Marcus - Precinct 12

by Chloe Vincent

  A prime example of his personality came a second later, when he requested that she stay in bed because she needed to get back to full health before going out and trying anything dangerous, except he said it this way: "You look terrible. Go back to sleep. God knows you need it. There'll be time for whatever little thing you're working on when you wake up."

  She took a deep inhale, forced herself to calm down, and spoke in a rational way. "Gregory." Her voice was tight and strained as she attempted to keep politeness in it. After all, this was a man that saved her life, even if talking with him made her regret it. "You're not my dad. I appreciate you saving me and I know you're probably right, but I have to go. If it attacked me, who knows? Maybe it went after Pierce and Alex. You know as well as I do that neither one of 'em could..." she trailed off. She didn't want to say what she was thinking. "I need to check on them."

  Gregory thought about it a second, as if weighing if it was worth the effort to try to keep her from leaving, then shrugged, took his hand off, and popped another slice of apple in his mouth. "Your funeral." With that terse remark, he headed towards the door. "Shotgun's yours to keep for now. Don't scratch it. It's worth a lot of money. You have my number." He paused in the doorway to look back at her. "Oh, but if you die, I warned you." He spit out a piece of the apple and tossed the rest lazily into the hedge. "Shit apples, by the way." He gave her a wink and left, leaving her feeling frustrated, angry, confused, and inherently childish. She grumbled something back, but there was something about him that made her feel like a kid. When they'd first met, he was slightly older than her and she'd looked up to him. Now that she was older, sometimes she'd slip into the same feeling despite her best intentions. He always just... confused her. Threw her off her game, like the first time they'd been alone on a stakeout. Things had gotten a little steamy, and half-jokingly, she'd called him Daddy. Just to fuck with her, he called her Mommy.

  The rest of the night hadn't been sexy whatsoever.

  Well, the time for reminiscing wasn't there yet. Now, she had to focus on getting back to the office to make sure everything was okay. She didn't think she had to worry about the werewolf for now. If he'd shot it, it was still recovering. It was bigger than her and genetically superior in most every way, but healing-wise, Adina had the edge. It was probably licking its wounds somewhere, and if it came back to finish the job, Adina would give it some more wounds to lick. Now that she knew to expect it, it wouldn't be nearly as big of a threat. She could fight werewolves. She could win. She just hadn't been expecting one to appear in her bathroom with zero warning. That had been nothing short of a mind-f'er. Here she was, thinking some idiot human had barged in, and instead she was abruptly dealing with about 15,000 pounds of pure canine muscle.

  She leaned up and regretted it. The exterior stuff had healed up with the exception of a few little nicks here and there, but the internal stuff was still plenty sore. She clenched her teeth and forced her body to do what she wanted. She sat up with a mummy-like moan, whipping her feet around to the floor. Shakily, she stood up. Her body felt like it had been tossed into a blender. She couldn't even count the number of cuts, busted organs, and broken bones that she'd probably had. That was another good part of it—the werewolf almost certainly didn't know about her abilities. Practically nobody did. She kept it close to her heart for a good reason: the fewer people that knew that she was essentially immortal, the better. There had been multiple occasions where hitmen had "killed" her with a drive-by or something, but she'd heal up and clean up the evidence before they knew what hit them. This werewolf had simply wanted her to suffer. Between all the unnecessary slashes and the overpowering emotion that had been coming from the beast, it had been straight after her in a way that she'd almost never felt before. If she didn't know better, that was the sort of passion that came from very few things, namely the death of a family member. Whoever the werewolf was, it had been after her for something in particular, and it hadn't wanted her to go easy. She suspected that if Gregory hadn't come, she'd have been turned into even more minced meat than she already was.

