South Beach Diet...Epilogue

I stood, arms folded across my chest, as I watched the discussion taking place in the room behind the one way mirror.

Special Agent Jennifer Wilson paced behind me, flailing her arms as she spoke. “How can Corrales possibly think that he is the real killer? That man is stark raving mad!”

“Who is, Corrales?” I continued to focus my attention on the face of the man I knocked out.

His face was still stained with the blood from the victim’s kidney that he had nearly finished. His eyes were wide open, his pupils dilated. The dark circles beneath his eyes indicated that he had been running on little sleep for quite some time.

He was speaking in short, quick sentences that were nearly incoherent, especially if, like Corrales, you didn’t understand the babbled references he was throwing out like barbs to me.

“It’s been a great run man. I love the beach. It’s a perfect place for a midnight meal with the Beast. Blood never tasted so good.”

Corrales was overwhelmed, trying to take an intelligible statement form this guy, but he kept pressing anyway. “George, why did you kill these five victims?”

George shook his head. “I didn’t kill them, man. The Beast did. Oh, I suppose that I helped. Especially with that last one. She was a wild one, that one. I don’t know why the Beast wanted them dead, dude, but they sure were tasty.”

“Who is this Beast you keep referring to?”

George smiled; his bloody lips curling back as he did so. “It’s here watching you, so you better treat me right, Detective. It’s always here watching, learning, judging. The Beast is you, me, all of us.”

Corrales nodded, seemingly glad to have received an answer that he could use. “So you are the Beast, right George?”

George just smiled.

I had seen enough. I turned to face the still pacing Jennifer and touched her lightly at her elbow. When she turned to face me, I leaned in close and spoke softly nearly her left ear.

“Don’t worry Jennifer, your profile was impeccable. This man is not the killer of these people, but the creature that led me to him left him to take the fall for those killings. All of the forensic evidence will be made to fit this guy. There is nothing that you or I can do to stop that now. This whole series of killings was meant to solely to draw me here.”

She pulled back at that. “But why would…?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know enough yet to say for sure, other than that I was given a message. I message I haven’t had time to read yet.”

She looked shaken. “I have pictures of the symbols that were left next to each body. Do you want me to give you copies? Maybe they were part of the message too?”

“Yeah, you can send them to me via e-mail. I need to go, now.” I looked back through the one-way glass into the interrogation room to see that Corrales was putting the papers he had been filling out back into a folder. A group of burly officers from the Metro-Dade Police Department had entered the room to escort the soon-to-be-famous serial killer du jour to his cell. I leaned in close to Jennifer again. “Keep an eye out for strange profiles like this one. Let me know ASAP when you encounter another one.”

“There will be more?” Her eyes had grown wide with shock.

I nodded. “It’s just a matter of time. You can count on that. Tell Corrales that I’ve left. He won’t get, or need, any testimony from me for this nutcase.”

I left her to her own thoughts and Corrales’ likely wrath at my failure to stick around. I found a nice, darkened office just off the main hall and slipped into the Shadowland for the brief trip home.

I emerged in my meditation chamber, a particularly dark room that had no actual door into it in the mundane world. It was here that I came when I needed to be alone with my own thoughts.

I touched a small orb that lit up the small room with a bright, clear blue light. I pulled the rolled up scroll from the pocket I had kept it in and began examining it as I sat down at the small roll top desk that served as my only work surface for writing.

The leather of the scroll had a strange look to it and felt thinner and lighter than new leather should have. The scroll was held closed by a thick wax seal that was embossed with the symbol of a dragon with three heads…Dracaar’s sigil.

I cracked open the seal, letting the pieces of wax crumble onto the desk. I unrolled the scroll carefully.

The language of the letters and symbols of the scroll gave me pause for a moment as I searched the memories of Ma Grendel to come up with meanings. When it clicked into place, I drew an instinctive breath. This was no human language, but the original script of the An’girasii.

The message contained within those words was chilling…(to be revealed in the next post.)

South Beach Diet...Part 4

A figure strolled in the darkness along the beach, off to my left. It was walking that line between earth and ocean, alone, just as I moved between the world of Shadow and Light. Its physical form was that of a lithe young man. Its Spirit form was something Other, something that I had not seen before. It was small and dark, exuding a roiling, seething hatred.

The doppelganger was issuing its challenge to me- ‘Come play!’

