Thank you so much for all the wonderful reviews, also to autumngold, sorry I couldn't send a proper reply. Please keep them coming, they keep me going! Also thanks to anyone who has put this on favorites or alert, I hope you will continue to enjoy it. And thanks to afrozenheart412 for discussion and lily moonlight for poking.
Black Moon Rising – Burning water
Flack double-checks the number on his notepad before he knocks on the door that has no other means of distinguishing it from the others in the house but a set of brass digits. It is opened much quicker than he had expected.
"Good evening, Detectives." the elderly woman says.
"Good evening Ms Wagner. Sorry to be disturbing you at this late hour …"
"Perverts work overtime." Ms Wagner says simply.
Flack struggles a little to keep his jaw from dropping. He darts a glance at Angell and sees that her eyes have also widened somewhat.
"So you have to work overtime too to keep them in check." Ms Wagner continues. "No problem for me, I don't need much more sleep anyway. Welcome in." With that the woman opens the door fully.
Letting Angell go first Flack steps inside and they follow the elderly female through a dusky corridor.
"I'm Detective Flack, we spoke on the phone. And this is my colleague Detective Angell." Flack eventually finds time to introduce themselves before sitting down on the offered couch.
"And you want to know more about what I saw." Ms Wagner lingers by the window for a moment, shrunken but not bowed by the years she has lived through.
Flack can only nod.
"Yes." Angell helps him out, "And also we were wondering about the doors in the alley. What makes you think nobody left through them?"
"They are always kept locked at night. I've been living here for over sixty years now, I know all the people in this neighborhood," Ms Wagner elaborates, "and they all know me … even if they don't know their next-door neighbor."
"And you are sure that none of those three men who entered the alley was one of your neighbors?" Flack asks.
"Oh yes," Ms Wagner insists, "my eyes are still working very well. It's my hearing that is abandoning me though my ears seem to want to make up for it by growing bigger and bigger."
She gives Flack a sideways glance, and he hastens to draw his eyes away from her ears and look at Angell. With a smirk the female detective comes to the rescue again.
"Do you think you could give us a description of the people you saw? And also it would be helpful if you could tell us about anything that struck you as unusual."
"I'm guessing you mean unusual as in today?" the old woman winks at Angell, "Because I have seen a lot of unusual things happen in my life."
-o-
Darkness flooding through her, she's sinking, waves of silver crests webbing around her. Swirling and swirling like a black rose unfolds. Palpable gloom she's groping into but her hands find nothing to hold on to. Then swim, her mind orders, but she doesn't know which way. Is this argentine shimmer a lifeline or is it tangling her?
A drop of light sinks through the darkness, or is it a bubble rising? It wobbles in the surrounding liquid soot, in waves originating from her hands as she propels herself into motion. Trying to breathe against the pressure on her lungs. Trying to get away from wherever she is. More and more light boils past her, meets to form a bright and hovering mesh, like the sun from under water. She forces herself towards it, struggling for oxygen, darkness on her heels. She slips into the light.
-o-
Danny inches his way through the alley, flicking the bright circle of his flashlight up and down, feeling a bit like he's making the darkness scurry away. He wishes he could do the same with the shadows that keep ghosting through his mind.
Lindsay is working on the pile of ashes and its immediate surroundings quietly. He's glad of it, not that she's quiet, because although he doesn't want to talk her voice would be a welcome distraction from his thoughts. He's glad that she's working on the ashes because the sight of them has him churning, a swirl of associations that pulls him asunder. He's trying to concentrate on his job but every other moment his eyes anchor on her.
Lindsay feels the recurring pull of a look brushing over her. Silently she grits her teeth against the urge to return it. Instead she focuses on the task before her. The stake looks like it used to be the leg of a chair; she makes a mental note to check that possibility later. She studies the pile of scintillating grey, a large amount around where the stake had been, smaller quantities spreading outwards like arms, legs, and a head.
-o-
Stella comes up gasping, her hands still trying to find a hold. She feels like she's floating in a haze, panting and sweating. Shivering in the swirl that still dances around her. Her mind grasps for a notion of what is going on, fingering through a cloud of confusion. She shakes her head in an attempt to clear her mind but immediately regrets it, a flare of pain stabbing into her neck.
Her breath is dry and rasping. Deliberately slower now, Stella turns her head to bring a faint red glow into her field of vision. She blinks a couple of times as it swims in and out of focus. Finally the digits become clear enough to read. With a sigh she lets herself sink back into the pillow. So early yet, and she doubts that sleep will come again that night. The dream is still a pressure on her mind and on her chest.
