[tCotR] - Alicia Daggett

[Ariadne]

She had noticed patterns over the last few days. Bodies left in the open, messy feeding habits, random killings... it reminded her of when Wendigo was first turned. That boy have been a proper monster for months after she turned him, and she was the one who had to run behind and clean up the mess of the thing she had created. Quite the learning experience, that. Not one she was keen to repeat. Hopefully is was just those dicks over in Fifth Column trying to out the vampire population.

Hopefully.

There was a tipping point one night when she was deleting files. The title of one caught her eye. Some human thought they had found a werewolf in the wilderness around Cherrydale. The footage was fuzzy to start and looked like it had been shot quickly on a camera phone. Nothing of note was in the pixelated blackness, though one could make out the harsh sounds of flesh tearing from bone. Another minute of footage reveled a figure hunched over what might have been a rabbit. It was impossible to tell if the figure was male, female, or anything resembling either. The long hair hid most of the face and the rest of the body was so scrawny that it had no shape aside from ‘boney’.

The file was deleted quickly after she noted the date and time. No humans needed to see this and start wandering around the woods looking for monsters. If they did, they were quite likely to find some.

[Ariadne]

She didn’t like being outside. Being in the woods was even lower down on her list of ‘things that are awesome’.

Cherrydale had been pretty quiet since she had arrived. She set up shop at the very edge of town and set Pasi out for miles in each direction, searching for any trace of attacks on wild animals. In the mean time she scoured the the internet for any additional sightings of this thing she was searching for. So far no one else had seen it, but there was a small amount of talk regarding ‘odd happenings’ in Harper Rock on some of the social media sites. Damn internet. She would have to keep an eye on those.

It was a good hour before her wraith found anything, but what she found was significant. Piles of bones in a small cave that looked more like a predators hideout. The smell of the place was of death, and not just from the bones and scattered waste in the small space. Old death, new death, and various stages of decay assaulted her senses and blocked her ability to draw out any supernatural indication of what lived in the hovel.

Kicking around the rubbish and bits of fur on the ground reveled several large bones, perhaps belonging to mountain lions or wolves. The bones were clean of teeth marks and breaks, making it unlikely that the animals died in a fight with another member of its species or a larger animal. No indications of supernatural or faeish behaviors either. By all accounts this was just a regular old cave that had an over abundance of death stink.

Death stink was an acceptable clue though.

[Ariadne]

Ari left her wraith in the wilderness for the next day while she rested and did some research. She started with local legends; Wendigo and Sasquatch legends were all over the supernatural sightings message boards and chat rooms. Occasionally she’d run across something rarer, like an Ogopogo sighting or story. Flickering lights at a lake in Saskatchewan, a burning ship in Northumberland Strait near Prince Edward Island, and stories of haunted buildings and various locations all over the country. The only thing remotely close to what she was looking for was a series of supposed werewolf sightings in the La Belle Province of Quebec. Further digging did not uncover any substance to these claims. That and Quebec was a reasonable distance away. If this was a non vampiric supernatural being she needed something local to support the claim.

She pushed her computer away in frustration and rubbed her head. She’d been looking for hours and not only had she not found anything to indicate that she wasn’t looking for a vampire, she hadn’t found or heard of any additional sightings in the area that she had left her dear wraith. As much as she disliked the idea, she needed to expand her search and start looking for the monsters she knew existed. Monsters created through carelessness or an overabundance of sympathy and pity combined with a lack of follow through.

Pulling her computer back she typed in what was getting to be a very familiar search term; Missing people in Harper Rock.

[Ariadne]

The list of missing persons she had complied last night was disturbing, to say the least. WIth such a large vampiric population contained in a relatively small area it could be expected, but it was worrisome and left little doubt as to why the Paladins had come here, and why the humans were becoming more and more aware of what was really going on.

