Joel Yorick [] 489 [] He/Him [] Neutral [] M: Open
Hunting Vampires, unsurprisingly, was rather challenging. Forget the fact they have supernatural abilities, all Vampires suffer from a rather severe case of photosensitivity. The sun's rays were deadly to their kind, and so they only really came outside at night. It was precisely seven thirty-six in the morning, which was rather problematic. The attack most likely happened hours ago, late in the night, who knows where his quarry could have sauntered off to by now?
Joel grumbled to himself as he approached the park. It was his only lead, where the body was found. Northside of the Central Park, under the Hanover Bridge. Northside was a troubled area, the city never offered it funding for infrastructure and so many of its buildings were old and crummy. This side of town was riddled with dangers for both Mundane and Mystic alike, crime and violence was rampant here. This was a prominent battle ground for the war between the Demons and Angels too, though it was more designated at the warehouse district. Closer to the docks for both sides allies to be involved in the fighting...
He entered the park with sharp eyes scanning over every individual thing he came across in fear of being caught unawares. It's exterior brick walls crumbling in some area, with ivy growing upon them, the wrought iron fences lost its luster and now rusted over, garbage littered the ground, the grasses were long and overgrown, and the weeping willows overhanging the entryway cast a curtain of brush.
"This is sketchy as hell...", was the only thing he could say in such a moment. If he was a lesser man he would have certainly walked away, avoided the place entirely, and never returned, yet he was no lesser man. Joel had seen worse. He stepped past the intimidating sight with only a glance, and made his way deeper into the park towards his destination.
Hanover Bridge was an old stone structure, victorian in style, riddled with moss and lichens. It overlooked a small river that ran through the rest of the park and into the city, before dropping off into the harbor. It could have been a quaint place, oblivious to all that was around it, the stereotypical lost world of children's dreams...
Now though, it was anything but. Joel could feel the presence drifting about, remnants of the living. Lost souls. Ghosts. Mere extensions of the living energy who possessed enough sentience to drift upon the mortal plain for eternity. They left their mark, the air was cold, the aura of the surrounding area felt desolate, strangled whispers spoken in the wind, and the strange flickers of light that occasionally appeared like a firefly yet nowhere near as jovial. Ghosts always sucked up the happiness of the areas the roamed, cast shadows and negativity.
The person who died here, they must have suffered. A fear so encapsulating. All hope sucked from them as they were hunted down by a vicious predator. Joel felt himself frown and his heart rage. He approached the bridge, the faint ghostly whispers seeming to hush.
There was no body, the Mundane police having already brought it to the morgue... The crime scene was startlingly similar to that of other cases he had dealt with. Therianthropes who craved the taste of human flesh, hunting them in the night. This attack was clearly premeditated, planned. Despite the grisly aftermath, there was no real sign of struggle. The body was mutilated after death.
Joel scowled, 'What a sick bastard'.
A pool of blood was the only sign of the crime that occurred here, that and torn bits of flesh, settled under the bridge. He knelt down near the red puddle, dipping his fingers within it, rubbing it between his pointer and thumb.
"Maybe a few hours old... I would say this happened around two in the morning, given the coagulation. It's mostly dried aside from the central portions", he concluded. He grimaced at the blood on his hand, using his free hand to pull a peice of paper from his pocket. A rune seal, his prime method of tracking Rouge Vampires... The Blood Compass. It was a rune that would take a blood sample and lead the user to wherever quantities of that shared blood could be found... For example, a Vampires' stomach.
Joel took his blood covered fingers and ran acrossed the runes. There was red flash before it shutting off, the faintest bit of a pulse rhythmicly coming from the piece of paper, like a heart beat. He raised the paper in the air, facing it in each of the cardinal directions, waiting to see if its signal grew stronger. There was a sharp buzz once he turned West. "Now we're getting somewhere...", he said.
Joel's gaze settled on his bloody fingers, with a flick of his wrist seemingly pulled a clean rag from his coat sleeve. The small rune on his palm said otherwise, Magic was somehow involved. He wiped the blood off his fingers, while slowly rising up from the ground. Another glowing red rune on his palm, and the bloody rag had disappeared in smoke.
Joel stepped away from the bridge, satisfied with what he had seen. This place made him uncomfortable, the dead spirits roaming the isolated clearing. Nothing good came from lingering to long in their domain, and so he promptly left whilst following the Blood Compass' direction.
[Ugh. Another long post...]
Winter 
Night 
Blizzard Moon: 
