wanted to take her on over to St.
Luke's in the ambulance, with Valley Vale, but she wouldn't go. Well, you know
Lois..."

"Oh." White mulled that over. Then he coughed lightly. "Well, son, why don't
you keep an eye on her for a spell? Just in case. I'd...uh, sure hate to have
one of my best reporters out of the loop."

Jimmy grinned and sobered as White raised a brow at him. "Sure, Chief," he
said hastily. "Stuck like glue. Uh," he amended, with a glance for the
elevator into which the subject of discussion had now disappeared. "Once
she's...outta the showers, course."

Perry eyed him narrowly. "Smart call, son," he drawled. He pointed a stern
finger at the photographer. "You let her outta your sight for the rest of the
day, you got me to answer to. Capisce?"

Jimmy nodded smartly.

"Good. Well, hop to it, son! What we running here, some kinda rest home for
the elderly and infirm? Git those prints downstairs! And get me some coffee on
your way back up!"

"Yessir!"


~@*****@~


As a matter of habit, Clark picked up the early edition of the local paper on
his way back to his room. He'd successfully managed only three hours or so of
restless sleep once abandoning the bar to Mike, but an early morning walk in
the crisp, snow-tanged air had cleared the mugginess from his head some and he
was in cheerful mood as he chose a selection of papers from the foyer stand
and paid the vendor. The blizzard had played havoc with distribution, it
seemed; his choice was limited and, disappointingly, there was no sign of the
Planet's early morning edition. He'd been looking forward to reading Lois'
take.

The Boston Tribune had a lot in common with the Planet though, carrying a
mixture of local, national and international news. He scanned the front page -
an expose of shady dealing on city officials' parking permits - as he waited
for the elevator, and flicked through the inner pages as he stepped absently
into the cage along with three or four other passengers.

"Which floor, sir?"

"Huh? Oh, fifteen. Thanks."

The elevator paused briefly for disembarking passengers on the fifth floor as
he reviewed the theater section on page three, stopped again on floors ten and
eleven. It took on two passengers on the twelfth.

"Isn't this your floor?"

Clark glanced up at the middle-aged woman looking back at him curiously and
nodded, giving her a smile. "Yes, it is. Thanks."

He went back to his perusal of the paper as he walked slowly down the corridor
towards his room at its far end. He reached page eight halfway along and the
banner headline reared up to meet him, stopping him dead in his tracks.

                         METROPOLIS VAMPIRE CAUGHT

His immediate thought, disappointment that someone had beaten them to the
take, after all those months of digging and sifting through any evidence they
could find for clues, was wiped smartly clear as the sub-header directly
underneath registered.

         Daily Planet Reporter in Midnight Stakeout at Cemetery

"What the - ?"

An elderly woman, passing him at that particular moment, gave him a haughty
sidelong glance. The glossy coated Peke in her arms echoed it. With those
identical expressions of disapproval, and the heavy-jowled cheeks the woman
was carrying in the midst of a podgy, overblown face, they might have been
sisters.

Oblivious, Clark scanned the bulk of the story in a fraction of a second and
then raised his eyes to the ceiling, the newspaper crumpling convulsively in
his fist. "Unbelievable!" he hissed, an explosive, exasperated growl that
provoked the Peke into a frothing-mouthed fit of yapping.

In deference to the savage look the Peke's owner gave him, he offered an
absent apology before he excused himself to stride determinedly for his room.
The woman watched him go with unforgiving eyes before she gave her attention
to soothing her 'poor little baby', as it choked itself furiously into a fit.


~@*****@~


"Jimmy? Jimmy!"

Lois punctuated the yell with a wave of the sheaf of computer data in her
hand, half rising from her seat the better to gain the attention of the Daily
Planet's researcher, way across the room. Jimmy glanced up from where he'd
been trading a slow smile with the new filing clerk: brunette curls down to
the middle of her back and blue eyes wider than a rabbit about to be run over
by a garbage truck, Lois thought cynically. Jimmy waved back with a quick grin
and jogged in her direction. By the time he reached her desk, Lois was back at
her keyboard and had typed in three more paragraphs.

