Dancing With The Devil by the Pale Moonlight

II
My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.
—Ayn Rand

Trent Lane had a goofy smile, whistling along the rhythm of Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger". His bus stopped on the side of the road and suddenly his walkman worked no more. He blinked and looked down at the battered old music device, not quite understanding what had happened.

The bus' front door opened and a man wearing a trench coat and fedora climbed the stairs. He seemed to scan the bus for a moment and after nodding to himself, walked with a slight limp all the way to the seat next to Trent, and after waving his hand in a friendly manner, sat down.

Trent looked at the man with an eyebrow raised in an inquisitive way. He didn't quite know who the man was, but he got an odd feeling about him. There had been plenty seats for the man but he had limped all the way to the back for some reason. Was it because of him?

Trent yawned and decided it wasn't important to delve about the man. Napping was of much more importance, after all.

However, before Trent managed to fall asleep, the man took a newspaper from his trench coat and started reading. "Poor girl, don't you think?" He said without looking up from the article.

"Huh?" Trent blinked, "who?"

The man smiled slightly and pointed at the article, "Jane Lane, age 19. You know her, don't you?"

Trent had always been someone a bit slow on the uptake, but when his sister's name was mentioned, he reacted like any brother would've. "What are you talking about? What happened to Janey?" He didn't wait for the man's reply and snatched the newspaper from him.

His eyes widened as he read the article. "It can't be her, I talked with her yesterday!" He glared at the man, "who are you?"

The man quietly recovered the paper and put it back in a hidden pocket inside his trench coat, "no one important, just a man and his will to survive." He paused, expecting the younger man to catch the reference but knew he had must've been too agitated to even think straight, "The name is Leon, Leon Fafnir." He extended his hand in what looked to be a friendly gesture, "so, are you her brother?"

Trent looked down at the hand being offered to him and shook it, not knowing what else to do. "That can't be my sister, like I said, I talked with her yesterday morning."

Fafnir seemed to be amused by this. "Was it yesterday, really?"

"Are you calling me a liar?"

"I'm calling you a sleepy-head. You tend to take day-long naps and are rather infamous for your lack of time-managing skills." He took his fedora off and looked at Trent in the eye, daring him to ask him how he knew what he knew.

"It was yesterday," Trent insisted after a long pause. He stared at the other man's eyes, wondering how one could be blue and the other brown.

"I'm sure it was," Fafnir agreed and then looked up as if in deep thinking, "but there's the fact that I actually know that this Jane Lane and your sister are one and the same." Before Trent could complain, Fafnir raised his hand and shook his head, "your sister was murdered after you talked with her." Trent suddenly noticed that Fafnir was reading some sort of notebook. "That was around 18:00, hardly what I would call 'morning' by the way, the Nosferatu Killer got her about fifteen minutes later."

Trent's face took an uncharacteristic shade of green. "Are you a detective or something?"

"Or something," Fafnir said, taking notes as they talked, "I wanted to meet you before this bus got to Arkham, the police is bound to be expecting you to identify the body."

"But- but-" Trent stammered as he tried to find words to accompany his feelings, "-why?"

Fafnir didn't reply for almost a minute, instead focusing his attention to taking some sort of notes and writing at a speed Trent wasn't sure it was possible to think at the same time. Finally, he put the notebook back in his pocket and looked at Trent in the eyes, "that's something I have yet to find out. I know more than your average Joe, but I'm hardly omnipotent."

"Wouldn't that be omniscient?"

"There you go, I didn't even know that," Trent could tell that the man was playing with words, almost as if he was playing some sort of game. "Anyway, considering that in less than five minutes this little ride will be over, what can you tell me about Daria Morgendorffer?"

"She found her?"

Fafnir nodded absently, "being questioned right now, since all those books mentioned in the book are of her property, Detective Dencoyne believes her to be the Nosferatu Killer."

"Daria would never do that, she and Jane were- they were-" Trent sighed and closed his eyes.

"Freaking friends?" When Trent nodded Fafnir smirked, "I thought that song was about them. Anyway, the books we're talking about aren't exactly the Wiccan version of the Bible. It's pretty hardcore stuff; your sister's friend is definitely involved somehow. But I can see in your eyes that you don't know what I'm talking about. I will bother you no more, I hope you have a pleasant stay at Arkham, understand that it's not such a bad town."

As the bus stopped, Trent turned his head to say something to Fafnir, but the man had vanished like a stage magician. He didn't have time to check the exits as two police officers entered the bus and walked to him, looking like they had some bad news for him. The musician closed his eyes and wondered how could Daria be involved in her own friend's murder.

That just didn't sound right. It wasn't like her. Was it?