Title: Vampiric Victimology.
Summary: Cases are long and hard. But how they work on people, especially undead people, is even more difficult. An epic, Gothic AU.
Disclaimer: I laugh in the general direction of anyone who fathoms that I own or could make money off of this or the series the characters come from.
Warnings: Blood, gore, mentions of rape, mentions of incest, totally AU and crossover.
Dedication: To Rose Midnight Moonlight Black, whom I adore as a writer, in repayment for her horror Halloween fic. Since she used Damian's clone Tallant in a setting befitting the writings of most vampire novelists like Stoker and such, I have decided to pay her back in kind. Since she mentioned she would like more of my scary fics, I am offering it up on her alter like a dead cow to a pagan deity. I hope she doesn't mind how I put up her favorite characters like actors in a simple BBC drama…

For those that are wondering, the answer is: no. There are not going to be any OC's what-so-ever in this fic. Technically, I'm pretty sure Helena Kyle, in RMMB's universe, is Selina's actual daughter she gave up for adoption, so there's no cheating here. I don't use OC's, so be prepared for a long game of "Where Have I Seen This Character?"


-:-
Go down the garden singing,
Silencing all the petals
And setting the valleys ringing.
-Manor House.


{One week before a morning in the mist, at the gates of sacred ground…}

A double set of hands in the dark intersect and maneuver among each other. One pair strong and tanned, with little nicks on every finger engraved there like tattoos; holding a large Dung needle with some sort of thread like the umbilical cord of a barn animal, still bloodied and careful to weave it through the soft, but wet fat and skin of a pair of dead deer the dainty hands of chalk white had carved up for the occasion.

The lady hands of white, with black fingernails that were not the product of polish bought from a market, pinched together the skin over the middle of the two bodies held inside of the sack the controllers of the hands had set about making.

Dusted blue eyes—of smoke and plotting and concealment of horrors that would send normal beings weeping or baring teeth like an animal of the wilderness—held onto the sight of the bodies for as long as possible. Aside from the very dead, very cold man and woman in this coffin of flesh made from two sinners—and the masculine of the two sewers and weavers did understand that they were indeed sinners, for what else could they call themselves when not even the writers of the papers could give them any title?—there was cotton plucked from trees shedding down for birds, scented and sweet, and there were many kinds of flora that he did not know the name of. Let the police behold both sickness and beauty, as his partner oft said. Let them behold minor compassion before they discovered that the woman of the dead had no tongue and the dead man had no stomach.


The meeting he was supposed to go to for his so-called trauma was happening now, as he skimmed his fingers like spider's legs over the keys of his type writer. Damian was at his meeting at the moment, forced to go by Helena.

Such was the way things were these days.

One week, Helena—feline Jinniyah extraordinaire, and queen of all things known and unknown and of course, the boys' only biological sister—would make Damian go to his meeting with the rape victims of Tallant Al Ghul, a high level vampire that had seen thirty decades and until three years ago, despite Talia and Ra's coaxing, had never hurt anyone except mentally; where he would spout off what had been going on in his life since three years ago when his wretched twin brother attacked him with his clown bitch watching from the sidelines and marked his back when Tallant (the scourge of Damian's existence) was done with him.

It was a small group of four that included—for Damian's group, anyway—Tamara Fox (a gorgeous black wolf shape changer that had been wandering through the park when Tallant's partner had jumped her and dragged her under a nearby bridge for Tallant to have his way with her), a British woman named Beryl who was a Summer fairy (Tallant had torn her clitoris and his partner had torn both of her dusty yellow wings in half) and, horror of horrors, Damian's uncle Dusan (a real albino vampire from some long forgotten empire of the sands) that had been the second victim, whom was half blinded. Amazing, really, how the second son of Talia Al Ghul acted so polished and sweet with whomever his mother and grandfather felt worthy of associating themselves with, but once they lost their usefulness, he acted just as cold and bitter—with much more evil in the fact that he acted so soft while doing it.

