Chapter Text
Wednesday would be able to spot the distinct splatter of blood on the pavement from a mile away. The sidewalk is still damp from the night’s rain, but even across the street, she can spot the darker tint, the glossy sheen that doesn’t quite scream “puddle.” She tilts her head as she gives the alley’s entrance a quick glance from her current position, noting the scattered trash, the knocked over wooden crate, but most importantly, she notes that the alley seems to be devoid of any obvious movement. Whoever was bleeding may have gotten help. Or maybe they didn’t get away at all.
Since graduating from Nevermore three years ago, there’s been decidedly less violent attacks in her life. Not completely devoid of murder, of course – New York City isn’t particularly known for being the safest place in the world and since getting her private investigator license, she’s certainly been asked to look into a handful of particularly brutal cold cases. Still, it hasn’t been the same random encounters, the same supernatural darkness that seemed to have clung to the town of Jericho, Vermont, and Wednesday can’t say she doesn’t miss the thrill it used to carry. She doesn’t miss the school, exactly, but the atmosphere was certainly something she had grown to appreciate.
There’s only a handful of people and a rare car when she goes to cross the street for a closer look at the scene. It’s two in the morning, and while New York is known to be the city that never sleeps, there are still quieter areas to be found around the place, even in Manhattan. Those who stumble by the alley are too drunk to think of what they might be stepping in. Wednesday had been on her way back to her apartment after a night of visiting her family in New Jersey. It wasn’t a long train ride and while Wednesday could have had Lurch drive her directly home, she’s starting to become more used to public transport, and the freedom that it offers her. Her parents would never step foot on the train and it makes it far less likely for them to try and ride along with her when all she wants is some space. It’s the same reason that she moved into her parents one bedroom condo in the city; she loves her family, would do anything for them, and (though she’ll never admit it aloud, even under threat of death) genuinely enjoys spending time with them, but she finds that she becomes significantly less burnt out on their affections when she can easily escape them.
It’s definitely blood. She notes the red tint easily once she approaches and while it’s been diluted and some of it has already stained the concrete beneath it, she can tell it’s fresh. She can’t help but wonder if she’s only just missed all the excitement. She glances further into the alley and sees exactly what she expects – the blood moves farther in, and she can tell from the strong metallic scent that there’s far more of it in the shadows. Wednesday goes to dig into her pocket, finding the pocket flashlight she keeps on her and flicking it on. There’s barely any hesitation, only the vague thought about what she may need to prepare for should the attacker still be there, but she has a gut feeling that the only person (or persons) she’ll find hidden in the dark won’t be a threat any longer. Wednesday steps over the large puddle, careful not to step in any of the other stains as she walks farther into the alley. She notes a large smear across the side of a dumpster, tilting her head as she leans in further. There’s something that looks like short hair or fur stuck in it. A dog, maybe, though something about it makes her doubt that’s the case. She digs into her bag, pulling out a zip lock and a pair of tweezers – maybe not the perfect thing to go around gathering evidence with, but it will do. She pulls off a small bit of the fur and puts it into the bag, sealing it and then wiping the tweezers clean with a black handkerchief.
As she shifts her focus away from the dumpster, Wednesday lifts her flashlight slightly higher to get a better look at what’s to come. The scene is more gruesome than even she expected and the idea that the fur belonged to a dog seems completely improbable now. The body of whoever once held all this blood within it is in pieces, with splashes of blood, fat, and sinew sticking to parts of the walls of the alley as well, proving the extreme dismemberment occurred right here rather than in another area. It almost looks like whoever attacked them latched on to parts of the body and shook it violently to create the patterns she’s seeing now. There’s an arm severed at the elbow lying near the dumpster, the top half and shoulder not too far from it. The other arm is still attached to part of the torso, leaning against the brick wall in thicker puddle of blood. The legs are still attached to the waist, but it’s far enough from the pieces of torso that the victim’s innards scattered across the ground. The head is… missing, maybe, or potentially it rolled somewhere that she can’t see from here. Wednesday continues to step a little closer but stops when she realizes she can’t investigate further without leaving obvious footprints in the carnage. Even if she’s the one who calls the police, which she likely will be, she can explain a small amount of her own prints or DNA being present at the scene, but she’s learned investigators are quick to question why anyone would be perfectly fine just walking straight into remains of a brutal slaughter.
She sighs, deciding to kneel beside the arm that’s closest to her instead. She tilts her head as she looks it over, noting the subtle tan to the skin even when it’s grayed from blood loss and the death of the tissue, and though the hands are torn to shreds (it almost looks like teeth marks from here), she can tell the fingers were once long and thin. She tilts her head to get a better look at the skin closer to the pavement and catches a glimpse of half of a tattoo on the forearm. It’s roughly four inches in diameter, she’d guess, and seems to be an image of some kind of constellation – Ursa Major, she’d guess, given the faint image of a bear that seems to be overlain on the stars. Wednesday pause, before she goes to dig into her pocket again, carefully pulling out her cellphone so she can use it to start taking pictures. There’s a small tug in her chest as she feels the weight of it in her palm, one that’s been there for months each time she touches the irritating piece of technology that has become so necessary to her life.
