Snippets: Human/Nature pt 1

[strange_natures]

https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/326880.html?thread=1878283744#cmt1878283744

"You're certain about her?" Abby said, nodding over to where Detective Thewlis was trying to take her painkillers without spilling any water from the glass in her trembling hand.

"She followed the evidence, instead of letting her most basic preconceptions of reality get in the way; chased after a Lovecraftian nightmare because her instinctive duty to protect others overrode everything else; Nev would be in much worse condition if she hadn't immediately assessed the situation correctly and baited the suspect into our containment circle; and she's accepted that eldritch monstrosities aren't automatically guilty and we need to investigate further. I get why you have your doubts, Grandpa, but if that's not past the bar I don't know what is." Elfrida leaned her weight against the table, tilting her head and clicking her teeth together a couple of times before adding, "It's bloody obvious she's clocked you too, but she's still managing to keep her shit vaguely together because she needs to solve this case more than she needs to stay away from people like us."

The old vampire sighed, mulling it over until finally he murmured, "You know, it's somewhat reassuring: I was beginning to think human Justices were the real cryptids."


*****

https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/326938.html?thread=1880217882#cmt1880217882

The door opened and Agent Fox entered the incident room, neatly suited once more, though less than impeccable now that the left side of his face was badly bruised and his arm was in a sling.

Not even sure where the courage came from, except perhaps some mad urge to laugh to keep away the darkness, Karen asked him, "So they managed to save your foreleg then?"

After the briefest of pauses he lifted an eyebrow and smiled at her, a lop-sided slash of white teeth, some of them far longer than she was comfortable with. "Well spotted, DS Thewlis," he said, glancing at his sling, "I suppose it's at least a traditional way of being outed."

"For the record, I put two and two together before I was even out of A&E - if you're going to yell at me to stay out of my own investigation twice then at least have the decency to change your voice as well as your shape."

*****

https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/327280.html?thread=1881622128#cmt1881622128

What was really disconcerting was how quickly the basement had started to look like a real, normal world incident room: two constables who'd already been banished to the 'odd squad' had been assigned, and were trawling through auction sites and poring over property deeds; Abby was tacking photos and drawings to a whiteboard; Agent Griffin was on the phone, apparently trying to wrangle information out of a consultant; and Agent Fox was staring through the window of a side-room that would usually be designated as the DI's office.

Which was really where the main difference lay, Karen thought as she briefly caught sight of the creature inside: a slithering mess of fractals and slick, twisting curves, light and darkness with edges that suggested that something more existed in dimensions beyond her familiar four. They couldn't keep their suspect in a normal holding cell, so it was down here with them, where there was no risk of 'some bloody idiot', as Abby had put it, smudging the carefully drawn circle that trapped it.

The knowledge that it was held at bay by only chalked symbols and intent chilled her to the soul. She hadn't yet worked out how she should feel about the assurances that, if the roles were reversed, it would be equally skeptical about locking her up in a cage of mere concrete and steel.

*****

https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/327529.html?thread=1883643241#cmt1883643241

Abby took a breath, seeming to steel himself, and then launched into his briefing: "Right, once we combine our cases we have eighteen confirmed victims: always two murders at a time, one human, one dusk-wight; always on the night of the new moon; and always leaving behind a very large mess that all but obliterates any spellwork found at the scene. We also have nine wanderers unaccounted for, which is a very suspicious number under the circumstances. And, given that we had a tenth new moon only two nights ago, it is highly likely that there are new victims and another crime scene out there we haven't even found yet."

He paused to let that sink in before continuing: "We have one individual in custody, but finding out whether it's a potential suspect or a heavily traumatised witness will have to wait until specialist help arrives. Theoretically its presence could be unrelated to all this, but I'm fairly sure you will all agree that being in the area, whilst coated in the rather unusual combination of human and dusk-wight innards, would be one hell of a coincidence."

Karen shuffled, still a little sceptical that it wasn't enough to rule out 'innocent witness', but she'd seen humans do some bloody strange things when panicked by the discovery of a vicious murder.

*****

https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/327788.html?thread=1885288044#cmt1885288044

"Nev and I have been through every pawn-broker and fence who might know they were shifting something of this level, but if it went through unknowing channels..." Griffin said.