"Hey. What'd you need?"

"How about a researcher who can keep his body temperature level?" Lois
grumbled.

Jimmy grinned at her, unabashed. "She's cool, isn't she?" he breathed
admiringly, looking up to aim a wave at the new object of his desire, before
returning to Lois with a confidential, "Leanore. Single, got a condo up in
East Park..."

"Really? East Park...wow..." Lois glanced across at Leanore appraisingly,
before she went back to the sheaf of papers in her hand. She raised a brow.
"On her salary? Perry must be paying higher than I thought."

"Yeah. Well," Jimmy lowered his voice, "don't pass it around, but, actually,
she's old man Jeffers' niece. Working out her time for her journalism major.
You know, getting some work experience?"

"Ah. Well, I'd be careful, Jimmy, 'old man Jeffers' doesn't get wind of
exactly what kind of experience his niece is getting down here in the
newsroom," Lois warned him.

Jimmy ignored that, still lost in the glow of rose-tinged appreciation. "Works
out twice a week at the local gym... She drives the coolest Cobra 427 - mint
green - you know, man, that thing can go! Zero to sixty in four
seconds...maximum bhp of 410 at 5600 rpm...it's like taking off in the
shuttle, I mean just like...pow! Slams you back in your seat like an Exocet on
full charge...at least, it does when Leanore drives it."

He sighed, wistfully, and then, returning heroically to business, leaned his
elbows on the untidy clutter of the desk to enquire, "So, anyway...what can I
do for my other favorite lady this morning?"

Lois reached for a small folder by her left elbow, passing it over. "This guy.
Dale Karvin? He's in town for - "

"Big 'praise an' raise' rally uptown." Jimmy looked up from the open folder
and shrugged. "It's been on all the local stations."

"'Praise an' raise'?"

"Well, it's what they do, isn't it? More raising than praising too, if I hear
tell right."

"I take it you're no fan?"

"Of Karvin's? Don't know him well enough to be anything about him. Just not my
scene is all. Are you?"

"Not especially. Can't say I know enough about the subject either way. Which
is why," she added meaningfully, "I'd like some background on the man."

Jimmy snapped the folder to. "On my way, boss lady!"

Lois nodded and then dragged open her desk drawer and pulled out a 100mg
bottle of aspirin. Tipping out a couple onto her palm she washed them down
with a quick gulp of cooling coffee and grimaced as she got to her feet.

"Head still hurting?" Jimmy paused with a frown.

"Yeah, a little. The fresh air'll blow away some cobwebs though."

"Fresh air?" He turned to watch as she hooked her coat from the rack. "Where
you going?" he asked, alarmed.

"City Hall. I just got a call that the Mayor's about to hold a press
conference on Valley Vale's arraignment."

"But - " Jimmy glanced down at the folder in his hands and then over to the
editor's office.

"If you get anything on Karvin before I get back, just leave it on my desk."
Lois added hurriedly, glancing at her watch before she snatched up her purse.
"It's urgent, Jimmy. I need it before I leave this evening, okay?"

"But the Chief said - "

She headed up the ramp at a run. "Thanks, Jimmy! I owe you one!"

Jimmy drew in a low breath and then puffed it out again, considering. "You
will if the Chief finds out I let you go wandering off on your own," he agreed
mildly, as he headed for the reference section.


~@*****@~


Estelle Pinchenski rattled the charity can under the nose of another passer-by
and kept the glazed smile fixed on her face with an effort as she was ignored.

After another five minutes went by without so much as a sour glance in her
direction, she backed up into the shop doorway behind her, letting the can
drop to dangle from its loop around her wrist and stuffing her chilled blue
hands deeply into the pockets of her camel coat. One of them was cold enough
to have been itching mercilessly for over an hour. She rubbed her palm against
the lining of her pocket in an abortive attempt to ease that maddening tingle
and then gave up with a sigh.

She glanced at her watch. Another half-hour and she was taking a break. Martin
could hardly say she hadn't tried. Course, she lifted her eyes to the overcast
sky with a scowl, Martin was probably collecting inside the mall. Warm and
cozy. She sniffed. For a preacher and a Christian, she considered, Martin Gipe
could be a prize jerk, times.

