The two detectives emerged and made their way past the bevy of excited reporters and curious spectators. An ambitious reporter, desperate to get the scoop, cut in front of them as they tried to make their way to the crime scene. Before they could get one step further the reporter thrust a microphone in Warren’s face and began to bombard him with questions.
“Detective! Detective! Is it true that the body is headless? Do you think a supernatural did this?” asked the blonde, female reporter in the tight blue pantsuit as she struggled to keep pace with the two detectives’ long strides.
“No comment,” Warren said as they approached the uniformed officer guarding the crime scene.
The answer given didn't seem to satisfy the pushy reporter as she continued to ask the same questions in a different manner.
“Detectives, are you from the S.U.I.T. precinct? If you are, then this must have been a supernatural killing, right? What kind of supernatural did this? Was it a vampire or a shape shifter?” she asked in succession.
The two detectives ignored the line of questioning, continuing on to the yellow and black police tape blocking off the crime scene. Both men ducked under the tape in unison and continued making their way to the two detectives who were waiting for them to take over.
“Hey, Barry, look who’s graced us with their presence. If it isn’t the ‘Dynamic Duo’,” Detective Gabriel Johnson joked to his partner Barry Weinstein who was kneeling by the body.
“Heya boys,” he greeted the approaching officers.
Barry straightened himself and made his way toward his partner.
“Warren… Matthew,” Barry said, giving a little ‘hello’ nod to the two detectives.
“Gabe and I were the first on the scene. The guy who discovered the body is over there away from the media sharks.”
He pointed to a twenty-something year old black male, standing against the side of a building.
“You know how hungry the media is for a story when they get a whiff of fresh blood,” he joked.
All four detectives chuckled, nodding in agreement.
“Yeah, but the guy won’t be able to tell you much. He was dumping the trash that should have been dumped the night before, when he came across the body. He said, ‘he saw the legs sticking out from behind the dumpster and knew something wasn’t right.’ That’s when he called the police, who called us in. That’s about it,” Gabriel said.
“Captain must really like you two. She gives you guys all the coveted cases,” Barry teased.
Secretly, he was upset about being removed from this case, but was trying to keep it professional. He knew his partner felt the same way.
“Yeah, remind me to send her one of those famous Anisi gift baskets as a ‘Thank You’,” Matthew retorted.
“Well, as much as we would like to stay here and chit-chat with the two of you, we’ve just received a call. Captain wants us. Maybe she’ll bestow upon us the same generosity she’s shown you two,” Gabriel said.
“Ha! Don’t bet on it. She wants the two of us, ‘cause we’re hot,” Warren joked.
“Yeah, I heard she likes guys with young, firm balls,” Matthew added.
“Exactly. Not old shriveled, wrinkled balls like yours, so you’re both out of luck,” Warren finished.
“Well, I guess I have to settle for your mother then, hey Matthew?” Gabriel shot back, smiling slyly.
“Shit, be my guest! If she has a little Romeo on the side, maybe she’ll stop bugging me about making her a grandmother,” Matthew joked, causing the four detectives to laugh.
Gabriel and Barry said their “goodbyes”, wrapping up their friendly banter and began walking toward their unmarked police cruiser as Warren and Matthew headed toward the body.
Matthew and Warren looked at the sheet-covered body which lay partially behind a dumpster in alley of the Dark Night Travel Agency, a well-known agency that catered to the supernatural. After the supernatural race was exposed, all types of businesses saw it as another way to make a profit. This particular agency helped vampires travel during the day.
Both detectives stood over the corpse. They noted the small drops of blood spotting the sheet where the head should have been. Matthew squatted down beside the corpse, lifting the sheet to peek under. It looked to be the body of a black male and, on a closer inspection, he appeared to be middle-aged. Matthew threw a glance at Warren who seemed to be having a dilemma of his own. Matthew noticed Warren’s breathing had increased and his jaw muscles had tightened. He also saw tiny beads of sweat forming on Warren’s forehead.
