catch me if you can
march 30th
Grainy crime scene photos aren't really a match for a good look at the real thing. By the time he arrives, of course it's all been cleaned up. Still taped off, shut down, and locked up, but clean.
The lights illuminate the place, once he gets them on, and he stands in the middle of a floor that's been hosed down and mopped up, but a hundred and thirty seven people?
There's always some things that just don't wash out.
He looks at the CCTV stills Shukla's provided him with, spins around the room, tries to match the angle. Once he does, he relocates, scans again. There aren't exactly taped outlines of bodies, because there had really just been too many bodies. Instead there are great outlined blobs shaped in white crime-scene tape. The intention gets across.
Something grabs his attention.
In a corner, where blood has etched so deeply into scratches on the floor, he finds a rogue shell casing missed by forensics. He picks it up, and twirls it around in his fingers for a minute before standing and considering a few things.
The Werewolf tears out of its human shape. The crowd surges away. This part of the country, this part of the state, the guns come out quick. Bullets won't stop a wolf like that, not without silver. People aren't used to a wolf the size of a Volkswagen. They pound at the door and-
No. Wrong. Wolves don't turn that fast, even the really old ones. Not enough leftovers either. His gut does turn a little at the idea of that being what he's looking for. He's seen what that can do to somebody like him, even with a nipped finger. Gotta be something else.
In the back, he's sorting through papers left on bulletboards, sticky notes he's found in the office. Things that seem inconsequential but which couldn't be. Maybe it's something as pure and stupid as crooked business and retaliation. His mind wanders back to the original theory.
The doors are barred. A group of figures in masks and hoods bring out weapons of choice. Sacrifices for a key to heaven. Blood for a blood god. Any given crackpot theory that could drive somebody to end life en masse. People trample eachother, reach for guns, broken bottles, anything they can to escape this fanatic's fate and live to see the s-
No. No. He can't make a cult make sense. He cannot. There was no cryptic messaging, no writing, no calling card. And that many people? No group of crazy nuts is going to kill this many people and not claim it. They WANT to spread their silly shit, whether through the news or word of mouth or conspiracy, they leave enough to be found, somehow. He's dealt with rooting out the dregs of one very specific murder cult for eighty years, more, really. They all work the same, and they're all really fucking stupid.
Danny loks at the desk, where there's a faint outline where dust has settled a little more recently. He needs to find that CCTV footage.
—
april fools day
The cop stands behind him while he rewinds the CCTV footage over and over again, trying to peer through the old grainy things frames one by one, trying to figure out who it is that started this whole fucking thing.
All he sees are a bunch of bumpkins linedancing, and then it turns into something else. Something different. Thronging, dropping, swaying. It's not the yee-haw boot-scoot shit anymore. It's like a rave club or something. It's a weird and noticeable switch.
"You gonna be done soon, Agent Barnes?"
"No," he says. "Go get me a coffee. Your country thanks you."
The officer does so, like a good little pig.
He rewinds it again.
And again.
And again.
And Again.
Every time, they go from one dance to another, like it just switches. If only it had sound. Janky ass setup. He grumbles.
And then, on a whim, he pauses it, trying to catch something, and he catches something else entirely. Up by the DJ booth, someone stands there, talking to the Jockey. Then, as he frames through, he sees that same shape. Here. There. Over there. Over there. Like it's teleporting. Like it's too fast for the camera to catch.
Realization knits onto his brow. He rewinds.
Frames forward.
Again.
Again.
Again.
"Hello there."
It's fucking blurry, but now he's seen it, he can follow it. That's a vampire.
It makes the rest of it make sense too. The slow rolling wave of people shifting from once dance to another. The way the crowd seems constantly confused on which way they ought to be running. The reason bullets didn't do jack shit. The reason they're all running with this crazy fucking cult theory.
A single vampire in a room is as good as a whole squad. Ask him how he knows.
When the cop comes back with coffee, Agent Barnes is gone, and so is the CCTV tape, and by the time he realizes what's happened, so is his memory of everything he's seen that night.
—
April 15th.
He's been working outwards from that little squat for what seems like a century, even if it's only been a handful of weeks. No survivors is a real fucking downer on trying to track this person down.
He's seen the ballet of murder a thousand times by now. Seen the way she (it's a she, he's sure of it by the way she moves, by the shape of the black glob of pixels that makes up her hair) dances through a crowd, latching onto people with abandon. He knows what she is now, too.
Ripper. Bleeder. Shredder. There's a bunch of names in a bunch of languages for a vampire who just doesn't know when to quit. As many names as their are explanations. Some people say it's a hitch in the turn, that it can happen to anybody. Others say its a hallmark for Vampires who shut themselves off to their feelings. Still others think it's just based on the person, that some people have broken minds from the jump, and that isn't something that undeath can ever heal.
He doesn't know, he doesn't have a strong opinion on it. He doesn't judge either - he's no angel, and he can't say he's never killed somebody while on the feed.
