Warning: Some topics may offend. Contains mature content.

***

The file had been several pages long that excluded photographs and exchanged correspondence with other potential targets. A copy had been sent through the mail, to a secure post box that had been set up to keep in contact with the network. She had requested it several days earlier and had received it the day after by express mail. What she had reviewed had twisted her stomach and boiled her blood, and yet it was the same details that she had read over and over in other case files. That it was becoming so common was sickening.

People would read headline news that barely covered any of these details she were privy to. They would grieve in that small moment, briefly wonder how this could happen in their neighbourhood, until the kettle boiled and it was time to make another coffee. They would forget about it by the time they were sitting down to watch the latest reruns of evening television that flashed images and stories based on true and bloody crimes. Sitting on the edge of their seat they would sigh in disappointment when the episode was over and they would have to wait a week for the next. But that didn’t matter much there was the other show, the one about the special sex crimes detectives that fictionalized real and shocking events.

But this was far from a tv show. It was a stark reality that she lived and breathed on a daily basis. The details of their crimes, of her crimes, and all of those committed against Gaia, would be too horrendous to ever made it onto a scrïpt. These things should never make it to venues that were used for entertainment value. She believed that they were half, if not three quarters of the problem.

He thought he could hide. All that arrogance, intellect, political power and bank accounts couldn’t keep him safe from the Bacchantes. Bred through generations of Black Furies, of women tied to a cause close to every beat of their hearts, were the honing instincts of primal predators. They existed to hunt the globe for people like him. Many had the mistake of presuming that these criminals were just of the male gender. Those same stereotypes would label the Black Fury as nazi feminists and man haters. But the truth of it was, Tisiphone’s Blade had swung her weapon at more women than she had cared to.

--

She lay on the floor. Blood had soaked into the cloth of her blouse and the pants she wore, it had stained the rug a thick and dark colour. The same colour was sprayed across the cream paint of the walls, the neatly made bed, the wooden trunk with the toys stationed neatly in a row, across the teddy bear with large brown eyes and the pretty doll in a Victorian dress that had fallen on the floor. Her neatly decapitated head rested by the neck, dropped there purposefully to contain the spread of mess and death.

Looking around the room, Ruana’s back was to the wall. She should leave here. There were already people starting to come down the stairs and into the large basement area. No one would have thought it a basement. It should have been a place of care, of inviting warmth and childhood fantasy. But what it had been was nothing of the sort. Despair lingered here and now death was joining the ranks of stench that filtered into the walls, soaked into the pores as if the concrete were made of sponge.

She closed her eyes as the clean up began. They weren’t her chores to take care of. The network was huge, diverse and well equipped. Her duty had been done. It would be easy to say that she should have drawn it out. The woman’s death could have been prolonged and her screams forced to be more frantic. But no matter what anyone said, this wasn’t easy. The targets deserved death. She wanted to believe they deserved endless torture to the misery they had inflicted on others and the world. Ruana wanted to believe that she could be the one that would inflict that suffering, to make them pay tenfold for every tear, anguished cry and moment of terror that their victims had felt.

Sitting on the floor, with the wall as her brace, she had wanted to believe that deep in her heart. She knew it wasn’t the way. Her rage had always been great and had been a terrifying thing in herself, and knowing all she did, seeing it first hand, speaking with victims and these criminals herself, had made that seething anger boil into a bright red of fury. Now, looking at the room, studying all details, she could envision what went on here and although part of her regretted the swift kill, she wouldn’t change her action.

She was an executioner not a torturer. Its what set her apart from the others. Every time she had to remind herself of that. One slip and everything could change. It was a fine line that warriors walked.

--

A hand touched her shoulder.

“You should get cleaned up and head home. We can take it from here.”

Nodding mutely she slowly got to her feet and glanced at all the people moving around, cataloging while making orders, proficiently cleaning the scene.

“Thanks for your help Tisiphone’s Blade.”

“Don’t thank me.”

Turning away from the others blue gaze, she made her way up the stairs and out the nearest exit, and into the fresher air of the night.

--

It was the last time she was without pack.
Now, she arrives in Sanfield with the pack in tow.