Darkness of the Spirit

ONE

HOLLYWOOD. 1:55 A.M.

Morgana arched her back as she rocked on top of her prey. She watched him through slit eyes, looking for the signs. He grabbed her breasts and moaned. She looked down at his hands. It wasn't time yet.

She moved faster, rocking back and forth. She leaned down, letting him bite and suck on her nipples. Their rhythm quickened. She could feel his short gasping breaths coming faster.

Dominick grabbed her hips, pulling her closer, and thrust hard upwards. His fingers dug into her pale skin and she felt them harden and pull back with a wet sucking sound.

There it is.

She closed her eyes, so hungry for the moment.

His fingers turned into sharp, suction-like fish mouths that dug into her skin, leaving tiny red and purple circular bruises on her hips.

She ran her hands down his chest, feeling it shift into something rubbery and slippery, like strange, wet leaves. His skin flushed iridescent green, then purple, then shimmering blue. She looked into his eyes and saw the faint honeycomb lines of a compound pupil forming.

Morgana moaned and screamed, rocking faster and pulling at his arms to bring him in closer. She felt his spine, knobs of knotted fists straining up through the flesh. Two hard nubs were pushing out behind his shoulder blades. She could feel the scratchy mass of feathers just below his skin, the ticklish sensation of tendrils brush against her fingertips.

It was time. She leaned forward and pulled a small, glittering bone blade knife from the pile of her clothes. With one quick arc, she plunged it through his chest and into his heart. She pulled the blade out and a burst of bright red blood splattered across her face and chest.

Dominick gasped and choked out a scream. He looked up at her, his gold eyes wide and scared. Morgana hammered the knife in again and again, opening his chest, the blood shooting over her face and running down her body.

He jerked and twitched, his body convulsing. He vomited a spray of blood and gave a last strangled moan. Then he slumped back, his body shaking and his cock still hard inside her.

Morgana wiped the blood from her eyes. She had to move quickly, while his skin was still shimmering.

She reached down and cradled his head in one hand. With the other she carved a deep cross in the space between his eyes. She pushed down on the hilt, driving the blade deeper into Dominick's skull. She slid the knife out slowly. A mess of bone fragment, blood and brain matter spilled out onto her hand. She jammed it in again, carving wider, and pulled the knife back out.

No! she hissed. It has to be here!

The signs were all there. The eyes that shifted from the usual Fae green to that tell-tale gold. The body that transformed under the sway of the drugs.

She slid a finger into his skull, reaching into the hole in his head with her fingers, probing, pushing, but finding nothing. Nothing.

She always pictured the Key as a diamond. Or better yet an emerald. Something crystalline and beautiful that she could wrap in her hand, feel its power seep into her body and course through her soul. But not today. Not with this useless piece of meat.

With a grunt of disgust, she threw the knife into the floor. It pierced the wood with a solid thunk.

Morgana grabbed Dominick's head with both hands and slammed it over and over into the wall behind the sofa, screaming and growling. She kept going until his skull splintered beneath her palms like a cracked coconut.

Breathing heavily, she stood up and retrieved her knife. She got dressed, paying no attention to the blood soaking through her clothes.

As her breathing slowed, she realized someone had been knocking on the door for some time. She walked over to it and kicked hard outwards, smashing the lock and sending whoever it was flying backwards. A crowd of shocked Fae watched her walk calmly towards the exit.

Then they looked inside the room. The walls were streaked in wide swaths of blood red speckled with bone white and brain grey. In the middle was the mutilated body of a young Fae who’d strayed too far from home. A kid who’d never know that he’d been followed all the way by a lone detective intent on bringing him back to face a sentence that was far less cruel than the one he’d found.

TWO

HOLLYWOOD. EARLIER THAT DAY.

Jack had hunted for seven weeks before he spotted him outside a back alley Hollywood nightclub that didn't exist. Seven weeks of kicking in chained doors and knocking around dead-eyed junkies all the way down the coast from Seattle. Seven weeks of skulking through dark, sweaty bars listening to the death of music and pushing through throngs of beer swilling baby mortals, too drunk to realize how fast their lives would burn up. Seven weeks of sitting in his car in one town after another, watching cigarette smoke crawl up the windshield as he wasted eternity.

When the kid finally showed up, Jack's first impulse was to sprint across the street and tear the clueless bastard into pieces too tiny for the world to miss. Instead, he stubbed out his latest smoke with careful, deliberate taps into the ashtray and focused all his attention on the young Fae waiting for his chance to talk his way past the bouncer. The eyes gave it away. An unnaturally bright shade of green that would look like custom contacts to any human. Jack always thought of them as more insect-like than the jewel tones the Fae used to describe them.