Those meetings were hard for Damian, especially since he was Tallant's very first victim—Terry should know; Tallant had attacked both Damian and Dusan the same night, but when Terry went to see them both in the same hospital, the knife wound that both he and Dusan had at equal depth and length had mostly healed on Damian and Dusan's was still fresh and spurting his (and Damian's similar) vampire blood all over his pale white robes he had thrown on in a hurry.

Terry tended to avoid Helena like the sunlight in summer time when it was his turn to go to meetings. Don't get him wrong, he knew that, according to statistics that Helena herself had pulled out of thin air before his eyes that had many details inscribed into them by the vampire boys' father, therapy, over long periods of time with people that had gone through the same thing as him was supposed to help. However, it didn't feel right that he was the only vampire among the rest of his fellow victims.

His group, as it were, was raped by Tallant's partner Delia—a demon, not a vampire, that had claws of black midnight and a polished, chalk white complexion and as an added smear was notorious in underground royalty in her own right, like Tallant, which made them disgustingly equal—had taken her victims in open spaces where people could have helped them if only Tallant hadn't caused something to happen that kept anyone from hearing the cries for help.

Delia had taken Ghoul (an undead that looked rather attractive, even with his grey skin, permanent bags under his eyes and a lot of scarring from being stuck with Tallant's favorite sword) in a playground and used the chains from a set of swings to choke him. He still hadn't, in the three years of therapy, been able to divulge in just how he had been penetrated. The clown looking bitch had almost drowned Melanie (a sweet snow leopard that had to have her tail bobbed after breaks and tears Tallant had administered to it after Delia was done) at the beach in the wee hours of three in the morning. Deidre (Delia's identical twin, save for being a mere immortal with hyena spots all along her back and only pale, instead of chalk white) and Terry had both been in the same district of empty apartments, raped an hour apart and neither of them knew who was her first victim; Deidre, because she had been pregnant and had miscarried and the doctors had been more concerned with saving her from blood loss than saving evidence and Terry because he had refused to go to the hospital until a night had passed because his father and Dick had made him go with Damian making sure the younger vampire didn't jump out of a window. Tallant had stabbed them both just above the pelvic bone. Both the blonde and the brunette commented, in group, that they had been stabbed from behind and saw the blade go through them like a sewing pin through a teddy bear and felt the pearl decorated, cold hilt touch their skin.

It wouldn't be so bad, except Terry tried to spend all of his free time catching the two creatures that had made all of these people so screwed up. They had stopped allowing people to live after these groups of people and settled for raping and then leaving bodies in the entry ways of graveyards all the way into Minsk, Belarus. Thereupon they had disappeared and stopped leaving tracks.

Until three weeksago, when the bodies of ten year old Princess Perdita of Blatava and twelve year old Billy Batson of Faucet City had been found in a graveyard south of the swamps of New Orleans; they were together, sewn into what looked like a cocoon of cotton and deer stomach lining, with the tell tale signs of Tallant and Delia's handiwork. Billy had been missing his stomach and Perdita had been missing her heart.

Terry wouldn't be able to sleep properly—in his coffin, nicely done up with Baby's Breath and silk pillows despite his telling Alfred constantly that he wasn't so fancy—until they were either preferably dead, or rotting underground in those special prisons they had started making since four hundred years ago and the supernatural among human beings had gone public.

Turning to the watch hanging pathetically on his rather sickly wrist like the flower bracelets children made for their friends in primary school. His blue, camera and picture worthy eyes changed to the blazing yellow of some cats for a moment.

'Well,' he thought, adding on another paragraph to his report, 'I've got another two hours until he gets back.'


Buttoning his coat and tying his grey scarf around his neck—he couldn't feel cold, but he was told that it made him look less like a blood sucker—Damian was the last person to leave the imposing, but simple white walls and pillars of the meeting place. The quiet Doctor Light—yes, she had repeatedly told the group that was her real name—had vanished in a flash and spark of a lightning bolt with no thunder to leave the place and go back to doing whatever it was that physics professors of the astral plane did.

