It was late when Ben came out of the nightclub. Alone.
It had been a good session. Fluid Exchange had been the lead band, and he liked them. He suspected that the saxophonist was an exotic. He was also not a little puzzled by the lead singer’s energy field—a wizard? A bard? He hadn’t felt one quite like that before. And he was sure he’d seen an elf on the dance floor, and another, younger, talking with the saxophonist and the lead guitarist. If it hadn’t been impossible – a human, an elf and an exotic – he’d have said all three were family, from the way they interacted.
As always, just before he stepped out of the protection afforded by the doorway, he quickly scanned each side of the narrow street, in both directions. There was nothing. Yet a prickling alert made the nape of his neck shiver. He had learnt the hard way not to ignore these warnings.
He turned and sauntered towards brighter illuminations of the main street, deliberately affecting a nonchalance he did not feel. Away from the light spilling from the door of the nightclub, it was dark, and his sense of danger grew. Like all his kind, he could see very well at night. There were no recent infra-red trails, no fading traces of dangerous auras. Yet the prickling was beginning to feel like needles piercing his skin. Out of a side alley, a space only a few yards wide and not much longer, he felt the residue of a wave of malevolence, a dab of filth brushing against his mind and fouling his aura. He reached for the weapon he always kept in his handbag, widened his pupils, tuned his ears to maximum alertness and breathed deep the foetid scents of rubbish, piss, dogshit, and evil. His gun raised, he turned into the alley, and began to walk forward.
The body was spread across the dumpster at the far wall, just so much meat. It was halfway through changing—legs already furred, tail half formed. Its throat was cut, and it had been disembowelled. A youngling, life cut short long before time.
Ben reached for his mobile.
As he waited in the shadows, he reviewed the evening. He had felt nothing especially unusual. Only one or two exotics in the club, most of them linked in some way to the band. He hoped the band was not involved – he liked them, had a few of their CDs. He’d have to go back to interview them after the team arrived.
He felt rather than saw the arrival of his colleagues. They looked like ordinary Victorian uniformed policemen, the dark blue serge and chequered helmet stripes as effective a disguise as any. Emma was in charge, James just behind, and their wiz, Neil, his hair flying and his uniform rumpled, trailed as usual in the rear. Ben canted his head to one side in greeting, and stepped into the mouth of the alley to screen their actions.
“What’s happening?” One of the faces from the dance floor. Ben had hoped for a while that they might be going home together afterwards. Probably just as well it hadn’t happened. Their tryst would not have survived this, and the revelation of who he was.
“Murder,” said Ben laconically.
“Wow!” The man was staring at Ben, finding him interesting, now, when it was too late.
Sighing, Ben said, in his best policeman tones, with just enough authority to ensure obedience, “Move along please.”
Behind him, he could hear the zipper of the body bag, and feel the occasional trail of wiz’s magics. Sighing again, he turned and made his way back to the nightclub, pulling out his badge from his wallet. It was going to be a bugger of a day. And it hadn’t even started.