The first killing drew little extra attention. It occurred on a night along with two gang-related
shootings, a couple of deaths attributed to domestic violence, a fatal car crash and a mugging gone bad that ended with an elderly woman dying at the scene. It was, rather sadly, an average night on the streets of Gotham City. The only thing to set apart the murder was the savage nature of the attack. The victim, finally identified as a twenty-seven year old white male, had been disemboweled. His lower spine has also been crushed, due to severe blunt trauma. It was the coroner's professional opinion that the man had died screaming. The body had been found inside of a small park, tucked away near a grove of trees. What the Gotham police kept quite was the fact that chunks of flesh were gone from the carcass. No progress was made in finding the killer, and the case was placed on the backburner.
A month later, another body was discovered. A rookie patrolman was the first police presence on the scene, an old, unused warehouse. One look and he promptly vomited up the turkey sandwich he'd had for dinner. The victim was later discovered to be a forty-five year old black male. The forensics department needed finger print records to make a positive identification. The man's head was found twenty-two feet away from the remains of the corpse. Investigators not only found pieces of the man missing, but they found strange tooth marks along one femur. The GCPD was puzzled, but the similarity between the two murders was hard to overlook. Work on the killings stalled when no new leads presented themselves to the prying eyes of the police.
Approximately every thirty days, another grisly murder was committed. The police learned to clamp down on releasing the details, which grew increasingly gruesome, to the public at large. One citizen, however, learned of the mysterious killer whom the police called "the Wolfman" when they were behind closed doors.
Batman was edgy as the night wore on. The moon was full and he knew if the pattern held, someone in his city would die a horrible, painful death before the morning sun arose over the bleak spires of Gotham. The criminal element paid for his mood. The Dark Knight was a bit more zealous in his pursuit of justice than normal, and the extra bruises and broken bones suffered by malefactors attested to that fact. But even Batman could not find anyone who knew anything about The Wolfman. He kept one ear attuned to the police radio inside his cowl, and just after 2:00 a.m., a frantic 9-1-1 call was placed to the authorities. A body had been discovered that fit the M.O. of the previous killings. Batman swung into action, knowing thanks to superior speed, he would get to the scene at least a few minutes before the police arrived.
He found the location of the crime without much trouble. It had happened in an alley between an abandoned building and a Chinese herbal store. A cursory examination revealed the remains of a white female, age approximately 25-30 years of age. The detective blocked out the sight of her splayed and mutilated form, along with his rising anger, and instead concentrated on finding evidence that would help lead him to the killer. Avoiding the copious amounts of blood on the ground, he walked in concentric circles around the body. Moving quickly, his flashlight picked out a small clump of longish hair among the carnage. Using a pair of tweezers from his utility belt, Batman retrieved the hair and placed it into a sterile plastic bag. He also withdrew a small, but powerful camera, and began snapping pictures as sirens started to wail in the distance. The Caped Crusader took one last look around the alley. A deep frown creased his face, as he prepared to leave. He fired off a grappling hook to take him away from that place of blood and death.
Later that night, in the Batcave, he ran a spectroanalysis on the hair sample. Batman was staring at the results when Alfred Pennyworth entered, carrying a tray of refreshments. He noticed the hero, whom he had known since Bruce was a boy, was silently chewing his lower lip.
"A problem with the night's activities, sir," he asked. Batman glanced at his longtime friend and companion.
"The analysis on this sample came back inconclusive," he said. "The closest parameters are a sixty-five percent match with wolf hair, and a seventy percent chance the hair is human."
"Does that imply what I think it means?" Alfred sounded appalled as the idea bounced around his head.
"In a world with flying aliens that have the power to move mountains, mortals with the attributes of ancient gods and humans who can move near the speed of light, you can't discount anything." batman punched up enlargements of some of the photos he'd taken earlier. "Whatever we are dealing with, it's powerful. You can see that both the ulna and radius were snapped with one blow. And here, the hip joint is completely separated, like it was pulled from the socket. The contusions..." Alfred turned away and started back upstairs. He found it distasteful when Bruce was so clinical and detached over some poor person's bloody remains. Batman continued to pore over the case until exhaustion claimed him.
