Will's daemon had changed into something they couldn't focus on.
It was like trying to stare into darkness. No matter how hard they tried, their eyes could not make out her shape.
It was almost like she'd become invisible. Except, she wasn't. She was still there. They just...couldn't see her.
Her edges had blurred away to nothing, and even her shadow was impossible to make out.
Jack Crawford tried not to let it get to him, and focused instead on the crime scene they had been called out to investigate.
It wasn't much better than trying to figure out what Kali had become.
The body was almost non-existent.
The face had been burned into a blackened shell hidden by dark hair, and the muscle of the shoulders and arms had been cut away, leaving nothing but pure white bone, and metal pauldrons had been placed over it where the shoulder-blades had once been.
From there, silk ribbons as yellow as the sun waved in the chilling wind, as though nothing beyond the shoulder held any importance. The arms were nowhere to be seen.
The chest had been cut open according to autopsy regulations, but the ribs had been pulled out to form a cage around the abdomen. The heart had been removed, and had been impaled in between the points of the ribs, so that it hovered in the middle of the torso, still dripping, still fresh.
None of it made sense. Arrows fitted with owl feathers had been rammed into what was left of the left shoulder, running all the way down to the ground in a cape, and the right shoulder had plates of green leather that interlocked over one another like giant scales, almost hiding the ribbons tied to the metal from view except for where the ends fluttered out in the wind.
And that wasn't even the strangest part. Tentacles-octopus tentacles—had been sewn into the bottom of the torso where the hips would have been had they not been removed, and hung toward the ground, curling against the dirt and covered in a light later of leaves that the wind had tossed over them. More ribbons—larger than the yellow ones, and bright, blood-red, hung to the ground behind them, and twisted against the confines of the cage they formed, struggling to follow the wind when it tugged at them.
As far as Jack could tell, the body had been tied to a tree to hold it in the air, but he couldn't see any ropes.
His gaze drifted back to Will, who still stood in the spot he had taken five minutes ago, his daemon still shifting and turning and almost invisible. It hurt Jack's eyes to look at her, so he turned away again, to the other side, his mouth already opening to ask Beverly what she thought—
—Only to meet empty space, and silence.
There was no Beverly, no blue-feathered parrot on her shoulder. Not even Price or Zeller to question.
Even Hannibal was missing from the scene, visiting with a family friend for the day.
Jack was alone with Will, and the silence was creeping along his skin like insects he couldn't brush off.
Kali's form shifted, suddenly, as though she'd almost caught onto the edge of a clear shape, but then it dissolved once more into impossibility, and Jack had to resist the urge to speak, to break the silence.
Nothing but the wind and the leaves skittering over the dirt was left to dissolve the quiet over the crime scene, and he could almost feel the splintered edges of Will Graham's consciousness digging into his skin like shards of glass, digging in deeper with every second that passed that he was exposed to the gruesome vision before them.
Like a bleeding wound, Will was drowning, and Jack wasn't sure he would be able to pull him back out. He didn't want to be responsible for someone's shattered mind. But he needed the information that only Will could give him.
Finally, Will breathed out, evenly, his daemon still something unseen out of the corner of his eye, and Jack knew that he could now safely voice the questions that had been burning inside his mind.
But Will beat him to the sound, not turning to look, his gaze still locked away, on the body hanging from the tree like some monstrous hybrid.
"This woman didn't fit into his view of the world." He said, almost to himself, as though he were alone.
Kali's form began to slip back into the realm of reality. Fur sprouted from her suddenly small body, grey-ish brown, with darker spots and a short tail that ended in black.
A civet, he realized after a moment, an African civet.
When Kali spoke, her voice was lower, almost male. Softer, rougher. "He's curious. He wants to understand." She said, swinging her nose close to the ground, and approaching the body a few steps that crunched softly on the leaves underfoot.
His own daemon stepped forward slightly, as though entranced, and tracing the leopard's footsteps.
Not for the first time, Jack was unable to believe what his eyes were showing him.
But he shoved the mystification away, focusing on the problem at hand.
His eyes locked onto the scales and feathers. "Why the scales?" He asked, "Why the feathers?"
Why the ribbons and metal?
He wasn't sure he wanted to know what the tentacles meant.
But Will wasn't a mind-reader, no matter what it seemed, and his voice was quiet when he spoke, following his daemon the few steps closer until he was barely a few inches away from the body.
