Vampire Rule N°30: If you can't beat them, wait till they die of old age.
… … … … … …
It was raining again in Gotham, a heavy, dirty rain that seemed to wash nothing clean.
John stood under the awning of a tenement rooftop, watching the street below. Another scuffle was breaking out on the sidewalk. Two men in cheap windbreakers, shining badges clipped to their belts, were trying to shake down an old corner store owner.
The owner, a frail man in his late seventies who knew every child in Brideshead by name, had been beaten last week for refusing protection.
Tonight, he just shook his head as one of the cops pushed him against his own window and started yelling, spit flying everywhere.
John didn't blink. He didn't need to. He could see it all.
These weren't just low-level crooks. They were wearing uniforms now. Or pieces of them. Tinted windows and badge numbers turned backward. Off-duty cops, maybe. Or on-duty ones paid to be off the books for a few hours. Either way, they walked with the arrogance of men who thought the badge made them untouchable.
It wasn't the first crew like them.
In the last forty-eight hours, nearly every block in Brideshead had seen activity. Not from the usual addicts or petty thieves, nor the gangsters he sent packing every other night, those came and went, always had.
But from something coordinated.
Planned.
Professional enough to scare the locals and rough up anyone who asked questions.
And smarter than the street gangs, too.
No pattern. No obvious signature. Every crew different, every tactic tweaked. Someone was sending in feelers, seeing how deep they could dig before something bit back.
John didn't know who.
But he knew why.
Someone wanted Brideshead back the way it was, all dope and whores and good business.
They wanted the corners, the clientele, the muscle memory of crime that had once lived in the bones of this neighborhood. Someone was investing heavily to test the strength of the strange peace he'd built.
And they were counting on one simple truth.
Heroes didn't touch cops.
Even crooked ones.
They investigated and pushed and made the operation fall apart, they exposed the corruption as if anyone gave a darn, as if those lards getting paid off haven't already built a nest egg, as if they would get anything worse than a suspension or forced retirement—pension very much included, of course.
John smiled without warmth.
'I'm not a hero.' He thought, his mind already coming up with new ways to make the human experience as miserable as possible.
He could go and take a walk, but he was feeling fancy.
By the next night, the message had changed.
The cops weren't just ignoring the situation anymore. They were part of it. Patrols were redirected. Checkpoints moved. Search warrants mysteriously arrived where they weren't needed, while real crimes in Brideshead were overlooked.
It wasn't a takeover, it was a bureaucratic slow-burn. Legalized sabotage.
He didn't feel like bloodying up uniforms just yet, that would mean accelerating his plans a bit more than he'd like.
It also looked like his opponent was trying to make him do it, with how brazen the corruption was getting, even by Gotham standards.
So he started listening instead.
Reginald tracked most of the activity through CCTV patches the city forgot it had. The Harker Fund's "community security initiative" had layered the streets in quiet tech.
Cameras in lampposts, microphones in public trash bins, backdoors in police radios if you knew the right frequency.
But hardware didn't give motive. It didn't give fear.
John needed that to work.
So he started watching up close. Slipping between shadows. Walking beside officers who never knew he was there. Whispering into minds stretched thin by paranoia, alcohol, and guilt.
Dominate wasn't a simple sledgehammer. It was a scalpel. A whisper where shouting would fail. It worked best on those already half-controlled by something worse.
He met one of them, a younger cop named Finnegan, behind a strip mall two blocks south of the Children's Clinic.
Finnegan had blood on his shoes and a receipt in his pocket from a place John knew didn't exist. The man blinked twice too slowly when asked who his supervisor was.
John didn't ask again.
He didn't have to.
Finnegan spoke for fifteen minutes straight, pouring out schedules, rendezvous points, known drop locations, and, most useful, names.
The ones giving orders. The ones who weren't cops but still acted like they owned them. Finnegan didn't even know he'd been talking.
When John released him, the man vomited, collapsed, and cried.
Nothing further mental manipulations couldn't fix, making him forget the last couple minutes was child's play for a vampire who revelled in the use of his power, and has a steady supply of high quality blood.
That was the fourth one that week.
But it wasn't enough to gather intel.
It was time to apply pressure.
So the fifth cop was different.
His name was Myers. Greasy, bloated, breath like rotten onions. He smiled too often, always with his tongue pressed to his teeth. Reginald flagged him as a consistent presence around missing persons cases that never made it past a desk drawer.
A legendary sleazebag, in the ghoul's own words, even for a copper.
John followed him for three days. Watched where he lingered. Who he threatened. What he liked.
He didn't need much more.
That night, he found one of the men on Finnegan's list— Small-time 'collaborator' named Lorenzo Carni. A slick bastard with a love for firearms and a temper like gasoline.
John took Lorenzo's mind apart like peeling an onion.
He didn't even need to try. Just pressed a single gloved hand against his chest and leaned in, showering him in just the right amount of Presence before going for the big prize.
"That cop you don't like. The one with the little girls. He's a loose end. He knows your face. Kill Myers." He said, the power behind each word increasing exponentially as dominate impressed them upon an already unstable mind.
Lieutenant Myers being despised by everyone and their moms, including his own, probably helped.
A few seconds after.
Lorenzo's eyes turned blank, and he found himself wondering why he spaced out in a dark alley, that was a sure way to end up mugged by a fool, or become the fool strapped to some psycho's dining table.
But he found himself having the urge to do some community service.
The next morning, Myers was found in an alley three blocks outside Brideshead, stabbed sixteen times with his own boot knife.
There was no press release. No memorial. Just quiet rage inside the department.
Cops don't give a damn when a junkie dies. But a dead cop?
Even a bad one?
That changed the weather.
For a brief moment, Gotham law enforcement started doing its job.
Crooked cops who didn't want to end up like Myers stopped moonlighting in Brideshead. Patrols went back to regular. Internal Affairs "suggested" officers limit contact with certain underworld figures, some of whom were big earners.
John watched the ripples spread, not fully aware of who he screwed over, but enjoying it like a true hater.
He still didn't know who the man behind the curtain was. No name. No scent. Just the pressure.
Whoever it was, they knew the game well. They weren't new.
They were methodical, embedded, smart enough to use both systems, legal and criminal, as levers.
But now they were bleeding money.
Their street soldiers were vanishing.
Their favors weren't being returned.
And John Harker was still standing in the middle of it all, untouched.
There would be retaliation. He was sure of it.
But he'd made his point.
He didn't need to know who yet.
He only needed the bastard to start panicking.
And soon enough, he would find them.