Mood:
lazyNow Playing: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Topic: Chapters
Chapter 1
I woke up to the phone ringing and glanced at the clock. The numbers glowed angrily green at me, saying it was just past three in the morning. Liam grumbled next to me and turned over, knowing that the late call wasn't for him.
I reached for the phone on my right side, but came up with more bed and Liam. The phone had moved, and so had the bed. I pried my eyes open as the phone rang a second time and realized that the phone hadn't moved; I had. I reached over Liam and picked up the phone on the third ring, just before the answering machine was tripped.
"Kylie, we have a body down here, looks like something that we need you for." Short and to the point, I liked that in a person. I was given quick directions as I tip-toed through the room grabbing clothes.
I worked as a retainer for the Burlington Police Department. My expertise in unusual creatures was something that the department needed on occasion. I helped with cases that were suspected to be supernatural in origin.
"I'll be there in fifteen. Just give me a second to get dressed." The phone lay dead in my hand. Rude, but with a murder investigation to conduct, I could let him off this one time.
My name is Kylie Randel and I am a mild mannered college professor by day and a werewolf by night. Well, I'm a werewolf all the time; I just didn't get to show it during the day, since I work at a college. Parents don't like the thought of a wolf teaching their kids, and the administration didn't like the paperwork involved in having a terminally ill person working at the school. And that's what being a were-anything is considered, a terminal illness, like AIDS, there is no cure, and only ends in death, usually caused as a secondary problem. I have lived for the past twenty years as a werewolf, and will probably live a lot longer then most humans, yet I'm terminally sick.
I grabbed what looked like black pants out of my dresser and pulled them on. I tried desperately to keep quiet so that Liam could sleep, I grabbed a pair of shoes that were sitting in the hallway waiting to be put in the closet and ran out of the room. As I walked to the front door, I managed to miss the couch and an end table without turning on the lights; I wish I could say that I also missed the lamp that was sitting on the end table. I'm a werewolf for Christ's sake; shouldn't I have better reflexes than that?
By this time it was three-ten, and my train of thought had de-railed itself. I was dressed in what I thought were black jeans and a black long sleeve shirt, But as I got into the car, I noticed that my pants were just dark blue jeans with a purple shirt.
It was a long drive down a tree lined dirt road, with no light to show me the path. Each turn bringing new surprises; the night was pitch black, the new moon casting no light. My headlights caught a flicker of yellow up ahead; as I approached the open field, I could see the police tape waving in the wind. The ugly yellow stripe crossed the entirety of the field, so wide that I couldn't even make out the body I was told was in the center.
Officers were milling around, probably waiting for me to get there. I was the last to be called in, there for the last to arrive. There are always an over abundance of people at murder scenes, maybe it was just the accumulation of people over time; maybe it was the fact that I was always arriving late, but the fact remains that there were way too many people. I'm surprised that any evidence is ever recovered with all the people tromping over and over on the ground around the body.
An officer that I didn't recognize stopped me at the tape, asking for my badge. As I had no badge to show him, being a civilian, he asked me to wait were I was while he went to get his Sergeant. Kurt arrived at the taped line and smiled.
"Well, little lady, what is it that I can do for you?"
"Cut the crap Kurt, you called me here, do you want my advice or not?"
"Come on through, the shows just about to start." He grinned, flashing fang at me.
"You're just gross." I ducked under the police tape and followed him across the field. The body was slowly recovered to me as people parted like a curtain at the high class play house.
"I'll leave you to it; I have business with the coroner's office." He walked away with his cell phone plastered to the side of this head.
There was the acrid smell of blood and other liquids in the air as I crossed the field; I wasn't following this with breakfast. I knew before I got close enough to look that blood and stomach continents had been spilled into the grass, causing me to look down at my shoes, they were black. I slipped gloves from the pocket of my jacket onto my hands and checked my pants as well, my new jeans would get ruined, and I was just going to have to deal with that. That'll teach me to go anywhere without pants I can ruin.
