Title: Just the Devil
Author: Eleen
Rating: T. Warning for minor gore.
Spoilers: This is AU, but I can't make any promises.
Summary: Grissom and his team join forces with a mysterious Doctor and his family to solve a string of grizzly murders. But our favorite entomologist soon finds out, he may be in way over his head. Crossover with "Twilight" but you don't have to know that Vampire lore to understand.
A/N: Okay, the following is a crossover with Twilight, a book series by Stephanie Meyer. But since the story is told from the CSIs point of view you don't have to have read them to understand. But if you do have any questions feel free to just leave a review or PM me. This a companion piece to another story of mine "Viva Las Vampire".
Bright light city gonna set my soul
Gonna set my soul on fire
Got a whole lot of money that's ready to burn,
So get those stakes up higher
There's a thousand pretty women waitin' out there
And they're all livin' Devil may care
And I'm just the devil with love to spare
Viva Las Vegas, viva Las Vegas
-Viva Las Vegas, Elvis Presley
Chapter 1: Evidence
Grissom pointed his Maglite at the Vampire's face, but the hood was pulled down and all Grissom could make out was bright white teeth.
"What do you want?" Grissom asked.
"Me? Me? What do I want? No, let's talk about what you want." He said, anger finally was materializing in his voice. "What do you want, Dr. Grissom? I think it's time you thought about that. Because I don't think you want to cross something like me. For the reason of what I might want to do then, yes? Maybe I might want to rip her throat out? Is that what you want?" The Vampire used his left hand to force down the collar of Sara's shirt, exposing the skin covering her jugular. "I'm sure you have an idea of what it will look like when I'm done with her."
Grissom eyes widened, as the demon lowered his head to her neck. Sara struggled against her attacker's iron grip.
"You're in way over your head, Dr. Grissom." He said, his mouth positioned an inch above Sara's skin. "I think it's about time you realized that."
9 days earlier
A cell phone ring broke the science that engulfed Gil Grissom's townhouse. Grissom snapped out of a semi-conscious state and hastily seized his phone off the bedside table and flipped it open to silence the ringing.
"Grissom."
"Hey Gil, got a 420 up in Henderson." Came Brass' voice.
"Swing tapped out?" Grissom asked, glancing at the bedside clock, shift didn't start for another three hours. He rubbed his forehead and pushed the covers aside, swing his legs over the side of the bed as he did so.
"Not exactly. We got another one, another victim."
"What do we know?"
"Juliana Leishman, 32, best friend found her in her living room. Body's been posed."
"Cause of death?"
"Coroner's not here yet but it's not hard to tell form the gaping hole in her throat. Listen, I got to go, neighbors are going insane. Get here soon."
"Stupid piece of crap!"
()0()0()0()0()0()
Catherine Willows, CSI Level III, drove the pointed toe of her left shoe into her rear fender without fear of consequence. The force drove the energy strait into her big toe, resulting in a spike of pain shooting up her leg and a dent to form in her fender. As she hopped on her good foot, Catherine cursed her luck, her toes and her tires. This had been her second flat in a week, and thanks to a busy week of crime in Vegas, she'd been unable to take the stupid thing to a garage and replace the donut, now destroyed donut mind you, with a new tire.
It was her day off and she'd been coerced into driving her 15-year-old daughter to a last minute sleepover in a suburb across town, so now she was stuck somewhere between there and her house with a stubbed toe and a flat tire.
Just as Catherine was beginning to contemplate her options, she heard her cell phone go off from her purse in the passenger seat. She walked-limped-to the front of her car and swung in, locked all her doors, and reached across the center console to grab her phone.
"Hey Warrick." She said, reading the call display.
"Hey Catherine, we've got a homicide."
Catherine wondered why it wasn't Grissom calling her, the entomologist was probably knee deep in bowflies somewhere. "Listen, 'Rick, I've got a flat." She explained. "Call Sara or someone."
"Give me you're location and I'll come get you."
