Liv popped a stick of nicotine gum into her mouth and chewed it like a rookie realizing too late he'd forgotten to chamber his sidearm. The call had come in somewhere between too late and too damn early—another Bloodletter incident.

Two down.

One was a city cop

The other, a working girl.

Both alive—and only because of a vigilante.

The Vulpes.

The name clung to Liv’s thoughts like smoke. Apparently, she’d fended off the bastard and performed emergency triage before EMTs arrived.

A small mercy.

Liv took a corner too hard for someone driving a government-issued Crown Vic with RCMP plates. Tires screeched, but she didn’t care. Not tonight.

Constable McDonald was in rough shape—lost a lot of blood from what sounded like a damn near surgical strike. Internal damage, too. He might pull through, but the odds weren’t good. If the stories were true, the Vulpes was the only reason he even had a chance.

The girl—Sheila Something—had gotten off lighter. Shoulder wound. Through and through. Painful, but survivable. She’d be hurting for weeks, maybe months. But she’d live.

Without the Vulpes?

They’d be zipping up two body bags.

Of course, the Fox hadn’t stuck around.

None of them ever did.

She’d ghosted the moment the sirens got close. That was the part that made Liv grind her molars—heroes who played God but refused to sign the paperwork afterward.

Still, Liv had a job to do. And that started with collecting every scrap of evidence the alley hadn’t swallowed.

She reached into the glovebox, rummaging with one hand and muttering a string of French curses under her breath.

No more gum.

Perfect.

She blew a breath out through her nose, steadying herself as she pulled into the alley. It was cordoned off with tape. Blue and red lights bounced off brick and concrete. Local PD cruisers were here. So were two RCMP units.

She stepped out of her unmarked navy-blue Crown Vic, the door creaking shut behind her. One of the city cops opened his mouth to greet her—but froze when he caught the expression on her face.

Good.

She moved past him like a woman on a mission, flashing her badge with a flick of her wrist before barking:

“Who’s handling forensics, and what have they got for me? Two witnesses are barely clinging on, and the third vanished the second the cavalry showed up.”

Another officer—an older man in a worn uniform, his eyes sunk deep with too many years and too many crime scenes—answered her with a voice like gravel and spent patience.

"McGill's your man. Been bagging, tagging, and assessing since he got here. You want answers, Detective? Talk to him."

His tone wasn't disrespectful—just tired. The kind of tired that soaked into bone.

Liv gave him a curt nod and scanned the scene. Blue floodlamps lit the alley in sterile cold light, shadows falling long and harsh across dumpsters and cracked pavement. She spotted McGill crouched near the chalk outlines and evidence markers, his gloved hands working steadily over a bloodstained smear on the concrete.

Liv said nothing at first.

She’d worked forensics. She knew how it was—being deep in the zone, focused on the angle of a blood spatter or the curl of a scuff mark, only to have someone stomp in and break your rhythm with a dozen questions and no patience. No one appreciated that. Not when the scene was this hot.

A masked vigilante had been involved.

And the Bloodletter had gone after a cop.

With lethal intent.

That changed everything.

Her entire profile on him had to be reevaluated. He wasn’t just a predator picking off the vulnerable anymore—he’d escalated. And targeting law enforcement carried weight. Gravitas. It rattled the rank and file. It made good officers edgy.

It made bad ones jumpy. 

And that kind of tension got people killed.

She exhaled slowly through her nose, trying not to think about the press conference that was no doubt already being written. She could see it in her head, crystal clear—the media firestorm already catching wind.

Some would throw the cops under the bus.

Some would spin Bloodletter as some kind of dark avenger.

Others would paint the Vulpes as a menace—yet another masked lunatic operating outside the law.

It was going to be a shit show.
A dozen takes. None of them useful.

None of them helping her case.

She shut her eyes briefly, jaw flexing.

Then McGill’s voice cut through the fog of her thoughts.

“Detective. You’re here sooner than I expected.”

Liv let out a slow breath, her eyes scanning the alley like it might suddenly shift underfoot.

“Got here soon as I got the call. Sleep’s overrated anyway. Care to give me what you know about what went down here?”

McGill grunted, not quite a laugh but not quite a sigh either.

“What I know?” He motioned around them with a gloved hand. “We’ve got arterial spray on the west wall, fragments of a ballistic plate over there by the dumpster, and three types of blood already confirmed. Yours truly’s been busy.”

He crouched again, tapping an evidence marker beside a small, oddly shaped hole punched clean through the alley concrete.

“From what I can piece together? This wasn’t a brawl. It was a knife fight on one side, and surgical strikes on the other. Bloodletter tried to finish the cop—looked like a straight kill shot. Would’ve landed, too, if someone hadn’t ruined his aim. Probably Vulpes.”

He stood, brushing his palms together.

“Then we’ve got a shot fired—revolver. The direction of travel says it hit the civilian woman. Likely intentional, not a miss. From there, all hell broke loose. Bloodletter escaped using a smoke grenade. Vulpes vanished into the smoke after tending the wounded. Left a piton in the perp’s shoulder for her trouble.”

