Aeron turned away from her kill licking her lips and smearing more blood across her mouth in the process. She was soaked in it, her prostitute get-up entirely ruined. Still, it had been worth it. It had been a long time since she had had the chance to… play with her prey. She sauntered down the alley, flicking hair over her shoulder and smirking while she licked her fingers in a leisurely sort of way. She was the very picture of a self-satisfied glutton.
"And I though-tuh I made a mess," the Joker's voice said behind her. She looked over her shoulder, her smirk turning into an open mouthed leer.
"I like making a mess," she said, her voice throaty and rich and so very different from the cool self-possession usually present in it. The Joker gestured toward the hood of the car.
"Where'd you hide the piano wire?" he asked. The vampire shrugged, lewdly running her tongue over her fangs.
"The purse is in the car," she answered before continuing to saunter down the alleyway, leaving the Joker behind. She disappeared in the combined rain and darkness as if she had never been there.
But, of course, she had been there, and Commissioner Jim Gordon paled when he heard the report. He had difficulty not vomiting when he finally arrived on the scene the next morning. It was… horrifying to say the least.
"Is this the Joker's work?" he asked no one in particular incredulously.
"No, sir, we haven't found any joker cards at all," one officer said, standing by his side with camera in hand. She spared a glance at the mutilated corpse of the pimp on the hood of the Cadillac Escalade and swallowed hard. Both ripped their eyes away and went around the corner so they could at least feel like they were breathing air free of horror.
"Any clues?" Jim asked the blonde woman, but she shook her head.
"No, sir, the officers who were first on the scene found him just like that." There was a moment of silence before she continued. "But we've identified him. Jamar Buttle, aged 34 years, a known pimp and cocaine dealer. We've reports of him picking up a prostitute last night, then disappearing with her."
"Find the prostitute," Jim said instantly, and the woman nodded.
"We've a couple of officers already trying to find that information," she said, "But we won't know much more until the forensics come back. Unless we find the prostitute."
There wasn't much more to do or say, so Jim went back to his office and tried not to think about drinking while on duty. There was a knock on the door and he sighed and fell into his chair before telling the knocker to come in. He frowned at the pale girl who shut the door and then sat in one of the chairs in front of his desk.
"Who are you?" he asked, his eyebrows knitting. "Does your mother know you're here?" He rubbed his face as he stared at her. She was lean, all slenderness and angles and there was something hard about her, something… unsettling. He felt fear chill his insides.
"I don't exist and my mother died a long time ago," she said with a cryptic smile, lacing her fingers and resting her elbows on the arms of her chair. Her posture said as blatantly as possible, 'I have the power.'
"Sorry, miss, but I have to think you exist considering you're sitting here talking to me," Jim said, narrowing his eyes at her through his glasses.
"I suppose I should clarify," the girl said, "I don't exist in your records, city, state, national, or otherwise."
"Even if that was possible, miss, I don't know why that would matter," he said, closing his eyes and pushing his glasses up his nose in irritation. "Now, if you wouldn't mind, I have work to do."
"Your forensics report will come back with an unknown set of fingerprints and possibly some samples of hair. My fingerprints and hair, to be precise," she said calmly. Jim could only look confused.
"Which forensic report? Are you playing a joke on me, young lady?" he said, getting even more irritated.
"The forensic report for the Jamar Buttle case," the girl said matter of factly. Jim was dumbstruck into silence. The name hadn't been released to the public yet. Hell, the press was only just starting in on the case. How did she know the name? And why was she saying that…
"Were you the prostitute?" he demanded. She nodded, the hint of a smile on her face.
"I was," she said, and then a smirk appeared on her face, "I was also the killer." His jaw dropped, his mind whirling in panic, whipped into frenzy as her very presence continued to disturb him.
"I can give you all of the information you'll get on the report in a couple of days," she continued, sounding like she was selling him the latest and greatest electronic instead of giving him the details of a murder. "He died at precisely 3:39 AM this morning on the hood of his cream, Cadillac Escalade SUV, bound to the car with piano wire which had also been used as a tourniquet on his arm, presumably after his hand had been severed at the wrist at roughly 1:48 AM and used as a gag." The girl stopped and lifted a delicate eyebrow. "Should I continue? You look rather… ill, Commissioner Gordon." Jim Gordon was, indeed, very pale. He coughed, trying not to vomit again as he saw the scene from this morning come alive in his mind with this strange girl in front of him as the perpetrator. What was just as horrifying to him was that he could so clearly see her as the murderer in his mind.
"Of course, the times on your report won't be quite as precise as those I just gave you," she said with a deliberate shrug. Her mannerisms fit into his vivid images of her as the killer too well. He could almost see her delicately and deliberately pulling a man apart, except that she seemed too small and not strong enough to do so.
"You realize that this means I have to arrest you," Jim said finally, past the dryness in his throat.
"You can try," she responded readily, "But you're not going to. And don't be so nervous," she added, eyes flashing over the man. "Relax, I'm not going to eat you. I'm quite sated." She flashed him a cunning, razor sharp smile. His head spun and buzzed with disbelief mixed with panic.
"I have to arrest you," he said, clinging to that idea, clutching his desk the way he did his perception of normality. She merely laughed, suddenly no longer in her chair and sitting on the desk with his face nearly in her lap, legs crossed elegantly. He reared back and shied away from her, stumbling over his chair in the process. She blew him a mocking kiss.
"I promised I wouldn't hurt you," she cooed, her black eyes shimmering with amusement, "Or rather, I told you that I'm sated enough to not want to eat you right now."
"What are you?" he gasped, feeling his heart thundering away impossibly loudly in his chest. He backed away a few more steps, then remembered his gun and drew it. She laughed again.
"You wouldn't even have the chance to shoot me," she said, her expression caught somewhere between an arrogant leer and utter disdain. As if to prove her point, she vanished and then he was pinned against the filing cabinets by a small, lithe body that had more strength that it should have. He pressed himself further back into the cabinets, but she pressed into him that much harder, his gun hand caught between their bodies. The tilt of her mouth was seductive, but her eyes were distant and cold and blank. He was utterly terrified of her.
"You won't arrest me because you can't and you won't track me because I don't exist," she murmured, cruelty creeping into her face. "What will you do now, Jim Gordon?" Abruptly, she walked away from him and to the door. She paused there, hand on the doorknob, and looked back at him. His chest was heaving with hyperventilation, his gun was visibly wavering as he pointed it at her. She offered him that razor smile again.
"You should go talk to Bruce Wayne and his butler, Alfred," was her parting shot, and then she disappeared out the door. The instant she was gone, Jim felt like he could breathe and suddenly he wanted to catch her and arrest her. He bolted for the door and tore it open, but there was no one there but his secretary. She looked up at him with wide, startled eyes.
"Do you need something, sir?" she asked hesitantly, eyeing his pistol with trepidation.
"The girl who just came out of my office, where did she go?" he demanded hotly. His secretary looked confused.
"What girl?" she asked, "No one's been here since you returned from the crime scene this morning." Jim bit out a curse and disappeared back into his office without a word. Her words seemed to linger.
"You should go talk to Bruce Wayne and his butler, Alfred." Jim paced his office for a moment, then slumped into the chair behind his desk in defeat and prepared to call the number.
"Alfred, right? Could I talk to Mr. Wayne, please?" he asked.