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Chapter 8:

The Taste of Darkness

Juliet was startled awake from her desperately needed sleep by her cellphone on the nightstand beside her bed.

"Who is it?" she said groggily.

"O'Hara. It's me. Look we got two more victims. I'm going to send you the location. But…it's not good."

Juliet sighed and said that she'd meet him there.

No more than thirty minutes later, Juliet arrived on the scene and saw a very ragged and angry looking Lassiter. And she could understand why. A father and son were mutilated inside. Very similar to the other victims, but this time it was different because of the fourteen year old boy.

And that's where the whole case changed for both of them. Whoever this killer is, has no regard for children either.

It was now eleven in the morning and Juliet was back at her desk and currently was looking over crime scene photos. Eventually though she closed the folder due to the onslaught of horror this case was becoming. Juliet then glanced over at her partner as he was talking on the phone with the forensic lab. As he finally hung up, Lassiter got up and came over to her desk. "So forensics say that the blood found on the scene was human but not really. And they don't know what to say about it."

"Not completely human?! Are they sure?"

"They re-ran the test four times."

"Man what's going on with this case…" Juliet thought out loud.

"I don't know. Have you found out why the son was there?"

"It looks like the son just was at the wrong place at the wrong time. He was just coming in from a late football practice, according to the woman who was in charge of the carpooling." At this, Lassiter's face became downright murderous. Then suddenly, Lassiter gave guttural snarl as he rounded and punched the column beside Juliet's desk.

Surprisingly, there was an impressive dent in the column. "Uh, Carlton are you ok? Did you break your hand?"

"I…no. It's not broken," he said a little surprised. His hand didn't even ache.

Juliet stood up and started to inspect and prodded his hand. She was amazed at this. Lassiter gently removed his hand from her smaller ones and tried to convince himself that they had a case to solve. Cowboy you know that you moved your hand because you felt that slight tingling when your hands touched.

Shut up! He snapped at his evil inner voice.

"So," Lassiter tried to say without awkwardness, "Have you spoken with Spencer? Has he gotten any…visions…about our victims?"

"Nothing yet…"

Lassiter sighed and went to find McKinley; however, McKinley is nowhere to be found.

FBI federal building…

What neither Lassiter nor the SBPD knew was that Detective Larry McKinley was at the FBI federal building. He was checking out a possible lead with a FBI informant.

However, as he was waiting for his informant to come back Larry saw someone that he recently met. Chuck Simpson. Why is he here? Anyone friends with that asshole Lassiter can't be good.

With that, Larry decided to follow Chuck and the two agents he was with to another room. This room was very dim, and there was about a dozen vats of the same goo that fell on Lassiter. As he sees chuck and the two agents go into another room, Larry hangs back and takes a few pictures and notes of the vats of goo.

But as Larry walks by the last container a grey blob jumps on the glass startling Larry. Causing him to fall on some keys and the alarm goes off. Larry then starts to frantically press some buttons hoping to turn of the alarm. Unfortunately, instead of turning off the alarms, the button Larry pressed open all the vats of goo causing the floor to be practically covered in different colored ooze.

Suddenly a particular glob of grey goo launched onto the unsuspecting Larry causing him to fall again. After desperately trying to pry off the gooey specimen, it finally merged into his body. And as he got up off the floor, he decided to flee from the lab.

There's no way I can turn off that alarm now…maybe I can just get out before I get my butt arrested.

Just as Larry left though Chuck, the other agents, and a scientist came rushing into the room. As they came in four other gooey specimens launched themselves at the four.

A goldish orange goo attached itself to Chuck. A solid black goo attached itself to a male agent named Jacob Talbot. A silvery purple goo launched itself to an African American woman agent named Kaela Walker. And finally a blue colored goo launched itself onto the lab scientist named Dr. Butterfly McMillan. They fought their gooey aggressors valiantly; however, the ooze sunk into their bodies. A few moments later, few more agents came in and were able to avoid any other launching ooze and get the other specimens back into their containers.

While the agents were fighting the ooze, Larry was able to escape to his car and drive off. As Larry finally got far enough away, he noticed his hand had some goo coming out of the actual palm of his hand!

Larry then pulled over and started to analyze the gooey substance between his hands. Just started ringing. Larry then picked up the call awkwardly with still gooey hands.

"Hello?"

"Hey partner, where are you?"

"I was out looking for a lead. And came up with nothing."

"Ok well hurry back. Lassiter's on a rampage."

"Yeah whatever. I'll be there soon." With that Larry hung up and was looking at his screen saver lost in thought for a second. But suddenly his other hand shapeshifted into the shape of the knife on his screen saver!

"What the living hell!" Larry exclaimed as he was looking over his hand. He then imagined his normal hand and immediately it changed back to normal.

"Well, well, well. You better watch out Lassiter."

TBC

A/N: These special two chapters are brought to you in-part by Free Time. Get More Of It! ;)

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