When he returned to the cave, the computers had dug up a connection between the five victims. All of them, at some point before they had been killed, had purchased Gotham Knights merchandise at Gotham Memorial Stadium. Each of the five had paid with either a check or credit card, leaving a paper trail that could be traced. The Knights were Gotham's professional baseball team, and their season would still be going when the next full moon cast its pale eye upon the city. A quick check of the lunar calendar revealed there was no baseball game scheduled in Gotham on that particular night.
The next time the Knights played at home, Batman went to a baseball game. He did not go in costume, nor did he travel as Bruce Wayne. Either would have attracted too much attention. Wayne Enterprises always reserved a number of Knights tickets for employee incentives, so it was not hard for the man who owned the company to lay his hands on one. The disguise he wore made him appear to be a balding, middle aged man. Stooped shoulders and a slight shuffle in his walk helped to complete the image. Once inside the stadium, he ignored the game, instead going from one vendor to another, sizing up each of them, occasionally buying trinkets if he wanted to get a closer look at the sellers.
In order to gather as much information as possible on the killer, Batman had spent a good deal of time researching the myths and folklore surrounding werewolves. It had been a frustrating experience. There seemed to be little, if any, consensus on the subject. Even Oracle had not been much help. Most of the sources indicated that a shape shifter had certain subtle physical characteristics while in human form. The detective decided to utilize his keen observational skills to try and narrow down the list of suspects.
Most of the vendors were honest working folks, but a number of them turned out to be distressingly human. He saw two skimming money from the cash registrar. Three were overcharging customers and pocketing their ill-gotten gains. One was even making illicit copies of credit card receipts. Batman filed all of this away for future use, but kept his mind on the primary goal. It turned out to be futile because no one he saw that day exhibited any of the classic traits he was searching for.
He went back twice more, each time wearing a different disguise. The second time, five days later, yielded the same disappointing results. Some of the shills were different, but none tripped a red flag. The third time, in the middle of the following week, was the proverbial charm. A man was selling jackets and hooded sweatshirts whom Batman had not seen before. He was wearing a Star City Rockets baseball cap, but his hair was dark and unruly underneath. His eyes were hidden by a pair of wraparound sunglasses. The detective thought that unusual enough to warrant a closer look. He waited in line, quietly studying the man. When he reached the counter, the disguised Batman flagged down the salesman.
"What do you want, buddy," he asked.
"I'd like one of those large sweatshirts, please." His usual dark and commanding tone tuned down to sound meek and mild.
"Which color?"
"Black." The man turned to get the appropriate garment, and Batman mulled over that the man's canine teeth seemed to be longer and slightly sharper than normal. Batman paid for the clothes in cash. As the man returned his change, he noticed his palms were rough, and strangely enough, both his middle and index fingers were the same length.
After the game was over, and the stadium closed down for the night, the strange man left. A shadow followed him on his path through the city. His journey ended at a run-down apartment complex called The Waymore Arms. The shadow watched until it saw the man was securely retired for the evening and other pressing business called it away.
As the month wore on, the shadow accompanied the man home another three times. On each occasion, the man remained in his apartment throughout the night. The infrared sensors trained on his home made certain he stayed put. Once while the man was working, the detective entered his apartment. Inside the place was a hovel, with food wrappers and debris piled high against the dilapidated furniture, several pieces of which had been broken. There were no human bones or body parts lying around, nor any conclusive evidence that a supernatural killer lived in the place. There was however, a smell that permeated every room. It was a musky, feral odor that Batman had never run across before. He wrinkled his nose in disgust. Rifling through a stack of papers the detective did discover a name, Justin Davis, that appeared to belong to the occupant. Before leaving, Batman placed a number of very small listening devices around the apartment.
Davis provided a disturbing soundtrack. Long strings of silence were broken by incoherent mutterings, howls of laughter and deranged diatribes heard only by the speaker and the detective listening so many miles away. No one else ever came to the grungy dwelling. Davis kept to himself and had as little interaction with other people as possible.