"Well, that was a waste of time," he muttered darkly under his breath as he walked out the door with the three wide range and imposing staircases awaiting him out front…

With his uncle standing outside at the first step going down, apparently waiting for the young man. Well, young for vampires.

Damian would never admit it, breathe it aloud and give the thought form, but he was still, after three bloody years, trying to get used to one of Dusan's eyes being a horrible, milky white color of a blind human, when the other was still red and bright as a lobster's shell. It was twice as imposing and strange and made him flinch more noticeably than his father had made him react in a hundred years.

The dark prince of Wayne bowed his head at the tall, somber chalk white man, walking up to him like he would have in the old days and walked almost beside him on the way down the stairs.

"You spoke more than you have at all in the last couple of weeks at this meeting," the albino remarked offhandedly, a start of a conversation not really the sort of thing he had ever been used to doing (not when before the incident of his rape he had bowed down to his father, Damian's grandfather like Dusan himself was nothing; never speaking unless spoken or ordered to first) but that still made him a little better than Damian, "I was wondering why?"

Damian said nothing at first, just looking from the stairs and occasionally at Dusan's choice in wardrobe (Red sweater with arms like that of a Tibetan monk's robes, silk white pants that could not be practical in winter if he were a human, shoes that looked like slippers for priests in the Sahara and a white overcoat that would keep out the cold if only he would button it up just once) and then finally at Dusan's face.

The left, moon similar eye looked blankly forward, unseeing as they continued at pace, heading down town for the Gotham Police station when Damian was due to meet up with his siblings for some food that wasn't quite lunch, but not quite dinner, either. Although, saying that wasn't quite right, as Helena did consider it dinner as she had gotten up with the eardrum breaking rooster that sat atop the manor, compliments of Selina and Alfred as a joke.

"I've had a lot on my mind," the vampire prince finally answered, the never not-present sound of superiority almost lacking when in the company of elder vampires such as Dusan, "And I thought that was what this therapy was for? An expensive form of whining with few results from that woman who makes watching paint dry seem like a joy."

Dusan gave a low chuckle, ducking an overhanging awning with little vine plants hanging from the two corners as they passed the flower shop that Damian went into once and a while to buy dying plants as a pretext to talk to Colin Wilkes, one of the employees.

"Yes, well, I'm just glad to see my nephew trying to communicate with the world in other ways than with his fists. You're at least doing better than young Terrence in that respect."

"Hey," Damian shrugged, the both of them crossing a sidewalk with the sign on the other side blinking with the red hand when there were no cars in sight, "I've got a boyfriend. He's still getting over that Asian princess that he dumped. I can't entirely blame him for being so obsessed with the case; at least he gets paid over-time for it."

"Silver lining to a dark cloud."


"You're absolutely sure?"

The office of Commissioner Barbara Gordon—a gorgeous, redheaded human with Greco oracle blood in her veins from her mother's side of the family—sat at her chair, phone pressed to her ear and gripped like a vice; her fingers had gone white long ago, with little red spots forming at the ends of each finger.

Outside her window, on the fire escape and with twin frowns that made them look so alike that it could become difficult to tell that they weren't bodily related, stood Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson-Wayne. They had been speaking with Barbara all morning and out of earshot of Terry until Damian got back from therapy. Helena knew they were there, but certainly had not bothered to come up and say hello. She was still avoiding Bruce on account of a fight she, Selina and the King of the Night had a few weeks ago about the prospect of her possibly looking for a new line of work. She wouldn't talk to Dick until Bruce was far away and then she could tackle her oldest brother properly.

"Well, then," Barbara sighed, her grip lessoned, but not all prone, her other hand tracing the lining of her eyes and the edges of her bangs, "I'll send the detectives down there as soon as they are both available. Yes, thank you for the up-date, Maggie. Good-bye."