Jack took a quick visual assessment. The guy was small but swollen with muscle. A gym rat's body, hard abs and a glass jaw. He was carefully dressed up in three hundred dollar blue jeans and a hundred-dollar t-shirt that showed off his biceps and his lack of taste. Jack took in the bleached hair and the razor wire tattoo and figured the guy would go for a gun at the first sign of a real threat. No worry there, but best take him somewhere devoid of civilians. Jack hated involving the cops. They were such a pain in the ass.

He cracked his knuckles and got out of his car. He was a few blocks south of Hollywood Boulevard, on a mostly deserted side street full of closed-up liquor stores and anonymous office buildings. The club entrance was at the mouth of a narrow alleyway. There was no other way out, so his prey was finally cornered. He was the lead suspect—the only suspect—in a parking lot shootout one tragic midnight not too long ago. He'd evaded the cops for months before one of the victim's family put Jack on the case. The guy had shot three of his fellow dealers and one innocent kid who was passing by. A kid with some powerful relatives, as it turned out. The dead were all human but Jack picked up a latent scent at what was left of the crime scene and knew the shooter was Fae. Their sugar sweet blood was hard to mistake. And even harder to resist. But Jack was a professional and set about finding the killer and wouldn't consider drinking his blood. Probably.

Jack scanned the crowd lined up in front of the club and didn't see any problems. Kids mostly, young Fae sneaking out after curfew. A few humans who might be in the loop but were more likely drawn to the energy of the place unconsciously. He wondered how many of them would make it home. Then decided he didn't really care. Humans who couldn't be bothered to pay attention deserved whatever they got.

Jack’s plan was to flash his fake badge, stick a gun in the guy’s gut, and lead him around the corner. Then he'd hook him up with the cuffs and knock him out if the guy tried anything stupid. It was a fine plan that went straight to hell when some woman leaned out of the doorway, draped an arm around the bouncer's shoulders and whispered in his ear. The bouncer nodded once and walked down the line till he was right next to Jack’s fugitive Fae.

The bouncer put a hand on the perp’s shoulder and whispered something into the kid’s ear, gesturing toward the door. The kid looked confused at first until comprehension set in and he smiled wide, puffing out his chest. He turned to the others in line around him and flipped them off, still grinning.

Jack watched the bouncer lead the kid into the club and cursed under his breath. He looked up to get a glimpse of the woman at the door who’d summoned the kid. His first impression was that he was looking into the eye of a hurricane. Her pale, triangular face was wreathed in a cloud of red hair and her whole body, encased in a skintight green dress, looked tensed for explosive movement.

She sensed Jack's stare and when her wild eyes turned to his, her mouth spread open in a feral grin. Jack immediately sank into a defensive crouch, his fangs sliding out and his eyes flashing red. It wasn’t a friendly smile and whoever this woman was, he was ready to tear her apart.

The redhead saw Jack’s reaction and slowly winked, then disappeared back into the club entrance. Jack fought the urge to run after her and take her down. He unclenched his fists and gathered himself together. Not now—he needed to focus on the perp. The hunt wasn’t over.

He walked back to his car, mentally filing away every inch of the redhead’s face for future reference.

When the Fae kid turned the corner of the alleyway, he spied the redhead waiting for him against the wall, her face half covered in shadows. She looked him over slowly, from his red leather shoes to his bleached blonde highlights. Then she settled on his eyes and smiled.

You'll do.

I'm Dominick, he said, moving closer. What's your-

My name is Morgana and you can stop talking now. She grabbed his hand and pulled him quickly down the alley and into the club itself. Inside Dominick was plunged into a dark cave illuminated by the staccato flash of strobe lights and the throbbing bass of the fast electronic beats favored by the Fae. Swaying half-naked bodies covered the dance floor. Animalistic howls and guttural cries bounced off the walls as a hundred drugged Fae indulged in the brief, magical high of pixie dust. Pixie didn’t work on humans, but it gave the Fae an incredible, earth shattering, soul quenching high. A bone deep ecstasy that lifted them out of this world and onto another plane of existence. It was a chance to feel a touch of the powers Fae used to have in the time before the fall. But a taste of that legendary Faerie magic only lasted for an hour or two and then it was a hard crash back into reality.

Dominick felt the familiar tingling in his nose and gums when he smelled the drug in the air. As if reading his mind, Morgana slipped a small vial into his hand and kissed him on the neck, inhaling his scent as her lips trailed