The altar table itself had been fragmented by the impact, barely recognizable slivers of wood lying
everywhere.
She bent to pick up a short length of fractured wood, feeling a little guilty as she gingerly touched it.
Upon lifting it, she was immediately plunged into a vision of another world, as daylight turned into
darkness.
Cassandra saw a street she didn't recognize, but knew from the buildings that it was someplace in
Gotham. Indistinct crowds of people thronged the street, laughing and moving along in dancelike
steps. A firecracker cartwheeled into the air, its bangs and crackles punctuated by the laughter of the
crowd.
Now she could see the people more clearly. Every one of them wore a mask. Some were cheap
plastic replicas of celebrities and presidents, while others bore the image of skulls, animals, and even
characters from children's cartoons.
"Trick or treat?" she heard a young boy in a mask call out, and realized that this was Halloween.
Witches' night. In olden times, it was a celebration of another year safe from evil. It was also when
ordinary mortals had to take extraordinary steps to banish evil for the coming year.
The whole city seemed to be engaged in the street party. The sides of buildings were lit up with neon
signs. Holograms depicting jack-o'-lanterns were projected in the air. Mobs of people streamed from
all directions. Music boomed from the open doorways of a dozen bars and diners. A group of teenage
girls wearing pop-star masks and carrying lit candles led an impromptu dance on the pavement,
bringing traffic to a halt.
Suddenly a bearded student, his face made up to resemble a werewolf, pointed upward. Cassandra
looked, and her blood turned to ice water in her veins.
Towering over the street, a thousand feet high, was the horned monster she'd seen in Raymond
Marcus's tarot card.
Terrified, Cassandra tried to drop the fragment of wood she held. But her fingers were locked rigid
around it, and try as she might she couldn't move them. The church interior was like a distant dream.
Reality was now witness to the Halloween street party.
The music had magically halted. The dancing girls stood rooted to the spot, gazing up. The shrieks
and laughter of the joyous crowd were silenced, and a grim oppression seemed to settle like a blanket
on the whole street.
The massive figure moved for the first time, tilting its head downward to look at the silent figures on
the street far below. A huge drop of blood slid from the creature's stained pelt, splashing over a group
of people as it landed on the tarmac.
Its eyes blazed red, then cobalt blue... and all hell broke loose.
Jagged streaks of lightning leaped from the behemoth's eyes, striking a half-dozen different buildings.
Huge chunks of masonry broke free, tumbling end over end, smashing to the ground amid the recent
revelers. Cassandra saw the bearded student in the werewolf makeup fall, flattened by a billboard
that had dropped from ten stories above.
The air was full of frightened screams, and the terrified crowd scattered in panic as the whole city
began to crumble around them. Gaping holes yawned in the streets, swallowing a thousand people at a
time. Flames leaped from several buildings as gas and electricity lines were severed.
Human blood ran through the gutters in surging rivulets.
"Ma'am?"
Suddenly, Cassandra was back in the cathedral. She was still on her knees, but the sliver of wood had
fallen from her hand. Her heart was beating at an incredible rate, trapped in her frozen body. She
couldn't see for the tears that filled her eyes.