  Adina staggered over to the front door. Her healing was still going down, but every step was a constant reminder that she wasn't back to 100% yet. That was fine. She wasn't going to war. She was just trying to get to her phone, which, near as she could remember, was by the dining table. Sure enough, there it was. As she made her way gingerly over to it, her eyes fell upon the shotgun resting against the wall. She hesitated, then grabbed it and brought it over to within grabbing distance of the table should the need arise. Was she seriously worried about getting re-attacked so soon? No, but she'd feel awful stupid if she let her arrogance get in the way of her survival. She wasn't a person that needed a shotty. She never needed protection. People needed protection from her.

  She took a heavy seat at the table and, with bloodied fingers, she unlocked her phone. Time to make some calls.

  7

  The Redo

  "I can't believe we're here!" Alex's voice rang out as he and Adina walked through the set of Precinct 12. She was trying her best to look discrete while he was trying to look at absolutely everything at the same time, like a puppy that had just been let outside of the house for the first time. "Oh my God," he whispered loudly as one of the cast members of Precinct 12 walked by with a cup of coffee, "Adina, that's Cindy! Cindy Guire!"

  Adina gave him a “will you shut up” look, ducking under some stage equipment. "Would you keep your voice down?" she hissed a little stronger than she intended. "We're trying to keep under the radar. We don't need everyone knowing that we're here."

  Alex, if he had been a puppy, reacted a little like he'd just been caught chewing on something he wasn't supposed to, and his owner had whacked him with a newspaper. His eyes dropped down and some of the excitement faded. He went full circle, from bobbing around, looking at everything with utter fascination, to moping along.

  Adina groaned internally. "Yes, it is Cindy. She's a very talented actor and I'm very excited to see her here," she said apologetically. It worked like she'd hoped—part of the childlike wonder and optimism came back, but not enough that it went back to being overpowering. He stayed right there in the realm of being annoying, putting him in a place where she kinda wished she hadn't brought him along because he was making the agency look unprofessional, but also enjoyed how thrilled he was at the same time, so it was a bit of a catch-22.

  What wasn't a catch-22 was that someone here was responsible for the attack on Marcus.

  When she'd talked through the terms with Marcus and it had been decided that the agency would take the case, she'd been granted access to the set. She'd gone through half a dozen security gates and been screened at least four thousand times to the point where it had started to become annoying. If she'd been a deranged attacker, she wouldn't have made it anywhere close. That was after recruiting Alex to see if they could find any holes in security where a potential werewolf could jump the fences, climb in, or anything like that. Nothing came up. The place was locked down better than Alcatraz. Whoever had attacked Marcus had been let in. Maybe it was Cindy, the lovely police commissioner that was often on set. Maybe she, jealous of Marcus's success and wanting more of the spotlight herself, had turned into her werewolf form and gone for hairy vengeance. Who knows? It wasn't like there was any way to prove she was a werewolf unless she was caught in the act; forced DNA tests got the double-whammy of being both illegal and ineffective in determining the so-called "Gifted gene," not to mention that it was tremendously offensive to even try.

  No, someone here was the culprit. Maybe it was another actor. Maybe the producer. Maybe it was just a stagehand. Whoever it was, they weren't going to get away with it. She took a hell of a lot of pride in her work, and now that she'd taken the job, it was happening. The werewolf had made it personal. She'd recovered for a few days and she was still alive, but whoever it was had it out for her. A dangerous, psychotic, emotionally unstable werewolf was about the worst thing she could imag
ine. It was a recipe for disaster. Combining all that ridiculous physical ability, the sheer size of the werewolf form, insanity, or at least way too much rage for a normal mind, a completely undetectable transformation, and put it all in the oven for 325 degrees. Ten minutes later, you'd have the perfect killing machine—and it was more than likely one of the people right here.

