The Colorado Vulture

Helicopter blades sliced through the air with urgency; spotlights scanned fields in the dark and dreadful night, looking for one thing and one thing alone. A soft, gentle breeze pricked his skin with goosebumps, but they felt like thousands of tiny needles as he stood in the dead of the night. Dozens of cops swarmed nearby with flashlights, hunting on foot.

“Elliot!” A woman’s voice cut through the thick, heavy silence only a night like this could bring. Stepping forth to the source of the sound, the man held his stomach in his guts as he laid eyes upon it.

“...Jesus Christ.”

A severed head - chopped clean. No eyes, no ears, no tongue.

“The Vulture got another, huh?”

Ava’s flashlight pointed steadily at the trophy, the symbol, the message, her fingers gripping the handle of her flashlight as if it were her lifeline.

“How old you think it is?”

“Hard to tell. I’d say maybe a few months?”

The flesh was deteriorated, flies swarming what remained of him.

“Where’s the rest of him?” He inquired, kneeling down beside his colleague to examine the head more closely. He’d never seen cuts so clean. Skin peeled off of the corpse, its mouth hanging open to show the muscle missing betwixt his teeth. Two orifices were the only hint the man had even had eyes to begin with.

...Seemed Vultures had plucked him clean. He was half flesh, half bone - an ugly thing to be. Flies were picking clean the rest of what hadn’t been taken by the local wildlife.

“Who knows? They never leave the body.” She muttered grimly. Indeed, it made it much more difficult. At least they left the teeth to recognize the victims by. If it weren’t for dental records, they’d have no way of ascertaining who the Vulture had struck down.

“...What do you think it means?” Ava asked, turning with the leveled detachment you had to have in this sort of career to survive.

“...Who knows?”

The Colorado Vulture.

It started as hushed whispers in coffee shops, loose nicknames on Reddit threads and true crime forums...and then, one day, she saw it.

Sam had been laying in a hospital bed, victim to none other than the bastard of a brother Briar had been cursed with...the brother she’d killed. Then, in all its glory, she beheld it; Looking at the television screen, doing her best to ignore the red dot in the lower righthand corner, a moniker appeared.

The Colorado Vulture.

Briar couldn’t help herself; she beamed ear to ear, shitty hospital coffee in hand.

Eight bodies recovered, Eight men paying for their sins post Mortem. The world would see them as they were - foul, rotten beasts, the kinds that preyed on young girls and defenseless women. The sort that deserved to rot.

Excitedly, she pointed to the television.

“...You’re a sensation, buddy.”

Months passed; months of caution, of looking over her shoulder, of driving laps around blocks to be sure she wasn’t being tailed. Today, though - today, Briar wasn’t bothered.

...She wasn’t the one driving.

The humming of Sam’s Lexus eased Briar’s nerves as they passed by a closed cafe off the freeway in Boulder, Colorado. What used to be their rendezvous, their safe haven, a nest - had become nothing more than another shutdown shop in a shithole state. Glancing over to her muse, her partner in crime, her better half who wouldn’t yet admit it - she raised a brow when she noticed the speedometer.

“...In my criminology course in high-school, my professor told me that all the big guys got caught for small mistakes, like a missing headlight or license plate.” Sam spoke, her eyes glued to the road.

“And speeding is what’s going to do us in?” She teased.

“...You can never be too careful.”

Forty minutes later, Sam pulled into her parking spot, routine. Briar let out a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding at the sight of her new apartment. New to her, anyways.

They’d spent the weekend hunting down Henry Ferris; a lesser criminal, perhaps, but a criminal no less. What was of particular interest to the Colorado Vulture was that he was a man; a man who abused women.

It didn’t matter that they’d made local or state news, it didn’t matter their moniker was mumbled in horrified or fascinated whispers, it didn’t even matter they'd soon graduated to national news. For every man they sliced down, three more arose. Men who took, used, abused, conned, tricked, manipulated, coerced - they were growing by the day.

It was a fool’s errand, and yet...who else was going to do it? Who else would smite the Leo Barlows of the world? Who else would make sure men like Alice Brookes’ uncle, like Jack Eisman, like Brayden Branch paid for what they took? No, these men didn’t just take. They devoured, they conquered, they erased women like Alice Brookes, women like Rose Barlow. Every shitty experience added a tally mark to their reason to distrust the lot and decreased their lifespan. And yet?

They’d be met with the same response, time and time again.

“Not all men!”

“He didn’t mean it, he was just a boy.”

“What about his future?”

“Do you have proof?”

Their histories, their stories were left to be erased to give the bastards the benefit of the doubt, to pretend they were the problem and not those awful, devious, horrid lot of pigs that took and took and took and took and took until -

“Briar.”

Sam’s voice called out, pulling Briar from wherever she’d just been. She didn’t even know where she’d went, but now? It didn’t matter. Smiling up at the redhead, she responded simply.

“Sam.” She beamed.

“...We’re home.”

“What, not going to get my car door for me?”

The woman rolled her beautiful green eyes.

“I drove for the entire weekend. Get your own door.” Her tone was harsh, but Briar knew Sam. She didn’t mean it. Not with that snicker, not with the way a smirk tugged at the left corner of her lips.

“Chivalrous.” She remarked snidely. Sam gave no reaction.

Stepping out of the car, she took in a breath of the fresh air. It was the same as it had always been, and yet it felt...cleaner, somehow, knowing men like Henry Ferris would no longer be sharing it with her.

“Feels good, doesn’t it?” Briar tossed her head back, rolling out her shoulders.

“Hm?” Sam asked, making her way towards the stairs.

“Cleaning up.” Screams echoed in her mind - the screams of filth, of rot, of a pig meeting is overdue end.

“...It does.” She agreed simply.

The two marched up the stairs in silence. Briar’s muse doffed her coat on the coat rack. The apartment itself was tidy and charming, hiding their capacity for depraved violence well. To think America’s newest serial killer consisted of two women in their late twenties living as roommates....well, it was laughable. So laughable, in fact, that even three years past the discovery of Leo Barlow’s mutilated corpse, they’d yet to be caught.

Three years. It had been three years and all the news stations could provide was slander and speculation on their identities. When the seven o’clock news began to play, details of a man who’d killed his stepdaughter in the middle of a custody case sent her thoughts to the mental hitlist she’d accrued.

Glancing over to her troubled roommate, Briar could only watch in awe and adoration as the deceptively insipid woman set out to make their nightly feast. As the news wrapped up, she couldn’t tell if the woman she stole peeks at was a human or justice in the flesh.