But even cold hands and a chill that leeched its way right down into her bones
were worth it if they meant avoiding having to listen to another lecture on
how worthy a cause the United Church was, how much her contribution was
appreciated, how every single one of them must do the very best they could to
achieve the Church's aims. All with that pious, pitying look that said she was
very far from performing high on any one of those targets.

Estelle sighed. And even enduring that pity, which made her want to scream and
drum her heels in frustration, was better than spending another day in her
apartment alone, watching the world move past her window.

At least Martin gave her some attention, made getting up in the morning
worthwhile.

She wondered idly if tonight might just be the night she'd persuade him to
agree to her cooking dinner for him at her apartment. Her mood slipped a notch
further as she considered bleakly that it probably wouldn't. There'd been a
great many excuses made already and she was sure another was in the offing.

What the hell was the guy's problem? She was attractive enough. Wasn't she?
She slipped a sideways glance into the store window and then shied hastily
away, like a deer startled by traffic, before the slightly plump frame and
haggard mouse face that stared back at her could fully catch her eye. Estelle
had avoided catching her reflection in windows for over a decade and had no
intention of changing her mind now. In her mind's eye, another woman lived,
far removed from the prim, mousy little Estelle that greeted her first thing
in the morning from the depths of the fly-speckled bathroom mirror in her
dreary apartment. An Estelle that charmed and turned heads and drew men like
moths to a flame. Just, in fact, like the heroine of her favorite novels.
Fiery, redheaded Madison Bel Marco, who effortlessly juggled a successful
modeling career with running a thriving fashion house business and satisfying
both a husband and two lovers - in between secret assignments for the
Government as one of their top espionage agents, of course.

Estelle's narrow mouth turned down at the corners. Yeah, right, she thought
scornfully. She'd like to see Madison Bel Marco do all that, after spending
half her life nursing a sick, elderly mother till she gave up and died.
*Wasted* half her life. She'd just like to see her do that, that was all. She
could have been successful, she pondered dismally, if she hadn't missed out on
so much, when it counted. When it mattered. When the best years of her life
were passing her by as she breathed in the sick air of her mother's room and
glanced longingly out of the two story apartment window, in between dressing
bedsores and emptying bedpans, for something better she could only imagine in
half formed dreams.

Something better. She hadn't even known what it meant. Just that it was
something she was missing out on. Her teachers had told her she was smart
enough to go to college. And she had. She had spent two wonderful, free and
easy years at Bain College in Detroit - a world away from the stifling home
life she had known and the grasping mother who chained her to it. That had
been before Mother's emphysema had been diagnosed, of course, and she'd had to
drop out of school to take up the burden of unpaid nurse and care giver. Here
in the miserable city of Metropolis, to which Mother had moved when Estelle
had left the family home. To be nearer her friends, she'd said - now that she
was alone. Abandoned, she'd meant of course. By an ungrateful daughter more
intent on enjoying herself with her flighty friends than caring for those she
should. Friends! Estelle snorted. Friends who'd hardly visited in over ten
years and had quickly dropped out of their lives. Friends who hadn't even
bothered to turn up at the funeral.

And then what? The ungrateful old witch had upped and died on her, that's
what. Left her alone. Squeezed out her youth and her prime and then left her
alone. Left her to molder in that empty apartment in her turn, unwanted and
unloved and with barely enough education to hold down a job on the checkout of
her local five and dime.

The bitter, discontented line of Estelle's mouth tightened to a thin line and
then softened as her lips curved in a faint smile.

Until Martin. Martin had saved her. Would save her. She was sure of it. She
didn't much believe in God any more, but still, she was sure He'd sent Martin
'specially for her.

