October Challenge

[belak-krin.livejournal.com]

It occured to me that my previous post was more of a 'what if?' than Elseworlds, so I decided to try and write something that showcased other characters in a slightly different style. A bit longer than my other submissions.




I knew it was going to be trouble. Every time that damned number shows up on my phone I know there’s a shitstorm brewing over my head. The instructions were painted up in the usual fancy-pants words but their meaning was clear; find those responsible or you’re our scapegoat.

They’d sent the barman as a messenger. I never really liked him, he had one of those Daeva shit eating grins that says ‘whatever happens, it won’t be sticking to me’. He walked in and threw an envelope down on the desk.

“Got a fresh one for you, Dick, kind of a messy job.”

Slipping open the envelope a pile of photos slid onto my desk. A young girl lay on a dirty concrete floor, her stomach and chest split open like a freshly picked carcass while blood splatter had been shaped into occult symbols around the room. The horror in the girl’s eyes wasn’t lessened by their rendering in paper. Sourly, I realised I was probably the first one of these bastards to actually give a damn about her instead of the problems her murder could cause.

“She was drained dry,” the barman continued “Council wants to know who the culprit is so they can put on a big show. Lots of rumours that it’s the Brood back in town.”

I turned my eyes away from the photos, this was starting to sound worse by the minute.

“Why can’t the Giant do it?” I asked “Its his job to sort this kind of stuff out, I’ve seen more than enough after last time.”

“The Giant’s busy on another case. Besides, the Council want an impartial investigation. They want to keep their hands clean to avoid suspicion.”

“You mean they want to hang me out to dry if I don’t find anything.”

“If you‘d prefer I could go tell them you said no.”

I stared at him for a while to see if he was joking, but that damned grin of his said less than the best poker face.

“I’ll do it. What kind of assistance am I getting?”

The barman laughed “You’re on official Council business, what more do you want?”

After he’d gone I looked at the photos again. Each was a washed out, clinical rendering of the death of a young girl. They were professionally taken; coroner’s photos, which mean the whole damned place was going to be covered in human revulsion and fear and god knows what else. No wonder they were dumping this on a mere ghoul, all the true Shadows don’t want to be seen to be as blind as the rest of us.

I opened the desk drawer and pulled out the revolver, a filthy old service piece from the first world war. I checked the two remaining bullets and then threw the piece back in the drawer and picked up the lighter next to it. Whatever I was going to run into out there, it wouldn’t give a damn about bullets.

****************************

The crime scene was quiet. Frankly that’s about the most disturbing thing I encounter these days. Noise means people going about their night, it means humans and more importantly the living. Quiet is bad. Quiet means nothing is alive round here and there’s no-one to endanger their precious masquerade. Worst of all it could mean one of those Nosferatu bastards is hiding somewhere, ready to scare me half to death.

The police tape was still in place across the door, but there was no sign of cars waiting or officers watching to make sure the scene wasn’t tampered with. The girl wasn’t dead 24 hours and already they’d gone home to let any old Tom, Dick or Harry in to nose around her murder scene.

The front door was broken, a professional job by the look of it, probably the police gaining entry. Stepping inside, the smell of the place hit me straight away. I could be romantic and say it smelt of death and desperation, but frankly that just means it smelt like rotting meat in an open sewer. The first time I smelled something like that I nearly threw up. These days its just another damned day at the office.

Just as I suspected, the place had been trampled by the police. Fresh cigarette butts, coffee stains and boot prints surrounded the entrance. Those Mekhet bastards would have been chasing their own tails for months trying to ‘read’ this place the way I understand it. I guess that’s why they still need guys like me.

I’d love to say that the basement reminded me of some torture porn horror film, but it was all too familiar after all the years I’ve worked this job and the part of me that wanted to be sick had a real time fighting the part that needed another fix. Best to concentrate on the details, remember its old and dried. It’ll taste like crap. They’ll reward me if I do a good job, maybe even enough to keep me fresh for a couple more months.

I walked around for a while taking my own photos of what was left. This place wasn’t going to give me any answers on its own, it just raised questions. The police here had tainted the scene with more than their usual level of incompetence and they had left far too quickly, which meant someone was pulling their strings. That meant going to see the fixer. There was also the question of whether this occult hoodoo was the genuine deal, but I wasn’t ready to go asking those kind of questions unless I had to.

****************************

Twenty minutes later and I had myself a meeting. The fixer was one of those men that dressed like a gangster but acted like your best friend. I used to like him, even though I knew he was a criminal, he seemed like one of the good guys, someone you could deal with. He had this smile that made you feel like even though he was about to screw you over, you’d still feel like you got a bargain.