Her night was spent cross referencing the missing persons reports with hospital records of those with unusual injuries and amnesia, or identified corpses. The amnesiacs proved to be quite a boon when crossed with missing persons as it narrowed her list considerably. Unfortunately, even with the bodies in the morgue there were still at least five more missing people than there were found bodies. Out of those five she was fairly confident that one or more had been turned by accident, or by intent and left to fend for themselves in the city and beyond.

Five names. Three female and two male.

Last known addresses, family, and jobs were easy enough to come by. She’d try to close on two of these people by tomorrow night if she could. Thankfully one of the males had West Towers listed as his last known address. That one she could do tonight. Time to go find out what happened to the dear Mr. Holland.

[Ariadne]

Mr. Holland had been murdered by his mistress.

She wondered why the HRPD had such a problem closing that case. The ladies underwear in his closet that obviously did not belong to his wife (nothing against Mrs. Holland, but she did not wear lace thongs. A quick look in her closet would have also shown that ‘small’ was really not her size), the emails in his work folder that had nooothing to do with work, and the spending in his hidden back account would have lead a seasoned detective to a similar conclusions as the one she had found. Olive, the shopkeeper for RIngs and Things had been very helpful in providing a full confession about how and why she did away with her once lover (hit him, chopped him up, and burned him in a metal trash barrel. The horror!). Ari had been very persuasive.

The poor girl tasted like dried cherries. Burned like dry, dead, driftwood though.

Mr. Dougan was found in a back alley behind some slum club in Stag Heath. Drug overdose on what appeared to be heroin, poor soul. At least it looked like he died happy? A quick call to 911 from a burner cell was enough to get him taken care of and off of her list.

Just the ladies left now. Daggett, Harlow, and Williams.

At least one of them was still alive.

[Ariadne]

Ms. Harlow had been a naughty girl. She wasn’t missing at all, just holed up with her long time boyfriend and now husband, Jeffery Goodman. The former Ms. Harlow had, unbeknownst to her roommate and family, eloped with the young man in a drunken passion, forgotten to call of of work, and was enjoying the marital bliss of her hangover in some hotel in the Americas. Shame, really. At least that one would sort itself out soon. It was amazing what one could find out through credit card records though.

She was having some amount of trouble locating Mrs. Daggett. This difficulty left poor Ms. Williams out in the cold as she directed all of her efforts towards locating the missing secretary, though her husband had been found murdered in an alley some time ago. Mrs. Daggett’s phone records were blank after the date of her husband’s murder, as were her credit cards. The security cameras in her apartment building had not recorded her coming or going. Same with her work place card reader and cameras. She had simply dropped off the face of the earth, at least as far as electronic tracking measures were concerned.

Mrs. Daggett seemed to be a promising lead. Long brown hair and a slim figure were close to what Ari has seen on that fuzzy footage some nights ago. Her apartment was also close to the edge of the wilderness where the video had been shot. It could all just be coincidence, but it would have been foolish to ignore the similarities.

The kicker? Ms. WIlliams had been a coworker of Mrs. Daggett’s until a few months before Mrs. Daggett went missing.

[Ariadne]

Ari was back at the edge of the wilderness. She despised that place. Full of fae and it made her skin crawl. Pasi had found something though, and she needed to look into it. As wonderfully helpful as her wraith was, there were limits on what she could do. One of those limits was not being able to dig up a shallow grave located about a mile from the cave she had found a few days before.

Gathering her willpower she stepped into the woods and set out in the direction Pasi had indicated. Even at a run it took her nearly fifteen minutes to reach the grave site. Once there, Ari understood why it would have remained undiscovered if her for her wraith. The only indication that something had happened was a slight disturbance of the undergrowth and the tip of a shoe peeping out from the leaves.

She took great care in uncovering the body. The less disturbance the better. Ms. Williams had, at one point, been a woman of average beauty. What was left of her, however, was not. It looked like she had been ripped apart by a wild animal. Broken bones, bite marks, missing flesh, torn clothes, and separated limbs. Poor girl never had a chance against something with this kind of hunger.