She often thought, wonderingly, of how short a time she'd known him. Only
three months since he'd knocked on her door seeking donations for the United
Church of Salvation, for which he served as an oft times preacher and full
time collector. She'd persuaded him to come on in a spell while she made a
pretense of rooting for her wallet and had plied him with weak coffee and
home-baked cookies in an effort to keep him, to stave off the moment when he'd
accept the coins she gave him and leave her to the silence again. And he had
listened. Actually listened to her. Actually seemed to be interested in what
she had to say. And by the time he had left, he had drawn her into his world,
infected her with his enthusiasm for his faith. As soon as the following
morning, she had taken the small, gilt-embossed card he'd left with her,
dialed the first of the numbers printed there, and volunteered her services to
the Church.

Congratulating himself on his success in drawing another sinner into the fold,
Martin Gipe would, perhaps, have been shocked to learn that Estelle didn't
care two shakes for his precious Church. He would certainly have been appalled
to learn that though she did count her contribution to its well being as a
labor of love, it was a love rather more firmly directed at him than he would
have felt comfortable with.

Tonight, Estelle thought dreamily as she stood in the doorway of the store.
Tonight was definitely going to be the moment she and Madison Bel Marco had
waited for all these years.

She stepped out into the street again and, fired by her hope that things were
about to - finally - come right, she managed to snag seven contributions
before she'd been at it more than five minutes.


~@*****@~


"Lois Lane's desk; Jimmy Olsen speaking."

"Jimmy! It's Clark. Where's Lois? I've been trying to get through all morning
and all I get is her machine!"

"Hey, C.K.! How's sunny Boston?"

"Sunny Boston's clouding over and heading for stormy. Which is, curiously
enough, just about where *my* mood is right now."

"Oh." Jimmy's mobile grin stiffened on his face as he heard the dry note in
Clark's voice. He winced. "Caught the early editions, huh?" he guessed.

"Sure did. Caught the morning news report on LNN too." Clark's tone turned
drier still, taking on a falsely sweet note as he added, over-brightly, "Can I
talk to Lois now?"

"Uh, sorry, no can do. She's gone - "

"Gone?"

"Well, she hasn't been in since first thing. She - "

"But...she is okay, right?" Clark's acerbic manner tightened. "I mean she
looked okay when I saw her earlier and - "

"Saw her? When'd you see her?"

"Uh...on the news. On the...on the TV. In my room. This morning."

"Really? I thought LNN just covered the capture. Lois was mostly left out of
it. Peters - you know that dope of a cop that's been handling the case? - I
think he'd just like it if Lois wasn't involved at all. He's been trying to
claim credit for the catch all morning. Never even mentioned her to the press
at the SOC." Jimmy's tone regained its puzzled note, "In fact, most of the
media's just beginning to wake up to the fact that it was Lois who caught
Valley Vale right now. How'd - "

"I dunno. Maybe LNN had someone on the ground quicker than anyone else. Jimmy,
is Lois okay?"

"Oh, sure! She's fine! Just bruised up a little, that's all. Banged up some.
He put up one helluva fight." Jimmy puffed out an admiring breath. "I mean,
like, wooh!"

"He?" Clark repeated, disbelieving. "*He* put up a fight? Valley Vale?!"

"Boy, did he ever! Lois though, I mean, man, she was like something out of
pro-am wrestling night - incredible! Like The Ripper on a bad night, you know?
Something else! Had him down and out flat, on the ropes, in two rounds,
although it was almost a straight K.O., no penalties, no submissions, when he
bounced her off of that gravestone like that. I mean, I don't mind telling
you, C.K., when I got there, saw all that blood, just for a minute there I
thought for sure we were looking at - "

"Bounced her - ?! Blood? *What* blood? She was bleeding?"

Jimmy paused, running out of steam all at once like a runaway diesel. There
was an instant's silence.

"Uh, well...it...t was just a scrape. Didn't even need stitches or anything.
You know, I don't even believe half of what she said he did. I mean, you know
Lois, right? She was probably exaggerating -- "

A long, tortured sigh crossed the wire.

"Jimmy..."

"Hey, C.K., it's cool, honest, I - "

"Did she get checked out? Did she go to the emergency room, get seen by a
doctor?"

