Cause of Death: Unnatural tcod-1

by Eliza Ford

  You're a monster, Emilia, she told herself.

  Nick's hands were on her face, brushing away her tears.

  'What's the matter, babe?"

  She kissed him and nuzzled into his neck. His throat. She realized she was lost. She was a creature of the dark, a member of the Family above and beyond everything else. How could she possibly have even dreamed of a normal life with Nick? How could she have imagined a life with children and laughter, and Sunday barbecues? And what the hell was she doing today, saving the life of his nephew like some guardian angel or a fairy-godmother? She was a monster - the daughter of one of the oldest and cruellest monsters alive.

  Who had himself loved a human woman.

  Em sighed. Life was never easy, even for the immortal. Is this what being human was all about? Doubt and confusion.

  "Babe?" said Nick.

  Em reached out for Nick's soul. She wrapped it slowly and carefully in a thin veil of her own dark energy. Nick shivered a moment.

  "Nothing," she said soothingly. "Nothing's the matter. Everything's fine."

  Nick stared at her and smiled, and Em looked deep into his eyes and loved his simplicity. How trusting he was, how confident, how ... loving. Feeling like a bitch she allowed the veil of energy to become thicker, stronger. She felt Nick's soul begin to flutter against the edges of the embrace she'd wrapped it in and she tilted her head back as the feeling spread like butterflies through her chest and down into her belly.

  Nick cuddled her closer and shivered again.

  She wasn't sure why she was doing this. When she'd chosen to live amongst humans she'd also realized she didn't have to take souls to sustain her own life. She did though, from murderers, drug dealers, pimps and rapists, the lowlifes she met around the city who had never deserved a soul in the first place. Had she drunk too much hatred and filth lately? Was it rubbing off on her?

  But here was Nick's soul still open and trusting, and pulsing gently against the walls of dark energy she'd built around it. She was so, so tempted to tear that soul away and gorge herself on it and enjoy the goodness she knew she'd find in it. Could she do that? Could she do that to Nick?

  She looked at his face and the kindness that glowed out of it. No, she decided, of course she wouldn't do that to Nick. She loved him. What a mess she was in. She was more rattled by this headache and Alina's mystery killer than she thought. She was losing her grip.

  She smiled at him and he kissed her, and she couldn't help herself. She slipped.

  It was divine. Nick's soul was a million times deeper than fear, sweet in a way that revenge could never be, richer and fuller than hatred, more luscious than any horror she'd ever known. So this was what love tasted like. She couldn't stop herself. She drank and tugged hard at Nick's soul, pulling it into her.

  Suddenly Nick stiffened in her arms. His body straightened out in a rictus of pain, he moaned low and frightened, and in her mind his soul suddenly screamed in fear.

  The sudden taste of fear in her mouth was hideous. That old flavour she'd grown up with suddenly tasted like ash. What had she done?

  She sprang away from Nick, letting both his mind and his soul fall back into his body.

  'I'm sorry," she said, without thinking. "I'm sorry, babe. I was never going to hurt you. Are you okay?"

  His body relaxed, and he sucked in a lungful of air, then curled onto his side like a baby. When he looked at her, it was with fear still in his eyes.

  "What was that?" he said, his voice hoarse and low. And then a horrified realisation dawned in his eyes. "You're sorry? What does that mean... You did that?" He sucked in the air in big petrified gulps. His fear was physical, heaving at his chest. "What did you do?" He looked at her like he didn't know her. He looked at her like she was a monster.

  Em hated herself.

  She reached out a hand to touch his arm and he jerked his body away retreating to his side of the bed in a panic of movement.

  She stretched out her mind again, letting her dark energy uncoil a little less subtly than before. She could clean this up, she thought. She jumped into people's minds all the time and rewired things to suit her. She could do it now. She could make Nick forget this.

  He was rolling over to get away from her and swung his legs over the side of the bed. Her mental energy hit him like a wall and he stopped moving and sat staring at the window on the opposite side of the room.