Normally a phone wouldn’t cause any sort of emotional reaction in even the average person, much less in someone like Wednesday Addams. It’s not the phone so much as the memories it comes with; this was the last gift that Enid had given her before they’d parted ways from school, coupled with a promise to keep in touch so that they wouldn’t lose the relationship both girls—women—had come to truly cherish. It had worked at first, Enid’s obsession with narrating her ever thought and feeling to Wednesday in real time rarely ceasing, just as she had expected from her bubbly blonde friend. It had been an annoyance, of course, but just like with her physical presence, it hadn’t been one that Wednesday had ever actually tried to put a stop to. Her responses were sometimes lackluster and Enid had consistently criticized her for being such a “shitty texter”, but it never stopped her from continuing to reach out.
Until she didn’t.
The texts became less frequent at first, Enid mentioning during one late night phone call that she was busy trying to get to know her new pack. It hadn’t concerned Wednesday at first. Enid hadn’t changed much since school, her relationships rarely lasting, and her place in the packs she joined outside of Nevermore disappearing with every breakup. She’d move on to a new boy, a new pack, and each time, she’d dip slightly in her communication. This most recent change has been different somehow, though. Enid had begun to date some alpha named Dean, the leader of a small but well-connected pack in Los Angeles. She insisted he was different than the others, as usual, and she had gone on about his dreamy dark eyes and thick hair, the way that she always did, and Wednesday hadn’t thought much of it. Dean, Enid said, had been in Nevermore too, but they’d run in different circles at the time, so she hadn’t thought of getting closer to him. Wednesday hadn’t been able to recall him, but it became clear rather quickly that he recalled her, and he hadn’t been a fan. He would consistently cut their conversations short, calling Enid off for one thing or another. Her texts started to come in less and less, usually sent in quick chunks of time, clearly rushed, like she was trying to hide that she was texting her at all. Eventually, the texts stopped coming all together.
It had been roughly a year since they’d last talked. Wednesday had sent all of one text to her in an attempt to reach out and a late-night phone call that had gone unanswered. When she hadn’t received anything back, she assumed that Enid had finally found her mate, her place in her pack, and as Dean seemed to dislike her so strongly, it also meant she’d found a place in life without Wednesday. The phone was a constant reminder of the missing presence in her life, a physical manifestation of the void that was left behind, and she almost wanted to destroy it purely on principle – had considered doing just that several times. She never managed, though, and at times like these, she was at least slightly glad that she hadn’t.
Wednesday took a quick picture of the tattoo, the best she could get from this angle, before standing up and proceeding to snap photos of the scene from several more angles. She made sure to get the blood splatters on the objects around her as well and used the measuring feature built into the phone to make sure she recorded the dimensions of the alley for proper analysis later. She pocketed her phone after, taking a deep breath, and then bent down to the arm once more. Wednesday closed her eyes before reaching out to place the very top of her finger against the skin of the appendage, the familiar shock to her system as the vision overtook her a welcome distraction from the lingering pain of memory lane. The images were quick and disjointed; glowing yellow eyes, snarling teeth, and a deep feeling of bloodlust that overtook every one of her senses. It switched to the image of a woman no more than a year older than Wednesday, her skin a much warmer tan than the corpse that now littered the alley, brown eyes wide with terror as she ran down the sidewalk that Wednesday had first seen the blood spilled on. There was a flash of a silver knife, the breaking of skin that seemed to sizzle like it had burned, and the woman screaming in shocked and deep pain. The rest went as expected – blood spilling and flying, flesh tearing, the iron taste filling Wednesday’s mouth as the wolf feasted on parts of his victim.
The vision ended and Wednesday’s eyes shot open. She breathed in deeply to try and counter the somewhat dizzying, disoriented feeling that always came with her powers, before she dared to try and pull herself up on her feet. Wednesday decided to grab a few more samples of tissue from the alley, placing them in her imperfect containers, and making a mental note to apologize when she presented them to her cousin who worked for a local criminal forensics lab in the city. Maybe she could finally talk him into giving her a proper set of containers for the future. There was a small hum of excitement in her veins as she started to head out of the alley. A werewolf attack wasn’t unheard of in New York, but it wasn’t usually quite as graphic, nor as personal. Wednesday didn’t trust that the local normie police would be well equipped to track down an Outcast.
Clearly her days of independent murder investigation weren’t completely behind her.