Her eyes sought out the nearest street sign. "Dorsia Avenue, around the Trip Wire Bar. But, what about my car?"
"Have it towed back to your place. We…"
"I'm not going to just hang around this neighborhood, Grissom's place isn't far, I'll meet you there."
"Okay. I'm on my way, the quicker were all here the better."
"Why the hurry? What's going on?" Catherine inquired.
"Cath it's…" The line cut out. "…Positioned…blood…others…." The volume of Warrick's voice waxed and waned. "…Neck ripped out…same guy…reporters…Cath? You there?"
"What guy? Warrick you're breaking up." Catherine ambled out of her car, locking the doors once more and stuffed her keys in her jean pocket. "Hold on, I'm going to try and get a better signal." Catherine slung her bag over her shoulder and began to walk up the street. When Warrick's voice didn't get any clearer she glanced at her display, she was greeted by the impending blinking red battery.
"Shit." Catherine swore as her phone died. She glanced around the practically deserted street, contemplating her options. Normally one would call a tow truck when confronted with the predicament of the flat tire, but now her phone was dead. Dorsia Avenue. Grissom's place was a few streets up and she knew where his spare key was, she'd just let herself in if he was already en route to the scene, he wouldn't mind. So she'd walk, not the wisest thing, but her choices were limited.
()0()0()0()0()0()
Grissom examined the corpse of Juliana Leishman, her throat had been torn out and the blood had splattered down her face and around the floor of the sofa where she lay in the middle of the room. Two more bodies had been found with similar MOs, and, like Juliana, their throats had been ripped out, bodies positioned the same way as they were murdered.
Catherine and Sara had combed every inch of the first crime scene, the second had been discovered during Swing but the whole Graves team had shown up to help once they realized they might have a serial on their hands. Juliana's case, and should there be others, would fall into the Nightshift's responsibility.
Nothing but a disturbing lack of evidence had been found at the first scene and he and his team had had the same discouraging result at the second. Even though the crimes were now established to be a serial, they could find no sign of a break in, or anything that indicated foul play, except for the body and blood. No yanked out hairs, no defensive wounds on the victim, not even a knocked over lamp.
"She should have more blood that this…" Grissom mused.
Nick joined him, camera in hand. "Her heads almost completely decapitated, at the angle she was positioned…" Juliana looked like she had been pushed over the sofa, her knees were the highest part of her body, legs bent over the back of the sofa. Her head and left arm were hanging off the seat by the arm rest, her torso and other arm, the majority of her weight, were being supported by the seat of the sofa. "All the blood should have ran down onto the floor." Only a small pool of blood had formed under the victim's head. "There should be a much larger pool. She looks posed, I'd say she was killed elsewhere if it wasn't for the splatter." They both looked upwards at the drops of blood forming a crude line on the low ceiling over the victim's body.
"We don't even know if it's her blood, or the killer could have staged the blood splatter as well as pose the body. That could explain how he got in here…"
Juliana was walking alone at night, she decides to take a shortcut, a hooded figure emerges from an alley and grabs her, after slitting her throat he proceeds to quickly mutilate her neck with the blade. Blood pools on the concrete around them. After he's finished he chucks the knife into a nearby Dumpster and fishes a wallet with her license and a set of keys from his victim's purse.
"So he kills her than goes through the trouble of transported her body back to her place of residence and positions her so that every remaining drop comes out here where she can be found, why? Killing and mutilating them is not enough for our serial?" Grissom asked the question to no one in particular.
"Maybe it's personal, hoping a loved one would find her? Or maybe a copycat? Enough of the last two killings has been spread across the news."
"A copycat would feel different. This one's the same as the others, the copycat would be sloppy. The lack of evidence is evidence in itself."
"Hey," Warrick announced himself, peeking inside from the back door. "Catherine's got a flat, I'm going to go pick her up at your place." He informed Grissom.
"What is she doing at my house?"
"It was close." Warrick shrugged and made his exit.
Grissom and Nick turned back to the corpse, Nick shone his Maglite over the blood-covered face.