"She is nothing he has ever encountered before. She doesn't belong to any category he has constructed. He placed her heart in between her ribs to punish her. She keeps her secrets close, and refused to tell him. This is her punishment. He offered her life. She refused. And now she's taken her secrets to the grave."
Will's head tilted to the side, and his daemon curled behind his legs, her fur shifting in between fur and feathers and scales as fluidly as water, but never leaving behind the spotted pattern or shape of the civet.
Bersheyna was a few feet away from Will now, tensed and watching the other daemon warily.
Will spoke again without prompting, his fingers tracing the air infront of the limp tentacles. "He wants us to see her who for what she is. He wants us to ask ourselves the question he has been asking himself." He said, his voice almost a whisper.
"And what is that?" Jack asked, stepping forward as the bond between he and his daemon strained slightly at the distance, "What question?" He pressed, when Will was silent.
Finally, as though remembering suddenly that he wasn't alone, Will turned to look at him. His eyes were dark, hidden behind the frames of his glasses, but sharp, his mouth firm. "An enigma."
The word was uttered with such anger that for a moment, Jack tensed.
Kali had shifted back into the shape that was unseeable, and her voice rumbled from her inexistent throat in a growl that shivered through the air like an earthquake, low and unable to be avoided.
For a moment, Jack could see golden fur splashed with red, and heard the gurgling screams of a marmoset drowning in its own blood ringing in his ears like an echo that had forgotten to fade.
Then the anger dissipated, and seemed to simmer over Will like a second skin.
"You aren't going to catch this killer, Jack." He said, his mouth twisting even as his daemon returned to her leopard shape, "He's going to take his secrets to the grave. He won't stop killing until he knows whatever secret this woman held."
"But you already said she took it with her." Bersheyna said, looking at the leopard instead of Will, "How will he learn it now?"
The leopard just growled softly, and Will spoke for her, keeping his gaze on Jack even as he answered Bersheyna's question. "She wasn't the only one that knew her secret." He said, "She wasn't alone. He's going to hunt down the others and kill them, too. Unless they give him what he wants."
"Information?" Jack guessed.
"Understanding." Will corrected.
Silence fell over the small clearing, as Jack closed his eyes to shut out the world around him.
"Was this the Chesapeake Ripper?" He asked, finally, quietly.
He didn't need to see to know that Will had nodded, or to know that his hands had fisted at his sides.
Even behind his eyelids, he could still see Kali, a glowing collection of dust that swirled with the colors of chaos and random chance. There was nothing firm or concrete about her. Not even the form she'd settled into.
The cold of the wind was starting to burrow in through the sleeves of his coat, and Jack shivered in the autumn air.
Leaves crunched under Will's feet, and the shape of his daemon moved to follow the sound. Jack opened his eyes to watch him walk away, and didn't bother to say anything more.
Bersheyna trotted back to his side as he pulled his radio from his hip and spoke into it, "Price, Zeller, your turn." Before replacing it in the holster on his belt.
The bloodhound that was his daemon lowered her head to the ground, and Jack could share for a moment in the scents that overwhelmed the bond between them. The smell of decay, and chemicals meant to slow it. The sharp dullness of steel, and the soft thickness of the leather that covered it. The hardness of the plastic arrow-shafts, and the air of the feathers. Blood, and silk, and the alien strangeness of the tentacles that seemed to clog the air and weigh it down with unfamiliarity.
The fading scent of Will's sweat—anger and fear and horror all in one—and the strange lightness of the leopard that walked by his side.
Then the crunch of leaves sounded again, and the traded insults of Price and Zeller interrupted the almost-silence with the snicker of a lemur's laugh, and the harshness of a toucan's smirk.
Breathing out slowly against the cold air, Jack lowered his head to look at his daemon, and wished for a moment that he had chosen a different career.
But then the moment of doubt faded, and he stood back to watch the other members of his team do their job.
It wasn't until several hours later that the body was identified.
And like a stone dropping into a pond, the calmness was shattered, and another devastating blow was dealt to Jack's peace of mind.
Because the body hanging from the tree was Marona Katz, and nothing Jack did could stop his anxiety for Beverly from increasing.
It had been two weeks since she'd gone missing, and now he wondered if they would ever see her alive again.