CHAPTER 2 : Someone and something :

In front of him, R.C was crouched on his haunches, blue forensic covers like upside down shower caps over his stupid boots, latex gloves covering his hands and feeding up into the disposable guards that covered from wrist to elbow. He rested his elbows on his knees, hands hanging between them, and stared at the floor. Carl stood behind him and looked around.

All around the pair, the fourth floor apartment was splattered with blood, like a blender job with the cap taken off. In front of where R.C crouched was obviously the place where the body had come to rest and soaked blood into the carpet, apparently enough of it to make its way through the insulation and into the apartment below. Hell of a thing, Carl thought. To be innocently eating wheaties one minute, showered in blood from your roof the next.

Around the room, there was what the cop at the door called "signs of struggle," and Carl was beginning to redisignate "evidence of monster lunch." The body had been slashed to the spinal cord by something long and razor sharp - knives, of course the local PD had said - but that couldn't account for the missing parts. The heart, liver and surrounding viscera were missing entirely from the picture the police found thanks to one iron-showered downstairs neighbour.

"I know what you're thinking," R.C claimed from his crouch at Carl's feet. "But it just ain't. The cycle's not right. Not when I'm blind as a bat just taking the garbage out. No moon out tonight, brother."

"You never know what I'm thinking," Carl argued, but it was a blatant lie and they both knew it. R.C grinned up at him and duck-walked further into the mess.

"There - see that scatter? Something was feeding sure, but something else was standing right there. If this was wolf chow, then they would have been too."

Damn it, Carl thought. He's right.

"And there," R.C stood up to face Carl, moving to stand in the middle of the room, his hands spread. "It stood here, then -"

He shook his head like a dog worrying meat, and Carl followed the extensions of the motion painted in liberal ribbons of dried blood across the floor and coffee table. Right again. His uneasiness was only growing.

"Look around for prints," he said, trying to push it down.

R.C shook his head. "If there were prints, it'd have been in the report."

Carl snorted. "Yeah, sure lackeys like us are given the whole low down."

"Like I haven't read it anyway," R.C shot back.

Carl lifted his head from the blood at his feet to track his partner with his eyes, as R.C sidestepped the dark slash of the victim's cold lifeblood congealed in the carpet and tiptoed towards the window.

"You didn't - you hacked the -?"

R.C tilted him his trademark sardonic half-grin from the window, a calculated move meant to communicate cockiness rather than humour.

"Don't ask, don't tell, man," he quoted.

Carl shrugged out his shoulders and dug in the satchel across his chest, looking for a blacklight. R.C ran his fingers along the sill, no doubt looking for residual sulphur, then unlatched the catch experimentally.

There was nothing untoward under the light's star-pale beam, and R.C found no demon trail. It was a long shot, anyways. Demons rarely animalistically eviscerated their victims with claws. The only reason the cops were calling this a homicide was because it took place in a fourth floor apartment in Long Beach. He thought again of Montana with dark wistfulness. There, it might have been chalked up to animal attack.

"Okay," R.C snagged his attention from the middle of the room. The younger hunter was looking around with down-to-business written all over him.

"No demon, no witch, no werewolf, no shifter. And, you know, no animals or nothin'."

He blew out a breath through his nose, perching his hands on narrow hips.

"Tell me we're sure this ain't just some grade-A whackjob slicin' and dicin' with a machete."

He crossed one arm loosely in front of his chest, slashing an invisible machete back and forth with the other like a skinny white Bruce Lee.

Carl crossed the room to the window.

"This was latched, alarm was still on, no forced entry to the place. But you already knew that. Cop said that she let her attacker in because that's the only option that makes any sense to them. I doubt she let in something capable of doing this. Yeah, I'm going with something rather than someone."

"Maybe a cocktail of both," replied R.C, moving to stand again in front of the spread bloodstain by the door. "Whatever stood here and watched the show might have been a someone."

Carl looked at the spot on the floor, uneasiness again crawling up his back.

"Someone," he said softly. "Someone stood there and watched some monster tear that woman to shreds and eat her organs. Why?"

R.C shrugged. "Why do people snort crack and fuck hookers, or crochet and join bridge clubs? Why does anyone do anything?" He pinned an uncomfortable Carl with his pale eyes. "So, apart from the all-knowing oracle of Occam's Razor in supernatural reverse, got anything else to back up your monster lunch theory, old man?"

Carl shifted his gaze from contemplation of the bloodstained carpet to favour a quizzical regard of his partner. R.C was standing again with his hands perched on his hips, fully facing Carl, his expression twisted into that characteristic mixture of smart-arse cockiness and confrontational meanness. He was deliberately trying to provoke Carl and not being very subtle about hiding it - at least, not from a man who knew him as well as Carl did, despite the show. You didn't work with a guy in jobs like theirs for eight years without gaining some insight into his nature, genuine and contrived. The truth was he was uneasy too, and expressing it in a vintage R.C sort of clusterfucked way. Carl looked up at him and felt his expression soften, which in turn provoked R.C to scowl in confused discomfort and flick his eyes around the room nervously.

