The Vixen knifed through the Toronto night, engine a smooth purr under Vulpes as the city blurred past in neon and shadow. She ran the board in her head. Benoit would need time to push the blood through the lab—DNA, tox, trace. Meanwhile, she had to assume Bloodletter would wait to heal before striking again… but assumptions got people killed.
Best case, the piton had hit bone—cracked it, slowed him, forced a longer recovery. Worst case, it passed clean through soft tissue and he’d be mobile sooner than anyone liked. Factor in painkillers and a high tolerance for hurt, and the window shrank fast.
So: no waiting.
She’d work three tracks at once—armor, ground, pattern. Get John’s anti-stab refit finished. Put eyes back on his hunting corridors and ingress/egress routes—alleys with camera blind spots, dumpsters with cover, rooftops with fast exits. And pressure his rituals: immaculate blades meant maintenance, sharpening stones, specialty oils; the axe toss meant a supplier or range. Someone had sold him steel, and someone would notice if a bloodied man bought gauze, burn cream, or sutures at odd hours.
The Vixen took the next turn, throttle opening just enough to bite. If the lab call came, she’d pivot. Until then, she’d treat the city like a chessboard and move first.
The weapons would be the hardest to trace. A decent knife or a balanced throwing axe could be bought a dozen ways with no paper trail. His armor, though—that had looked like a proper set, not a DIY patchwork. Body armor was trickier to acquire than steel; odds were he’d gone through the black market or a quiet reseller who didn’t ask questions. Some gear was easy—surplus stores, online vendors, even legit retailers if you knew what to say. But that smoke grenade he’d popped? Not a half-baked homemade tin. Police or military grade by the look and burn—good plumes, even spread, fast screen.
She ran the mental audit again—what she had, and soon, what the RCMP had. Her helmet comms pulsed; WOLF blinked on her HUD. Vulpes eased the Vixen into a quiet service tunnel, killed speed, dropped the kickstand, and thumbed the hidden talk stud on her helmet.
“This is the Fox. What’ve you got for me, Wolf?”
“First,” John said, voice dry, “you have a day job. Don’t stay out so late you forget the name on your business cards. Second—the new armor’s looking good. Swing by the Den before you crash and we’ll fit it.”
“Hit me.”
“Torso: swapped most Kevlar layers for a tight-weave stab package with laminated inserts. You’ll give up some ballistic cushion but a stiletto won’t treat you like warm butter. Shoulders and ribs now have curved ceramics to skip points instead of catching them. Forearms: hardened polymer over steel mesh—made to eat a blade and trap it. Boots got anti-penetration midsoles. Added a low-profile gorget; you don’t lose a fight to a lucky jab at the throat.”
“And the damage to my pride?”
“About a kilo and a half extra. You’ll feel it on long runs, not in a clinch. Also relocated what ballistic protection remains to heart and spine. Against him, that’s the right bet.”
“Good.” She glanced down the tunnel, already mapping her next sweep. “I’m working leads on his sourcing—armor resellers, private vendors, surplus, and the smoke. If that was police or mil-grade, I might trace it by filler signature.”
“Copy. I dropped a list of likely distributors to your board. Cross them against the RCMP’s forensics when you get it. Oh—and your gauntlets now have blade guides. If he tries another boot-knife trick, roll and pinch; the channel does the rest. Practice it.”
“Roger. Anything else?”
“A compact occlusive foam cartridge in your kit—good for sealing punctures fast if he tags you again.”
“Can’t promise he won't but I will do my best,” she said, and almost smiled. “ETA ten.”
“Den’s open.”
The Vulpes cut the comm, kicked the stand up, and rolled out of the tunnel. The Vixen purred back onto the street, and the city opened ahead—alleys, rooftops, and a monster with a taste for blood to run down.
She pulled into the Den not long after; the manor’s back roads and discreet connections funneled her straight into the Fox Den’s vehicle bay. The Vixen didn’t just prowl—it flew when she asked, and though she rarely admitted it, going fast still put a quiet grin somewhere behind the mask.
Helmet on its hook, she headed for the war room first, jacking her digital camera into the workstation so the RCMP file shots could start transferring. Progress bar crawling, she slipped into the armory.
John was at a bench, grease on his coveralls and a dark smudge across his chin. A fresh set of gauntlets lay open in front of him like dissected predators.
Vulpes pushed her hood back. “What are you on?”
“CCW system,” he grunted without looking up. “Concealed claw that doubles as a tool. Got the idea from shinobi shuko—retractable, high-grade steel, composite tip. Punch, snag, short climb, cut rope.”
She nodded. “Multi-use is good.”