Dropping the phone back onto its cradle, Barbara merely blinked, just a second—less than a second—and both of the dark figures were before her desk, grim and tall and large as many lifetimes more than anyone like herself had ever or perhaps would ever see.

Formalities would, as it were, be quite pointless and so she got right to the point.

"A set of bodies were found in Gotham Cemetery today. Same signature as all the others. One male, one female, organs cut out surgically and by hand. They're back."

Bruce breathed inwards, as did Dick, but his was full of consideration, while the younger vampire's was full of fear for both of his younger siblings. Bruce never really let his emotions show among other beings—vampire or no—and Barbara, it seemed, even if she was loathe to admit it, was no exception to that rule. Dick gave her a sympathetic look as Bruce looked upon her again with cold stone blue eyes and spoke, cool and commanding.

Although, really, it was more of a suggestion that came out as what would probably happen.

"Damian should interview Terry's therapy group. Terry would be too emotional towards them. And Terry, should interview Damian's lot. Understanding among them might prove valuable."

Barbara raised a brow, sleek and all line, "After they look at the body downstairs in the autopsy, if it pleases your highness?"

Bruce, despite indeed being royal as most aged vampires are—a single lifetime he had lived where he was not a Duke or a Magistrate of some kind had never come to pass and all of his sons made such perfect princes while his daughters did their best, even when not related to him by blood like Helena, to be the most exasperating princesses—always shuffled and bristled at being addressed to as someone's better. He did so in that moment, clearing away his throat and giving Barbara not-quite-smile.

"Only if it pleases you, Commissioner," he hastened in reply, turning on his heel to remove himself from the room, nay the whole station house.

He knew Dick would not follow directly after him—why should he when he enjoyed speaking with this brilliant oracle with flaming red hair and kind eyes; not being able to see her as often as his immortal self would like—and so he shut the door behind him with no bang and no real sound but the wood creaking as the knob clicked back into its place.

A nice silence sat itself in the room for a moment, drawing out the time for a number lower than sixty in seconds and finally, Dick spoke up. It was always a nice change from listening to Bruce, sometimes.

"How are my little brothers doing, Babs?"

"They're almost as big of a pain in the ass as your mother at charities for dogs," the redhead replied, smirking and setting her head atop her hands like a nymphet and twice as beautiful to the blue tie wearing vampire before her, and she knew it, too, "Although, your sister keeps them in line more often than not. Better still when they clear cases and stop their shouting matches when they bet on who was going to go down in flames. Other than that, they're fantastic."


Neither of them are happy when they find themselves assigned to interview people for more clues later. People that they neither know personally, nor hear much about from the other—wouldn't their family be just so much better if the two of them talked about things other than work?—and would have been happy never to have to, if only new bodies hadn't turned up. A glorious sort of invitation from the enemy to pick up the game where they'd left off; something like tag or hide and seek in a perverted, sadistic and masochistic form.

Both of the brunettes hate the smell of the morgue and Helena tagging along to collect notes is no help since she is wearing that "Thing of Beauty" perfume that makes them both gag terribly if they get too close to her. She does this often when Damian or Terry goes to therapy so that during work hours they don't play fight and she can keep working—an act only she could find to be enjoyable. So much like her mother…

Leslie Thompson stood waiting for them, hands holding up a saw and undoing the winding of that which held the sort-of cocoon thing together. Blood from the cocoon had splashed onto her middle where her lab coat protected her and her gloves were saturated with what smell to the siblings to be mud and something worse than swamp water. She paused in her movements to say hello and tell them, plainly, that they were just in time to meet the guests of honor.

"I thought Detective Sawyer said that it was a man and woman?" Helena questioned, standing well back in a corner of the room. Like any feline, she hated to get dirty for any reason unless she were a tom and wanted to become more fragrant for the ladies. She was no tom and would not get closer unless she was piqued with interest.

