The Night of the Wolf

Chapter 1: Urban Predator

By Shoddywork

So, here it is, the next story involving Detective Urawa. I guess I decided I wasn't done with the poor guy yet, though this story will take a decidedly darker turn than Youma Dust did, so those of you bothered by violence and horror, you've been forewarned. This chapter is short, but I will be releasing more soon. If you have any comments or criticisms, please leave a review.

He stood on the top floor of the parking garage, a wild grin torn ear-to-ear across his face, the moonlight glinting off his carnivorous teeth, the neon from nearby buildings casting nauseating floodlight over his body. Sweat dripped down his neck, past his shaggy, unclean black hair, and rolled down his arms, mixing with her blood and running off his fingers onto the concrete. There was more blood; blood by the bucketful sprayed across his gray jumpsuit, seeping into the white canvas of his sneakers, sticking to the black latex of his gloves, and smeared across his face marked by two dead brown eyes. The grin had all the warmth of a wolf after a kill, panting and delirious and, for the time being, satiated. But it wouldn't last long, not if the pattern held true: exhilaration on day one, regret on day two, pride on day three, and hunger on day four.

What had started as a hunt of purpose, no, necessity had become a joy in and of itself. She wasn't the right one, he could tell when the last of the shimmering light faded from her eyes and the gurgle of blood in her throat ended, but it felt damn good anyway, it almost didn't matter that this was a failure. The man had told him that this was to be a mission of purpose and precision, but there was so much joy that he could keep doing this forever if necessary. But that voice reminded him again that he needed to find these girls, that his very life and salvation depended on it—they were an affront to mankind after all.

His was a life of quiet anguish that went unnoticed; a drifting existence that yielded nothing, a lifeless tree that bore no fruit. Here was a chance to do something more, to impact the world in ways it wouldn't even begin to appreciate. It had started a month ago, when the man came to him—in a dream, or on the street, he wasn't quite sure—and confirmed everything that he had suspected. There was a deadly fog that was hanging over the city, an unmistakable presence that screamed that doom was marching over the horizon. Five figures were here amongst them, representing a bastardization in the natural evolution of man, that posed as champions of good as they tore their bloodied hands into the soul of the city to rip out its beating heart. The man said that he could cure this evil, blow out the fog, with his own bare hands and that he could finally realize the love and admiration that he always desired.

The man had never mentioned how much he would love the work, though. True, the first girl nearly blinded him with her radiance, and he had trouble luring her into the shadows and his muscles twitched with fear when he plunged the knife into her ribs and twisted. She had even bitten down onto his hand during the struggle, which pierced his skin and took some of the enjoyment out of the proceedings. But the second girl, he got it right that time; his heart soared when he heard her muffled squeals of pain, a sound that thrilled him so much that he couldn't stop stabbing even after she was already dead. His knife had become a physical extension of himself, almost like a sensory organ that he could no more get rid of now than he could chop off his own arm.

He stood over her prone body, admiring the array of deep cuts that marred her flesh, that tore through cloth and skin and meat in a delirium of ecstasy. He bent down and inspected her face, grabbing her chin that was now cold to the touch and moved her head from one side to the next, drinking in her visage so that he would never forget the night they had together. He would take his trophy, which the man didn't approve of, but there were perks to this work, and he wanted to take full advantage of them. The sweetest would be when he could feel the helplessness of his real targets struggle against the power of his hands and their essence drift off into some distant night, scattered away forever in his moment of final glory.

Police officers were going to be hunting for her soon; there would be worried parents, paranoid, their heads filled with thoughts of murder heightened by the blabbering hysteria of news anchors and talking heads. They would find her eventually, and he couldn't afford to be singled out this early, with so much yet to be done. Only one thing left to do before he could go home, weep bitterly into his pillow and fantasize about other nights and other glories. He reached down, pushed the blonde pigtails floating from tightly wound odango's that sat on her head away from her ear, and brought the knife down below the lobe. As he cut through, the silver earring she wore jangled about, filling his ears with their metallic ring. It sounded like church bells...

