Chapter I

"Body Count"

The blood pooling around her body was almost dry, but not quite. Hours dead, not yet a full day. Jason was getting closer.

Not close enough. Not to save this one. But closer is closer.

He examined the girl visually only. He was back in Gotham now, and the Bats would notice his tampering if they got to the body before the cops. GCPD would assume it was a Bat, but the Bats would know it washim.

Jason wasn't ready for that. Not yet. Bruce didn't want him in the city limits, and despite the deep longing he always had for home, he wasn't up for that kind of fight. He had work to do that was more important than dealing with Bruce's bullshit.

Hard enough to track a nomadic serial killer without having to deal with a territorial, hypocritical jackass getting in the way.

Jason crouched on the left side of the body, studying her jaw, her nostrils. Unbroken. Unbruised. Most of the other victims had suffered facial trauma. Jason assumed it was either to keep them quiet or to make them scream. One or the other. That this body, this girl's body was in such … good condition (for a dead body) suggested she'd played along.

Street kid. Gotham street kid. Smart. Practical. Knew what death looked like when it caught her. She looked all of 13 but was wearing undergarments a woman a decade older might pick. It made Jason see green. With him and Selena out of Gotham, who exactly was looking out for these kids? They weren't exactly on the radar for any of the others. Between him and Catwoman child sex crimes in Gotham had plummeted over the last few years. With them gone—

Jason bit his tongue. That wasn't why he was here. He was hunting. He was hunting, and his prey had been in this room. Time to buckle down.

The wound that killed her – a hole the size of a coke can in her belly – was almost completely dry, and stank. Whatever the man used to kill (Jason wasn't 100% sure on that, but he was leaning towards some form of borer) had obviously taken a section of bowel with it, letting waste spill into the open cavity of her body and ooze out with the bleeding.

He had been in rooms with so many versions of death, but none had smelled quite as awful as this.

The man fed them before killing them. Leaving them enough time for their digestion to hit just the right time. Never the same things, though. Jason had actual forensics on the last three. And just by eyeballing, he could tell everything she'd been given was soft and easy to digest. Wasn't like that with bodies six and eight.

Sick bastard. Same M.O. but a different … unique ambiance for each girl. Cause of death was the same, the symmetry the same. The feeding the same. Same type of injuries. But the textures and colors were different. And there was always something special in each crime scene.

Jason shut his eyes catching a faint hint of music. He looked up. A wind chime. There was a wind chime, high above. Wind chimes don't justhappenin abandoned buildings.

The color. The texture. The symmetry. The smell. The music.

No question. She was number nine.

Body eight and this girl were the only two he'd seen in person, and Eight he'd seen on a slab at the morgue. She was the granddaughter of an old ex-mob contact hiding in Rio. Thought it was a hit. Cartel, maybe. Knew Jason's weakness for children and vengeance and sent for him.

Old man didn't realize Jason had already seen seven other cases with the same M.O. or that he'd already be – for lack of a less dramatic phrase – on the case. He'd been called in by, of all people, Tara Battleworth.

Dead girls popping up all over the world. American girls only, but all over the world. Kidnapped. Brutalized. Split open. Left for viewing.

First was the daughter of expats in Korea. Second was a young competition horse jumper in Arkansas. Third was a kid on a two week missionary trip to Uganda. Fourth, and oldest, was a newly-graduated 17-year-old fresh off a plane, found in a storage room in the Kona International Airport in Hawaii. Fifth was a 2nd grader in the woods behind a private park in Metropolis. Superman had been off-world that week. Sixth was the middle child of a large family touring through Italy, in Rome. Seventh was a middle schooler in Colorado. Eighth was a girl from Detroit visiting her exiled Pap-pap.

And now Ninth; a Gotham street brat.

These girls were all colors and a wide range of ages, from 7 to 17. Hair different lengths and colors. Different hobbies.

The only thing they seemed to have in common was that they were girls, and that they were there when he wanted them. There wasn't anything … definite. Not that he could tell. Not a singular thing that connected all nine of them that he was looking for. It obviously wasn't so clear-cut as that.

Jason thought back toLolita, a novel he'd read years ago and not touched since, but he remembered enough. Back to the way Humbert Humbert locked onto the girls he fetishized. Specifically Lolita, who he would spend years abusing. Maybe it was something like that. Moments of vile desire, yearning constantly for a creature it was impossible to possess. The main character in that book was looking for girls 9-14. That's not vastly different from this monster's target group.

Major difference would be that this guy, unlike H.H. didn't take his Lolitas traveling. Or bother with the families, if they even had one.

But it was more than a one off. He looked up to that wind chime. There was always an element of domesticity or actual beauty brought into the horror. As if he wanted something more from these girls than their bodies, their deaths, but knew he couldn't have it.

Because he knew he had to keep moving to stay free?

Or because he understood he was a monster and that wind chimes, flowers, family portraits, sculptures, and other such objects were anachronistic to his very self?

Jason wasn't sure yet. But the man would leave clues. He always left clues. Pieces of the girl's body, pulled from inside her, and bits of the girl's hair around Gotham for the next two or three weeks. Not the easiest thing to do, track a serial killer while hiding from a clan of militant detectives, who were very against him being in their territory, but this girl – all of these girls – deserved justice.

And for proper justice, this monster would have to die.

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