"Why don't you go right ahead and find me some unequivocal hard evidence to back up my unmatched gut instincts, if it's that important to you, Dick Tracy," he suggested, his voice warm with amusement.

R.C snorted and turned away, but proceeded to strip down the room for supernatural clues nonetheless, while Carl smiled at his back.

"So, in your covert view of the police reports, got any red flags?"

"You saw the picture," R.C returned, crouching down on the linoleum of the kitchen floor to unpack the chemical cleaners of their day job. "Body slashed to the bone, they suspected knives, but there was no trace elements in the wounds. Heart and liver missing, along with surrounding guts and shit."

Carl flicked him a look, idly and utterly pointlessly wondering why R.C often spoke in such a way as to deliberately downplay his intelligence.

"Organs never found. So something ate them, according to your theory. No one heard or saw anything, but that's not so much of a stretch. You were right about the lockup - doors and windows were found locked, alarm on." He tilted his head at the ceiling. "There's the vents - no one mentioned those. That all sounds good for a hunt, yeah. But there's one hole. If something human stood here and watched a rabid monster eat some chick, how'd they get out alive?"

Carl frowned. "I'll see your question and raise you another - how did a monster get out of a locked apartment on its own, if it had no help doing it? Something that tears a woman apart and eats her - that's cold, animal behaviour. Doesn't exactly strike me as the sort of customer likely to lock up and leave the keys under the mat."

R.C flicked his eyes to the point in the carpet where their mystery human may have stood, and Carl could see the reflection of his own unease. Monsters - sure. Ghosts, spirits, demons, shifters, tulpas, witches, vampires, black dogs, hellhounds and everything in-between, both he and R.C wouldn't flinch arming up with whatever weapon would take it out and lose no sleep over doing so. But humans - humans scared him, and though R.C would never drop the bullshit long enough to admit it, he knew the younger hunter felt the same.

"It's like gangsters matching pitbulls," he muttered.

It was an apt enough analogy. Carl gestured to the mess surrounding them.

"Get anything else from this?"

R.C shook his head, both in negation and to clear it of his thoughts, Carl suspected.

"Nah, lets get on with it."

The machine flashed two messages when Carl returned wearily to the office. It wasn't far from his apartment, and he wasn't quite sure why he had detoured to the business instead of just going home with R.C. As if seeing the guy at work every job they got wasn't enough, he was also his next-door neighbour. For Carl's part, he had regarded the arrangement with a contradictory sort of love/hate. He wouldn't deny to himself that he wanted R.C close enough to keep an eye on him - they both knew what was out there in the dark, had hunted it for eight years. Conversely, it knew them. He didn't want something following the younger hunter home one night without him having someone close to turn to. But the very idea of actually living with R.C aged him another eight years. No, they'd kill each other - or more likely, he'd kill R.C.

He stabbed the button. The first was from the detective who had passed them on the job, Jacobson. His congested monotone crackling in a tinny imitation through the cheap speaker made Carl think of paperwork, black coffee and unsated desperation. Just listening to it made him tired.

"Nice job on the cleanup, wasn't sure you guys'd even be in town. Payment's been made by the department on the flat rate. Give you a call if anything else comes up."

Carl nodded absently. It was a familiar police complaint voiced in Jacobson's exhausted passive-aggressive way - though Carl and R.C had some roots, unlike many other hunters who stuck to the road, didn't mean they didn't go where the hunt took them from that springboard. The crime-scene and forensic clean-up outfit they ran had often allowed them access to supernaturally-inclined activity, like the apartment that day, without the riskier need for fraud. Carl was getting too old for a young gunslinger's game, and despite R.C's habitual bullshit cover necessitating the need to rail at him for that, his innate intelligence won his acquiescence in the end. The second message beeped into life.

"It's Mackey. Heard about some slice up down tinsel town and thought you guys might be on it. If not, head's up. I'm passing though that way myself in a couple of days if you need a third wheel. Just call."