He finally glanced over, eyes flicking to the bandage at her arm but saying nothing. She started shedding the suit. John had seen the in-between a hundred times; he had a girlfriend, and he and Coraline were close enough to family that anything else would be unwelcome and weird.
“So,” she said as the last plate came off, “let’s see the new melee-spec Vulpes suit.”
John wheeled the armor rack over. Coraline took a slow measure of the new build on the mannequin—chunkier than her baseline suit but unmistakably Vulpes: burnt orange and deep red, white accents, the stylized fox ears, the faux-fur mantle, and the sweep of synthetic hair that broke up the helmet’s silhouette so she never looked fully encased.
She nodded once and began the familiar ritual. Undersuit first—wicking fabric that slid cool against skin. Then the flex panels at hips and lower back, anchored with silent elastic pulls. Thigh guards buckled in with low-profile latches. The torso carrier went on next; she drew it tight with a pair of side cinches until it hugged her ribs and didn’t float.
Forearm shells followed—she seated the inner cuffs, then wrapped the outer clamshells until the buckles kissed and the retention tabs clicked home. She felt the blade channels under her palms, a subtle track that would guide and trap steel. Gloves snapped to the gauntlet rings with a quarter-turn lock.
John handed her the shoulder pieces; she set each on its rail and slid them forward until the stops met with a soft, satisfying tch. The low gorget came last—she lifted her chin and let it settle into the notch above her sternum, fastening the hidden tab behind the ear line.
Helmet in hand, she checked the seal lip, then slid it on. The world narrowed to the HUD’s faint glow and the steady pulse of her own breath. She rolled a shoulder, raised a guard, and cut a short combination in the air—no snags, no rattle, the weight bias forward and close where it belonged.
She flexed her fingers. The gauntlet channels guided cleanly beneath her touch; a twist and pinch promised a trapped edge.
He crouched, tapped a boot, checked seals, then stood. “How’s it feel?”
“Honest,” she said. “It wants a knife fight.”
“That’s the idea.” He nodded toward a small cartridge on the bench. “Med foam for punctures. Piton driver’s tuned—fresh cartridges.”
She clipped the driver back to her belt and glanced toward the war room. The transfer was nearly done.
“Files will be done in a minute,” she said. “After that, I run his hunting lanes.”
“I’ll have the claw module ready by the time you’re back,” John said. “And—eat something. Your day job still expects a functional lawyer in the morning.”
She smirked. “I’ll pencil it in.”
John rolled his eyes at her “pencil it in.” “Remember you still have the Alice Little case to work.”
Coraline paused. The reminder hit both halves of her life at once—hunting Bloodletter while making sure Alice didn’t get steamrolled by the system. She gave him a small nod, grateful he’d said Alice Little and not Wonderland like the headlines loved to do. The media wanted capes and villains in black and white; some people needed treatment, not a circus.
“You’re right,” she said. “I should make the most of whatever recovery time he needs—but assume worst case and plan for a clean through.”
John leaned on the bench, thinking. “You know the medical side better than me. How long until he’s functional—and lethal—after a clean puncture through the shoulder?”
Vulpes started undoing the new suit piece by piece; she’d work from the Den tonight and push Alice’s case forward between sweeps. “If he’s not a Special and doesn’t have super-science or magic—because if he did, we’d be in a different league—then it comes down to what the piton hit. If it punched soft tissue—deltoid or upper pec, missed major vessels and the rotator cuff—and if he controls bleeding and infection, he could be moving with usable strength in forty-eight to seventy-two hours. Pain tolerance matters, and he has that in spades.”
She set the gauntlets on the rack. “He’s ambidextrous. So even if the piton arm is angry, the other side can still stab, grapple, and throw short. An axe toss wants clean shoulder rotation—he’ll feel that for days—but a stiletto thrust can be driven from the elbow and body. If the piton struck bone, we get weeks. If not, we get days. Either way, he doesn’t strike me as the type to wait for a doctor’s clearance.”
John grunted. “So clock’s ticking.”
“It always is.” She pulled the helmet free and set it beside the piton driver. “I’ll treat the window like seventy-two hours, plan for twenty-four.”
He slid a protein bar across the bench and pointed at the coffee machine with a grease-streaked chin. “Fuel. You’re no good to Alice or to the city running on fumes.”
She cracked the wrapper. “I’ll start with suppliers—armor resellers, quiet brokers, surplus, plus the smoke signature. If that canister was police or mil-grade, filler composition might narrow the field. I’ll also flag ERs and late-night clinics for shoulder punctures, chemical burns, or amateur cautery. He’s meticulous, but pain makes people sloppy.”
