Damien returns home empty handed.

It was getting close to dawn when Damien had returned to the temporary batcave, pulling down the service door behind him and locking it tight after shutting off the vehicle and gathering his findings in front of the computer at a nearby table, the bat computer showing all the gathered data over three screens. His efforts at the Snake’s Den were a waste; the D-listers didn’t know a thing, nothing useful that he could gain insight from on who had been smuggling in silver, only that he was in the dockyards. He had to admit, it was a clever move having two teams of thieves stealing the unmarked boxes at the docks to drive off to the other side of the city, only to switch vehicles and drive back. He found the other vehicle drop off point at another location to the east where the car he stopped would have unloaded their prize and crew and dump the older car into the brush. Even if the police knew who they were and chased them across New Gotham would never have guessed they were chasing phantoms.

But Damien was going to have to wait until tomorrow to investigate the docks further and find where those teams had been storing all the silver they had been gathering all these months. In the meantime, he had other pressing investigations at hand.

He had managed to gather information on the three murder scenes and their victims. The first victim was a Daryl Grison; a former staffer at what used to be the Langstrom institute, the same one that blew up after his father tried to find a cure for lycanthropy and unintentionally created different strains of the condition. The gas explosion had taken out the entire structure and mostly anything else living in the R&D section of the building. His father had seen to that. For now, he had nothing to go with this one, Grison had no prior convictions and the reasons for being killed weren’t clear even on the day his remains were found let alone several months later.

The second murder scene at the very least showed some promise. Brian Rufus and Antonio Montino, two of Two-Face’s head enforcers back when he was ruling a chunk of Gotham during the war between Lycanthropes and Vampires. No one had seen them after the war had intensified, it was believed they had been two of the many killed by Dracula’s brides or turned by Bane in his gambit. Their deaths a month ago proved otherwise. But it also raised as many questions as they did answer them. Why were they targeted? How were they found when they had remained low for almost 5 years after the war? Whoever their killer was, they had it in for Two-Face if the perpetrator had managed to find his lead lieutenants and tore them limb from limb like rag dolls.

The third were the pair of Lycanthropes, the most recent victims of whatever was rampaging through the city on a full moon. A pair of werewolves named Carlin and Mint, fourth generation born from Harleen Quinzel and Pamela Eisley. Their information was scarce since they had spent the majority of their lives had been spent in the Umbra and out of curiosity had come to New Gotham to experience the mortal plane… And got their first taste of mortality in the worst way. Leaning back in his chair and pulling the mask and cowl off to rub the bridge of his nose, Damien thought out loud, going over what he had so far.

“A pedestrian, a pair of mobsters with a history of lethal violence and a pair of werewolves arguably older than the city itself. An escalation in targets based on how challenging they could be to kill. Sport killings perhaps? The victims have nothing in common otherwise…”

Going over the claw marks in all three crime scenes, whoever or whatever killed them was bigger than a truck! The spacing of the claw marks were almost half a foot between each digit, meaning the claw responsible for carving them up was big enough to splay over the hood of a car. It didn’t match any of the lycanthrope tribes in Gotham, not even the krypto-wolves, which means whatever was skulking around at night was big!

Sighing to himself and leaning back in his chair, Damien went over his findings he gathered last night and got changed. In the span of just 30 minutes, he was already locking the heavy metal door behind him and put his hands in his coat pockets. The morning sun was already creeping up over the high-rises overhead, with some shops on the street looking like they were just about to open. Taking the long road back to the hotel suite he and Alfred were living in, he made his way to the front lobby and headed to the elevator alone. The trip up to the top floor only took 45 seconds when the doors slid open, revealing an empty hallway, stepping out into the open, Damien made his way to his suite and unlocked the door.

“Ah, welcome back home master Damien, pleasant night I hope?” Asked Alfred at the kitchen nook, brewing tea and starting breakfast for his charge’s return from his patrol.

“I still don’t have a lead on who’s smuggling silver into the city, the rest of the freaks and lunatics only know he works out on the docks but don’t know where specifically.” Turning to sit on the couch and lean his head back against the neck rest, Damien sighed. “Not only that but I have been banned from the Snake’s Den lounge.”

“I’m sure they will let you back into their good graces once you show them what a model citizen you can be, the lady of the house seemed quite reasonable.”

Narrowing his eyes and giving Alfred a dirty look, the elderly butler ignored his scowl as he placed a tray of fruits and bread in front of the young man with a cup of tea.

“On an unrelated note, your shift as janitor to the Wayne foundation starts in about a few hours time, I suspect you would like to get cleaned up after breakfast so you can brood over the indignity of being put in your place by a talking snake before work, hmm?”

Exhaling a breath through his nose and nodding in agreement, Damien quickly ate his breakfast and then got up from the seat to head off for a shower.