Helicopters criss-crossed the night sky, beams of brilliant white light cutting through the darkness. A field of brightness played over the empty streets and alleys like the gaze of a predator, up and down the sides of buildings and through the dirt and scrub of vacant lots. But their gaze saw nothing, their search was unfulfilled. Whatever they were looking for was not making itself known.
Jimenez leaned against his rented car and sighed into his coffee, the thick odor of it making him recoil. Jimenez had very few regrets about joining the bureau, but chief among them would be the coffee. He had never been a fan, never could stand the taste, not even diluted with enough cream to desiccate a cow. Briggs told him that he'd get used to it, but if he hadn't developed a taste for it studying forensic science for seven hours a night then he probably never would. If this search went for any longer his needs for caffeine would go beyond the limits of any conventional beverage.
His radio squawked. He tossed the dregs of his coffee to the ground, crumpled up the paper cup and answered.
"Jimenez."
"Status report, Agent," said the familiar voice, her words ever so slightly stretched out and distorted.
"Briggs, you're supposed to be in the hospital," said Jimenez, whispering into the radio, not wanting any of the other officers milling around the dark, empty cityscape. "Are you drunk?"
"Of course I'm in the hospital!" shouted Briggs. "I escaped that thing twice, I'm not going to let it take me out with an infection."
"Right, right," said Jimenez. "How's your face?"
"I can live with it," said Briggs, her voice dropping back to normal. "They gave me about 40 stitches and put me on some serious painkillers. My whole face feels like it's stuffed with marshmallows."
"Well better get your ass well soon, or I'm going to wrap this thing while you're still in bed."
"You still haven't given me that status report, Jimenez," the voice on the other end seemed amused. Jimenez sighed. He was never able to get anything past her.
"The… spider landed in an abandoned warehouse, in a whole district full of abandoned warehouses," Jimenez said. "All kinds of dark places for him to hide, nobody around to see him move. We've got uniforms canvassing the area but it took us an hour just to mobilize around where he landed and the bastard was long gone by then. He could be anywhere in the city."
"Not like it can be easy for us," said Briggs. "How about Tooms, any sign of Tooms? Or that armor guy?"
"Not a hair," Jimenez said, pulling out a notebook. "We had the police set up a tip line, though. There were about a dozen false leads on Tooms and fifteen on the armor guy, plus ten Batmans… ten Batmen? Ten Batmans, seven Spider-Mans, three Robocops, a Ronald McDonald with a chainsaw and five whole teams of Power Rangers."
"God, that's the last thing we need," Briggs said. "As if we don't have enough trouble with the normal sized monster."
"Who was that masked guy?" Jimenez asked. "Did he say anything to you?"
"…I couldn't say," Briggs said. "It was really loud in that helicopter. Could barely hear my own gun going off."
"Right, stupid question," said Jimenez.
"Yes, yes it was," said Briggs.
Something caught Jimenez's eye. A tiny spot of blackness was moving against the tableau of gray and shadows that was the city at night.
"Hold on," he said, focusing on the shape. A single inattentive moment and it could be lost. "We have a situation."
He turned to approach the black shape, slowly, taking advantage of the night, careful enough not to spook it. He got closer and his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, and the figure resolved to what looked to be a man in a long, black coat, a dark baseball cap pulled down over his eyes. It didn't seem to notice Jimenez. In fact, the agent would likely have written the man off as just an ordinary man going about his nightly business if he wasn't the single most suspicious person he had ever seen.
"Excuse me, sir!" Jimenez called out. The figure didn't seem to hear him. "Sir, this area has been closed for a federal investigation. If you don't vacate this area immediately I'll be forced to detain-"
The figure made a sharp right turn into an alleyway, his footsteps breaking into a run as soon as he was out of Jimenez' line of sight. Jimenez broke into a run, drawing his radio.
"All units, this is Special Agent Jimenez, in pursuit of fleeing person of interest!" he said, following the retreating figure into the alleyway, keen instincts tracking the sounds of the strange man's pounding feet and long, flapping coat. "Subject dressed in black coat with black hat, currently on foot in alley south of Nielsen Street!"
He turned a corner and skidded to a halt. The corner led into a blind alley, bordered on all three sides by brick walls. The alley was shrouded in shadow, but he could see the darker shape of the black trenchcoat. Cautiously, he drew his pistol with one hand and flashlight in the other and approached the man.
"Nowhere to run, sir!" he called out, trailing the light over the dark figure. His shoes and pants were as black as his cloak, and as the flashlight beam came close to the man's face he shielded his eyes with a pair of black leather gloves. "Alright put your hands down. I'm FBI, you're nowhere near my pay grade." He took a step forward, slowly, his tone friendly but his arms up. "You're not under arrest… we just need to ask you a few questions, then you're on your way."