It was time to make a proper introduction. I called the Shadow, wrapping myself fully within it. I gave the dark energy the twist that took me from one place to another and stepped out directly in front of the creature.

The fleshy face of the young man melted away as I stood at arms length from the creature. I was standing face to face with a being that now had no face.

“Why have you come, Hunter?” No mouth opened as it spoke, instead a slow, grating whisper just emanated from the creature.

“Why are you killing these people? What have they done to you?” I stood facing the thing in a combat-ready stance. My hands open and ready to trigger my batons to drop into place at the first sign that it was done talking.

“It is time to Hunt again. Have you not heard the Call?” Its form shifted slightly, its arms grew slightly longer than would be normal for a human being of its height, its hands shifted into large, wicked looking claws.

“What Call is that?” I rose up on the balls of my feet and shifted my balance forward ever so slightly.

“The Call of the An’girasii, that which has not been uttered in over six hundred years, ever since the Burning Times. How can you not hear it, Brother?” It reached one razor sharp talon towards me slowly, pointing towards where my heart used to be. “Lord Dracaar walks the land once more. My Spirit sings with his Call. I feast so that I may grow strong enough to serve him once again! Shall we dine together tonight?”

I brushed the talon away with a sweep of my left arm while reaching up to the sheath across my back that was not actually present in the physical world. Somehow I didn’t think my batons would be of much use against this creature.

“Look buddy, I don’t hear any Call from Dracaar or anyone else, but I think you’ve had your last meal on this or any beach.”

It drew back from my brush off and gathered itself for a lunging attack, both clawed hands ready to strike with its leap.

It leapt before I could get my hand on the hilt of Excalibur, knocking me backwards onto my back in the wet sand. We became a tangle of grasping hands and claws, kicking legs and tussling forms in the gently rolling waves.

It wrestled with the strength of several men, moving lightning fast with the ferocity of natural predator as it tried to keep me from reaching the blade that it somehow knew was there.

“You are known to us, young Hunter. You have much to learn before you will inspire fear in any of us the way your Father did.” It was not straining to speak as we continued to wrestle, it continued to gain the upper hand, always anticipating my next attempt to wrest my hand free to reach for the blade.

“Drake was not my father, dammit!”

It gave off what could only be considered a chuckle as it leaned its grey, blank face close to mine. “It was only through him that you were born into this existence. He is your Father in every way that matters.”

I stopped struggling when I realized that this creature, this doppelganger, was sitting astride my chest in the shallow surf, holding me down, but not otherwise trying to harm me. I stared into its blank mask of a face, trying to pierce the veil into its Spirit. “Who or what exactly are you and why did you draw me here?”

Two pinpricks of red light grew into glowing orbs of eyes. “I am a humble Servant, a messenger, if you will. I have something for you.”

“What is it?”

It reached into the dark robes that I now realized it was wearing and drew out a rolled up piece of what looked like leather that was sealed by some sort of wax-like blob and placed it on my chest as it let go of my right arm with its other claw and stood up.

“Read this soon, it is a message for your eyes only. You will find the fifth and final victim a short ways down the beach. You will also find a suitably guilty killer alive next to the carcass. He will serve the needs of your human justice system well enough for now.”

“I can’t scapegoat some poor schmuck for your crimes!”

It stood over me, its eyes fading back into the grey of the mask. “Oh, I’ve chosen well for you. He’s killed far more of his fellow men than I have lately. If he weren’t so fallibly human, he might have been of more use to us. I have enjoyed this meeting young Hunter, until we meet again, fare thee well.”

I sat up, grabbing the thick leather scroll before it fell into the water. As I did, the creature faded into Shadow and was gone.

I got up, knocked some of the wet sand off of me and set off towards the site of the fifth victim a few hundred yards to the south. As promised, I found the fifth victim and a dazed man with the sickly Spirit of an unrepentant killer kneeling next to her. In one blood drenched hand he held the half eaten kidney of the young woman laid out, spread eagle on the bloodied sands of South Beach. His other hand was covered by bloody glove with jagged blades extending from the fingers.

I subdued the bastard with one quick blow to the back of his head with my fist and made the call for Agent Corrales to collect his prize for the dog and pony show that was sure to follow this arrest…

South Beach Diet...Part 3

I slipped back into the Shadowland, hoping to catch a glimpse of my prey yet again, only to find that the creature had slipped away for the moment. I shifted back to normal vision, clenching my fist in frustration. I turned, stepped out into the street, easily slipping between the cars stuck in traffic. It was time to check out the beach. Once on the far side, I pulled the Shadow closer, hoping to use it for cover as I thought back to Corrales’ reaction to Jennifer’s shocking pronouncement.