He still had that smile, but now all it reminds me of is a shark circling around its prey. Biters get that way sometimes, they forget who they are and get hard and vicious, real unpleasant to be around. It didn’t help that he had his guys standing behind him like a brick wall and a chain smoking attack dog.

The fixer leaned back in his chair and lit a cigar. It was a negotiation thing of course, something for him to blow in my face at the opportune moment maybe. Probably worked a lot better on people who didn’t know he was half pissing himself with fear every time he sparked up.

“So how can I help you, mister Detective?”

The smile, the nonchalant attitude, and the inflection in his words were all there to make me feel like I was in a weaker position. The routine was the well practised work of a man used to being questioned; the criminal who knows there is no evidence to convict him.

“Well Mr Kovacs, I’m investigating the murder of a girl.”

“Call me Danny, how many times have we been through this? You only need to call me Mr Kovacs if I’m in trouble right?” He pulled a lungful of the cigar smoke and blew it out into the air.

“Yeah I know the girl you’re investigating, real fuckin’ tragedy, potential masquerade breach right? I dealt with that crap, Police will be fingering some paranoid schizophrenic who hasn’t been taking his meds. They’ll find in him in his house in a few hours with a fridge full of bottled blood.”

I just sat there, watching him force smoke in and out of his dead chest with my mouth open. It wasn’t supposed to be this easy.

“So you admit you had the police mess up the crime scene?”

“Of course, ain’t no good reason to let them go finding evidence contrary to our scapegoat’s involvement right? The way I figure it, I just did the council a big favour… they’re racking up quite a debt as it happens.”

It was all too rehearsed. Vamps are great are lying to each other, but those dead faces of theirs just don’t twitch right. They try too hard to look natural and the whole thing ends up a farce. They’re always lying, so that was no surprise but I needed information, I needed to know why he was lying. Sometimes when you need information you have to do something stupid, and my next fix was on the line and that tends to make me play a little reckless.

“So you aren’t concerned that you appear to be covering up evidence that might lead to the arrest of a member of Belial’s Brood?”

There was a moment of struggle in the fixer’s face and then every last trace of understanding left his eyes as he leapt across the table at me, snarling like an animal. Trying to struggle against him was a waste of time and I barely managed to get my hands up to keep his teeth out of my throat, but his ghouls managed to drag him off of me before he ripped my throat out.

If I wanted a reaction, I’d certainly got one, but damned if I knew what it meant.

****************************

The chain smoking Mr Pike next to me after his brick-wall friend had thrown me out of their van onto the hard concrete of a car park. He carried on his conversation to me while rolling yet another prison-thin cigarette.

“Listen Dick, I know we all have an understanding, ghoul to ghoul yeah? We all got that monkey on our back and that’s why I didn’t just have Dave break your neck and throw you in a ditch right now, but what the hell were you thinking taunting him like that? Haven’t you seen what one of their moods can do to a person?”

His lighter clicked in the night air and a cloud of smoke slowly disappeared in the moonlight.

Wincing, I sat up and spat blood onto the floor. Both of us stared at it for a moment, taking in its rich colour and the faint, metallic smell. I looked up at Pike and he just took another drag as though it didn’t bother him. I figured he had been fed recently; the bastard was always fed recently.

“I was just asking a question Pike, my balls are on the line for this one and your boss just cut the trail cold.”

Pike didn’t even turn to face me, just started getting back into the van.

“Sorry to hear that boy, but its dog eat dog out here. If you put Danny in a bad place like that again, I’ll finish you myself.”

The van drove off, leaving me to feel my wounds and the cold. A brief self-exam noted a couple of cracked ribs, a fresh black eye and a shoulder that had been dislocated but hurt like hell. I sat there for a moment, gripping my arm and thinking about the pain. Maybe I had enough of the undead bastard’s strength to fix myself, force that rich ruby blood round my body and be whole again, it would be a real rush, take my mind off how screwed I was right now. But I hadn’t been fed lately; I couldn’t risk running dry. It was better to just man up and take the pain.

At least I knew how and why the crime-scene had been dealt with, but I was still in the dark about the why and the who of the murder itself. That meant I had to go find myself an Occultist. I wanted to avoid the Crone after the last time they’d wanted payment for the information, which meant I had no choice but to head towards the edge of town.

Standing up, I reached into my coat for my hip flask, wincing as I shifted the position of my shoulder. It was only whiskey with iron pills in it, but it took the edge off. I called for a cab and the rain started to pour.