“And the files?”
“Transfer’s almost done. I’ll cross Benoit’s forensics with our map—ingress/egress, blind spots, rooftops, dumpsters, camera dead zones. Then I walk his routes on the screen until something gives.”
John nodded, already turning back to the claw rig. “I’ll have this mounted by the time you want to spar against blades.”
Coraline took a long drink of coffee, eyes on the wall of monitors. “Good. Because if he’s back on his feet by the weekend, I want to meet him first—and I want him to bleed less than last time.”
John paused, something clicking into place. “Cora, let me chase his gear. Alice needs your focus, and I still know a few black-market doors from my street-race days—mods, quiet parts, the kind of people who move armor and smoke.”
Coraline nodded, reluctant. She hated him drifting anywhere near that life again; it had nearly gotten him killed once and almost landed him in prison. But he was trying to shoulder weight so she could keep Alice from being ground up by a system that wanted her to be bad guy not victim. “Alright. But don’t get too deep. Your old ‘friends’—and I’m being generous with that word—aren’t what I’d call trustworthy.”
“I’ll keep it clean,” he said. “Burners only. Public meet spots or not at all. No buys, just questions—distributors, resellers, who’s moved police-grade smoke lately, who’s selling armor quiet.”
“Loop me in on every step,” she added. “No hero runs. If something smells wrong, you walk.”
He gave a short, wry salute. “Copy that, Counselor.”
A soft chime from the war room: transfer complete. Coraline pushed off the bench, coffee in one hand, the other already reaching for the keyboard.
“Ping me if anyone bites,” she said. “I’ll start with Benoit’s files—map overlay, then Alice’s docket. Two fires, one bucket.”
John turned back to the claw rig. “I’ll have steel in your hands before dawn.”
She nodded once and headed for the monitors, pulling up two windows side by side: Bloodletter—Supply & Routes and Alice Little—Defense Strategy. The Den’s hum settled around her like armor of its own. Time to make both count.
The legal work was the easier fire. Coraline had already earmarked the precedents and boxed in the angles: disclosure demands, expert notices, a tidy chain-of-custody for anything the RCMP “found,” and—most useful—evidence that would gut whatever performance Michael Macentyre tried to sell a jury. Emails, wire patterns, export-control red flags… he was the kind of man who’d toss his own mother under a bus to save his shoes; proving it wouldn’t be hard.
She sketched her defense in pencil, the way her law professor at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law had taught her—principle first, tactics second. Capacity over intent. Not a mastermind to be punished, but a mind in crisis that needed treatment. Light touch, no melodrama. If the Crown painted Wonderland as calculated malice, she’d counter with clinical context: a forensic psychologist who could speak to trauma, dissociation, and persona formation without turning the courtroom into theater. She tagged a few cases where courts favored treatment over incarceration for Specials whose actions flowed from a genuine break, and highlighted the passages a judge could use for clean jury instructions.
Contingencies: a sealed special-assessor brief ready to file if powers or super-science entered the record; a narrow motion to invoke the Vigilante Identity Act of 1943 if a masked witness became necessary—carefully scoped to relevance and safety, with chain-of-custody language that would survive appeal. She drafted her cross on Macentyre last, tabs marking bank trails, procurement emails, and the little tells that strip a “victim” down to motive. No reveals, just pressure points: who paid, who profited, who lied.
Satisfied, she saved the drafts, slid the Alice folder to one side of her desk, and brought the Bloodletter map back up on the other. Two fires, one bucket—keep Alice from being crushed by a system that didn’t understand her, and make sure a man who bled for art never found his next canvas.
The files on Bloodletter’s prior victims were meticulous. Liv’s notes stitched a clean narrative from ugly facts: three victims, three blades, same mind behind the cuts. First: a woman in her thirties—heavy blade, cleaver or hatchet—brutal but precise. Second: a girl barely into adulthood—serrated edge—jagged, tearing work. Third: a man in his forties—slender blade—neat, controlled “game meat” cuts. Different weapons, different methods… but the bodies were always posed, the blood deliberately drained, and selected parts cleanly removed post-mortem.
Pinned beside the photos was Benoit’s margin note: “All slash marks made with well-honed blades—quality over type.” He wasn’t wedded to a signature knife; he was wedded to sharpness and control. A bleached utility knife recovered near one scene matched serration angles exactly—mass-market, yes, but honed beyond factory spec, then “placed” where it would be found. Taunt, not mistake.
The profile pages were steady-handed and cold-eyed. Tall, practiced, physically strong; cuts from a higher angle; no hesitation wounds. Someone who knew anatomy—arteries favored over organs; femoral, carotid, subclavian opened with confidence. Procedure over passion.