As Detective Sugara Urawa ducked beneath the yellow police tape and into the parking garage, he had already steeled himself for another night of carnage. It was a sick, sad time to be living in Tokyo, and as a newly minted homicide detective, he had a front row seat to it all. Granted this wasn't what he had hoped for when he took the job; just the opposite in fact. All the Tokyo prefectures put together only average a murder rate of about 1.4 per 100,000 people in a year, which is almost sixty times less than some U.S. cities, so to say that Urawa thought he was walking into a cushy job would be an understatement. Plus, it would get him away from the organized and property crime cases that occasionally lead back to the Senshi. It had been two years since his first fateful encounter with Makoto and the gang, an experience that left physical reminders all over his body, and he was tired of the burning urge to intervene on their behalf when things got rough for the girls. Especially because Setsuna would string him up by his balls if there was even a hint of interference on his part.

So he took the job in homicide and was ready to settle into a comfortable routine when young girls started showing up dead. The first time around, it seemed like the work of a psychotic boyfriend or jilted admirer, but when the second girl was found carved up like a steer fresh out of the abattoir, there was only one conclusion he could come to: their was a damn serial killer on the loose. The media smelled the blood in the water with this one, and they packed the sidewalks, shining floodlights into the vacant car park. Their time to waste, since the murder occurred on the top floor, and unless they started parking their asses on adjacent rooftops, Urawa was only going to give them the information he wanted to give them.

So here he was, middle of the damn night, woken up out of a fitful, medicated snooze to record the senseless murder of another young girl while the pack of wolves outside regurgitated half-baked theories and fiery rhetoric to an already jittery populace. As the sound of his footsteps trudging up the concrete steps to the fourth floor reverberated around him, they seemed to pound home the importance of finding the man who did this, who brought these young lives to a senseless and brutal end. He was a monster, an animal, without conscience or thought who thirsted for carnage. But to what end? That was the damn question that was so elusive.

Urawa calmly strolled to the center of the open-air top floor, now ablaze with police lights and abuzz with the comings and goings of the four crime scene techs working on the case, gathering blood samples and snapping photos all around him.

"Urawa! About damn time you got your ass here, we've been waiting for you before we moved the body!" Takashi Sone's voice had all the bite and venom of a man who had been interrupted during the act, something his disheveled appearance and wrinkled black polo shirt and dark jeans confirmed. He was a wilting reed of a man, beat down by a cruel bitch of a world that seemed to joke about his very existence, and his natural demeanor bore all the traits of a man who had settled for what little life was going to offer him. He was also Urawa's partner, something that Takashi loathed; he didn't enjoy playing wet-nurse to a new detective, but his new partner's jaded and narcissistic view on life managed to foster a little fatherly concern on the veteran's part. Not that he was going to let Urawa in on that secret any time soon.

"Sorry, sorry; I had to drive all the way across town, and those bastards in the public works department decided to shut down the street in front of my house..." Takashi's face stated the obvious: that he didn't give a good God damn what excuse he had, so he might as well drop it while he was ahead. "So, we're looking at the same M.O.?"

"Everything fits: young girl, seventeen years old, multiple facial contusions, looks like she was beaten first while she was dragged up here, then multiple stab wounds with a large bladed weapon, and her right ear severed completely. No signs of sexual assault, no signs of a struggle here on the rooftop..."

"It started down on the street, on the sidewalk as she was passing by. He dragged her into the shadows by the entrance, beat her, took her unconscious body up here and..." Takashi finished the sentence, pantomiming a disturbing stabbing motion, a visual reminder which might have bothered some of his previous partners. "Looks like there are droplets of blood leading towards the railing by the street, probably the killer walking off the adrenaline before he left."

"Or basking in it. Looks like the ear was last again; blood flow had already stopped by the time he got around to cutting it off. We've got men talking to people in the neighborhood, see if they saw anything."

"Nothing will come of it. He's too new at this, and still too careful. He loves the risk, the thrill of killing these girls in public, but he's familiar with the area and the people who live here. He wouldn't do it if he felt he was going to get caught."

Takashi nodded his head in agreement, "He's not done yet with whatever the hell it is he wants. The son of a bitch probably lives or works around here, so nobody would notice him walking home in the middle of the night. Probably has a bag or sack to carry his tools in, maybe has a change of clothes in there as well. He's getting used to the routine, and he's obviously liking it. We'll have to wait for the coroner to confirm, but it looks like she has 20, maybe 30 stab wounds, quite a few more than the first and second girl. That number might increase with his next victims if we can't figure out this guy's pattern, stop him before he gets going again."

Urawa's teeth were clenched tight as the blond odango's glistened in his eyes, murmuring, "We'll find him, God help the bastard..."