The body was lying in a thick ring of salt that had been spilled into the grass. It was facing away from me, and relatively clean from the back. The murderer had taken pains to keep the back undisturbed, grass stains had been smudged off the skin, and blood wiped clean. I braced myself as I crossed the circle of salt, ready for the push of magic that would usually linger at a site like this, and felt nothing. I walked around the other side of the body making the smell of stomach acid assault my very sensitive nose, and I had to take shallow breathes threw my mouth to keep from feeling the need to vomit. No matter how seasoned you are there is a chemical in stomach acid that makes you want to throw up. The front of the body was a ruined mass, the murderer had been careful to keep the body facing the house on the far end of the field, so as it would be seen. Possibly it was a sign to whom ever was inside; it was propped up on a bent knee and arm, like you would prop up an unconscious person to prevent them from choking on their own bile, here it was used to spill the contents of the body onto the ground. The eyes of the victim had been removed and the body cut open from the clavicle all the way down to the navel, the ribs pulled apart, spilling organs and fluids onto the grass. I saw no sign of the eyes in the grass around to body.
I kneeled next to the body, turning the head to check the neck for marks that I was almost positive weren't there, but I was expected to look, as it was one of the reasons that I had been called in. This was a possible supernaturally related murder, the circle indicated that, and as there was no push of magic, my next though was vampire. When I discovered no marks at the neck, I moved on to the arms, moving them to look at the bend of the elbow. The legs where still encased in a pair of faded jeans, and I would wait until the autopsy to look at those, though I knew I would find nothing. The blood was all on the grass, I could feel it cooling around my legs and soaking into my jeans, there was too much blood for any of it to have been taken.
"It's a beauty isn't it?" Kurt was the head of the investigation, and the man who had called me earlier in the night asking for advice. "The body has been identified as, Mr. Jeremiah Markus, the owner of this, what do you call these places? A Grape Farm?"
"A vineyard," I deadpanned, I promised myself that I wasn't going to throw up, but the wind had taken that moment to blow across the body, hitting me full in the face with the body's odor and this close to the fluids I was struggling to get air down, swallowing convulsively.
"Yeah, poor guy, just the wrong place at the wrong time." Kurt handed me a bible and an old hat. "These where found near the body just outside the circle. We already talked to the wife; she was the one that called us in. She's up at the house methodically making grilled cheese, seems to think that will make everything alright. We're also keeping and eye open," he chuckled, "for the eyes."
"What are you thinking? A collector?"
"Possibly, but if that's all we thought it was, we wouldn't have called you in. Look at the salt."
"I did, I haven't felt anything from it, and as far as I can tell there have only been humans in the area. Well, besides the two of us." Kurt bristled at my comment, looking around to see if anyone else heard what I said. He is still convinced that no one can tell that he's a vampire. The man had honest to god fangs, and yet he still thought that no one knew.
"Could it be some kind of ritual sacrifice that didn't get off the ground?"
"I would have felt some sort of power, unless the people who did this didn't know enough to call on any. It could have been just a sign of loyalty to a deity or a show of devotion; I'll have to look into that."
"Witches?"
"I don't think so, maybe some manna bes."
"You think there was more then one murderer?"
"I'm positive."
I looked at the hat it had to be very old. It was a soft gray, possibly once black, with white embroidery on it; `To rise with the sun is to feel all of its colors.' Too bad this early riser was caught a bit too early. Rural Vermont isn't the place you would think would have to worry about this kind of thing. Most people didn't even think we needed a homicide unit. Most people didn't see the same things I see, and we are much better at keeping it out of the media then the rest of the country is.
I headed up to the house as the body was being loaded into the ambulance to be taken back to the morgue, I would have a closer look there. For now I needed to talk to the wife, see what she had to say, and maybe even snag one of those sandwiches once my stomach settled down.
"Kylie?"
"Yeah, Boss?"
"You might want to change before tromping into the house."
"Yeah, probably a good idea."
"And be nice to her, she's an old lady and she just found her husband cut up on her front lawn."
I gave him a shocked look. "Am I ever not nice?"
The back door of the farmhouse went right into the kitchen that smelled pleasantly of melting cheese. The woman at the stove couldn't be much younger then seventy. Her graying hair was pulled back into a loose bun, and she was dressed like the twenty second century wasn't even a conceivable thought in her mind.