And he cleaned. No prints, no stray DNA, no casual shed. Likely doubled gloves, airtight tool storage, solvent/bleach, maybe even a mask to trap hair and saliva—containment as habit, not paranoia. Scenes read as disciplined, not lucky.
Geography pulled tight as thread: Bloor Street as an arterial—different faces every ten blocks, yet all three murders orbiting its span. If the hunting ground wasn’t about the victims, it was about him—ritual or fixation stamped on a map.
Benoit’s language kept returning to curation: not a butcher, an “artist.” Kill close. Drain cleanly. Arrange deliberately. “He’s not just killing. He’s curating.” Coraline underlined it in her head; it fit the fight she’d had in the alley—the careful knives, the disdain for noise, the way he chose a shoulder shot for the girl to force her triage.
One photo cluster made her pause: an evidence board snapshot showing the bleached blade, the radiating scene circles, and a sticky note that simply read, “Why Bloor?” Coraline could almost hear Liv pacing. The workups acknowledged what mattered most: precision, intimacy, ritual—and a killer comfortable enough to keep refining.
She pushed to the logistics tabs—the part she could weaponize. Ingress/egress routes, camera blind spots, dumpsters and rooflines, time windows, weather. This was the seam she could pry open: plan the city the way he planned a kill. Cross Benoit’s map with her own: rooftops, vents, alleys, patrol gaps. Then walk his lanes until something gave.
Last, she flagged two actionable threads for herself and Wolf:
Sourcing: the lab’s bleached knife and Benoit’s “quality over type” note point to a sharpener’s pride—stone or guided system users, not casual owners. Pair that with likely black-market armor vendors and recent movers of police/mil-grade smoke; narrow by filler signatures and purchase clusters.
Medical touchpoints: ERs/urgent care for shoulder puncture + cautery burns within 24–72 hours fits her alley estimate; ambidexterity keeps him lethal even if one arm’s angry. Pain breeds mistakes. (Her own ops plan already had those calls queued.)
Coraline absorbed the data, mulled it over, then slid to Benoit’s formal profile. This wasn’t scene work; this was the mind behind it.
Benoit’s model was crisp: a planner who organizes first and indulges second. Control-seeking, low-reactive, the kind of offender who treats logistics like a sacrament—scouting routes, timing windows, pre-staging exits—then calls the result “art.”
No manifesto impulse, no ideology. The performance is the message. Likely lives alone or presents that way; needs privacy for kit maintenance and self-care. A workspace—garage or basement—where solvents don’t raise eyebrows and a vise can sit out. Hands comfortable with tools; background hints at trade or rural chores where blood isn’t novel and sharp edges are respected. When thwarted, he doesn’t rage blindly—he escalates with intent to humiliate.
Coraline penciled in what the alley had confirmed and what the file couldn’t know:
- Ambidextrous, with smooth hand transitions. Even wounded, he stays lethal at thrust range.
- Environment user. He boxed her between wall and steel to make her footwork betray her. Don’t give him straight lanes—steal angles, kill his stance.
- Surprise steel. Boot blade was deliberate, not improvisation. Expect backups: wrist picks, a garrote, tucked throwers. Train the trap mechanics until they’re reflex.
- Seams hunter. Needle-point thrusts for joints and gaps; treat “ballistic” as secondary, fight for anti-stab lines and limb isolation.
- Leverage over preference. He hates guns but used one the second it let him force triage. Prepare counters for hostage-making gambits and split-attention plays.
- Flash sensitivity. He shielded his eyes instead of tanking light—basic optics, not anti-flash lenses. Pair flashes with lateral movement, not frontal rush.
- Pain tolerance. High. Breath control present. Aim to break structure, not just pile on pain.
From that, her forecast shifted. He’d need to reclaim the narrative after having a scene vandalized. Expect a “gallery” piece meant to shame—badge, investigator, or a venue that reads as a stage. He’ll pick an arterial again for its anonymity and exits, and he’ll time it to recovery, not comfort. If her piton only tore soft tissue, he can act within days, not weeks.
Resource pressure points stayed the same, but she sharpened the ask: sharpeners who sell to obsessives, not hobbyists; quiet armor brokers serving mobile kits; fillers for police-grade smoke; late-night pharmacies and clinics for puncture care and amateur cautery. Cross all of it against Bloor-adjacent commutes and garages that breathe solvent.
She closed the case file exactly square to the blotter—Benoit-level neat—then turned to the monitors. Map overlay first. Vendor net next. If the Bloodletter wanted an audience, the fox would be in the front row—and in the rafters