“Hey, keep it together, man. You don’t want to attract attention to yourself,” Matthew encouraged his partner in a hushed voice.
“I’ll be all right. Don’t worry about me,” Warren said, hoping to ease his partner’s concern.
Matthew returned his attention back to the corpse before him, but in the recesses of his mind, he began to think back to the time when he’d first discovered Warren’s supernatural secret nearly three years ago. They’d been on a stakeout, tracking down a child molester, who would strangle his adolescent victims, dress them up as life-sized dolls, and rape their corpses.
The stakeout had gone wrong when their suspect noticed their plain, black van parked across the street from his house. Matthew and Warren had hated the idea of trying to be “inconspicuous” using the van, but they'd had no other choice. They had been sitting in the van for eight hours on the third day, their butt-cheeks had gone numb and the Crunchy Crème donuts they had eaten earlier had left their bellies begging for refueling. It was at that moment when the nut came bursting through the front door of his house blasting his twelve gauge shotgun at their van.
Matthew would have caught a buckshot blast straight to the head had Warren not thrown himself in front of the shot, taking the injury in his upper right shoulder. Never losing their composure, they returned fire and took down their suspect. After disarming the man and confirming his death, Matthew returned to the van to check on Warren, the partner he trusted and now owed his life to.
Warren had covered his wound with his jacket, not wanting to let Matthew see it. He insisted that it was just a flesh wound and nothing to worry about. But Matthew, ignoring Warren’s protests, struggled to apply pressure to stop the bleeding. He remembered trying to snatch the jacket away from Warren who seemed to be behaving as children sometimes do, hiding their wounds from their mothers so that they won’t go dabbing alcohol into the wound. He joked with Warren, in hopes to diffuse the situation and keep Warren calm by telling him not to worry, he promised it wouldn’t sting. Warren however, was adamant about keeping the wound hidden until Matthew pulled at the jacket with all his might. Warren had finally relented, exposing a partially healed wound. Matthew watched in amazement as the wound continued to heal. He watched as the torn muscles began to reattach themselves. He looked on in awe and disbelief as the skin reformed over the opening the buckshot had left, leaving nothing but the blood around the area where the wound had been. He was speechless. He remembered looking to Warren for an explanation.
Matthew listened as Warren, his partner of nearly two years, confessed that he was a werewolf. Warren had decided to use the mortal terminology for his species. Shape-shifters, like himself, never used terms like ‘werewolf’ or ‘werecheetah’. He didn't like having his secret out, knowing full well that the laws were extremely biased when it came to his kind, even if he was a cop. Even if his intentions were good, he would be fired and probably prosecuted for lying and falsifying information during exams and testing. The human race didn’t trust those of the supernatural race. “Birds of a feather,” he supposed. He had trusted his partner enough to give Matthew the choice of keeping his secret or revealing it. In the beginning, Matthew had felt leery about such a revelation. He wasn’t sure how he felt about having a flesh-eating beast as his partner.
In the end, Matthew believed he knew his partner well enough to know that he would never eat him ... he hoped. He decided to keep the secret an
d their bond became even stronger. It wasn’t until after Matthew knew the truth about Warren that he started to understand his strange behavior of the past; such as the constant eating of high-fat, high-protein foods. He had never seen anyone who could put away two twenty-ounce porterhouse steaks the way Warren could and this was including the side dishes. He also began to recognize the look of bloodlust in Warren's gray eyes whenever they went to a bloody crime scene. He wondered how the hell it slipped his radar in the first damn place. He was amazed at how well Warren could endure the strong scent and sight of blood and flesh at crime scenes. He had chalked it up to Warren’s own high level of personal discipline, determination and dedication to the job.
Matthew remembered the times when Warren had broken the handle of his car door not once, but twice trying to hop out of the car in a rush. He also remembered the time they had to chase down a suspect. He had decided to cut the suspect off in the car while Warren took to chasing the perpetrator on foot. He found it amazing when Warren had beaten him to the punch and had the suspect apprehended. Now that he knew the truth, all the pieces that hadn't made sense in the past fell into place.