But in all those repeat viewings, he has grown something of an interest in his little femme fatale. Kali's got a thumb on it bringing her in alive. If she isn't just some whacked out feral, if she can learn to chill it out a bit, she might be worth more than front-page conspiracy rag fodder. He thinks of when he was fresh into this world. The mistakes he'd made.
Grilling the noodles of anybody involved in the investigation hasn't been good for anything but ruling out exactly what he's already kind of figured. She isn't here.
Fan out wider.
Vampires are two things, solitary or social. You get your Draculas, who find a place to hole up where they and they alone tend to a herd of humans. It's easy for one vampire to hide among hundreds.
A social vampire though? That's your city folk. They get into clans. They sort themselves. In the Bloc they call them Princes, sometimes; vampire governors who oversee local clans and divvy territory.
Portland's an option. So is Seattle. Both make his soul wither.
Port Leiry though? It's a hunch, but well, so many things converge there.
He has to make a choice though, because this trail is going to go cold. This isn't somebody with their name on a register. This isn't somebody with a picture in a file in the Hague. This is, by his reckoning, some kid who doesn't know how the fuck their teeth work.
He spends days chasing stupid theories and stupid leads. He needs this because he needs that fucking sun in his life again. Think of the freedom; immortality and naps in the sun. A chance at something that is... well, more boring than hunting a vampire in a stack of vampires.
—
cinco de mayo
He's in a gas station when it happens. He's been working backwards for weeks at this point. He's shown this same fucking blurry photo to a million people. So when he shows it to this guy at the counter, he's expecting the same indifferent shrug he's seen a million times, but that's not what he gets.
"Ah yeah, looks familiar."
He almost chokes. "Come again?"
"Yeah... sweet girl. Almost left her card, damn near broke my hip chasin' her down to give it back hehehe. Seemed real nice, real polite. Seemed a little sad though."
Compulsion buys his way into that backroom. Buys him a few hours of scanning through days and and days of tape rollback, but then he gets it. A clean shot.
This station's camera's nicer, and it's closer.
He checks other cameras. More hours. He's frustrated because the suns' coming up and he's gonna have to spend an entire day inside of a gas station compelling people to think that's normal.
It's hour three when he's losing steam. Maybe she hadn't driven. Maybe he was fooling himself. He goes back to the other tape, watches it again. No. That's her.
Then he sees it. The time stamp.
14:33:49p
That's... that's daytime.
"Oh, for f-"
Back to the other video. Stupid idiot. Timestamps. Idiot. Moron.
Leave this detail out of any talks with Kali.
There it is. 14:31:22p.
He hadn't even pondered checking daylight hours.
He's tired.
"Daywalker."
Interesting.
He rewinds. Follows her backwards walk from the counter ton the door, squints at the direction she comes in from.
West.
"Got you, Ripper-Girl."
—
May 16th Through the 18th
The weather's puts a hitch on things. He's compeled his way into an apartment once he'd returned to the city, so he gets to spend this whole freak storm tightening his net.
Port Leiry is no Berlin. It's no New York City. It's no Kolkatta. But it's not tiny either. And if you're looking for a vampire, a specific vampire, it's a little bit of a sort-job.
But there are known haunts. Territories. Treaties. Places they frequent that are safe and avoid that aren't.
The net closes tighter and tighter. He uses most of this time to study clan lines, look at reports from local news and conspiracy rags that sound like rip-jobs.
He even considers calling Tomás from Jacksonville, though he decides against it, because what are the odds he could actually help track a single vampire down?
That's when he sees her, across his living room, staring at him.
He almost trips, stepping over his coffee table and plucking the shred of newsrag off of the pin in the wall. He fishes his phone out, brings up the app. His eyes go wide with frustration. "Hot damn. Tomás I could kiss you."
—
It's been a week now, he's been doing the recon. He never goes in the store, because she's got somebody else in there with her, and he doesn't want to risk it. But he watches her on the fair few occasions when she does go out alone. What he sees is what he'd expected, a vampire who isn't sure how her teeth work, how quick she can kill. The amount of times he's seen her ditch a body is a little absurd, and sloppy - there's no way this is gonna go on much longer without some kind of hammer dropping on her.
Best he be the hammer.
He tails her one night, and it's with all the skill of 80 years of hunting the worst kinds of monsters. He tracks her from her little shop, makes sure her little gal pal isn't going too. Tracks her into the city. She wonders if the girlfriend knows. Wonders if she's in on it.
He follows her, and follows her, and follows her, and tonight, he's not going to watch her try to heal away half-severed neck.
Before she even gets a chance to bite into tonight's dinner, he's on her, peeling her off of whoever tonight's prime cut is and swinging her backwards, but careful not to let go, because there's nothing worse than chasing down a vampire.
"Run away, stupid!" he calls behind him as he drives Aria up against the opposite wall of the dingy parkway, trying to pin her there with all his strength.
He pushes sharpened wood up against her chest, pushes it just enough to break through her shirt, into her skin.
"We're gonna have a talk."
—
who: @photoaria where: Port Leiry
