A/N: Let's start with a bang!!!

The sun was rising on a warm summer day when the call came through the Miami-Dade Police Department; detective Frank Tripp had personally responded to it. As he waited for the rest of his back up, two beige Hummers arrived in their full glory. From one came out one CSI Ryan Wolfe and the newly reassigned Tim Speedle, both with kits on tow and ready to begin processing. It had been already 3 months since the Orlando raid and nearly half a year since Horatio Caine's kidnapping in Louisiana. On the other was the lieutenant himself, wearing a black suit and a white dress shirt that just begged to be bloodied up. The scene was a used warehouse registered to one Pedro Fierari, a moderately successful car dealer.

"Frank, what do you have for me today?" Horatio inquired as he removed his sunglasses.

"Not a scene for the weak I'll tell you that much, Horatio. Alexx and Secondet are already processing the body." Tripp responded, taken aback of what their newest case.

"Anything you wanna tell us before you go in?" Speed asked while he slipped a pair of latex gloves over his hands. He had relearned the basics of crime scene processing very quickly due to his previous life. All he needed was a review and he was good to go. He was a completely reanimated corpse that for some reason had kept his mind and never lost his memories; all good until unsuspecting people saw his inverted eyes, the only reminder of his state.

"Yeah, hope you packed some puke bags in those kits."

The atmosphere was horrendous; a steamy vapor of bacterial gases mixed with the natural humidity of South Florida, flies going around surfaces like crazy while the sun greeted the earth with its glare. The chaos sprayed itself in red and dark hues of purple all over the cement and zinc walls. Ryan's nose burned with the distinct smell of rotting flesh while Speedle ignored it. Spending time in a body cabinet did that to him.

Alexx Woods had her share of trouble as she tried to examine the corpse. It was mangled and outstretched, just like its tissue. The woman had enough maggots crawling around her body that it made the medical examiner's task of finding a preliminary cause of death all the much harder. Her relief came as the CSIs arrived.

"Whoever did this was brutal…made sure baby girl had no chance of getting out. Her entire abdomen's up for display," she stated as she replaced her gloves with new ones. "I don't what's still there, what's getting eaten by the maggots or what's been taken out."

Horatio took a moment to observe the surroundings before facing Alexx. He noticed a broken roll of nylon filled with white powder. Speed quickly took pictures of it while Ryan snapshot the body.

"Speed, I want this analyzed at Trace. Ryan, you're helping Alexx with the body and catalogue every drop in this place. There might be a chance the killer's blood is still in here." Caine ordered as he walked to Secondet Lainhart's side.

"Sexie?"

The angel snapped out of his trance and faced the lieutenant ruefully. "Sorry, I was distracted."

"It's ok; it's your first field investigation, you'll get over it." Horatio calmed with a smile. Secondet shook his head and signaled the man for a bit of privacy. He had some bad news that was better off not being heard by others.

Meanwhile, Alexx finally lifted the skin that had glued itself onto the gravel. Vertical marks lined themselves in a parallel fashion, not at all related to the main wounds. In her professional opinion, they seemed aged and probably ante mortem. Using a hand signal, she told Ryan to take a picture of the tissue. The coroner's assistance arrived and Alexx took a step back.

"I'll get a COD by the time you come back to the lab." Dr. Woods announced Wolfe as she left with the crew. Ryan nodded and continued to photograph alongside Tim Speedle. This man, dressed in a dark teal silk shirt and black pants, was his predecessor.

When he got a chance alone in one of the storage cabinets, Ryan murmured something under his breath.

"What was that, Wolfe?" Tim inquired while lifting and tagging a rag.

"I'm sorry I took your job." Wolfe replied shamefully. There was some truth to his statement; Horatio had hired him after Speedle's first death in order to fill the occupational void. After Tim recovered his prowess as a CSI, Ryan felt he had become a useless addition to the team.

The living impaired being smiled disarmingly, "It was your dream and I was dead so don't worry about it." A quick chuckle and he continued. "H was smart; he picked someone who took better care of his gun than I'll ever will."

Ryan shrugged and kept on with his job. Speed was quickly assigned Horatio's side but the lieutenant conveniently switched the names on the payroll. Internal Affairs had a field day trying to figure out where to put him but Caine cut the bureaucratic struggle and simply put him back.

Secondet was a bit nervous but shook it off as Horatio walked over towards him. His hair was pulled back by a bandana; making his emotions all the more clear. Lainhart had been working with Alexx for about the same time the lieutenant had been kidnapped, making him very aware of the rumors some of the dead had to say.

"Yes, Mr. Lainhart?"

"Archimedes Di Viságe has declared himself leader of the Covenant." The boy angel stated as he showed a picture three months old. In it was a familiar monstrosity holding what looked like a human head.

"The head he's holding is Mary La Fey's, the previous leader of the group." Secondet explained. "The gesture means dominance in any other clan, all the more reinforced by the head's status."

"So in vulgar terms, Archimedes is showing how big his undead balls are to whoever's under him." Horatio surmised.

"There is no one under him." Secondet took note of Caine's bewildered stare. "Archimedes single-handedly eliminated the Covenant."

Horatio's blue eyes opened in shock and his mind went back to that orgy of vamps. The clan in which everyone took a bite from his body, he estimated, numbered on the fifty in membership. He could picture piles of bodies lined against the walls, the lovely parasite grinning evilly on top. "I see. Thank you, Sexie."

Secondet nodded and went off to his job. Caine pondered for a second at Di Viságe's brutality but returned to the present situation. He decided it was best to tell his team once they were all at the lab.

On the other side of the building, Daikonran Kino arrived on the scene with Natalia Boa Vista as his back up. They were there to collect any evidence of the killer's escape or any ID left.

Kino was not very pleased with the arrangement; Boa Vista had proven incompatible with his field of work, the preternatural, by mocking it. He dismissed as ignorant and gave her the cold shoulder. Let her wander into a zombie room and see how she calls it 'fake ass waste of money'.

"Look, I'm sorry I said what I said!" the woman said exasperated.

Kino smirked while pulling back his shoulder length hair into a ponytail. "You should be apologizing to Speedle; you were the one who called him a 'fake'."

"That was before he showed me the bullet hole." Natalia sighed. She had been through so much in her life lately that it just didn't sit well that a 'newbie' flew up the ranks by claiming to be a deceased cop.

"Let's just do our jobs and maybe he and I will forgive you."

A/N: First chapter up! Reviews are greatly appreciated