"Well," the doctor started through grit teeth as the saw natted and chewed through the seal, "It had the same MO as the last ones and Miss Sawyer didn't want to disturb the evidence inside. Barbara said herself that you two get first dibs—ah, there we go!"

The thread of the otherworldly finally gave out and the entire cocoon opened wide, showing everything and leaving nothing to the imagination except for why these two people were targeted by such maniacs.

An immediate recognition settled over the occupants of the room as they looked upon the faces of the two dead bodies. One was a beautiful, young Chinese woman with cracked glasses set on her nose on purpose, like a theme. It was a reminder that she was once alive, despite how pale and cold she was now, though her skin did not seem worse for wear other than dried blood on her lips; her eyes were open and looking over at the man.

The man, as far as they all knew, had been famous and perhaps the eyes of the woman had been posed as some kind of joke on that. He was formerly, while alive, Black Mask. A man that all of the Waynes and Kyles knew at one time or another as one of the worst immortal crime bosses in Gotham; killer of three dozen organized rival crime affiliates and survivor of the plague in France two centuries ago.

Now he was dead and had been nicely stitched up from his breast plate down to his pelvic bone. Wasn't hard to guess what had been stolen from the black faced, skeleton looking dead man.

"Why does it smell like flowers at the shop instead of rotting meat?" Damian asked, curious enough to walk up to the table, despite not wanting anything to slick off of the cocoon and onto his suit. Terry came closer as well, eyes looking inside and analyzing everything; neither of them were concerned as Helena started taking notes from her own, clean little corner.

Leslie, for her part, started poking around inside, hands pulling out bits of cotton and some kind of flowers that Helena could identify and wrote down specifically as Arum Lily, Chinese Chrysanthemum and Speedwell. Every one of them must have been important in some way, but she wouldn't know for sure until she looked them up after this meeting was through. It could be nothing or it could be everything.

Thin but strong hands slowly raised the two dead from their bindings of the cocoon and onto the clean, steel tables. Black Mask was in a perhaps once white or beige suit now covered with his own blood and the woman laid to rest with him (Damian knew her name, he thought, to be Miss Li, Black Mask's secretary and first lieutenant) was dressed in simple black business skirt and jacket.

Dr. Thompson lightly traced Li's jaw and flinched back for a moment before taking one of the little white plastic pieces from her surgical tray to hold Li's jaw open; dark black blood drops leaked out of Li's lips and onto the steel table.

"It appears that her tongue was removed," the doctor explained, tracing the inside of the woman's throat, "All the way to just where her first set of tonsils branch out. Not surgical, but it seems that it was done after death, thank heavens. I can't see anything else of value with her, I'm afraid."

"And Black Mask?" Terry asked, taking a breath through his mouth and not his nose. He might be a vampire, but even he could flinch from the decay of a body.

Leslie went to work on the former crime boss; she unbuttoned his shirt and took her scalpel, cutting along the lining of the victim's stitches.

Once the cavity of his torso was laid wide open—a literal mouth of flesh and blood, open sores and perhaps a worse smell that an actual swamp—Dr. Thompson put her hands inside, touching around. After a moment, her eyes flashed with mild shock and she pulled out a laminated piece of paper like the kinds used for weddings in old Britain; a short sentence in cursive was displayed for any and all to read.

Both of the boys made to take it, but Terry was faster and he read it aloud, never minding or noticing the icy glare from his brother. He only paid mind to the two different types of hand writing on the page, his thumb smudging away blood where it made the words more difficult to read.

"The Lord and Lady are back in town, as you can plainly see by our invitation.

Wanna play?"

The brothers glanced at each other. One was noticeably angry, but that was not uncommon for Damian, so why should Terry be surprised at him being enraged now? Terry, for his part just had this mellow look. Or just blank; it sometimes became hard to tell.

"Wanna play?" Terry repeated, a twitch forming at the edge of his mouth. It was contagious and spread to Damian; both smirked malevolently.

"Yes," was the echo.