THE BLOODY KNIGHT
Chapter 1
The moon, once again, was voluminously full.
The night skies of Gotham City were uncharacteristically clear.
A perfect evening for…murder.
A single lady by the name of Lorelei Adelphia, who was essentially a simple person of commonality with an unremarkable life, just one of the millions living and working within downtown Gotham, would, on this fateful night, be forcefully transformed into a cliché…a Creature of the Night.
As she listened to the sounds of the city, a city that was always active, no matter what time of the day or night, mingling with the almost musical clip-clopping of her own designer-shoed feet as she walked along the always crowded sidewalk in weary route to her apartment complex/high-rise, a new sound mixed with the rest.
A curious screeching that seemed somehow as extant as all the rest assaulting her ears. A screeching that, somehow, seemed to be following her. Naturally, Lorelei looked all about her for the indisputable source of the curious sound…but saw nothing unusual.
Shrugging it off as just one more quirky curiosity of the city, Lorelei walked on while ignoring the strange screeching seemingly following along after.
Such would prove a sanguinary mistake.
As Lorelei reached the unbreakable glass doors guarding the entrance to her high-rise apartment complex, requiring not a key of metal but of plastic, pre-programmed especially for a single tenant's entry via a more or less common keycard reader, the screeching suddenly stopped.
Even though the only reflection in the front entrance was her own, that seemingly psychic part of the human mind seemed to sense a second presence. So, slowly, she turned to see…
"Good evening, Ms. Adelphia," the Euro-accented voice said even before the lovely lady, keycard clutched tightly in well-manicured fingers, gradually gawked at this undeniable apparition.
Standing in the semi-darkness, suddenly devoid of nighttime pedestrians, directly before the facing side of her high-rise residence, was someone dressed, head to feet, in a blood red robe with matching head-covering hood with the only sign of a symbol being a centuries-old skull-and-crossbones just above and between the perfectly placed eyeholes.
Clearly not your typical passer-by usually seen on the sidewalks of Gotham.
"Wh-who…wh-what…?" she stammered as her instincts told her to run away, yet finding herself hypnotically held where she stood.
"I have picked you, Lorelei Adelphia," said the red robed/hooded mystery man with the indefinably foreign-sounding accent that made the precise pronunciation of her name seem, somehow, important. And "important" was the one thing she had never felt before.
She should've screamed, but she couldn't. And the red-robed stranger gradually closed upon her in an indescribably lissome fashion. All she could do was stare into those mesmerizing eyes peering out from the well-placed eyeholes within the hood brandishing the skull-and-crossbones symbol.
"Wh-what d-do y-you w-want?"
"Your blood."
Having said that, drawing out the word "blood" longer than normal and, therefore, making such sound somehow justifiable, the taller red-robed individual, definitely a man, slowly lifted his hood and…
"Eeeeeiiiiiii!"
Flashing light-bars painted the area in reds and blues as yellow tape kept crowds of lookee-loos at a predetermined distance, while overcoat-wearing plainclothes police detectives, along with uniformed officers, stood mutely about the heinous scene.
Was it really any wonder that the Dark Knight could and would literally drop in on the same site of murder-most-foul?
Commissioner James Gordon, himself, showed along with his best homicide detectives, such as Harvey Bullock, as well as his best in uniformed police, such as Sgt. Renee Montoya, once word of the singular site of an absolutely ensanguined individual, a once lovely lady by the name of Lorelei Adelphia, who now lay…
"Drained of blood," said Commissioner Gordon with a mystified shake of his white-haired head. "I've never seen anything like this in all the years I've been in law enforcement."
"What about forensics?" asked the husky voice so readily identifiable as belonging to the Batman as he stood to one side with his long bat-like cape draped over muscularly athletic shape with his cowled head held so hidden eyes could take in the extraordinary spectacle. "Did they find anything?"
"No," heavily sighed Gordon, more than a little bit bothered by that seemingly impossible certitude. "Nothing to show that anyone even walked into the area behind the woman…nothing to show that the killer left. Curious. Very Curious."
"What about witnesses?" pressed the Cowled Crusader of the Night. "Isn't this usually one of the more well-traveled walkways?"
"Yes," said the Commissioner, again sighing heavily. "I can't explain it…no one saw anything. It's almost as if the killer was 'invisible'…or that everyone else was, in some impossible manner, hypnotized."
"Doesn't seem likely," Batman said as he slowly squatted to get a better look at the bloodless body. "And it also doesn't sound like any of the usual sickos that frequent the night in Gotham. Not even Victor Zsasz would be this vicious. Besides, last I checked, he was still locked up at Arkham Asylum…along with the rest of the worst of the worst."
It was just then that Batman took notice of something already detected by the less costumed police…most especially by Commissioner James Gordon.
"Yeah," Gordon groaned, "we saw that, too. What do you make of it?"
"Looks like some sort of animal bite," said Batman abstractedly as the eyes within the cowl narrowed. "If I had to guess…I'd say it was…a bat. But…"
"It'd have to be a very big bat," finished Gordon. "Moreover…what kind of bat, even an unusually large one, could…"
"Drain a person of all their blood?" the Dark Knight now finished, as if he and the Commissioner were somehow sharing a certain amount of actual thought. "I'll go back to the Batcave and use my computers to search for any other instances of such deaths…especially those with uncommonly large bat bites. I'll be in touch, Jim."
Even as the Police Commissioner, who'd been Batman's staunchest supporter even when Gotham City politicians protested the Caped Crimefighter's vigilante involvement with what, in their naïve view, should be strictly a police situation, responded…
"Damn."
The Dark Knight had disappeared into the darkness as quickly and quietly as he had arrived, no doubt with his turbo-engine Batmobile left several city blocks away so as not to be heard coming or going. Clearly utilizing his famous Batarang and grapple-line to climb/swing away.
It was at that exact instant that the coroner's workers, long after the coroner himself had stopped by the strange site of bloodless homicide, in order to tag-and-bag the dead body and, then, to drive it to Gotham's pathology lab for an intensive autopsy.
Not that such would reveal much more than the Batman's Batcave computers in regards to the Who and the How of the sinister situation.
Standing atop a nearby building, two dozen stories above the body's bloodless locality, just as the no longer living Lorelei Adelphia was being driven away, was the red robed-and-hooded source of such curious discussion.
"It is now time for you to rise, Lorelei," the mysterious man in identity-hiding red robe said with the self-same Euro-accented voice with a certainty of purpose. "Rise as one of my brides. Rise…and feed. So commands…the Monk."
At that same moment, in the dreary rear of the coroner's vehicle carrying the body-bagged victim of total bloodletting, a supposedly dead Lorelei unzipped said black bag and rapidly arose into a stiffly seated position. Her skin the colorless hue of ash. Her bloodless lips pulled back to reveal vampiric fangs instead of ordinary canines.
Fangs to be used on the unsuspecting men employed by the coroner's office of Gotham City. Victims to provide ready food for…the undead.
"Eeeeeiiiiiii!"
END OF CHAPTER 1