Detective Joss Carter ruffled her feathers irritably as she finished off one of the many stacks of paperwork accumulated on her desk. Crime had been on the rise lately and there had been little time to get around to the desk-bound part of her job.

The Fallen and the Unknown had been crawling up from the Lower Realms in droves, causing corruption and death everywhere. Quickly, she glanced up across her desk at her partner. Her old partner had died suspiciously, and Lionel Fusco had been put in as a replacement. She'd heard some rumours about him that she didn't particularly like. After all, it was no rumour that his former partner had turned out to be an Unknown that had taken three Seraphim to take down.

How strange it was that back when she was in the service she had hardly ever seen any of the Fallen or the Unknown from either side, and yet when she had returned home and joined the police force, she started meeting them every other day. It made her wonder exactly who it was that started the wars in the first place. It certainly seemed like a good possibility that the denizens of the Lower Realms caused the wars in order to shift the attention away from themselves. There was a war going right within their own borders, but the warriors were being shipped elsewhere.

Fusco's phone rang, drawing Carter from her musings. "Detective Fusco," he answered. A frown creased his face. "Alright, we'll be right down." He hung up and looked at Carter. "They think another one of the Fallen's broken through and apparently he killed three people to celebrate."

"Moseltov," muttered Carter darkly, reaching for her pistol. "We been called down?"

"Yep." Fusco pulled on his coat and opened the door to the precinct for her.

"Sounds like fun," she said as she went out.

The scene looked like any other place where one of the Fallen had broken through; but for a few significant details. Carter's brow furrowed as she stared at the blast radius. She nudged Fusco with an elbow.

"Do you see the size of that thing? I've never seen one that big before."

"Very few people have," answered Detective Szymanski who had already been on the scene. "We did a little research when we saw it. Apparently, the only Fallen that cause blasts this big are the Supremacy.

Fusco quirked an eyebrow. "Those guys don't normally leave the Lower Realms, though."

"No, they don't," agreed Szymanski, "And that's what has me worried."

Carter went over to examine the three bodies that were lying face down a few yards away. Two were men, one was a woman and one of the men was laid out close to the woman but the other was several feet away. Upon examination, Carter found that the man that was farther away was Wingless. The other two were Seraphim of the third class.

What was truly strange was the blood pooled around the two men. Fallen normally left bloodless corpses. Fusco joined her with a wrinkled brow.

"He didn't drain them," he said in surprise. "Why kill three people and then take nothing from them?"

Carter shook her head slowly. "Maybe he didn't need anything else," she said quietly. Fusco looked at her with shocked eyes.

Normally, the Fallen took their energy from those of the Living. Most of the time, they drained it passively from those around them. However, sometimes they got greedy and stole it. This drained their victims dry and left them for homicide detectives to investigate later. The idea of a Fallen who didn't have to drain their energy was a frightening one because it meant that he already had the Power he needed. Only a Fallen who was extremely Powerful and Talented could transfer their energy from one Realm to the next.

Szymanski came over to join them and said, "We got ID on the vics. The two Seraphim were Sarah and Marshal Jennings. The Wingless guy is John Wilcox. The Jennings aren't even from around here. Marshal was poisoned by an Unknown he was working with about a year ago. Sarah went on the run shortly after that. You know what the Unknown's poison does to people. Wilcox was just walking past here, apparently on his way home from work."

Carter gently moved to brush Sarah's hair away from her neck. "Look at this," she said gesturing the other two detectives over. "That's not Fallen style." She pointed at the strangulation marks on the woman's neck. "The other two had their throats cut. That's one of the many ways we hear about the Fallen murdering people. Never by strangulation though. Sarah wasn't killed by the Fallen."

Fusco was nodding. "She was killed by her own husband. You think Wilcox heard what was going on and tried to help?" He walked over to the Wingless man and pointed at his face. "Look, he has a black eye."

"Sounds plausible," answered Carter. "Still doesn't explain why this Fallen killed the two men without draining them. Fallen don't usually want to draw attention to themselves—especially just after they've come through."

"Everything we have so far are theories," said Szymanski, "We really don't even know for sure that it was the Fallen that came through here that killed these people."

Fusco snorted. "I doubt it was just a coincidence."

"We'll know more once we get the lab results back. We can puzzle over this once we have more concrete evidence," said Carter with a sigh. "Until then, all we have to go on are theories."