"Severe trauma to the left arm." Grissom said and Nick turned his gaze to the likely Perimortem contusions decorating Juliana's arm.
"He tried to subdue her." Nick guessed. "He knocked her around a bit before he killed her."
"He would have had to have been careful, nothing here has been disturbed."
Juliana's walking through her apartment, a man emerges from the kitchen, he seizes her arm and throws her into the wall. Her head cracks off the moldings and she crumples to the ground. The killer picks her up by her hair and drags her towards the sofa ignoring her screams.
()0()0()0()0()0()
Catherine pulled her jacket around her as she began to walk up Frine Street, the night seemed to be getting colder by the minute.
It took her a few moments of walking and denial to come to terms with the fact that the chill down her spine had nothing to do with the cold.
Catherine had been a CSI for a least 16 years, and she'd learned long before that to trust her intuition, her gut, her sixth sense if you will. And right now her entire body was telling her that something was not right. She crossed her arms and looked over her shoulder, whatever had wandered onto her radar was blending in with the shadows. She kept her pace calm and focused on the sounds around her: A car driving down the road ahead, two people arguing in the house to her left, a dog digging though a garbage pile up ahead. No footsteps, slow blacked-out cars, nor any cliched snapping twigs pursued her.
It was like that feeling you get when you left the house with the stove on or that illusive actor's name from that movie you should know you but can't recall. The unexplainable feeling of something sitting in the back of your brain, muffled.
Despite the lack of evidence, something was not right.
Quickening her pace, the CSI crossed the deserted intersection and spun around, unable to hide from the streetlights, her pursuer was forced to come into their glow.
She looked up, blinking in the luminosity of the streetlights. Some ways down the street a flash of black darted across, whoever it was, he was tall and wearing a hood pulled over his face. Catherine watched the blur pass out of the light and to her side of the street.
She thought of her daughter, miles away, blissfully eating popcorn and giggling with her friends about the captain of the basketball team. She thought about her gun, a nine-millimeter, safely tucked away in the glove compartment of her car a block down the street. She thought about Warrick, probably worrying about her. And she thought about all the cases she and the others had process that started out exactly like this…
Catherine ran.
Her pointed shoes beat it down the sidewalk, her purse swinging at her sides, keys digging into her thighs as her legs pumped extra hard. She could only hope she found a person, a squad car, a restaurant, anything before the reason she was running full tilt down Frine Street caught up with her.
Catherine tried to figure out where her predator was but she couldn't see anything behind her. She couldn't hear anything, her own breathing was too loud, her heart too loud pounding in her ears, her own feet to loud pounding on the concrete. But if she didn't hear him before, why should she hear anything now?
She found herself at another intersection. She'd be at Grissom's soon, that is, if she ever made it that far.
A car pulled up in front of her, the electric window on the passenger side whizzed down and the driver leaned over.
"Hey Cath, in a hurry?"
Catherine took a deep breath and just starred at Warrick's amused look. She felt embarrassed to be found in such a state of panic without any immediate threat in sight. But despite that, she turned to look back, an empty street greeted her, still and innocent and bathed in moonlight.
"Hey, you okay?" Warrick's previously cool demeanor was replaced with a furrowed brow of concern.
"Yeah, of course." Not. I think I was just chased down a dark street by my imagination, Catherine's inner voice contradicted wryly as she opened the passenger door and getting on the car.
Warrick knew that probing further into his friend's unease would get him nowhere. She'd already brushed him off and a mask of seriousness was now trying to cloud the worry set in her angular features. He buried his immediate concern and returned the easy-going grin to his face.
"We've got a crime scene to process."
A/N: Okay, so I'm not sure what I want to do with this thing as far as pairing goes. Sandle? YoBling? Wedges? Snicker? Stillows? GSR or no GSR? I think I may do a bit of GSR. Tell me what you think. You guys do have to pick someone because I need a pairing or my epilogue won't be as sweet as I planned. And, by sweet, I don't mean fluffy.