“What do you mean by ‘not entirely human’? What else could the killer be? No animal would leave the victims spread out like that or draw those weird pictures next to the bodies.”

Jennifer nodded. Her medium length gray curls bounced as she did so. She pointed out items on her computer screen with her long elegant fingers as she spoke. “The pattern of the bodies and the symbols that are drawn has meaning, so it definitely isn’t an animal. But the way these people have been killed, it isn’t with a weapon. A knife, even a dull one, wouldn’t tear the flesh like was done on this victim and over here on this victim. These are wounds that have been made by claws of some kind, very sharp claws.”

“That doesn’t mean that some sicko hasn’t found a way to make a weapon that acts like a claw. Remember, we are in South Florida. We have more than our share of weirdos down here.”

She looked back at Corrales, her eyes intense behind her large glasses. “This killer is not your average weirdo, Miguel. There is something about the feel of this case…I believe that the missing organs of the victims have been removed for some important reason.” She shook her head violently as she contemplated the case, which sent her silver-gray curls flying. When she started speaking again her words spilled out in ever faster sentences. “I just don’t think a human killer would have been capable of doing everything this killer did to each victim in such a short time in place where someone could come up on them at any time. The evidence is here Miguel. These people were killed on this beach. They each walked to the spot of their death with someone else who was clearly human at that time, but the tracks leading away from the site are not human. Each victim is missing an organ, a different organ from any of the other victims.”

Both Miguel and I just sat there watching and listening as she ran through the evidence as she spoke, clicking on a photo here, flipping past a slide there, all at the same speed she was talking. It all came so fast that it took us a moment to catch up to her when she had stopped, glancing between the two of us. She was the first speak again, but only as she reach over to click on the final slide in her presentation.

“I think the killer is a doppelganger.”

To be honest, I wasn’t that shocked. I had been following her points fairly closely and had already come to the conclusion that this killer was not your run-of-the-mill psychopath.

Miguel broke out in laughter, slapping his forehead. “You almost had me there, girl! I haven’t heard that word in over twenty year…doppelganger indeed. I remember those creatures from my role-playing days. So, now that you’ve had your little joke at my expense, what’s your real theory?”

Corrales had gone from side-splitting laughter to serious-as-a-heart-attack in the span of ten seconds. He looked from Jennifer to me and back to Jennifer.

“I wasn’t joking Miguel. That’s why I asked for Agent Bones to be here as well. He has considerable…experience…with creatures like this.”

His expression went from serious to confusion as he tried to make sense of this.

I slid my chair over to be close to him and looked him in the eye. I reached out and gently but firmly brought his right hand up to my neck. He was so confused that he didn’t even try to resist.

“Miguel, I not this ugly because of some crazy disease or any botched plastic surgery. I know you look at me and you think you see just a deformed person; at least once you try to process that information. But your true first reaction, the reaction you have before your brain dismissed it out of hand, is that I look like a zombie, that I look like a walking dead man. Well guess what? Your first impulse is right. Feel my right there where the carotid artery should be. No pulse. Feel how cold and clammy my skin is? I’ve got the flesh of a dead man because that’s what I am.”

“But…but…” He jerked his hand away, wiped it on his Armani pants as if they were dirty jeans and as if the feel of Death could be wiped off like a smudge of dirt.

I nodded. “I know. You see, I’ve found that I can walk around with less and less make-up than my makers ever thought I could because people see me for who I am at first glance, but then dismiss the mere thought of an undead zombie as either a good Halloween costume, or some weird skin disease, or a botched surgery or two. The human mind doesn’t deal well with things that don’t fit neatly inside the niches that it has assigned to them to. Simply because everyone knows that monsters such as zombies and vampires and…doppelgangers…their own minds fool them into believing that the thing they just saw with their own eyes was something else entirely.”

He looked shaken, to say the least. I put one hand to try and steady him, but he cringed, so I pulled it back with a shrug.