****************************

A storm was well on its way by the time the cab dropped me fifteen minutes walk from my destination. There was a rumour going round the daylight club that the Dragons had some ritual that made their place more intimidating. I figured they spent all their time converting the land to look more Transylvanian. Either way, I hated the place.

Looking up the hill you could just see the top of their house, an old mansion on the other side of a patch of forest. I would have bet my last dollar that right now there was some guy with a hump-back trying to harness the lightning for something.

They said they had dogs protecting the place, but they always looked like wolves to me. Ted used to say that they were actually some kind of experiment, that the Dragons would turn disobedient ghouls into animals to keep them in check. Ted’s full of bullshit, but I didn’t like the way the dogs watched me head for the front door, either hungry or longing for a life they once had.

A hit the large gothic knocker against the oak door and it opened to a beaming smile and a hearty handshake.

“Oh, hello there young Detective, we’ve been expecting you.”

I hate Wozza Pike. His god-damned friendly face and boyish charm were like the open arms of the English gentry, ready to buy a round for the whole bloody pub because they thought it would be a jolly good show. Anywhere else I would have welcomed his touch of humanity amongst the biters, but Wozza was a Dragon and everyone knew what they were.

At least Gabriel and Constance had the decency to dress like extras from a Victorian novel, all prim and proper. You’d never be surprised that they spent their time pouring over occult texts and summoning god knows what from beyond the grave. Wozza on the other hand was warm and friendly in a human sort of way, but I knew the moment I left here he’d be upstairs with the rest of them, dissecting some poor bastard to find out which part of the brain is the part that controls screaming.

So I find myself sat in a cold, wood panelled room listening to the ticking of a grandfather clock, watching the empty fire grate and drinking tea from a delicate china mug while Wozza draped a blanket around my shoulders. Constance sat opposite, with a pleasant, but distant smile on her face, watching me like I was a bug under a microscope.

“How can we help you Detective? We have plenty of medical skill between us,” She was holding a china cup and saucer too, although hers was empty.

I did my best to act civil, but everything in my body was screaming to get out. Nobody knew I was here and no one would come looking if I disappeared into some laboratory.

“No, thank you Ms Beckett. I am looking into a murder on the authority of the Council. There seems to have been some Occult purpose behind it and I was hoping that you might be able to assist.” I did my best to avoid wincing in pain and took the camera from my pocket.

I a surprising show of passions, she took the camera from me and began flicking through the photos as though they might fulfil some unknown hunger, flicking back and forth excitedly like a child with a new toy.

“The symbols presented here are almost certainly created by someone with a significant knowledge of the occult, or at least someone who has access to genuine texts. The cross-referencing of multiple fertility cult s with astrological and alchemical signs suggests a dedicated approach, although rendering it all in blood in this manner is somewhat. sloppy...”

She smiled at me in a way that made my blood freeze. I’d rather have gone another round with Kovacs than have to deal with what she said next.

“…but what more can you expect from the Crone?”

****************************

By the time I’d left their creepy mansion, they were already speculating on how the Crone’s use of masquerade endangering rituals could lead to the Ordo Dracul taking over the control of some temple site. To one of the biters it was probably some big secret, but none of them really give a damn about what the likes of us hear.

Personally I was too busy panicking about the whole affair. The Council wanted a nice tidy resolution to the problem, some low ranking member of the Carthians or Invictus having lost his mind so they could publically behead them and put all the questions to bed.

This news was the opposite of tidy. The Dragons would use it to push themselves as the ‘safe’ source of occult knowledge and secure themselves a position of safety within the domain. The Invictus would use Kovacs actions to try and discredit the Carthians and the Lance would push to have anyone not bowing down to their crazy undead Jesus investigated as potential members of a blood cult. The Circle would retreat to Norwich and their psycho prince would use the excuse to push for more Cambridge territory, butchering people as she went.

It would end in panic and violence and I was going to be the first against the wall for bringing the news to them and sparking it all off.

Constance had said ‘fertility cults’. I don’t know much about this occult stuff, or the way the Circle’s blood magic works, but when someone says ‘fertility cult’, I only think of one creature and so would everyone else.

I had to go and see Zagreus.

****************************

I don’t like Nosferatu, I think that’s what the living are meant to feel anyway, but I feel a special dislike for them and of the ones I’ve met, I liked Zagreus the least. I can handle the ugly ones and I can keep an eye on the shadowy ones, but I’ll be damned if I know what to do when a six foot, robed corpse is asks me to spank him.

Undead pervert or not, he was one of the highest ranking members of the Crone in the city and the evidence pointed right to him. I had to find out why, before the rest of the biters started using the situation for political gain and me for target practice.