The black-clad man seemed to scoff.
"Questions?" he said, his face still hidden behind his eyes. "Just questions? Is that all?"
"…sir?" Jimenez took a step back. He was still pretty green, especially compared to his partner, but he knew when there was no possible good outcome. "I need to ask you to lie on the ground, sir."
"It's fascinating," the stranger said, bringing his hands down, but shielding his face between his upturned collar and the brim of his cap. "I come into your restricted zone, I ignore your verbal directives and I flee at the slightest provocation. I'm obviously a threat to you, or at least an enemy of some kind, and you have a weapon. But you seem to take any step you can to avoid a violent outcome."
"There are a limited number of steps I can take, sir," said Jimenez, his gun trained on the man. The way he spoke was so nonchalant, so aloof it was hard to even respond to him. It was like trying to threaten a parade balloon. "Keep refusing to comply and you'll get your violent response."
"So you say," said the man. "No, I've seen your mettle. It's completely up to me."
And then the man was no longer a man. The first glimpse Jimenez saw of his face was a grin, one that seemed to stretch impossibly wide, lips peeling back from his jaws like they were being stretched. Pointed, scalloped ears grew from each side of the man's head, pointing to the night sky like the horns of a devil. The growth of these ears pulled and tugged on the skin of his face, stretching it until his eyes were but tiny slits that let no light through above a fanged, distended grin. His clothes seemed to melt away, staining his skin a flat, matte black, on a body covered in toned, humanoid musculature and patches of coarse, black hair, naked but for a loincloth and a pair of nipple rings. The wrist and elbow of each arm had a bony protrusion, each one several feet long, and stretched between them were lengths of pale, leathery skin, lined with thick veins. It held its winged arms out wide and grinned at Jimenez, a high-pitched call emanating just at the edge of hearing.
"Wha…" Jimenez asked, taking a step back and finding only wall behind him, his flashlight beam making shaky circles in the air. "Wha… wa… qué…qué chingados?"
The beam shook away from the creature, and that was all he needed to close the gap between the two, pinning the agent against the wall with one jet-black hand. He leaned in, whispering to the trapped man.
"Su vejo dios…" it said, the Spanish coming just as naturally to it as did English. "…he vuelto."
It leaned in, fanged mouth opening wide enough to bite through Jimenez's throat, and it seemed intent on doing just that. Jimenez closed his eyes and tried to look away, inadvertently giving the creature a much greater target.
"FREEZE!" Half a dozen cops rounded the corner just then, each of them turning their flashlights on the grisly scene before them. The creature screamed, dropping Jimenez to the ground, bringing both leathery wings up to shield his face.
"Jesus Christ!" said one of the officers, his voice echoed by a dozen similar cries. "What the hell is that thing?" asked another. "It's a goddamn vampire!" said a third.
"…s-shoot it!" said Jimenez, his own hands shaking too badly to aim. "Shoot it! It's one of them!"
The officers collectively snapped out of their daze and brought their guns to bear, but they had hesitated just too long. The creature shrieked so loud that the threatening officers were paralyzed, rooted in place with hands clamped tight over ears, firearms completely forgotten. The monster spread its wings and jumped, taking to the air with no more effort than a bird leaping from a tree. Jimenez watched it soar off and vanish into the night sky. He pulled out his radio.
"Briggs?" he said. "Briggs, the situation has escalated."
"Of course it has," said Briggs. "What's the status."
"They can look like us," said Jimenez. "One of them found me. Looked like a normal person at first, then it… it turned into one of those things."
"Crap on a stick!" said Briggs. "That must be how it got away from us. We weren't looking for anything but a spider. Was it the same one that I fought?"
"No ma'am," said Jimenez. "It was completely different."
"So now there's two goddamn bulletproof psycho spiders running around this city," Briggs's voice was sounding tired.
"Oh no… it's completely different," said Jimenez. "Not even a spider at all."
"These things come in different species too," said Briggs. "What was this one?"
Jimenez paused.
"Um… okay, you know how the first one was a human spider, but you didn't want us to call it… you know, that?" Jimenez said. "Even though it's the obvious thing to call it?"
"This case will have some dignity to it, Jimenez," said Briggs. "I'll turn in my badge before I say that dozens of cops were murdered by a goddamn comic book character."
"Right, well… the other animal…" Jimenez paused again, holding the radio away from his face as though it was on fire. "Look, you're not going to like it."
There was a longer pause, this time from the other side of the radio. Then, finally, Briggs's voice returned.
"…is it a bat?" she said.
Jimenez was silent. Uniformed officers looked back and forth at each other. Finally, there was a long sigh from the radio.
"They've gone and made this personal, Jimenez."