"Well, no...but it really wasn't that bad. You know she's down at City Hall
right now, covering the press conference the Mayor and Peters are holding on
Valley Vale's arraignment. Listen, I can get her to call you, she gets back
in, if you want - "

"Yeah. Yeah, you do that. I've got some seminars to attend this afternoon. If
she can't reach me, tell her to talk to Mike Atwell. He'll take a message."

"Sure thing, C.K."

"You're sure she's okay?"

"Absolutely. No problem."

"Okay."

"Hey, how'd you get along?" Jimmy changed the subject hastily as Clark sounded
less than convinced. "Wowed 'em with that speech of yours, huh?"

"Uh, Jimmy, I...can't talk about that right now. Listen, I gotta go. You'll
make sure Lois gets that message?"

"Trust me. Catch her first thing."

"Okay." Clark paused, then, "Thanks, Jimmy."

"No sweat, C.K. Uh-oh." A faint bellow in the distance sharpened his voice.
"Chief's on the warpath. I gotta go! See you later!"

"Yeah, sure -- "

Clark paused as the droning buzz of the dial tone cut him off and then hung up
with a low sigh. The tight knot of worry was back in his stomach again, like
an ulcer. He was beginning to slot together a picture of what had happened
with Lois and Valley Vale the previous evening, through the jumbled jigsaw
pieces he'd gathered from the papers and the news reports on TV and now from
Jimmy's enthusiastic account, and he wasn't liking what that picture was
amounting to.

Not one little bit.

Jimmy had seemed to think Lois was okay though. Perry obviously did, or he'd
have packed her off to Emergency by now, would never have sent her out on
assignment. He knew that. Course he did.

It was just that his stomach didn't.

An exuberant knock at his door lifted his head.

When he opened it, Mike Atwell beamed at him from the corridor. "Clark!" He
slapped a hand against Clark's shoulder in passing and threw himself into an
inelegant sprawl on one of the sofas. "How you doing? Thought I'd just look
in, see if you'd recovered from your disgusting lack of self-control last
night," he said, cheerfully.

Clark grinned at him. "I was the one on water and lime, remember?"

"Oh, yeah. So..." he grimaced, "I assume you don't have any aspirin on you,
then? Not having the need for them, as it were?"

"Sure. Somewhere..." Clark crossed the room to where his jacket was draped
over the back of a chair and fished in the inside pocket. "Don't have much use
for them myself. Never found that they did anything for me, really. But, I
usually keep some handy..."

"Don't tell me, you were a first rate boy scout, right? Always prepared."

Clark's smile widened as he switched to the right inside breast pocket, having
come up empty. "Well, actually, yeah. But, to be honest, I keep them around in
case Lois needs them."

"Right." Atwell grunted, as though he'd just confessed to something obscene.

"Here."

Mike caught the tossed plastic packet, double handed, ripped it open, and
winced as he dry swallowed two of the pills. "Thanks. Wooh, that was a doozy."

"Thought it didn't have any effect?" Clark asked him, dryly. Now that he
looked at him closely, the convention Chairman was looking just a little gray
around the gills.

Mike shrugged. "I don't throw up on the bartender or hassle young women in
elevators, I figure it's having no effect. I never said nothing about the
morning after."

"Oh," said Clark, dubiously.

Atwell gave him a steady look. "Kent, if we're gonna stay friends, I just got
one rule. You don't try and talk me outta having the odd little double now and
then and I won't mention this nauseating affection you seem to have for your
wife. Of the two," he added musingly, "I tend to consider my vice the more
natural. Didn't anyone ever tell you affection should be saved for mistresses?
It's wasted on wives."

Clark chuckled. "Deal," he agreed.

"Anyway, that's enough about me for one day." Mike sat up straighter, ditching
his hangover like a duck shaking off water. "Actually, I came up to let you
know that we've had to shift the program back a couple of hours this
afternoon. Professor Dertman called in. He's not going to make his two p.m.
seminar. Apparently, he's up to his well-paid butt in snow. Stuck on the
freeway just shy of the city limits like a loon on a bulrush. It's gonna take
him least that long to make it over here. You got any objection to your final
lecture moving up in line?"

"Not at all. Got nothing better to do this evening."