  Inside his mind she smoothed out some memories. She gathered up the fierce bundle of anger, fear and disgust that had formed at the front of his thoughts and gently massaged them until they subsided into confusion.

  "Honey," she said softly, projecting all the calmness should could into her voice. "Everything's fine. Come back to bed."

  She could feel his emotions beginning to yield, his mind beginning to listen to hers again. Now he was open to her once more she could rewrite the story the way she wanted it to go. His mind became easier to shape.

  The tension went out of his back. His shoulders slumped and his breathing slowed. With a sigh he turned his head back to her and slowly laid back down on the bed.

  She reached out to touch him, and with a few more mental nudges she made him want her again. He grabbed for her and began kissing her greedily, almost violently. She decided she didn't mind at all. She had him now.

  She relaxed her hold on his mind just a little and stretched out in the bed, her arms above her head, her body rising to his heat.

  She let go.

  He kissed her for a moment longer and then she felt something snap back into place inside his mind.

  Shit.

  "Em," he said, his voice low with horror again. "What are you?"

  She threw Nick out after that. She'd been on the verge of saying something dumb, revealing her true nature, but as she opened her mouth to explain she'd realized there wasn't anything she could say that made any sense. "I'm sorry darling, but I'm actually a thousand year old vampire halfling and I just needed a snack" wasn't going to go down very well. She'd stuffed up, and she knew it.

  All she could do was apologize, which she did over and over again as she gathered up his clothes, pressed them into his arms and pushed him out her apartment door. She couldn't stand the look of disgust in his eyes, but she leaned up against the door after she'd closed it on him and listened for a long time. He pulled on his clothes and left. She slid down the door and sat there with her face resting against the wood and sobbed.

  What an idiot she'd been.

  When Jarek found her she was still there. He materialized in front of her, the hem of his coat trailing black smoke and smelling of the void between the worlds. With his strong hands he dragged her to her feet, then picked her up and carried her to bed.

  He pulled the covers up to her chin, and kissed her forehead. She snuffled at him, still in tears.

  "You poor stupid thing," he said gently. "You're your father's daughter, that's for sure."

  And then he was gone.

  The alarm went off at seven in the morning and she dragged herself out of bed, only to stand staring at herself in the bathroom mirror for far too long. Her cell phone bleated in the kitchen and she let it ring, but the noise did a lot to haul her back into reality. She showered, dressed and drove to work still feeling numb, dreading seeing Nick.

  At the door of the lab, Robert pulled her aside. He held her arm tightly and whispered angrily.

  "I can handle being just a side show for you, but I would have appreciated being told about it. I thought I entirely respected what you and Nick have together, but now I see you've gone and used him too. What the hell have you done to him? He looks terrible, and you don't look any better."

  She said nothing, and he squeezed her arm a little harder. "You don't get to do this to people I like, Em. Sort this mess out with Nick and then stay away from him. That's an order."

  She shut her eyes and pressed her lips together in a thin line to stop them from shaking. Robert glared at her for a moment and then strode into the lab.

>   It was a long day.

  Nick wouldn't meet her eyes and Robert wouldn't work next to her. They had thirty seven bodies to process and they did it almost entirely in silence. The support technicians and assistants raised their eyebrows at each other and escaped from the room at every chance they could. The atmosphere was poisonous.

  Em was on her own.

  Toward the end of the day she found herself alone in the lab. The three bodies she was processing were laid out on the stainless steel benches, white sheets draped over their torsos leaving their head and shoulders exposed. All the damage, on all thirty seven victims, was in the neck area, and although she was obliged to double check every victim to make sure, the damage was all the same. Teeth marks.

  Em turned to the third of next batch of bodies and was stunned to realize it was female.

  A woman? That wasn't right. Em knew she hadn't been paying a huge amount of attention to anything that had been going on today, but she didn't know that there had been one female victim among the thirty seven bodies they'd found in the warehouse. She must have been working on something else when they'd bagged this one. Maybe she'd already left with Nick to go to his family's party. How did she miss this?