  Adina wouldn't be able to recognize the assailant, obviously. She'd been attacked by a werewolf, and none of the people in front of her were eight-foot-tall scary dogs, so as far as anyone was concerned, there was no distinguishable way to know. With her abilities, she might be able to sniff them out, but more than likely, the attacker was hiding it well. No, what she was mostly scanning for was highly unusual emotions. On the night when she'd been ambushed, she'd been nearly overrun by raw passion and hatred. That kind of thing spawned from deep, disturbing problems. That wasn't your natural, everyday anger that you forgot your clothes in the washer. That was advanced rage, bordering on obsession. They wouldn't be able to turn it off too well, especially if they felt that strongly about Adina. She had a sneaking suspicion that if the loony saw her, she'd pick up similar traces. The problem was that there were people everywhere, and it wasn't exactly easy to get a reading on a crowd. Put one person in front of her, and she'd have no problems. Like this? She scanned as many people as she could as she wandered through the set with the chattering Alex beside her, but she knew that it could realistically be any one of them.

  She spotted Marcus standing in a crowd of some people. She'd seen him a couple times since he stopped by the office. After she'd been brutally attacked, she made sure nobody else had been attacked, then she'd called Marcus's contact info that he'd left by accident. No answer. She'd finally just hobbled to her car and painstakingly made her way over to his condo. She'd knocked, but nobody had answered. It was possible that she had overthought it. It was also possible that she had started thinking he'd been brutalized by the werewolf first and that she needed to enter to save him. It was possible that she'd "aggressively" entered through the locked door.

  Walking towards him, she grimaced, remembering the occasion.

  * * *

  The cool moon illuminated the front door of Marcus's place, heavy clouds ominously filtering the light to combine with the bright luminescence from the streetlight on the sidewalk, creating a bizarre combo that made his home look straight out of a vintage European film.

  Adina knocked on the door again while standing on his porch, louder this time. "Hey." She fought the worry that she was too late. "Hey, famous guy!" She felt him in there and his car was out front, but the signature was dim and strange. He could be working out. He could be half dead. He could just be watching a scary movie. Whatever it was, his heart rate was up and faint, so maybe he was just deep enough into the house that she couldn't sense him, or, as her brain was happy to point out, he could be bleeding out right inside the door and the dimness was because she was losing him.

  So, she found herself faced with an option: bust down the door like she was Bruce Lee, call the cops and hope they got there in time and then have to answer a bunch of questions about why her clothes looked like they'd been through a blender and why she was still covered in blood stains, or... well, that was pretty much it. She could, of course, head on back to her place and pop on a movie, but she chose the first option: breaking in and hoping he didn't have large, terrifying dogs that might attack her the moment she entered.

  She glanced left, then right. The absolute last thing she needed was to see herself on the front page of the paper with the headline "Deranged Detective Attacks Famous Actor Marcus Pierce". Nobody was there. She was alone to do her law-breaking activities. She reared up a foot, knowing this was going to hurt, and planted the heel of the flip flops she'd thrown on before getting in the car right to the side of the door handle. The door snapped right on open like it had been hit by a battering ram. Hollow core. Huh. She figured he would have had better security than that.

  "Hey?" she called into the darkened house. "Marcus? You in there?" She took a tentative limp inside. "Hey, if you're around a corner with a shotgun, I'm not here to hurt you..."

  She'd done that once. She'd made this big courageous race to save someone, was given bad information and didn't know there was a terrified girl inside who was used to getting abused and finally, on that day, decided to take revenge on her abuser. Adina came strolling in, all innocent-like, and caught a full spread of a 10-gauge shotgun right to the chest. Later, she'd find it funny and respect the woman for trying to save herself. At the time, half a pound of buckshot embedded in her breasts had left her with other things on her mind.

  Her tattered clothes cast a strange shadow on the entrance from the moon and streetlight behind her. They were in a relatively isolated area, somewhat out of town. No real neighbors to worry about, lots of nature. Great place for relaxing and Zen mastery and all that jazz, but also a hell of a good spot to get murdered. "Hello?" she limped quietly through the darkened house in the general direction of where she felt someone. "Marcus, it's me, Adina. From the agency. Have you been attacked?"

