Chapter 13
BING WATCHEDWalter walk away and felt his heart drop into his gut. He saw Walter’s straight spine and the confident way he moved. And he remembered the things they’d done last night. The way Bing had simply given in and let Walter take control. The result had been the hottest sexual experience of his life.
Confidence looked good on Walter. Actually, it looked sexy as hell, and Bing was a first-class jerk trying to take that away from him. But he couldn’t let the Monkey King live inside Walter. Who knew where that would end? In the traditional story, Monkey learned Buddhist principles and eventually became the Victorious Fighting Buddha. That was great, but obviously the monkey inhabiting Walter was his pre-Buddha personality. The one who was impulsive, violent, and reveled in all things carnal. He could create all sorts of havoc before finally learning restraint.
What would happen to Walter along the way?
His phone rang, and he grabbed it because he needed something to do, not because he wanted to talk to anyone. “Yes?”
“Don’t hang up.”
It was Yordan, his trainer and guide to all things werewolf. He was a good guy in an American jarhead kind of way. Bing liked him, but he sure as hell didn’t want to chat about what was going on right then.
“I understand what I have to do—” Bing said.
“I don’t think you do,” Yordan interrupted. “You’ve never seen it, so it won’t sink in. I’m sending you a link to a video. Watch it.”
His phone dinged, but he ignored it. “I will get to it—”
“Now, Bing. I mean it. Put me on speakerphone and look at it—now.”
Bing didn’t want to, but he’d learned it was better to pretend to obey while his mind was elsewhere. So he did as he was asked, putting Yordan on speakerphone while he found the video and thumbed it on.
That was what he was doing, physically, but his gaze was focused on the life outside Walter’s tent as the lot began to wake up. Although it wasn’t a lot, per se, just a large campground area with a huge building in the middle that they’d converted into a soundstage. The only other permanent building was the shower/toilet hut where Walter had gone. Around them was some farmland, a little bit of woods, and dirt that was being used as a parking lot. How the hell had Walter found this place? Honestly, it was a stroke of genius, given that he probably was getting it nearly rent-free. They had woods for the exterior shots, and with modern filming equipment, a whole lot could be done for a fraction of the cost in LA.
“Do you see?” Yordan asked through the phone.
“Yeah,” he said as he was watching people arrive in cheap rentals or beat-up trucks. The makeup and costume people came early. Next would be—
“That’s the original Batman.”
It took a moment for Bing to catch up to Yordan’s words. He’d been too busy watching Auntie Sand slip through the empty parking area and run toward the shower building. Then he blinked and looked down. “What did you say?”
“Batman was a real guy once upon a time.”
On the screen was a black-and-white video of a middle-aged man sitting at a desk. His gaze was vague, his hands idly toying with a plastic gun. He was obviously in a care facility. A nurse came in and tried to talk to him, but there was no response. She kept going as if he had responded, gently wiping the remnants of lunch off his face before handing him a book, which he let drop into his lap.
“That is not the real Batman,” Bing said.
“It was when it was just a comic book. Now look at this next link. It’s all we’ve got, but he was real once upon a time.”
His phone dinged, and this time Bing paid more attention when he clicked the link. There was the same man standing tall. His eyes were bright, his body strong, and he was showing off his skill with the Batarang, a bat-shaped boomerang. He whipped a stack of them at a dozen wood targets and sliced right through them. Next came a short blond guy who tried the same thing. The Batarangs clanked to the floor. They were too heavy, and their aerodynamics were terrible.
The video then changed to the same strong Batman jumping from a five-story building with his batwing-shaped cape stretched out behind him. Sure enough, he landed with a light hop. Then the camera tilted up. This time it was the blond in an identical cape, only he leaped from a first-story balcony. He landed with a hard splat and would clearly have died if he’d jumped from anywhere higher.
Last came the sparring session. The man punched through a brick wall with only the protection of his dark blue gloves. When he pulled them off, his hands weren’t even red. Hell, they didn’t even look that strong. And though Bing was no stranger to qi masters who could punch through all manner of things, their hands were thick, powerful things that showed the strains of their training in calluses, thick knuckles, or fingers that had obviously been broken. Not this man. If anything, his hands looked elegantly refined.
“This can’t be real,” Bing said.
“It is.”
On the video, the man was joined by Wulf—the immortal werewolf who had started Wulf, Inc. He looked the same as always—lean and classy—and he started chatting with Batman.
“The audio has deteriorated,” Yordan said. “But I have the transcript. Batman’s saying that one Halloween, he dressed up as his favorite comic book guy. He went to a weird party in the woods where there were probably some fairies. He didn’t know, but that was our guess. Then suddenly he could punch through walls, leap from buildings, and throw his props hard enough to split wood. He worked with us for nearly thirty years.”
“What happened?”
“Adam West became Batman on TV.”