The night of the true full moon, Batman returned to the building where Davis lived as evening began to spread her darkening wings over the city. His vigil was short, because no sooner had the last rays of sunlight passed over the horizon, he spied Davis leaving his apartment. He exited onto the street and began walking. Batman noticed he was wearing only a thin t-shirt and frayed jeans, unusual with a slight chill in the Gotham air. The Dark Knight followed at a distance. Once Davis spun on his heel and turned his eyes toward the area Batman had occupied. The vigilante froze in the deepening dark, afraid to move a muscle. Davis looked for a long time, and snuffled the air, but eventually turned and loped down the street. Batman kept a more discreet distance after the episode.
He trailed Davis, who maintained a rapid pace without tiring, deep into the bowels of the city's entertainment district. The man stopped and sniffed the air outside of a bar, moved on to one nightclub, then another. After hopping from place to place, he finally went inside a neon-lit dance club called The Elephant Run. Batman, thinking he would look conspicuous, waited outside and watched. Close to an hour later, he saw a young woman burst out the front door and run up the street. Davis appeared and went after her at a trot. Another man grabbed his arm to intercept him, but Davis unleashed a massive, yet casual, backhand blow that toppled the stranger to the pavement. Through the telescopic night vision lenses in Batman's cowl, Davis's facial features looked slightly elongated, and his eyes seemed to glow with an eerie inner light.
Davis chased the woman away from the club, and the Batman followed in pursuit.
The stalker slowly closed the gap between his intended victim. The woman, in her terror, had quickly become lost, and her pace had slowed. Batman was able to swing around and get in front of the pair. He perched on a nearby roof. The woman passed below him, with a strangely slumped Davis hard on her heels. Suddenly, he stopped and leaned up against a nearby building. A closer look revealed the man to be shaking, with large amounts of saliva cascading from his mouth. As Batman watched in horror, Davis's face shifted. It seemed to grow outward as he stripped off his shirt and kicked his shoes away. Batman decided he had to act now.
He quickly eyed the angle need to intersect Davis and put himself between the fleeing woman and her pursuer. Triggering off a grappling hook, the Caped Crusader glided low over the steaming city street until he silently hit the ground in front of Davis. Yellow-tinged eyes glared at Batman, and a low growl issued from a throat no longer able to form human speech. Davis convulsed, as if in great pain, and a terrible popping sound reached the Dark Knight's ears. It appeared the man's bone and muscle structure were morphing into something more and less human. Part of Batman, the side that liked to explore the how and why of things, was fascinated by the transformation. He watched coarse grey hair sprout over every exposed inch of skin. Enthralled as he was at the sight, his darker nature came to the forefront when a muzzle full of jagged teeth burst from the thing's face. The newly born werewolf stretched to its full height of seven feet, flexed a body designed solely for killing, and snapped its powerful jaws. Its baleful eyes never left Batman, not even as he slowly reached back into his utility belt. A rumble sounded deep in the werewolf's chest. It's ears flattened against a lupine skull, and black lips peeled back to reveal a murderous smile. It tensed, and Batman knew the nightmare before him was about to attack.
He had no concrete way to stop this monster, too much was shrouded in myth and superstition. And he would not use a gun, not even on this thing. The werewolf leaped at him, with razor-sharp claws extended. Expecting this, Batman turned his head and popped a pair of intensely bright mini-flares , one held in each hand. It did not take a great detective to realize the werewolf was a nocturnal hunter, and most likely had sensitive eyesight. The howl of pain that followed the bright light told him he was right.
Acting quickly while the werewolf was blinded, Batman threw a handful of gas pellets at it's feet. The capsules broke on contact and the knockout gas wafted up as the monster vigorously tried to clear its head. Batman hoped the gas would at lest weaken the creature as even it had to breathe. The pragmatic crime fighter quickly slipped a small respirator over his face as the werewolf began to hack for air. Dipping once again into his bag of tricks, Batman withdrew a trio of batarangs. These had been specially made with each cutting tip lined in silver. Each of the weapons found its mark, thudding into the fur and meat of the lycanthrope's torso. A wolfen scream of pain and rage sounded through the Gotham streets.