"Why, hello dear. Would you like me to get you a plate? I'm sure you're very hungry after all the work you and your friends are doing." Her smile was pleasant, but didn't quite reach all the way up; like she was saying and doing what she was programmed to do, but didn't really feel what she said.
"Thank you very much." I took the plate from her, heaped with grilled cheese haves. "Do you mind if I as you a few questions, I know you have already talked to the police, but I'm hopping that you know something that could help, that they may have missed."
"Of course dear. What do you want to know?" Her eyes became glazed and distant. I hopped that she wasn't going to cry, though she had ample reason to do so.
I went through a list of standard questions, what time did you discover the body, what time did your husband leave and how long was it before you noticed that something was wrong. And on and on. She had nothing to add that the police didn't already tell me. "Alright, one more question." The old woman looked strained, but gave me a friendly smile. "Have you had anyone in the area recently that you thought was out of the ordinary? Any new neighbors or people on the property?"
She took her time to think, scratching the tip of her nose slowly. "Well, there was a few kids around the past few weeks, asked if they could look at the woods. Said it was for a project at school. They were here every day for the past few weeks, they didn't come by today. But they usually don't on Sundays. Three girls and four boys couldn't have been more then twenty or so. Nice kids didn't smile much though." The thought a bit more, growing very still. "Don't think they were too strange though. There the only people I can think of." I thanked her, and left her to her cooking. I filed away the answers into my mind for a later time.
"Okay, Wolfie, I'll see you in the morning and we can go through my paper work together." Kurt was still the only vampire I knew that would voluntarily go out during the day. The sun won't kill them; it's just really hard on their super sensitive eyes. Kurt wore very dark sunglasses, the wrap around kind that was cool about five years ago, and with any luck would never be in style again. I told him he looked like a bug. He retorted with, `Well, you're a great big dog.' Kurt was great, in a very annoying and older brother sort of way.
"Night, Fang." I was fun to see the look on his face when I called him `Fang' in front of everyone. He still thought that people didn't know he was a vampire on site. With his sheet-white skin, old fashioned hair cut, and I didn't mean fifties slicked back, I mean seventeenth century `I like my hair rather long in a pony tail because I'm a big man,' kind of old fashioned hair cut. On top of that he usually forgot what decade it was and had on loud eighties jeans and his jackets with the sleeves rolled up. The man screamed `Vampire,' even to people who didn't know. Then there were the fangs.
I climbed back into the car, and listened to the early early show on the radio, on the way back to the apartment and contemplated trying to get the blood out of my jeans.
Normally the though of coming home at four in the morning makes me a little sick, but the knowledge that there was a nice warm body to curl up with made it so much better. Wereanimals make the best cuddle companions because of our pack-oriented natures. Though not all of our associated animal forms are pack animals in the wild, weres tend to gravitate towards companionship, and they need the pack structure, maybe it was something to do with the human in us. Cougars or Catamounts, as Vermonters like to call them, are not pack animals. But as weres they are just as cuddly as any other wereanimal. Liam was no exception.
As soon as I crawled into bed, Liam turned over and snuggled into me. I was soon fast asleep once more.
I woke to the sun streaming into the room and knew at once that Liam wasn't in bed any longer; though I could still smell him on the sheets. I stretched and crawled out of bed, wandering into the kitchen for my first cup of coffee.
Liam was in the computer room; really it was only another bedroom with the door taken off. He liked the ability to see the rest of the apartment to complement the fact that he could smell everyone that was in and out, and he didn't like to feeling of being cut off. The apartment rooms, save the bedroom, were decorated in Liam's very modern clean style. The furniture looked like it had come out of one of those architectural magazines, and probably did. Clean lines and monochromatic black, making it impossible to see in the dark. The only splash of color in the apartment came from the walls, which were all painted in shades of blue and lilac; Liam calls it purple, but I think he's just trying to save his masculinity. I got to choose one room out of the apartment to redecorate when I moved in, so I chose the bedroom, the one room I was guarantied to spend time. That room is done in a Pottery Barn style, with heavy cherry wood furniture and light hunter green walls. The bed was mine from my old apartment, and had required a crew of highly trained movers to take apart in my old room, move two blocks down the street, and then assemble in my new room. This had taken two days. Okay, so the bed is a huge four poster bed with a canopy, but two days?