"Ah, yes, the local 'odd squad' does leave much to be desired." Abby looked over at the borrowed constables, and added, "No offense."

DC Smythe just stared back, stone-faced, but DC Witman grinned and nodded, blatantly ecstatic that the issues within her unit had finally been noticed by someone higher-up. "I already made a list!"

*****

https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/328359.html?thread=1888472231#cmt1888472231

"How are you holding up?"

Karen looked up to see Agent Griffin gazing at her in that weird, slightly tilted way she had, but the concern seemed genuine. "Oh, I'm fine, slept like a baby."

"Really?"

"Yeah - woke up every couple of hours to have a good cry, but give it a few months and I reckon I'll be able to get through the whole night."

*****

https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/328580.html?thread=1890222212#cmt1890222212

"So, you got lumped with the muggle, huh?" Karen said as she slid into the driver's seat of the car.

"Trust me, having to wrangle our potential specialists was the short straw," Fox murmured from the passenger side, where he was leafing through the extensive list of local dealers that Witman had compiled. "You know, I suspect it will be more efficient if you take the lead on questioning people."

"And in the meantime you'll have a sniff around."

He chuckled. "In the meantime I'll lay a low sweeping ident-spell, in the hopes of picking up some trace of our little friend's thaumatic signature - but yes, I'll keep a nose out for anything suspicious too."

*****

https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/329079.html?thread=1893613175#cmt1893613175

"Damn it," Karen snarled, "another lost lead and nothing to go on!"

Fox pressed his hand against the bleeding wound on his forehead, wincing. "Actually, I find the fact that he reached past an iron poker to grab a silver candlestick to be pretty significant."

"He must have known you're a werewolf?

Shaking his head gingerly, Fox eyed the poker and said, "Like you, he must only know enough to assume I'm a werewolf."

*****

https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/329285.html?thread=1895302469#cmt1895302469

"It would be nice to know what the plan is, instead of just following directions - I'm not a taxi," Karen muttered.

"Anyone who can spot a shapeshifter in their human form would also be able to tell a werewolf from a fairy-fox," Fox said. "I've only shapeshifted three times since I got here, every time in a low-traffic area that's related to our case..."

"Be a bit of a coincidence for him to have seen you, and be with one of our suspect dealers," she finished, unable to stifle the grin of triumph at having another lead.

"I might not be able to follow his trail through a city-centre at rush hour, but industrial wasteland is another matter entirely, and I happen to have a candlestick-shaped bone to pick with him."

*****

https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/329707.html?thread=1897048299#cmt1897048299

"Is there something I should be doing?" Karen asked. "Only normally when I see the dog unit out and about the human is holding a leash, and for some reason I can't see that going down well..."

"Ha ha, very funny; why don't you have a poke around?" Fox replied as he back-tracked over the alley between the warehouses, pausing to snuffle at some tire-tracks. In full daylight his other shape was very clearly a fox, rather than the 'mystery canine' she'd previously thought, but given that he was also bigger than an alsatian she felt she could be forgiven for making the mistake in the dark - especially since she'd been trying to apprehend a Lovecraftian monster at the time.

"Don't think I'll find much without a warrant and bolt-cutters; these are all empty nowadays, apart from Eddie Walton's yard, and he only deals in architectural reclamation since he met the missus... unless something really special comes along... I'll be back in a bit."

*****

https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/329861.html?thread=1898778245#cmt1898778245

"If you think this is going to distract me from the fact that whatever killed Walton left injuries that look an awful lot like mine then I've got news for you, Agent Neville Fox, or whatever the hell your name really is!" Karen yelled as she stormed into the small warehouse, not caring what the SOCOs in Walton's yard overheard.

Fox didn't even look up from the patterns and sigils drawn on the concrete floor, he just said, "Thewlis, please look to your left."

There was something in his voice, a gut-wrenching flicker of fear within the calm, that made her stop immediately and do as he asked: the corner behind her looked like the previous nine crime scenes, a mess of dried blood and exploded viscera worthy of an over-the-top horror movie, but concentrated over far less space.

She pressed her fist against her mouth, trying to hold back the reaction that was bubbling up inside, and turned back to look at the patterns he was still staring at - a concentric ring of circles made up of symbols, much like the containment cell back in the incident room, but in this case there were four radiating lines of sigils and glyphs that twisted outwards to the corners of the warehouse, three of them leading to smaller containment circles, and the fourth leading to the bloody mess that presumably covered another.