McGill looked up at Liv, expression grave beneath his face shield.

“He’s not just escalating, Detective Benoit. He’s getting bolder. And if she hadn’t been here tonight... we’d be looking at two counts of murder,”

McGill rolled his neck, the motion stiff and slow, and let out a tired sound—half sigh, half groan.

“That’s what I’ve got. You’re welcome to check my work, of course—though I’m half-tempted to ask for a professional courtesy instead.”

He straightened, eyes flicking toward her with just enough weight to signal the question wasn’t idle.

“What does one of the RCMP’s best profilers think… about our perp? And about Toronto’s resident vulpine vigilante?”

He didn’t say it sarcastically.

Didn’t have to.

They both knew this was bigger than knives and masks now.

Liv folded her arms, gaze steady as she took in the crime scene again before answering.

“Nothing on the books yet,” she said calmly. “But the fact he went after an armed peace officer? That shifts things.”

Her tone was even, but McGill could hear the weight behind it.

“Up until now, I pegged him as a textbook serial killer—methodical, opportunistic, focused on soft targets. Most of them don’t like noise. Don’t like struggle. They avoid even the idea of a fair fight, let alone tangling with a uniformed officer.”

She nodded toward the bloodstained patch near the cruiser outline.

“But this? Going for a cop? That’s either ego, escalation… or both. Could be he’s slipping. Could be he’s evolving. Either way, it’s a problem.”

She glanced over her shoulder, toward the direction the vigilante had vanished.

“And the Fox showing up? That complicates the hell out of it.”

McGill nodded slowly, his eyes scanning the bloodstained pavement one more time before he spoke again—quieter this time, like he didn’t want the others to hear.

“She saved two lives.”

A pause.

“And one of ’em was a cop. A good cop.”

He looked at Liv, not challenging her, just stating a fact heavy with implication.

“Vigilante or not… that means something. Especially to the guys on the force who are still clean.”

The silence that followed wasn’t uncomfortable, but it wasn’t easy either. Just honest.

Liv reached into her jacket pocket, fingers automatically searching for the familiar crinkle of nicotine gum—or, failing that, a pack of cigarettes she didn’t carry anymore.
Nothing.

She sighed, but only on the inside.

Instead, she crouched beside a faint, half-smudged boot print—barely more than a pressure distortion in the dust. Nondescript. Common sole pattern. But it had weight behind it. And angle.

She studied it for a long second before speaking, eyes still on the print.

“You fishing for my take on the Vulpes, McGill?”

Her tone wasn’t accusatory. Just blunt.

Like someone who’d seen the consequences of masks—good and bad—and wasn’t sure yet where this one landed.

McGill paused, like he was weighing how honest he wanted to be.

“To be frank, Detective… yeah. I am.”

He glanced down the alley, then back at her.

“Over the past few months, she’s helped us put away some of Toronto’s worst. Saved lives. Rooted out more dirty cops than Internal Affairs has in the last five years. She’s not subtle, but she’s effective. And the guys still wearing the badge for the right reasons? They notice.”

Liv slowly turned her head toward him, her expression unreadable for a beat.

Then she spoke.

“My read on her?”

A breath.

“She’s good people. Just doesn’t trust the system. Not sure why. Could be she was part of it once. Or maybe she’s seen too many of the cracks—seen the strings getting pulled, the deals cut behind closed doors, the Syndicates shaking hands with people who’re supposed to stand for justice.”

She shrugged slightly.

“But that’s just a guess.”

She stood, brushing the dirt from her hands, eyes scanning the alley again—not looking for clues now, but considering something larger.

“Whoever she is… she’s not doing this for fame. She doesn’t monologue. Doesn’t pose for the cameras. Doesn’t take credit. That tells me something.”

Liv’s gaze flicked to where the piton had struck blood from the Bloodletter. A brutal, precise move. Not reckless. Measured.

“She fights like someone trained. Knows pain. Knows restraint. Doesn’t kill—but she’ll come damn close if it means saving a life. That line she walks? It’s razor thin. But she walks it.”

She looked back at McGill.

“I don’t trust her. But I respect her. Which is almost worse.”

***

A very short time before Detective Benoit arrived...

The Vulpes had wanted to give chase.

Every instinct screamed for it. She could still hear the fading echo of Bloodletter’s boots vanishing into the night, that smoke grenade a mocking curtain call.

But two lives were bleeding out on the concrete.

She knelt beside the officer first.

Any vigilante with half a brain carried emergency medical supplies. Vulpes had more than that—she had prep, experience, and a grim familiarity with field trauma.

From her belt, she pulled a slim, pressurized canister. It hissed as she activated it, the mist forming a thin, quick-setting layer over the wound. A disinfecting medical adhesive—essentially a bandage in a can. The formulation was an old prototype, based on designs her grandfather had experimented with back in the sixties. Field-ready, combat-proven. She'd updated it herself.