Now, as Matthew looked at Warren again, he could tell by the way his partner's breathing was returning to normal that he had gotten control over his bloodlust and hunger and was ready to get his mind on the job at hand. Matthew reached into his right breast pocket, producing a retractable metal rod that he used to further examine the corpse without actually touching the body. A uniformed officer walked over to them, giving them each a pair of latex gloves. Matthew put on his gloves without hesitation. Warren always hated wearing the gloves. The scent from the latex and the powdered substance inside the gloves always agitated the sensory glands of his nose and mouth. Nevertheless, he slowly slid his hands into the gloves.
“Hey, look at this here, come closer,” Matthew said inquisitively as he gestured for his partner to take a closer look.
As both men peered into the gaping hole where the victim’s head used to be, Warren’s breathing began to increase, but he kept his mind focused. He looked at the broken spinal cord, the torn muscles and sinew left behind. The remaining flesh looked jagged as though the head had been ripped away from the body.
They gave each other a guarded look. The conclusion was not one they wanted to embrace, but the evidence left them with no other choice. Whatever it was they were dealing with was strong ... and vicious. That was never a good combination. So far, they had been lucky. The last case they were on had been the most grueling case since they joined the new division or rather, were “appointed” to the new division. They'd had to track down a werewolf in Joliet, Illinois.
The werewolf had run amok in the suburban neighborhoods, killing and mutilating four people. They had cornered the him on a farm right outside Joliet, after he had slaughtered two cows. The family had heard the ruckus and alerted the local police, who notified the S.U.I.T. authorities. The suspect was not willing to negotiate, so they had to take him down. At that point, Matthew had been more than happy that his partner was a supernatural. They would not have survived otherwise.
“It looks as though the fucking head was snatched off,” Matthew said coming back to the present situation as he inspected more of the corpse.
He noticed that the body was fully clothed. Relief spread through his mind that if there was anything else to find, it would be Marshall Galen’s job, as medical examiner, to find it. As soon as that thought came into this head, so did the dread that whatever Marshall found would just add more drama to an already dramatic case.
“Yeah, that’s what it looks like. The spinal cord was snapped like a twig. The flesh of the neck is all torn at the edges. See look here,” Warren pointed and made a circular motion around the neck area. “Looks a little stretched, doesn’t it? Like someone or something pulled and pulled until the skin and everything in between gave way. They could have done it in a fast motion but I think ... at least I feel in my gut ... that this killer wanted to feel and savor the sensation of slowly ripping off someone’s head.”
Warren rose quickly, shaking his head from side to side as he walked a few paces away from the corpse.
He had to regain his composure. The thought of someone so sick and twisted that they would derive pleasure out of such a macabre act of violence disgusted him. What unnerved him most was that the remains of that violent act made him want to get down on all fours, crawl over to the headless corpse and pig out like ninety-going-north. Matthew looked at him. He knew how hard it was for Warren; he knew his secret.
“Hey, Detective Davis, you ain't gonna puke, are you?” A uniformed officer called out as he noticed Warren with his back turned toward the corpse. “Aww, don’t tell me a little blood gets you two boys all green.”
“Fuck you, rookie,” Matthew shot back in their defense. “Don’t you have some tickets to write?”
He took the gloves off, tossing them in the portable disposal unit the officer was holding. He walked to his partner, patting him on the shoulder.
“Are you okay?”
Warren nodded.
“Good. Are you ready to talk to the one lead we have?” Matthew asked.
Warren took a deep breath. He looked at Matthew and nodded. In retrospect, Warren was relieved he had confided in his partner when he did. He trusted in their relationship enough now to let it all hang out. Matthew knew his friend’s “condition” even though it still shook him up, especially when Warren became glassy-eyed over spilt blood. Warren wished he had the control of the older ones; the pride of the Pack, those who could walk into a slaughterhouse and never even blink. He marveled at the amount of self-control one must have to resist such a temptation. He admired his Pack leader, Xander, for his superior self-control. However, Alexander, known affectionately as Xander, treated his Pack with that same amount of control which sometimes got on Warren’s nerves. By the same token, Xander was equally protective of the Pack; Warren respected and loved him for that.