"Good. Knew you'd be a trouper about it," Mike grinned up on him,
irreverently. "Gives you a couple of free hours right now though, right? So,
you game for a little road trip?"

Clark took an involuntary glance at the frosted windows.

"Well, a sidewalk trip, then," Mike corrected himself. "Just around the
corner. I was talking to an old buddy of mine at the Boston Trib. Says he'd be
glad to show you around, you want to go check out the competition?"

"Sure!" Clark said. It definitely beat sitting in his room trying to persuade
himself a second side-trip to Metropolis was out of the question. "I'd
appreciate that. Thanks."

"Yeah, well don't thank me too quick, Kent." Atwell got to his feet to give
him a wry look. "That was the good news."

Clark paused in the act of reaching for his jacket. "What's the bad news?" he
asked, warily.

Atwell coughed lightly. "Triple A just put out a flight flash on the local
station. They're up to their wings in snow too. Whole airport's iced in like a
tall double in a cool glass. Looks like you're stuck with us till at least
tomorrow morning."

"Oh, great."

"Yeah. Bummer, huh?"

"Tell me about it."

Atwell grinned. "Fear not, my friend," he said, laying a companionable hand to
the younger man's shoulder and guiding him for the door. "We'll keep you
occupied till your plane thaws out." He gave Clark a broad wink as they
emerged into the corridor. "There sure are a lot of bars in Boston!"


~@*****@~


Karen Culver was clearing her desk, just about ready to call it a night, when
she heard the faint commotion rising from the far end of the corridor, outside
her cubbyhole office.

/Great/, she thought sourly. /The one night of the year I get tickets for La
Boheme and they have to start again./

Sighing, she glanced at her watch.

Couldn't they have waited just ten more minutes till she was out of the
building?

For an instant, she considered sneaking out anyway. She'd waited years for
this treat, ever since she'd fallen head over heels in love with a dark-eyed,
silken-voiced Russian tenor called Serge Minarsovka when she was barely out of
pigtails and braces. All those years of worship from the backs of album covers
and sighing over vinyl acoustics, leading up to this one, short six week run
in Metropolis from an operatic tenor who rarely left his home country, wasn't
something she was going to give up on now. And she'd already been kept back,
was already a good two hours late in leaving, would have to rush if she was
going to make the performance in time.

But she knew what would happen if Mr. Gerrord heard that eruption. And how
unfair it would be to Richard, who would undoubtedly take the blame for the
disturbance. She muttered a string of expletives and put down the files she'd
been ready to take home with her, before she stalked from her room, already
knowing what she'd find when she reached the large, walk-in stationary
cupboard.

Sure enough, Clive Harkus was throwing the bulk of his weight around again,
his bulky, bear-like frame blockading the slighter figure of the boy he was
yelling at into a corner of the wall. Richard Carparon's weak blue eyes darted
fitfully around the room and Karen felt a flicker of shame that she had ever
thought of abandoning him when she saw relief flare in them at sight of her
across Harkus' shoulder.

"What the hell is going on here?" she demanded, though she knew only too well.

Harkus glanced across his shoulder at her and, as usual, took a second out to
give her a leering once over that made her think immediately about taking a
shower, before he straightened away from the boy cowering against the wall.

"Ricky Retard's messed it up again," he drawled sardonically. He waved an arm
around the metal-cast shelving that lined the room. Richard flinched back
against the wall with the movement, a soft whimper escaping him before he bit
it back behind clenched teeth. Harkus gave him an impatient glance.

"I mean, come on, Karen, how many times you got to tell him? The green files
go on the top shelf. The gray ones go underneath." He slapped the piles of
offending files as he spoke. For no other reason, Karen thought disgustedly,
than that he knew the noise would frighten the boy. She took a glance at the
shelf and her heart sank as she saw that Richard had gotten the colors
reversed again when he'd stocked up.

"I mean, jeez, it ain't that hard," Harkus went on. "You got that?" He loomed
over Richard again, raising his voice as though the office junior was hard of
hearing instead of just a little slower than average. "It ain't hard. Retard."
His voice had taken on a singsong note with that last and he looked plea