The Secret History
The weather was bad. Not just your ordinary "bad" but "bad-bad". Rain was relentless, covering the streets in sheets of muddied liquid death. Lightning streaked across the sky every few seconds. It was early afternoon, the parts of the sky, that areas not shaded in by black clouds, possessed a lazy gray hue. From the droplet decorated window, the city looked a different shade of miserable; His eyes reflected that tragic chroma.
He waited and waited. For the eventual call. It had been almost two days, he left her fingers untouched, so surely they would… Buzz… Buzz… He sighed, people around him in the lecture hall turned to stare. He answered.
"Is this Mr Hale? This is the New York city coroner's office."
"Yes." He answered softly.
"Mr Hale is there a problem?" The professor stopped his lecture.
"I regret to inform you that Victoria Grace was murdered a couple of days ago." He hung up.
"Yes, sir. Um, Victoria Grace was murdered. That's why she wasn't in class these past few days."
"Oh…" The class was speechless. Marcus got up, and proceeded to walk out of the hall.
He walked through the rain, straight to the coroner's office. They ushered him through the doors, saying words he didn't quite want to hear. They took him to a cool room, the metal walls had engulfed his senses. He smelt bodies of humans, and, he smelt her. Indistinguishable, she smelt sweet like lilacs.
"Can I see the body?" He asked startling the coroner.
"Are you sure. The damage was extensive, I'm sure you wouldn't be able to…~" He looked at the man.
"I'd like to see the body." He said, more assertive.
"Yes."
He opened one of the metal boxes, her smell intensified. He pulled back the drape, it was sticky with dried blood. He was left to condemn his handiwork. There was little left, he targeted the key areas. Face and skull, stomach contents and shoulder. The rest he ate to make it look good.
"Cause of death?" He asked awkwardly gulping.
"Ghoul attack. Must have been starved from the extent of the assault. I reported it to the Police and they've sent investigators. As her emergency contact, you'll have to make a statement." He covered the mass of flesh and bone once more in the white tarp. Pushing her back into the metal coffin. A tear rolled down his face, the metaphor of finality really sinking in.
"I understand. When can we bury the body?"
"When the CCG comes to inspect the body. After they finish, you will be free to claim it."
There was nothing quite like the mundane activities of an Investigator; that day-to-day predictable drivel. She sat tapping her pencil against the mountain of thoughtless paper. She had scratched her thoughts onto one, long doodles of scratched figures with knives for hands.
"What's that? A dog?" Dirk poked the black scratching. Making it smudge into a new shape; a shaded silhouette holding a gun? She actually liked it more that way.
"Something like that. Please tell me we have a case. Paperwork has me at the end of the rope." She flicked her pencil to the ground. Dirk leaned down and carefully extracted the sharpened instrument.
"We actually do, but the case came to us. We have to take a statement from the victim's boyfriend he's here in the Interrogation room."
"Victim?" Amber asked, a little too excitedly.
"Yea, girl was found in Central Park. Reports say ninety percent of her had been eaten."
"How in the hell was her body identified!?" Amber said in disbelief, they turned the corner, and walked towards the room.
"Only thing left of her was the hand and some bones." Dirk said with that grim look in his eye.
"Some. Bones?" Amber questioned.
"Not all. They found teeth marks on the remaining ones." He gripped the handle to the door.
"Hungry bastard."
The two investigators walked into the room, it had an eerie silence about it; an atmosphere like a malignant tumour. She felt threatened, but for no apparent reason. Was it the way the man with the black hair sat? With his leg crossed over the other, his hands coiled together on his lap. His eyes narrow and blue like a river straight, widened at the sight of the blonde Swede. As if the realization of seeing an old friend; or a ghost. His hair short and black hair screamed vanity, carefully styled with a patient hand and disciplined comb.
She looked down and read the file in her hand. His name, Marcus Hale. No former priors, no arrests, not even a parking ticket. Student at NYU, worked in a coffee shop/bookstore named Cafe Diem. "Hm cute." Worked part time at a daycare for toddlers and children in his neighborhood. Under different circumstances she may have asked him to dinner. But these were… troubling circumstances.
"Mr Hale, we're sorry for your lose. Is it okay if we asked you a few questions?" Amber sat down opposite him. Slowly, his head turned, and their eyes met, and she could tell it wasn't for the first time. His eyes… they were meant for crying; sorrow was all they saw. His nostrils flared, taking in an accusatory and drawn out sniff.