McDonald groaned but didn’t move much. That was good. His eyes fluttered, which meant he was still responsive. Still fighting.

“Stay with me, officer,” she murmured, her voice low but firm.

She checked for the through-line of the wound, monitored his pulse—too fast, shallow. Not good, but not death yet.

Not if she could help it.

The shoulder wound wasn’t the priority.

But it still had to be dealt with.

That was always the hard part in any medical emergency—triage. Knowing who could wait, and who couldn’t.

Her grandfather had drilled that into her. Back when she was still a girl learning how to throw a punch and stop a bleed in the same breath. He’d told her stories from his days working for the Crown during the Second World War—missions where there were more wounded than medics, where the right choice wasn’t always the kind one.

“You do what you can, for who you can,” he’d told her. “And you live with the rest.”

She moved quickly to the girl—the shoulder wound was bad, but survivable. Coraline slapped an adhesive strip across the entry point to stem the bleeding, then looped the girl’s good arm across her chest in a makeshift sling. Crude, but it would hold.

Then she turned back to the officer.

He was still bleeding, still ghost-pale, but breathing.

McDonald was the one she had to keep alive.

She crouched lower, brushing a few blood-slicked strands of hair away from the edge of his name tag. Her voice was steady, practiced.

“McDonald? You need to stay with me until the EMTs get here, alright?”

His eyes fluttered open, bloodshot and rimmed with pain. But they found her lenses.

And somehow—he smiled.

“Yeah… yeah, I know. If I die, my wife’ll never let me hear the end of it.”

The Vulpes slowly nodded, watching his breathing, gauging color, responsiveness—anything to keep her own rising worry in check.

Then McDonald gave a thin, cracked chuckle that turned into a cough.

“Guys on the force are never gonna believe it… got jumped by a psycho and saved by a myth.”

The cough rattled in his chest, wet and shallow. He was struggling—but struggling meant he was still fighting. That was good. She needed him fighting.

Don’t go quiet on me now, she thought. Not after all this.

“Wife, huh?” she said, voice calm, even, like they were just making small talk and not kneeling in a blood-slick alley. “You got kids?”

As she spoke, her eyes moved—checking his pulse again, watching for signs of shock. The stiletto had missed the kill shot, but that didn’t mean he was out of danger. A few centimeters could still mean torn organs, internal bleeding. She couldn’t know for sure.

But she could keep him focused.

“Yeah,” he rasped, swallowing hard. “Two. Five and three. Both girls.”

His voice cracked on the word girls, and something about the way he said it told her everything she needed to know. Not just that he loved them—but that he needed to get back to them.

Vulpes nodded, then shifted her attention to the girl.

She’d passed out from the pain, body slumped awkwardly beside the officer. Coraline checked her vitals quickly—pulse steady, breathing stable.

She was in better shape than she looked.

Bloodletter hadn’t gone for a kill shot.

He could have. She was certain of it.

If he’d killed her—or the cop—Vulpes would’ve been forced to choose between chasing him or saving them. But he hadn’t. He’d wounded them just enough to make her stop.

To delay her.

And he knew she would.

The Bastard had planned it.

This wasn’t a rampage. It was choreography.

He’d wanted her to see them bleeding. He wanted to show her what it cost to care.

That calculation chilled her more than the blood ever could.

She turned her attention back to Constable McDonald, gently placing a gloved hand on his shoulder—just enough pressure to remind him she was still there. That he wasn’t alone.

“What are your girls’ names?” she asked, her voice low but steady.

His eyes fluttered again. She could see the weight pulling at him, the dark edge of unconsciousness trying to drag him under. But he fought it—gritting his teeth, blinking hard, anchoring himself to the sound of her voice.

“Kate,” he murmured. “Kate’s the oldest. Lizzy… she’s the little one.”

He smiled faintly—pained but proud.

“Spitting image of her mom. Both of ’em.”

That was good. He was still lucid. Still connected.

And he knew, just like she did, that if he let go now… he might not wake up again.

Time crawled.

Every second stretched thin, heavy with tension as she did everything she could to give the wounded a fighting chance. Pressure here. Stabilization there. Quiet words to keep them tethered to consciousness.

But eventually, the rising wail of sirens cut through the alley—sharp and shrill, growing louder.

Flashing lights followed, red and blue strobing against wet brick and pooling blood. They painted the alley in alarm.

The Vulpes hesitated only a moment.

Then she rose, slowly, carefully. Not because she was tired—but because letting go was always the hardest part.

She didn’t say anything. Didn’t need to.

The paramedics would take over now. The officers would secure the scene. The system—flawed as it was—would move into action.

And her part in it?

Was over.

At least for tonight.

Without a sound, she stepped back, cloak fluttering softly behind her like the whisper of a passing shadow. Her boots barely made a sound against the concrete as she melted into the darkness between buildings.

A fox vanishing into the thornbush, slipping away before the hounds could draw close.

Because that was the job.

Be seen only when needed. Then disappear.