  She took a closer look at the victim. It was a woman of about twenty three years of age. Slim, attractive, blond. She appeared to have died only a few days ago, definitely much more recently than some of the other bodies in the collection.

  This was not good. So far, all the victims in this messed up case had been male. Now there was a break in the pattern, and that meant the killer was getting restless. Bored. And a bored psychopath was never a good thing, human or otherwise.

  Em bent down to take a closer look at the victim's neck wounds. Something glistened there. Was it an earring or something mashed into her throat?

  Em grabbed some tweezers and prized the sparkling thing out of the gaping hole that was all that remained of the woman's neck. She had it. It looked like a false fingernail, she thought incredulously, as she ran it under the tap to wash some of the blood off it. She lifted the sheet to look at the victims hands. No, no falsies there.

  Taking the nail over to a scope Em took a closer look. It was actually organic, she realized, not plastic at all. It seemed to have some kind of reptile print over it, a green snakeskin pattern...

  She had the funniest feeling she'd seen this before.

  Her cell phone rang, the noise interrupting her train of thought. She tore her gloves off, fished the phone out of her pocket and looked at the screen. Jennifer. Em snorted with impatience. Typical Jennifer. She always rang in the middle of work. Em knew she couldn't cope with Jennifer now. If this was another boyfriend disaster Em had enough of her own to worry about. Jennifer could wait. She dropped the phone back into her pocket and let the call go to voice mail.

  Before she'd even had time to turn back to the scale-thing under the microscope the phone rang again. Em groaned with frustration. This had better be important.

  "Jenn," she began, but Jennifer was already talking. She was practically screaming.

  "Em, Em, I need you please, please come and help me, please." She was panting, sucking in huge gulps of air and choking, choking on something.

  "Jenn, what's happened?" said Em urgently. She suddenly had a very bad feeling about this. "Tell me what's going on Jenn."

  "She bit me!" said Jenn hysterically. "She's not... she's not..." Jenn's breaths turned into coughs.

  She?

  Em's eyes flashed to the green reptile scale under the microscope. She knew exactly where she'd seen it before.

  "Jenn, where are you?"

  "I don't know. It's dark, like a warehouse or something. Em? Em..." Jennifer's voice started to pitch upwards again. "She said she's coming back."

  "I'm coming Jenn," said Em and she dropped the phone beside the scope and spun herself into smoke.

  Em flew over the city.

  With her mind she searched for Jennifer. She threw her energy ahead of her, skimming through the souls of people all over the harborside area. Streets, cars, pubs, clubs, people at work, people at home. She wasn't gentle. She had the most awful feeling she was going to be too late.

  She almost missed Jennifer when she did find her. Jennifer's soul was just a whisper, just a flicker, so faint Em nearly passed right over it.

  Em landed beside Jennifer, the black smoke of her dark energy snapping back into her usual form in the blink of an eye. Jennifer was lying in the damp corner of a dark laneway that ended at the door of yet another dilapidated warehouse. Her cell phone had fallen out of her hand. It was still on, Em noticed, the call still connected to Em's phone back in the lab. It had only been a few moments since Em had left the laboratory, but for Jennifer it must have seemed so much longer. The cell phone's bright screen spilled a sad and incongruous light over the dying woman.

  "Jennifer," Em said, quietly. She knelt quickly and put her arms around the woman, pulling her onto her knees. She hugged her close and looked sadly at the deep gashes and bruises over her friend's body.

  Jennifer stared up at Em with a puzzled look on her face. Em could see Jennifer's eyes were deeper than they'd ever been, her soul was close to the surface, twisting gently and slowly like a single autumn leaf on a twig. Jenn was cold, very cold, and it wouldn't be long now.

  "Em?" said Jennifer. "How did you..."

  "Shhh..." said Em quickly. "Don't worry about that. Everything's going be okay now." She rocked Jennifer gently back and forward, slowly and lovingly, wishing with all her heart it didn't have to be like this.