  She picked up more of a sense of his emotion, now. She picked up... fear? And anger? It was a whole mixed bag of emotions coming from him, but she was certainly getting closer. It wasn't like she had a full GPS that told her "he's two doors down on the left" but she got a general feeling of where he might be, and that was better than nothing. "I swear to fucking God," she muttered, leerily peeking into what appeared to be a living room. "Are you okay?"

  Music, coming from in front of her. What was that? Disco? She snorted in amusement, then clamped it down. This was a serious situation. Just because "Bad Mama Jama" was playing didn't mean that Marcus might not be in serious danger or dying at that very moment. She felt him, all right. More and more, but he was close. He might be right around the next corner, or he might be upstairs, but he was definitely somewhere nearby.

  And then, she heard him.

  "Get the fuck out of my house, you monster!" Marcus came barreling around the corner in front of her from the direction of the music, with the crazed expression of a man who thought he was being ambushed by a killer. That held her attention for a split second, largely because she noticed a few other things about him at the same time: first off, he was shirtless and covered in sweat, meaning that every ounce of his impressive, bronzed, Hollywood-trainer-created sculpture of a chest was slick and gorgeous to behold. His black hair, also wet from what she could only assume was a hearty workout, stuck to his forehead. Her theory that she'd caught him in the middle of a workout got further evidence from the fact that he was wearing athletic shorts and tennis shoes. She didn't have a long time to contemplate this, as her eyes caught the shine of a nasty-looking shotgun in his hands—a shotgun that he, in a panic, had leveled at her.

  "Wait!" She jumped back, tripping as she did so as her flip-flops utterly failed her. She landed on her butt and threw up her arms to show she was unarmed. "Don't shoot! It's me!"

  Marcus's wild blue eyes stared at her as he waved the gun with the obvious appearance of a man who didn't spend a lot of time with guns. He was just as likely to shoot her as he was to accidentally take his own foot off. He mostly kept the gun aimed at her chest, though it was swaying enough from his adrenaline to make the modern painting hanging near her head probably sweat nervously. Her boobs started having PTSD flashbacks of the last time she was in this situation. Marcus's muscular torso, combined with the lean brawn of his arms as he hoisted the weapon that might or might not fire at her, distracted Adina more than she'd like to admit.

  "D-Adina?" he stuttered the words, more confused than anything, squinting like it might help him make sense of it.

  "I'm not a werewolf," she assured him, keeping her arms high up so he wouldn't freak out and fire. "Okay? Put the gun down. I'm not here to hurt you."

  "You broke into my house!" he snapped, gesturing to the remains of his door. "Give me one good reason I shouldn't pull this trigger!"
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  Ah.

  Yes.

  She'd forgotten.

  Marcus was not experienced in this line of work. A great guy he might be, a talented actor he might be, but inexperienced he still was, and she wasn't about to get shot as a result of his jitters. "Wait, goddammit!" Wow, he must really work his abs a lot. "It's me! You know me. I'm here to help. Think, Marcus, think." Maybe yoga? Could yoga give that kind of results? "Put the goddamn gun down. You don't want to shoot me." She twisted her arms around slowly, like he was a fifth grader and she was trying to demonstrate that there were no weapons on her person. She'd left the shotgun back in the car for this exact purpose. "See? I'm not armed," she told him soothingly. Maybe this was the way to de-escalate the situation—pretend he was a child... with an especially attractive, oiled-up body still pumped up and strong from working out... God, was she really this fucked up? It took a half-naked man with a shotgun aimed at her after she'd broken into his house to turn her on? What was wrong with her? Sure, she knew that naughty thoughts and adrenaline were pretty closely linked, but was this really the time to notice how clean cut and smooth he was under there and how nicely the sweat caught the streetlight to illuminate those impressive man muscles? It didn't even look like he shaved his chest, just like he was naturally smooth.