“Like Jennifer says, I do have some rather specialized knowledge and experience about creatures like this killer of yours. I agree with her profile in that I don’t think you are dealing with a human killer here. But why this thing is killing people like this, so publicly, so quickly, that I don’t know. I’m going to have to try and track it for awhile. I will need to spend time where it has been hunting. I need to see what it is seeing and see if I can discern its real purpose before it actually kills again. I will start tonight, since that is when it is active, at night.”

Jennifer was nodding as I spoke. She really looked pleased that I agreed with her profile so far.

Miguel, on the other hand, was looking almost as pale as I did. He was looking at me, listening to me, but with the vacant kind of stare that told me that his understanding of the world had just been turned upside down.

“Jennifer, make sure that the Bureau communicates with the local police. They should maintain the same vigilant presence that they’ve had in place for the last week, but I don’t want anyone else trying to cover for me. I need to hunt this thing in my own way. I don’t want to spook it, unless we absolutely have to in order to save a life…”

Standing on the edge of Light and Night, of City and Beach, I was in Shadow. A watchful, vigilant Shade that moved from one world to the next with the ease of a moth flitting around a light bulb, one moment fully visible and real, the next moment a figment of the imagination.

In this new quasi-state of being, I could walk among the evening revelers leaving no more memory of my passing than that of a strange, cold shiver that caused a tingle along the spine and raised the hairs on the back of the neck.

The Hunt continued…

South Beach Diet...Part 2

Shaking my head as I stepped over the puddle of fermented vomit, I emerged from the darkness of the small alley and entered the pulsating stream of human sexuality that was the South Beach night life.

If the dress code of the partying crowd was any indication, it was about 80 degrees and humid out. Even the bikini clad gals and the bare-chested young studs were shiny with beaded sweat. I was, of course, the lone exception. I was wearing a lightweight, black windbreaker over a loose black sweatshirt. My sturdy jeans were properly distressed while my heavy black steel-toed work boots were brand new.

While preening, inebriated minnows darted and dodged all around me, I was the plodding, brooding predator seeking others who might be trolling for prey.

As chaotic and colorful as the neon, Art Deco scene was in normal vision, it was bland compared to the ever changing arrays of color displayed by the Spirit forms of the overflowing crowd. In the last year I had gotten much better at switching my vision from the mundane to the Shadowland while continuing to navigate physically through the mundane world.

It was so easy to scan crowds this way that I could almost operate on auto-pilot. If Agent Wilson had been right, the creatures that I was looking for would be far more likely to stand out in the Shadowland than they would in the mundane:

I made my appearance the next morning in the Flagler Federal Law Center where the Bureau had their main office in Miami. My ‘flight’ had been quick and hassle free. Agent Corrales met me in the spacious lobby on the first floor before taking me up the thirtieth floor meeting room that had a breathtaking view of Miami Beach across the bay and the sparkling ocean beyond that. Jennifer and a small cadre of forensic techs were waiting for me with all of the photographs and collected evidence laid out on the expansive conference table.

The photographs of the four victims, two men and two women, were gruesome. Each of the victims lay spread eagle on their backs, with arms outstretched and their guts ripped open.

My entrance stopped all discussion as each person took stock of me. Corrales had hid his reaction well down in the lobby, but that had more to do with the fact that I had waited in one of the darker areas for him to come find me. Even though I had my standard makeup job to cover up the worst of my appearance, it was getting harder and harder to disguise the fact that I now had a seriously ugly mug.

Jennifer got up from her seat at the table where she had been typing on her laptop and approached me, hand extended. “Rusty, thanks for coming so quickly.”

I shook her hand, carefully. “No problem, Jennifer. I hope that I can be of help to you.”

Corrales came up beside me, careful not to get too close to me. “Agent Wilson here has been singing your praises, Agent Bones. We certainly hope that you can help us resolve this case before the press eats us alive.” His eyes narrowed. “I didn’t see much in your Bureau profile though about building profiles.”

Jennifer cleared her throat, looked back at the various techs who had been watching our exchange. “Rusty’s skills are rather unique, Miguel, and his full profile is classified. Can we clear the room? The information we are about to discuss is to shared on a need-to-know basis only.”

“I see.” He looked sharply over at the techs. They got the point and began to shuffle from the room; more than one of them looked relieved. “May I presume that I am allowed to stay?”

Jennifer nodded and sat back down in her chair while pointing out two others to be pulled up. “Of course you are Miguel. You are the lead agent on this case, after all.”