"Certainly, Ms Winters." His face remained stoic, he narrowed his lids looking at her in a way no man had. It wasn't one of lust, longing, or intrigue. Nothing of the usual suitors, his look, was one of genuine confusion. Dirk noticed and looked back in forth between the blond and the raven.
"Where were you the night of the murder?" Her tone shifted to hostile, and he broke his gaze.
"I was closing the day care. Sometimes the parents have to leave their kids overnight depending on their work schedules. I was setting them up in my building." He answered looking at Dirk this time, confused as to why the man wasn't saying a word.
"Can anyone corroborate that story?" Winters prodded a little further, she leaned forward, she could smell him from across the room. His perfume was sweet, and expensive, from the inquisitive, fruity aroma, she guessed French.
"Yes, all the kids who stayed, and my coworkers Dante, Michael, and Harper." He paused, leaned back taking a longer look at the stern look on Amber's face. "Am I suspect?" His face had that look, one Amber had seen before, one of absolute disgust. Her shoulders relaxed.
"Of course not, standard procedure." Amber released the handle of her knife. Marcus felt his kagune bubble back into his back.
"Could you tell us…" Dirk spoke up, scrolling through his notebook taking out a pen. "The last time you saw Ms Grace?"
"It was um. Earlier that day. She was taking a kid home from the daycare. She liked to walk around Central Park cause she felt it was…" Tears were starting to build up in his eyes. "She felt it was safe." He rested his hand on his jaw and wiped the liquid from his lids.
"We're sorry. We know this is difficult for you, but please bare with us." Amber reached out and touched his hand, he recoiled at the touch, his skin was stone cold. After a second, he placed it back on the table.
"Would anyone want to hurt Victoria?" Amber asked, his eyes burned as she said her first name. Her name.
"She was killed. In a Ghoul attack." He spoke rather aggressively. "I'm sorry, but I didn't even know Ghouls lived in my neighborhood. So quite frankly, I can say, no. I do not know any Ghouls that would want to eat my girlfriend!"
"While it is unusual, Ghouls are very much like us Mr Hale, they can be unpredictable. You sure there wasn't anyone following her? Anyone acting unusual? Manic even?"
"Plus, they have legs. They can go wherever they want." Dirk added jokingly, but Marcus' face didn't reflect amusement.
"Right. Anything else?" He locked eyes with Amber once more, this time she felt a certain deathly glow behind the iris. It was if he had seen her before, that look of remembrance.
"Nothing else Mr Hale. But if you remember anything, anything at all. Don't be afraid to call me." She handed him her card, it was white, standard issue from the police department. He took the card in his hand, he smiled for a second.
"Thank you." He then proceeded to exit. Amber sunk back into her chair, Dirk circled around putting his hands on the chair their guest had sat in.
"You believe him?" Dirk asked, pushing it back in.
"Yes. But… I don't know." Amber bit her nail staring at the cold concrete walls.
"You can spit it out you know." Dirk opened the door, waiting for the blonde to get out of her seat.
"Isn't it convenient that the same night we killed a Ghoul, and the body gets taken. A girl winds up dead, eaten to the bone half way across the city in the same night!"
"Its not too unusual. Ghoul attacks have increased in these passing few days." Dirk left the interrogation room, Amber followed behind.
"I guess you're right. Just can't help shake the feeling. The air tastes funny on this one, that's all."
"Are you sure?" Marcus blew on his coffee, it's steam fogged against the steel of the machine that made it.
"Positive. She was there that night, same as that Agent Dirk. But that wasn't even the strange part…" Marcus trailed off, Michael sat at the counter, he was reading a novel, about half way through fully engrossed in the fine print.
"What?" Dante, his coworker poured his own concoction. It steamed as it melted through the ice in his mug.
"I could tell she had showered, the smell of lilacs and mouth wash was particularly pungent. But she smelt a little odd. Behind it all, she smelt exactly like Victoria, the stench was soaked into the skin."
"You don't think…" began Dante. Marcus nodded.
"Yes. They turned her into a weapon."
"Naw, shit!..." The blue-haired boy bowed his head over his coffee cup, pondering on the new revelation. "What are we going to do now? When word gets around that the CCG iced her then...~"
"We'll handle it." Marcus interrupted. Dante sighed.
"Don't get me wrong. Our entourage aren't a walk in the park - but we don't have the numbers to stand up too…~"
"Call Harper, tell her to assemble everyone for a meeting tonight. And I mean everyone."
"What about Habrok? He's in deep cover in Avant Garde right now…~"
"Especially. Habrok. We're too vulnerable, and we will need our biggest gun for the fallout."