The air stank of coppery fresh blood, fear, death, and the hard scent of hot metal and gunpowder. Maria picked her way carefully across the scene, leaning heavily on her cane, skirting around blood spattered corpses of men and women. The dead were dressed in brightly colored costumes embroidered with metallic thread, wearing masks. Jewel tones of purple, green, and blue shone where they weren't blackened with blood. A party of sort, it seemed, interrupted by a massacre.
The officer, Lieutenant Martins, looked at her, his face carefully blank but his posture screaming suspicion. "Special Officer Jabez," he greeted her guardedly.
"Lieutenant." Maria nodded. "What has your investigation yielded thus far?"
The Lieutenant shook his head. "Nothing concrete yet. We only received notification of the crime thirty-six minutes ago. I'm surprised you've been dispatched so quickly." His tone was brittle; it was obviously he would have dearly loved to know who had brought this red-coated carrion crow down on his scene.
"I was in the area, Lieutenant. News of a multiple homicide that involved firearms is something that interests me a great deal." She looked around the street again, noting the bullet holes, the spatter patterns where arteries severed by bullets had sprayed out.
"I think at this stage, we can still safely assume that you have wasted your time, Special Officer. From the number of dead, it is very plain that this was the work of at least three assailants." Martins wanted her gone, very obviously. The unspoken statement hung in the air - it couldn't possibly be rogue Clerics. They worked alone, or in pairs at the most.
Maria limped past him, to the brick wall of one of the buildings. She pulled a small penlight from her pocket, turning it on. The circle of light it created played across the wall as she took a better look at the pattern of bullet holes.
The problem was, she decided, snapping the penlight off, that the police didn't know the Clerics. Of all the Clerics, only she and Preston had been trusted enough to have any sort of role in the new government, and only because they had put everything on the line for the resistance. The others... most had been killed during the revolution, resisting with every ounce of strength and blood they had. The older Clerics that had been captured were kept in prison or under house arrest as they were slowly rehabilitated. The younger Clerics that had fled were under trained.
Of the three Clerics that she had helped capture thus far, two had been under trained, fanatical children. They were slowly recovering from long years of indoctrination in a rehabilitation center. Because that had been the ultimate price with which the government had bought the loyalty of both John and herself; the chance to the Clerics, perhaps the most damaged victims of 'Father,' to once again live a normal life, with amnesty for the atrocities that they had been used to commit.
The other Cleric that she had captured had been older, but insane, unable to handle the force of her new emotions. Maria had tracked her to the hills outside the city and put a bullet in the woman's head herself. Because she knew the pain, to a certain extent. It was what she would have wanted.
The Clerics had become bogeymen. And like ghosts or frightening legends, no one truly wished to acknowledge the reality of the danger.
"Here, hold this," Maria said, handing her cane over to one of the nearby officers. He nearly dropped it, surprised at its appearance and then by its weight.
"Special Officer..." Martins began.
Maria shook her head, extending her arms downward. With two metallic snaps, her guns fell into her waiting hands. She was rewarded by the officers, loosely grouped around her, taking a dismayed step back in nearly perfect unison. The cold, logical part of her mind noted that if she wanted them dead, they would be - second kata, sixth form. She smiled slightly in amusement, pausing to drop the ammunition clips from the guns into her pockets, and made something of a show out of checking that there were no rounds chambered.
Only then did she even bother to look at Martins. His face was fish-belly pale, taking on an unhealthy yellow cast from the scene lights. "Your perpetrator was a Cleric," she said. "And he worked alone."
Lieutenant Martins shook his head. "I think this silliness has gone on long enough, Special Officer."
"Observe," Maria said, her tone cold. She was getting very tired of having to fight with the man every step of the way. The look she directed at him was enough to get him to quiet, for now.
Maria took in a deep, cleansing breath, and let it out slowly. She let go of her annoyance, worry, and anger. She already knew which kata and which forms the Cleric had used. Closing her eyes, she began, her movements slow and deliberate. She couldn't move quickly without the aide of her cane, but that was for the best - it gave the police around her time to absorb the angles and order of attack. Mind empty of all but the feel of smooth movement, she followed the perpetrators footsteps precisely.
Her little exhibition ended with an odd little twist of the left foot, and a slight off-angle on the hands. Slightly imprecise to the true feeling of the kata, and very, very familiar.
It took all of her willpower not to shout in dismay or drop her guns from suddenly nerveless hands as the familiarity hit her. Instead, somehow, she took another breath, opened her eyes, reloaded her weapons, and put them away with casual efficiency. Only she noticed the slight tremor in her hands, and how pale her skin had suddenly become.
The police officers, even Lieutenant Martins, were staring at her with expressions of awe and shock. With far more confidence than she felt, she held her hand out for her cane. "A Cleric, Lieutenant Martins, acting alone, and very rationally."
Cane once again in hand, she turned to leave. Gravel crunched underfoot, the hem of her coat rustled in the air. Those were the only sounds for a moment.
"Special Officer, what do we do?" Lieutenant Martins asked, sounding like a man who had just woken from a nightmare, only to find it was real.
"Wait for orders," she said, not even looking over her shoulder. "The investigation is no longer in your hands." Cane ticking against the street, she walked away, shoulders square.
When she was three streets away and absolutely certain she hadn't be followed, only then did she let the shock overtake her. She fell back against a wall, digging around in her pockets with shaking hands until she found her phone.
She should have been expecting this day to come, but misguided hope had prevented that. Still, after searching all the prisons, the rehabilitation centers, the graveyards, she'd found one all important name missing. It had filled her with hope, to know that he was still alive, but also dread at what he might do, left on his own and betrayed by the person he'd trusted most.
Because yes, she had betrayed him. In the worst of all ways. She'd hidden things from him, shot him, and left him alone to be captured by people he had no choice but to hate, bereft of any comfort that she could have given.
If - no, there was no if, she knew this with certainty. He had returned. Any bloodshed he caused was on her hands.
The number was programmed into her phone. She had no trouble bringing it up, even with the shakiness of her hands. A moment later, the call picked up, and a familiar voice said, "Preston."
"John?" she said. In spite of all her efforts, she still sounded like a woman that had just seen a ghost. "There's a problem."
"What's going on?" he asked, his tone concerned but calm.
It helped her regain a bit of her cool, and when she continued, her voice was much steadier. "There's been a... massacre." She gave the location and a few details. "I know for certain that it was done by a Cleric. By... Cleric Branston. My former partner."
There was a long pause before John spoke again. She'd told him the stories of Branston. "Why don't you drop by," he said. "I'll start a pot of coffee."
"Thank you, John," she whispered. Later, when she was calmer, there'd be reports and evidence and she could start on the trail. But not yet, with this surge of strange emotion running wild through her.
And really, if anyone could understand the ghost of a former partner, it would be John.