Bruce Wayne was a very rich man. His wealth allowed him to acquire things that others simply could not. It was easy for him to procure lumps of refined silver ore and have them made into a pair of silver knuckles which fit nicely over his fists. The Batman believed, in a fight, of being offensive-minded. His philosophy was to hit hard and fast. Don't give your opponent time to think or react. In keeping with this strategy, the Dark Knight launched himself at the stunned creature in front of him. He went exclusively for headshots, and each silver-tinged blow left a mark of busted skin and sprayed blood upon the monster.
The thing was inhumanely quick, and after a viscous right cross to the temple, a lethal claw lashed out and caught Batman in the side. He felt a flash of pain as the talons tore through the kevlar woven into his uniform and found the soft meat underneath. Hot blood ran down his body. Biting back the hurt, Batman redoubled his assault. Finally, a crushing uppercut sent the werewolf tumbling down to the ground, where it twitched and bled, but did not rise.
Batman stumbled back and checked his wound. Four gashes along his ribs dripped blood. Not very deep, but a flash of fear drove through his mind as part of the werewolf legend surfaced. Anyone bitten or scratched by a werewolf was doomed to become one themselves. Batman began to run through the possible implications of his injury when he became aware of someone clapping. He whirled to his left and saw a man standing in the gloom. He was an urbane looking chap dressed in a suit, and sporting a bowler, of all things.
"Very good," said the stranger. "It's not often I see such a display of human prowess."
"Who are you," asked Batman through clenched teeth.
"That is of no importance to you," replied the man. "All you need to know, is that he," pointing at the fallen werewolf, "is coming with me."
Batman shook his head and assumed a fighting stance. "No. This creature will be turned over to the proper authorities and made to answer for his crimes."
The man let loose a great sigh. "I'm afraid that is impossible. Justin cannot be taken into human captivity, no matter what he's done. We take care of our own."
"We?" No sooner had the word passed Batman's lips then he became aware of movement on his flanks.
"Silly boy," said the man as a blond woman walked up next to him. "Didn't you know wolves run in packs?" Ignoring the pain in his side, Batman turned in a tight circle and found eight figures had formed a loose ring around him. They all stared hungrily at the detective, but kept a respectable distance. "I know what you are thinking," said the man. "Why did Justin turn, and we did not? Transforming only during a full moon is Hollywood rubbish. In truth, we can change at any time we wish."
"Justin, you see, has always been a bit...off, and..." began the man. He broke off abruptly when the woman beside him, who had not stopped looking hard at Batman, began to pant heavily. A look of distaste passed over the man's face before he cracked her across the face with a heavy backhand blow. Blood flew, and the woman flinched, but did nothing else. "My apologies," said the man. "Sometimes the less mature among us get too keyed up by the hunt." He paused. "As I was saying, Justin will be coming with us, the only question being, will it be over your flayed corpse?"
The threat had little effect on Gotham's grim guardian. "I won't let you terrorize this city," he said, even as he noticed a growing restlessness among the pack.
"We have absolutely no intention of remaining in this stinking town," said the group leader. "Our kind prefers the wild. We would not be here at all if we were not tracking Justin." He paused again. "Come vigilante, your time and my patience grow short. Stand aside or die screaming."
Batman hated to lose, but a fast calculation of the odds told him he could not win this fight. He relaxed and stepped back. Two of the pack members came forward and picked up the unconscious and bloodied werewolf. As the pair carried off their burden, Batman spoke. "Don't ever come back to Gotham. Any of you. I'll be ready, and I will not be merciful."
The alpha male laughed. "Of course," he said. "And if you are ever in our neck of the woods, we'd love to hunt you." He turned to follow his pack back into the darkness. "Oh, by the way, it takes an exchange of bodily fluids for the curse to be passed on to another. Those scratches on your side won't have you howling at the moon. Bye-bye," he said as the shadows swallowed him.
Batman quickly swung up to a rooftop and dressed his wound. He was far from happy about how the situation had been resolved, and he was not about to trust the word of a pack of mythological killers, but the Dark Knight had little choice in the matter. This time. If they or their kind ever showed muzzle or fang in Gotham again, Batman vowed to bring them down hard.
DA END