  "It was that girl," said Jennifer urgently, "from the club." She coughed and Em felt a gush of blood run out of Jennifer's neck and over the arm Em had around her shoulders. "She's not ...."

  But Em shushed her. "I know, Jennifer. I know all about her. And don't worry, she'll pay for this Jenn. I promise you that."

  Em realized a tear had landed on Jennifer's forehead.

  "I'm going to die, aren't I?" said Jennifer.

  Em said nothing for a moment as a few more tears fell onto her friend. She nodded.

  "It hurts," said Jennifer in a small voice. She sounded like a child, and suddenly Em knew what she had to do.

  She allowed a little wave of dark energy to ripple softly over Jennifer. It was like a mist, or a fog, and it curled around Jennifer's body until it covered her completely. Em strengthened it a little, gently, so as not to hurt her friend, and then she commanded it to settle deep down within Jennifer's body.

  Jennifer shivered for a moment, and then her eyes cleared a little. The energy absorbed her pain. Em could feel it, stabbing and burning. She gathered up the pain and stored it away for a while. She had a feeling she might find a use for it later.

  She brushed Jennifer's hair back from her forehead, tucked it carefully behind her ear. Then she gently wiped away the tears that had begun to pool in the corner of Jennifer's eyes. From the hollowness and emptiness she felt in the pit of her stomach Em searched for a smile to give her friend. She hoisted the smile onto her face and tried to shine all her love right through it.

  Jennifer's chin quivered. "I'm frightened," she said.

  Em hugged Jennifer one more time and then smoothly pushed her energy into her friend's mind. She filled Jennifer's mind with warmth and light and whispered softly, "It's going to be okay, Jennifer. You'll see. It's going to be beautiful."

  Em found the single silken thread that kept Jennifer's soul tethered to her body. She wrapped her mind around it. She reached back into Jennifer's thoughts and pulled forward all the happy memories she could find - childhood memories, her mother's embrace, the teddy bear she slept with till she was twelve, the flowers her grandmother grew, the roses her first boyfriend had bought her, a beach party, a favorite dress, the smell of warm fresh bread, the taste of chocolate, good times with friends...

  Em looked down at Jennifer. Her face was calm, her breathing had slowed. There was the hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth.

 
Em cut the thread.

  Jennifer's soul flew up and out of sight, and Jennifer's mind shut down. Em choked back a sob. She lay her friend's body carefully back down on the ground and stood up.

  "Raeisa!" she called, with all the fury she could summon.

  * * *

  Raeisa slithered out of the warehouse. The dress of reptilian scales had gone. It appeared to have dissolved into skin and spread to cover her entire body. She was naked, covered from head to toe in green scales, and her red hair tumbled loosely down around her shoulders. The snake patterned fingernails had hardened into long, sharp claws. Raeisa was still human in shape, but she was plainly more lizard than she was girl. She was also taller than she was before, and she swung her naked scaly hips with careless seduction. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth.

  "You didn't even take her, did you?" she said scornfully, stepping over Jennifer's body without even a glance. She walked in a slow circle around Em, smirking as she took in the redness in Em's eyes and the sorrow on her face.

  "You didn't even feed off her soul. A beautiful, fat, stupid soul like that one and you just let it go." Raeisa laughed and touched a finger to the blood that was running from her lip. She opened her mouth as she wiped off the smear and then, walking around to face Em over Jennifer's body, she licked the blood from her finger and looked at Em through half closed eyes. "Don't you find it dull, Emilia?" She strung out the syllables in Em's name mockingly. "Or do you like playing by the rules? Don't tell me you never indulge on a weakling every now and then?"

  "What are you?" said Em, quietly.

  Raeisa smiled and put her hands on her hips. "I'm a halfling," she said. Her smile quirked downwards into a lewd smirk and she drew out the next words slowly watching Em closely to see if they had the desired effect. "Just like you."

  Em sucked in a quick breath. She was going to devour Raeisa, but she wanted to know a little more first.

  "How did you do it?" she asked.