-o-
A thick fog floating past his window that, if he didn't know, would make him wonder whether the sun is already up, Mac sits in his office and studies the preliminary report Lindsay has given him. A copy of Ms Wagner's statement lies on his desk, next to the requisite cup of coffee. Mac puts the report back into the file and looks at the statement again.
The old lady was adamant that she saw three people walking into the alley, all Caucasian. One of them, his fair hair reflecting the streetlight, seemed to be very uncomfortable, walking unnaturally tense. He was also the one who didn't come back out. Mac marvels at Ms Wagner's power of observation; given that she could be related to Stella, he thinks.
A soft knock raises him from his thoughts. Stella enters, but his greeting smile is a faint one.
"I thought you'd get some rest …" he utters.
She manages a dry smile, "Go on, say it, I know I look like hell … and I was hoping it was just my mirror."
"What happened?" he asks, patting on his desk as an invitation to sit down on it.
She does so and lets her fingers stroll through his items before she replies, "Nothing, really. Just a bad dream, and afterwards I couldn't get back to sleep. I guess it will take a while, if ever, before I forget about that fire."
Mac nods slowly, the experience of her apartment building on fire is memorized in his bones too. He hopes that she will accept doing lab work today, he doesn't really want to see her in the turbulence outside.
Before he can make a suggestion she says, "I'll have a closer look at that." taking the files up from his desk.
"Have some tea with it." he smiles, though he has a nagging feeling that it might be a bigger cause for worry when she concedes so easily.
-o-
Mac raises an eyebrow as he sees Adam wander down the corridor, head bent down and looking at something in his hands. Kendall a couple of steps behind apparently has no intention to warn him that he's about to bump into his boss, literally. It's Mac's voice that alerts and stops him. Adams eyes flip upwards, down again at the bunch of garlic he's holding, and back up at Mac's face.
"It's … not what you're thinking." Adam bursts out, his head assuming the color of a tomato, which Mac can't help but think quite fitting.
"What do you think I'm thinking?" Mac asks, but then reassures the flustered lab tech, "Don't worry, I don't think you want to keep vampires at bay, I heard that you are going to cook for us. And I'm looking forward to a break from the usual takeaway."
The lab tech smiles, feeling a mixture of relief and pressure to succeed, and walks on. Kendall about to follow him with a grin is stopped by Mac. She hastens to put on an innocent face.
"I heard that Daniel has been misbehaving. Why don't you keep an eye on him?" Mac tells her.
Kendall nods eagerly. She has heard of the trick Daniel had played on Sid and has already thought of sorting him out, but to be kind of asked to do so by the head of the lab is a bonus.
-o-
Sid browses through the notes he has made. First victim, male, COD: unknown. Second victim, female, COD: unknown. In his mind he adds yet to both. Tox has revealed nothing of a deadly amount. But there were traces of different drugs that make him wonder if maybe these two people had been ill too.
Their fourth victim, the woman in the alley as he dubs her for lack of a name, had been ill. Signs of a serious infection all over her body, traces of prescription drugs in her system too. But no way of telling whether she had died of that infection. Another penciled yet appears in his mind. He's determined to find out, to do everything he can to provide his piece to the puzzle.
Maybe it was the infection that killed her, maybe it was an unexpected reaction to the drugs. But while he would be glad if these cases turned out not to be murders he still doesn't like where this might be going. Sid frowns at the specter of Daniel creeping into his mind. The lab tech hadn't scared him in the least, but the thought of people being robbed of their humanity, identity and dignity, whether before or after death, weighs heavily on the ME.
-o-
Stella brushes a hand over her forehead and through her curls. It feels hot in the room but at the same time she feels cold from the lack of restorative sleep. A noise makes her look up and it's gone again. She mutters a couple of choice curses under her breath, irritated with herself for being so jumpy. There can't be a fire, but something keeps flickering just out of sight. There can't be a fire but she feels flushes of heat.
She tries to focus on the stack of papers before her, block out all other sensations. But the letters refuse to stay in place, jumble into words of different meanings, look out. She feels like someone is looking at her, watching. She turns around, nobody there. Turns back to the table and again someone, no, something is digging its eyes into her neck. A rush of air rustles in her ears, like an unearthly panting. She swirls around again and it seems to take the room a couple of moments to follow. She adds a few more swearwords to today's list but whatever is there, whatever is causing her to feel like this, seems unimpressed.
She feels something in the room. Cinder eyes glowing every time she blinks. Gone when she opens her eyes, phasing away. So close, a hot breath on her eyelids, but invisible. A dark touch, raising the hairs on her neck, running like a shiver down her spine. Run, adrenaline screams through her body. She tries to move, backwards, forwards, anywhere.
She thinks that this can't be real, but reality collapses around her.
Everything falls, darkness.
It's a fairly long cliff too …
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