Later that night, Morgan headed over to the lab. She had showered and dressed in a tight fitting sleeveless shirt and a pair of faded jeans. Her hair was pulled back into a high ponytail and her eyes were lined with black liner. Grabbing her lab coat from her locker, Morgan slipped quietly into the lab so that she wouldn't be noticed by Hodges. Two hours into her shift, she was walking past the break room and caught the tail end of a very important conversation.
"We still have no leads on the two cases involving sliver nitrate filled bullets" Grissom said.
"I talked to management and they are going to declare them cold cases. With no leads and no new evidence there is no point in investigating them right now" Brass explained.
"I just can't believe there is absolutely nothing we can do to solve them. That sucks!" Sara exclaimed.
Morgan walked into the break room pretending that she hadn't been eavesdropping. She poured herself a cup of coffee and took a couple of sips, the rest was dumped down the sink due to the horrible taste that it had.
"Oh, before I forget, I need you to process these fibers" Sara said to her.
"Sure, I'll call you when they are done" Morgan replied.
"Ok, thanks" Sara smiled.
Morgan walked out of the break room and almost crashed into Greg who was coming out of the trace lab.
"I was looking for you. I didn't want to give this to Hodges" Greg handed her a jar.
"Ok, but I've got some stuff of Sara's that I have to get done. Although if you ask really nice I might do yours first" Morgan joked.
"Please, please, please process mine first" Greg pouted with his best puppy eyes.
Morgan laughed at the young CSI and promised to do his first. Greg broke into a wide grin and hugged her.
"Gross, I got CSI germs on me. Now I have to take another shower" Morgan chuckled.
Greg laughed and walked down the hall to finish with his investigation. An hour later Morgan called both Greg and Sara into the lab to give them their reports. They thanked her and left. Suddenly Hodges appeared next to her with a cup of coffee.
"I wanted to apologize for yesterday; I'm not used to sharing the lab, especially with a beautiful woman. By the way, would you like to get something to eat sometime" he said.
Unknown to the both of them, most of the team was standing behind them watching Hodges make an idiot out of himself.
"Yah, I would love to get something to eat, just not with you" Morgan smirked.
"Hey, come on, I know you don't mean that" Hodges tried to reason.
"Yes I do and I mean this too; go take a very long walk off a very short cliff" Morgan snorted.
Hodges didn't say anything, he just stormed out of the lab while the rest of the team stood there clapping.
"You know, it's about time someone told him off" Grissom declared.
"Yah, I just wish I had a camera so I could see that look on his face forever" Greg laughed with tears running down his cheeks.
After the short celebration of Hodges' defeat was over, everyone returned to work. The lab was pretty slow that night, just the occasional fiber or hair or whatever to process. At 8 am the next morning, the team left the building for some well deserved rest. When Morgan entered her apartment she immediately detected the presence of her long time friend Samuel.
"Is everything going ok at the laboratory?" he questioned.
"Yah, I spotted Damian yesterday. He hasn't changed the way he looks in 700 years." Morgan stated.
"Look whose talking Miss I-like-my-hair-and-if-you-touch-it-I'll-kill-you. Damian didn't see you did he?" Sam said.
"No, I dove under a desk before he looked my way" she answered.
They talked some more while Sam got her a pint of blood form the fridge. He asked her if her had any side effect from the last lycan bite. Morgan explained that she was fine and that she had to go take a shower. After the shower, she crashed on the bed and fell asleep. Sam left the house and placed in sunglasses on his nose.
The next few days at the crime lab were extremely busy. There had been a triple homicide out in Henderson and a double in a suburb of Las Vegas. What stumped the CSIs was that all five of the murders were them same style as the original two. Multiple gunshots to the chest with bullets filled with silver nitrate. Everyone at the lab was working overtime and pulling doubles and with all the activity in the lab there was no time for Morgan to monitor Damian's movements. Then one night something truly disturbing appeared in the morgue. It was the headless body of one of Morgan's kind, a vampire. The CSIs recovered the head and the autopsy began.
"There is no doubt about it; the cause of death is decapitation. The body still hasn't been identified." Doc Robbins, the ME at the crime lab said.
"Maybe I can help" Morgan said quietly.
No one had seen or heard her enter. She took a look at the body and head then nodded when she made her conclusion. She asked the ME to turn the body over so she could double check. There was a piece of skin missing from the back where a tattoo had previously been. It was custom for a lycan to remove the tattoo from a vampire if they killed one and it was custom for a vampire to remove the branded skin from a lycan.
"Do you know him" Grissom asked.
"His name is Daniel, and the missing skin on his back is a tattoo" Morgan explained.
"Do you know how we can get a hold of his family?" Nick questioned.
"He doesn't have a family, they died along time ago. He was living with a friend of mine" Morgan answered.
"Well what does the tattoo look like?" Nick asked.
"It's a fang, you know; a tooth, piercing the neck of a wolf and protruding from the underside with drops of blood coming off it" Morgan described.
"Do you know where they are done" Nick inquired.
"You can't them anywhere, they're custom" Morgan said.
"But why was it cut from his skin" Grissom interrupted.
"It's an ancient tradition that goes back several centuries" Morgan explained.
Throughout the whole ordeal Morgan appeared calm while looking at the body but on the inside she was seething. The lycans were striking back and they were taking no prisoners. The body count for the lycans was now seven and the vampires one, but there was guaranteed to be more of both, especially vampires with Damian wanting to get revenge for the last two weeks. Morgan excused herself from the morgue and made her way back to the trace lab. She grabbed her call phone and dialed Sam's number.
"Hello" he said.
"I can't talk long but I call to tell you that Daniel McKinnon is headless in the morgue" She stated.
"Alright, I'll inform the clan. Thank you" Sam sighed.
Moran hung up the phone and went back to analyzing mystery liquids. When Warrick approached her with a blood sample she knew it was from the most recent call out.
"I need this analyzed yesterday. I'll be back later" he said.
Morgan sighed because she knew the blood held no evidence. It would either be lycan blood or vampire blood, neither of which had DNA. Fingerprints wouldn't help either because vampires didn't have any, only lycans in their human form did. Morgan knew these cases would never be solves without a confession. At the end of the shift Morgan almost feel asleep in her car in the parking lot. It was only the tapping on her window from Warrick that kept her awake.
"Are you alright?" he asked.
"Yah, I'm just tired" she replied.
"You look like death warmed over, no offence. You shouldn't be driving like that, come with me; I'll give you a life home." Warrick stated.
Morgan was too tired to even protest, she just nodded and followed Warrick to his car. When he dropped her off at her house she thanked him and went inside. Her mind knew that her body needed more than one pint of blood; she would have to feed off a living source. She dressed in all black leather and called a cab company to drive her to the nearest cattle ranch. She snuck in the back door of the dairy barn and chose the nearest Holstein to feed from. Morgan's canines lengthened and she tore into the cow's neck. After her feeding she darted out the door and into the desert, making her way back to town. There was no evidence to suggest that anyone had been in the barn; no footprints, no fingerprints, no hairs, just one mutilated cow. She arrives back at her apartment and fell asleep, full and content, on the sofa.