Xander never really approved of Warren's choice to join the Police Force. He was true to the traditional ways; old traditions had wisdom. In Xander’s opinion, it just wasn't wise to take up a profession that might expose your secret. Being a police officer was high on his ‘hell no’ list. Although, Xander did acknowledged the benefits one could gain from working within and beside the law. He wasn't blind to that fact, but he feared Warren would be exposed, then hunted down because of what he was. Xander would not stand for that. Warren remembered the heated argument he'd had with Xander when he informed him that his secret had been exposed to his partner. Xander had threatened to kill Matthew, said he knew too much, but Warren had convinced him that this exposure was a move in the right direction.
Xander had scoffed at that statement. It didn't ease his suspicions or his thoughts of killing all who knew about them. It was one thing for the whole supernatural race's existence to be exposed. It was another to announce yourself as one. Because of that, Xander kept a close eye on Warren, the orphaned son of his Pack mates.
Warren’s mother and father had been murdered by a renegade group of deranged mortals. They shot both of his parents, piercing their brains with silver bullets while they were tending to their farm. Warren had barely escaped with his life. He ran into the woods, staying hidden until nightfall. Then he had gone to the one place his parents told him would be safe if anything ever went wrong. He ended up on Xander’s doorstep in the middle of the night, a scared six-year-old boy. Xander had taken Warren under his wing and raised him as his own. Warren was brought up in the traditional ways of the Pack. Despite all of Xander’s teachings, Warren had embraced the “mortal” lifestyle, including his career choice. Ever since his parents were murdered in front of him as a child, he had wanted to be a cop so that he could catch the bad guys.
Warren thought Xander should loosen up a bit. He knew that due to Xander’s old age, change was always difficult, especially after having lived for over two centuries. His Pack Alpha was pretty much hell-
bent on keeping with tradition and was most reluctant to change the old ways.
Warren was silently thankful to Xander for allowing him, however reluctantly, to work with S.U.I.T. While walking toward the one lead they had in their current case, knowing he wouldn’t get much from him, Warren reminisced on the day, long past, when he had been at home watching TV and his favorite family cartoon show had been interrupted for a special news bulletin. He remembered thinking it better be pretty fucking important to interrupt, “The Samsons”. He'd sat there and watched history in the making as the report commenced to prove supernatural existence beyond what the human mind could comprehend. It was all over the radio and had even worked its way into the cable network channels. So even if people were watching QueerPeople, they were going to know the news.
Warren watched, along with billions of people worldwide, as the supernatural world was exposed for all to see, for all to know. An overambitious reporter had scooped the story of a lifetime, revealing a corrupt politician who had been bitten and turned by a tiger. He was among several other politicians who were secretly keeping an abandoned military base in Death Valley. They'd had the hidden facility specially designed to perform experiments on vampires and shape-shifters and study the results. His mouth had dropped open as he'd watched that report. He'd felt grateful that he had been skilled enough at deceiving the mortals about his true identity thus far. He had learned how to control his hungers and lust, well enough to remain unnoticed, and unchallenged (outside of Matthew).
Xander had resented everything about the outing. It angered him that shape-shifters were tortured and killed at the military base. He had known that mortals would react badly after finding out.
“Mortals always hunt down and destroy what they can’t control, or understand, or what they fear,” Xander had said as he made numerous phone calls to other Pack leaders arranging an emergency meeting.
Xander had been right. In the months that followed, after the humans got over the shock of supernatural beings existing in their world, mass paranoia began. People had begun to panic and there had been pure chaos. Humans started looking over their shoulders; people started killing each other over the slightest suspicion.
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