Ari worked quickly. The wounds alone would help with the cover up, but she needed to plant some evidence first. Blaming animals was never high on her list as it tended to panic the general population, but framing a mountain lion or a wold was far better in the long run. Gloved hands worked claws, teeth, and bits of wolf fur into the various woulds and cavities on the corpse. Once the planting on the body was done, she picked up the remains and transferred them back closer to the cave with the bones in it. A quick spritz on wold blood on and around the body was enough to make it look like a legitimate animal attack.

A call to animal control about a wolf taking local pets would set a search for a dangerous animal in action, and would hopefully lead to the discovery of Ms. Williams.

Her task complete, Ari returned home and set about her last missions. Locating and killing Alicia Daggett.

[Ariadne]

Mrs. Daggett was proving quite difficult to find.

In the days after the discovery of Ms. Williams, Ari had hacked into every security feed she could in hopes of catching a glimpse of the human turned beast that was once a mild secretary.

Nothing.

There was nothing at all.

For all of her inexperience on the wild, Mrs. Daggett was proving to be incredibly resourceful when it came to taking care of herself and stay out of the public eye. According to police reports there had been an increase in the number of 'wild animal' attacks just on the edge of town, though just which edge it was kept changing and no real pattern was evident. It was almost like Mrs. Daggett was wandering wherever she could, killing when she had to feed, and leaving the bodies where they dropped. None of that was good.

Ari decided to take a shot in the dark and have Pasi wait with her around the edge of Stag Heath. Based on the last attack there was a good chance that Mrs. Daggett would show around there tonight unless she wandered in to town and fed.

Pasi floated off into the woods as Ari set up camp in an abandoned house near the edge of the wilderness. All they had to do now was wait...

[Ariadne]

Three hours that had spent in the cold embrace of the Canadian evening. Three hours with many sightings of humans, rabbits, and the occasional wolf. Three hours without so much as a rustle from a young vampire on the loose.

Ari almost called it quits at 4 am. She needed to make sure that she was safely inside and all her business matters were handled before she passed out during the daylight hours. She had packed up and all but called Pasi back when she saw the wraith speeding through the trees and out into he open grassy area in from on the building Ari has chosen as the base of operations for this adventure. The wraith raised a spectural arm and pointed southwest into the wilderness, indicating that she had found the vampire in question. Ari quickly ran from the building and to her wraith, gathering what information could be relayed on their target.

Mrs. Daggett was feeding on a small child. Pasi did not know where the child had come from, but he was not alive when she had seen him. No chance of saving the boy from a wild animal attack now.

Gun at her side and with an hour to go, Ari ran into the woods in pursuit of Mrs. Daggett.

[Ariadne]

Mrs. Daggett was holed up near a small gathering of boulders. By the looks of things she hadn't showered or changed her clothes in weeks. She was thin, the sick kind of thin, and her clothes were in such a state of distress that she hardly looked like a living being. The child that had been her most recent meal looked to have been about 5 or 6 years old, though there was not much of him left to tell by. It looked as if Mrs. Daggett had torn him apart and fed on each little limb individually in order to suck out any and all of his blood that was left after her initial feeding. No meal that small could sustain a grown woman turned vampire.

Ari approached her with great caution. Vampires gone feral could be unpredictable if not handled carefully, and the woman has no desire to get into an all out tussle. She did toy with the idea of shooting the poor soul outright, but she wanted some information about why she was in this condition to begin with.

The stench of death was the same as what she had encountered several nights ago in the small cave and. Longing to the body of the former Ms. Williams. Ari had little doubt that Mrs. Daggett was a Necromancer, though she did not expect the girl to know her true strength or powers. It did look as if she had mastered digging grave though... Both for herself and others.

Mrs. Daggett raised her head as Ari approached, her wild eyes gazing out from under the matted mess of hair. A snarl issued from her lips as the redhead straightened. "Who?" she said, in a raspy and unused voice. "Who are you?"