I grabbed my coffee mug from the cabinet, it's red and proclaimed `Number 1 Teacher!' My kids love me. It only took me a few minutes from the to locate the mug, get the sugar, which to my surprise was actually in the jar marked `Sugar' and get the coffee maker to relinquish its hold on the pot. I was finally beginning to figure out my new apartment. I poured myself a cup of coffee, and discovered that there was not more milk. I sighed, oh well, what did I expect, I'm living with a guy, and with both of us working full time there is usually no time for shopping. I quickly wrote a not to who ever got to the grocery next, and went into the computer room to kiss Liam good morning before heading to the station.
The computer room was starting to get a little ridiculous. Liam's a programmer, but who needs five computers funning at once? My little laptop looked really silly sitting on a desk all to itself in the corner. But the computers saved on heating costs, and in Vermont that meant a lot.
Liam looked up from his desk between two monitors that faced away from me, and gave me a cute smile.
"Morning sweetie, how was your murder last night?" He scrunched his face up upon hearing himself, then looked at me and smiled, waiting for me to answer.
"Sorry the call woke you." I looked back at the end table next to the couch, which was now without a lamp. "I'm also sorry about the lamp; it kinda snuck up on me." I'm still thinking that I should be more coordinated, being a werewolf and all.
"These things happen; I didn't really like that lamp anyway." Sometimes Liam is so sweet, though he's a terrible liar. With the two of us having just moved in together the week before, he was trying very hard no to add tension to the relationship; especially since it had taken almost a year for him to convince me to move. "You going into the station today?" He looked hopeful, getting his version of the guy smile, telling me he know what would happen if I stayed home.
"Have to, lots of paper work to look over. Hey at least I don't have to do it. Plus I have to make a trip down to Jen to go over the autopsy." He gave me a quick nod and got up from his desk, to stand with me, giving him a reason to run his hands along my arm, and play with the shirt that I had slept in. "You know, I think there would be fewer murders if people knew how much paper work was involved. If we could get the criminals to do all this work, then they wouldn't commit the crimes to begin with. Prison, bah. Now paperwork, that's a whole other animal all together." Liam gave me a pleasant smile and kissed me softly on the lips, just a gentle brush of lips that made me melt inside and started pulling at the buttons of my shirt. "I really need to get to the station."
"Just a half hour?" His eyes pleaded with me.
"It's already almost ten." The puppy dog eyes tugged at my heart, one day I will be able to resist, today wasn't that day.
Kurt was already at his desk when I walked into the station at around eleven o'clock. It wasn't a big shock, since he had probably been there since last night. I was beginning to wonder if he ever slept. He looked up as I sat down in the chair across from him.
"Morning, Sunshine." Kurt looked so chipper I wanted to hit him. I am not a morning person; I'm not really an afternoon person either, now that I think about it. I had to have at least three cups of coffee before my day really started. God I needed to get over this caffeine addiction that I had going for me.
"Morning, Fangface, what's new? Anything new about the case since last night?" I looked at the pile of paper in his inbox and wanted to laugh. I hate paperwork; it's full of paper cuts and tension.
"Nothing yet, though I don't expect anything until this afternoon, Jen just got into the morgue an hour ago." Jen was the coroner here in Burlington; she had been on vacation and got back last night. I understood why she hadn't come in before ten, jetlag sucks. Though I still wonder why we didn't have anyone to replace her when she's gone; it's not like the criminals take a holiday just because one of us does.
"Well, we can shuffle paper around your desk until that time." I gave him a hopeful look, the expression Kurt gave me said `yeah and we could do the moon walk down Main Street too.' Somehow I knew that it was not the time for humor. "Or we could actually do work." Kurt began pulling pages from his inbox and writing. I frowned and glanced over pictures from last night's scene to see if I had missed anything.
Posted by morgansilverwolf
at 2:15 PM EST
hungry
bright