The last time I’d met Zagreus was out on some old farm that despite the potential for rustic charm, just made me think of Deliverance. I certainly didn’t want to think about what or who might be kept in the old barns there. Yet here I was, knocking on every door I could find, hoping some super-natural sex-fiend would come out and say hi.

This was a wrong move and I knew it, but then this whole case had been wrong from the start. If Zagreus was a crazed killer, then I should be handing over evidence and crossing my fingers that I’d survive whatever interrogation ensued instead of looking for the guy.

Unfortunately, however much I disliked Zagreus, I never got the impression he was stupid. Something had been troubling me ever since I first saw the crime scene. Biters have places they like to do their disembowelling, secret places, locked away from the police and the press. If Zagreus decided to sacrifice this girl in some blood ritual then why hadn’t he dragged her back to his temple, or at least disposed of the evidence that would have lead any half-decent investigator directly back to him?

The last barn door I came to was unlocked. I flung it open and dived into the darkness, glad to be free of the rain.
That all too familiar smell hit me again and the floor was sticky underfoot. Fumbling for the lighter, I sparked it open and immediately wished I had remained in blissful, ignorant darkness.

Not just any investigator would have come here. Any Vampire worth his salt would have spotted the scene as a political play and let the results play out in court. It took a man who still thought like a mortal cop, who in spite of everything didn’t want to see an innocent man take the fall, to try and uncover the truth. In my life, the truth is usually better left buried.

The floor contained a thick, bloody circle centred around a pentagram. Human skulls were positioned at the edges, facing the centre. At the far end of the barn, an inverted crucifix still held its last, lifeless victim. It didn’t take an occultist to know the difference between the work of the Crone and Belial’s Brood, but if Zagreus was a member of the Brood, why would the evidence be left to lead me back here?

Suddenly the feeling of unease that had been following me around since this job stated developed into something much more concrete. The Nosferatu were all creepy, but most of them had their own, unique flavour. As the hair on the back of my neck started to stand up I knew exactly who was standing behind me, expelling the unmistakable sensation of seduction and fear, like having a beautiful woman give you the come on while she’s holding a knife to your balls.

I span round, brandishing the lighter like it was a piece of the true cross, uncomfortably aware that every step backwards brought me closer to the centre of the devilish circle.

Violet Deer stayed out of reach of the flame, smiling at me like a cat watching a mouse trying to escape a sealed room. While I didn’t dare to take my eyes off the woman, the damned dress she was wearing made it hard to keep an eye on the dangerous parts of her.

“What’s going on here Violet? Where’s Zagreus?” I took another step backward and thrust the lighter forward again.

“Calm down Dick, everything’s going to be fine.” With the grace of a cat she leant down to pick a piece of blood soaked straw from her foot. I knew damned well she did it on purpose and yet I still found myself staring at her cleavage instead of paying attention to the rest of the room.

It was the click of a shotgun behind me that jolted my attention back to where I was and reminded me just how screwed I was. I wish I hadn’t been so surprised to hear the fixer’s voice.

“You had to get stupid man, didn’t you? Couldn’t just let this fucking thing lie.”

Violet just smiled at me as I clicked the lighter off and put up my hands.

“Don’t be so hard on him, he came here to warn Zagreus, didn’t you Dick?”

I swallowed hard and tried my best to sound the tough guy, but I was hurting from my earlier beating and I didn’t have the blood left to fight back “He was set up, the whole ritual bullshit was a fake.”

The butt of a shotgun hit me squarely in the back and I fell to my knees as the fixer walked round into view.

“Of course it’s a fake you idiot. Any Vampire with half a brain would have seen that after a few nights investigation.” The blow was to the side of my head this time and the world swam with darkness and pain. “They would have assumed it was a Brood cover up.”

“Why fake a Brood a cover up?” I asked, trying desperately to stay conscious while sucking on the blood streaming from my own lips.

Violet leaned down to me, filling my nostrils with the smell of expensive perfume, blood and death. “Because it wasn’t a fake my dear. Now you lie down right there and we’ll make sure Belial gets his feast.” She pushed me hard in the chest and I fell on my back in the centre of the ritual circle.

I stared up at her, desperately looking for a way out “You faked a Crone ritual so they wouldn’t suspect the Brood member was one of you…”

Kovacs stepped over me now, levelling the shotgun with my eyes.

“Don’t think too badly of her man, my girl just gets carried away sometimes that’s all, and no one is going to take her away from me. Especially not some piss-ant ghoul like you.”

I closed my eyes and burned the last of the vitae, letting the rush wash over me as his finger tightened on the trigger and I didn’t feel anything anymore.