We both sat down as she pulled up a presentation that she had been working on. Once the room was clear except for the three of us and the doors had been shut, she began to speak again.

“Miguel, as I’ve told you before, I can’t build an accurate profile of the killer in this case based on the facts that we have accumulated to date. What I haven’t told you yet is that I am pretty sure that the killer is not entirely human…”

The flashback was interrupted as I caught a glimpse of someone, something, in the crowd that didn’t fit. The Spirit form of the being stood out from the large cluster of younger, brighter Spirits gathered outside of a particularly flashy nightclub. It was a darker, smaller form than those of most humans, and it felt my presence as I honed in on it.

The small head of the form swiveled in my direction as soon as I locked my gaze onto it. Two laser red eyes locked onto me for the briefest of moments before a massive explosion of intense light knocked me from the Shadowland and back into the realm of normal vision.

The crowd was milling about, oblivious to the dance between two Hunters as I tried to associate the out of place Spirit form I had seen with the right physical body in the swirling, dancing, flirting mass of humanity.

With all of the glances of fear, disgust, and disdain that I was getting, I couldn’t pinpoint my prey just yet. I was reasonably certain, however, that I stood out well enough to let my prey know that he or she wasn’t alone at the top of the food chain any more.

The minnows danced and darted about, too exhilarated by Life to realize that the true dance of Death had only just begun.

South Beach Diet...Part 1

I emerged from the Shadow into a dark side alley. I stopped at the end of the alley for a moment to take in the festive scene of a typical South Beach evening—pounding music, snarled traffic, pulsing neon lights, and a throbbing crowd of underdressed people of all races, genders and orientations milling about happily trolling for their next fling.

The call for assistance had come earlier in the afternoon from the Miami office of the Bureau:

“Hello.”

“This is Special Agent Miguel Corrales from the Miami Office, are you Agent Rusty Bones?”

“Yeah, that would be me. What can I do for you Agent Corrales?”

“Well, uh, we’re having a bit of a problem down here and we’re hoping that you might be able to help us to solve it.”

“What kind of problem are you having?”

“Well, um, it’s kind of hard to explain without sounding…ridiculous.”

I laughed. “Don’t worry about that Agent Corrales. I specialize in handling problems that sound ridiculous to most people. Tell me what you got going on.”

“You’ve probably seen some of our problem on the news, if you watch that stuff. We have someone, or something that is stalking and killing people here near South Beach.”

There had been a few news stories about a series of gruesome killings in Miami Beach lately. I hadn’t really paid attention to the stories, so I didn’t know too many details, other than that the mutilated bodies of young, otherwise healthy young people were turning up on the beaches of that city’s hottest nightspots, only to be discovered in the early morning hours.

“I’ve seen some of the coverage, yes. Looks like you might have a serial killer of some sort who has become active down there. But the Bureau has better people than me to create a profile of potential serial killers.”

“Yeah, well that’s just it. We’ve had a profiler brought in from Quantico already, Jennifer Wilson, she’s looked at everything, including the details that haven’t been released for the media outlets and she swears that the facts aren’t fitting any into any of her profile models. She gave me you name and number and suggested that I give you a call.”

I remembered Jennifer. She was a bright young agent who had sought me out on one of my many trips to Washington in the last few months. She had been one of Ravyn’s students a few years back. She had the natural talent to be a full fledged Caster and had been offered a position within the ORC’s, but had decided to pursue a career in law enforcement. She was now a rising star within the Bureau using her Talent and her training to build profiles of serial killers. She hadn’t been wrong yet. If she was stumped, this was serious.

“OK, I’m listening. What details have you guys kept from the press?”

“Well, all of the victims were badly mutilated, that much has been made public. But what wasn’t released is that each victim was missing a particular organ. We’ve also found blood and other…evidence that wasn’t from any of the victims at each site.”

“What kind of evidence?”

“Fluids that we can’t identify, strange looking symbols drawn in the sand near each body. Tracks going away from the sites of the killings always lead to the ocean.”

“And Agent Wilson said that she couldn’t create a profile from this?”

A young woman in a skimpy bikini top and a multi-colored sarong staggered to the edge of the alley where I was hidden and retched onto the ground, interrupting my reverie. She looked up from my puke spattered boots, staggering up to one knee. “Hey buddy, whatcha doin’ back there?” As her eyes traveled upward from my boots, her eyes grew wide. She got up quickly and stumbled off to rejoin her friends.