I know that the first couple of chapters are not very eventful but the story should pick up soon.

Chapter 2

Sighing, he pushed his hand absently through his hair, reaching into his pocket for his car keys. He unlocked the door and opened it throwing the file on the passenger seat. Another murder and another life reduced a statistic, to a file in a pile of thousands, destined to be locked away at the back of some filing cabinet, forgotten and unwanted. He wondered absently how many of those forgotten and unwanted victims had met their deaths at the hands of a vampire or shifter, as merely prey. Staring the ignition, he flashed a look in the rear view mirror, the eyes that reflected back were cold and weary, not those of the young, care- free teenager he'd once been, but those of a person who knew and had seen too many things in his short life. Pulling onto the inter- state he headed back towards the city, his eyes barely focused on the road ahead. His mind was elsewhere, drifting into the past, hazy memories of happier, innocent times; his holiday to Florida when he was six, the sun beating down, the sand between his toes as he ran across the beach screeching with laughter as he chased his little sister, his twin Poppy, catching her and dunking her in the sea, Poppy screeching and indignant, as she chased him trying to catch up with him. His sister who'd always been so happy and excitable and so full of life...

His green eyes darkened with remembered sadness and pain; he would never forget the day he was told that she was going to die; his mother was on the verge of tears when she told him his sister had cancer and that she would die within the year. Phil could remember feeling numb; he felt nothing and then as it started to sink in he felt as though his world had been turned upside down. It couldn't be right, they had to be wrong... first he was in denial and then there was the anger, which burned and consumed, why her? Why not him? She was only sixteen for god's sake she hadn't even begun to live yet and she was going to die. He felt helpless, he'd always been there for her, always been able to protect her, yet he could do nothing as his life began to spin out of control. For the first time in his life he truly knew what it meant to be human.

His lips twisted wirily, human? That had to be the biggest joke in the universe, he felt like a human, yet he wasn't, at least not fully. He'd so often seen people go through a similar set of emotions, the family of the victim. It was the most difficult part of his job, watching them cry, shout and scream as he told them that their wife, husband mother, farther, girlfriend or boyfriend had been killed, not just a fact of nature like Poppy's illness, but murder. He wondered if the murderers ever had a second thought for the people they destroy, the lives they tear apart through their callous actions. The reality was that most murders in New York, like any city on the planet, were not cold blooded, executed by a total psycho on a random stranger, in some ways that would be easier to cope with, ninety five percent of homicides were committed by somebody the victim knows. Murder was a horrible and detestable business and the worst thing is that you can become used to it, in a cold and factual way, just see a victim not a person, see everything as black and white, kind of like what a person in an abattoir must get used to, the bodies, the mutilation and the blood. It becomes a fact of life; it was the only way you could survive on a homicide investigation team, without loosing your sanity. Of course, that was fine for the majority of people, it was a quite another when you live and breathe that last person's moment, feel, see and touch what they did, witness that persons last moments. That is one thing you can never get used to, the feeling of terror, that bone chilling instant when you know that you are going to die, see your murderer come towards you, yet unable to escape, the terror and the pain...

Philip shook his head trying to rid himself of the horrible images that had assailed mind. Sometimes he thought that he'd go insane, the memories were so vivid and real that it was as though they were his own. Of course they were not, they belonged to the victim, their last moments somehow still imprint on their very being. He didn't always need to see or touch the body to experience their memories, sometimes he'd just walk into the crime scene or pick up a personal possession like a ring or a watch and it would come in a dizzying wave, washing through his psyche, transporting him back to that very moment in time when the act took place. In one way it was a very useful gift to have, he didn't need to piece together the clues and fit a profile to the killer, he was a first hand witness, as he was to this girl's killer. There was however, one major flaw; there was no way that anyone would believe him. Like all police officers, he needed hard evidence to charge someone with a crime, some half-baked story about a physic experience and they'd brand him a freak or lock him up in the funny farm. Another problem was the fact that he worked alongside Night Worlders, his boss for one, was a vampire, if they even got half an inkling that he was anything but human and they'd probably kill him, especially the fact that his sister was an illegal vampire and he'd helped her and her soul mate, James, to escape would not go down well. Of course there was his vampire hunting activates; if they put two and two together they may be able to pin them on him, especially as a number of his 'unsolved' cases were vampire and shifter killings. It doesn't take a genius to spot a Night World killing, bodies where there seems to be internal organs like the heart and liver missing, dumped in the wilderness where animals seem to have been gnawing at it them it was obviously a werewolf killing. Vampire killings were harder, the puncture marks on the neck could be hid by slitting the throat, but this was usually done after the person was dead and bled dry, another telling point is the lack of blood on the crime scene or the body. If you know what you're looking for then it was simple. The tricky part was catching the bastard who'd done it, it required patience and also great care, and they had to be removed discretely. Well he would wait; he had to be sure he had the right person before he acted, before he exacted justice...