Carl smiled to himself. He had always liked Mackey. There was absolutely nothing in this job for him to stuff and mount, however, he thought with a snort of laughter. No, so far they had next to nothing to go on anyway - no doubt R.C would be devoting himself to rectifying that shortcoming, and Carl had meant what he said. Though he didn't consider Mackey a yahoo, he didn't want other hunters in on this. Or anything, generally speaking. There were a fair few he respected, that was no less than the truth - Mackey was a good man, despite a few interesting personality quirks. And of course Bobby Singer seemed to be a man in everyone's journal, and had helped he and R.C out more times than he could count. And there had been Harvelle, he thought with a familiar slow settling of sadness. Poor old Bill, before that hellspawn clawed him all up. Turner had been good to them, but he stepped back from the job, and Carl had never asked him why. There had been others, by reputation or brief encounters. He knew contacts of contacts were out there, some less reputable than others. He slouched back in the cheap plastic chair that served as RC's idea of interior design and pulled in a deep sigh. There had been Billy Brady of course, but Seth's death at the hands of a demon - must be ten years ago now - had broken him and left him burned out. Carl frowned to himself, his mind skittering uncharacteristically to RC. Though he and RC were by no means involved the way Billy and Seth were, and maybe it was the uneasiness this job was working up in him, but he couldn't help but wonder in that moment if there was inevitably something dark waiting for them on down the road - one hunt gone bad was all it would take. One misstep, one slow reload. They knew the score - hunters didn't live long. But what would happen if he lost RC? He thought of Turner's famous phrase - "we all got it coming." He shivered suddenly, surprising himself out of his morbid reverie. Hell, he was being exactly what RC always sneered he was - a superstitious old fool. He stood up, putting it all out of his mind for the night. No doubt, the younger hunter would be on the scent, and remind him of it all again all too soon.

RC strode into Carl's apartment neglecting to knock, slammed the thin door, ripped off his worn black leather jacket and whipped it savagely at his partner's patched lounge suite, before dropping his lean form heavily into the lay-z-boy and propping his cowboy boots on Carl's coffee table. Only then did he shift his gaze to stick on Carl himself, who was sitting on the opposing couch and watching him without interest.

"Have fun?" Carl asked, despite the fact he knew it would only provoke the younger man.

RC twisted his face into a complicated mixture of disgust, anger, sarcasm and something else too contorted for Carl to place and hung his arms over the sides of the chair.

"The least you could fucking do is get me a beer," he said.

Carl complied without argument, leaning his shoulder into the kitchen doorjamb, waiting on the rant, as RC twisted off the cap and drank deeply.

"You know, you'd think we were fucking cleaning ladies with this shit. Here I am up to my elbows in piss and vomit listening to meathead cops talk up the overwhelming heroics of domestic war stories, all so we can keep our precious cover intact while some monster is out there happily eviscerating women. And where the fuck were you, anyways?"

"I took a detour to talk to Hughes again -"

RC snorted. "I got more chance out-striking a sidewinder than gettin' anything worth it out of that meatsack."

"At least then those boots would be practical for something," Carl smirked, earning him RC's settling glower. He pushed on before the younger hunter could wind up.

"And as a matter of fact, he did give me something, and while you were busy protecting our cover I did some digging."

He tossed a thin manilla file into RC's lap. RC shot Carl a final dirty look, and opened the file.

"What is this, some chick? A victim?"

"Not a victim. Maybe a witness, maybe something … else."

RC looked up at him. "Eh?"

"Look at the addresses," Carl directed, tipping his chin. "So far there's been two women killed this way - inside, apartment secured, slashed and organs missing. The scene we cleaned up for Jacobson, and now another one last night. This woman was seen at both, it turns out."

RC's eyebrows disappeared under the chaotic mop of his hair. His quick fingers leafed through the paperwork, finally coming up with a blurred, bad quality image of a woman, small and slender, dark hair and nondescript grey attire. He squinted at it.

"Hughes got that from the parking lot security camera across the street from last night's victim's house. Time-stamped about four hours before she was found."

"So, what," RC questioned, the frustration not quite worked out of his system still shortening his fuse. "Vengeful spirit, death omen, woman in fucking grey?"

Sarcasm was heavy in his voice, and Carl automatically drew in a slow breath through his nose, tempering his own irritation. It was a tick RC could read like a headline, and it only made him angrier.

"I don't know, but it's something. This woman was the only common denominator Hughes could find, his only lead. Which in a cop's world, gets him nowhere. It could get us further."

Carl's tone was measured, and he watched some of the fight suddenly drain out of RC. He took a pull from the bottle.

"Okay, Sherlock. So what now?"

"Without much more to go on, I'd say we need in on last night's crime scene."

"Doubt that'll get us much further," RC grumbled.

"You don't know that, and we have nothing else," Carl ground out, his temper rising just as his companion's cooled.

"So, what. Call Jacobson and ask to take on the job?" He was only half joking.

Carl sighed. "It may look suspicious, but unless he calls us, I don't see -"

His voice was cut short by the loud trilling of the phone. RC visibly startled, covering the reaction in defence against Carl's grin by complaining mulishly about Carl being a damn deaf old man. Carl picked up the phone, answered affirmatively with something RC couldn't catch, and took short notes. When he hung up, he was grinning.