"I feel like I should tell you that I've never seen a summoning like this; we're both on unfamiliar ground here," Fox said.

"No," she replied, shaking her head, "no, I've got a better idea: how about you don't tell me that."

*****

https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/330160.html?thread=1900473776#cmt1900473776

Karen walked around the edge of the spell again, wishing that she could just spot something in the shapes that she could translate into usable information.

It didn't take a pathologist to match the injuries that had killed Walton to the neatly stitched wound that still burned down her side, but there weren't any other victims who fit that particular pattern - and while his estimated time of death hadn't been narrowed down yet, the night of the new moon fit squarely inside the frame they did have.

"At the risk of being Captain Obvious to anyone with the slightest bit of magical training," she said, "I have two questions: one, could this have summoned the thing we have in custody; and two, why are the remains only in that corner?"

"Will 'it's so nonsensical I can't say for sure' and 'I have no bloody idea' work for you?" Fox replied, rubbing his temples.

"Not in the long run, but I'll accept them as code for you needing some time to think."

*****

https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/330429.html?thread=1902164669#cmt1902164669

"I think we need to revisit the idea of me interviewing the families of the other victims," Karen said. "You both found some leads interviewing the human ones, maybe I'll do the same and spot something you never thought to look for."

"I agree with you in principle, but when we said no it was because it requires training you don't have, and don't have time to acquire before the next new moon," Fox replied, leaning his head back against the car head-rest. "Either we spend days summoning grieving relatives into the physical realm, which can be traumatic and potentially fatal at the best of times, or we spend days half-arsing 'home visits' at the risk of your mind snapping because it wasn't prepared properly - and before you even ask, yes, it can be much worse than the itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny, eldritch being we have in custody."

She thought about said eldritch being for a moment. "...Okay, we'll put it on the backburner, at least for now."

***

https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/330615.html?thread=1904073591#cmt1904073591

"Please tell me they have better news than we do," Karen said as soon as Fox ended the call.

"So far none of our contacts has ever seen anything like our little friend's thaumatic signature, and one of them turned up to have a closer look and convinced Abby that they could stabilise it if the two of them worked together." He sighed, before adding, "On the positive side, they both made it out alive, and we now know we need to skip to the heavy-weight specialists."

"Are you ready to agree with me that that thing's dangerous yet?"

"I never disagreed, I just think it's dangerous because it's scared out of its mind."

***

https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/330962.html?thread=1905696722#cmt1905696722

"You all keep saying the thing doesn't make sense, but nobody will explain why," Karen said, unable to keep the exasperation out of her voice.

"Well, for starters, running five summoning circles at the same time is logistical insanity in terms of balancing powerflow and concentration, and there's no appreciable benefit over doing them individually," Abby replied. "Then there's the reckless combination of different magics; the partial invocations; the lack of specificity regarding the identity of the summonee; the shifting directional flow; and the fact that this abomination powered up at all - it's no wonder all their previous attempts went completely haywire." He pointed at a symbol, and added, "To put a cherry on top, somebody has forged the signature of a mage I thought I'd obliterated from the historical record, right here in the middle."

"Could this be personal?" she asked, praying for a lead.

"After seeing this, I'd say anything's possible."

***

https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/331210.html?thread=1907488714#cmt1907488714

"Fox, you said the nature spirits have been changing their territories around," Karen murmured.

"Hmm?"

"At the first combined briefing, you said the city's nature spirits have clammed up, but the local talent has noticed that they've been changing their territorial boundaries because of the fluctuations in the background magic - obviously I don't know how it works, but could they actually be moving their territories around because they're also going missing and there's empty space? Four smaller summoning circles: human, dusk-wight, wanderer... nature spirit."

All three of them stared at her, and she wasn't sure how to feel about having just knocked them even further out of equilibrium: it wasn't ideal that the scary people were freaked out by this case too, but it was also kind of nice to have some company out on the verge of sanity.

*****

https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/331341.html?thread=1909045837#cmt1909045837

"I'm concerned that you're obviously not okay with the specialist we're bringing in," Karen said, wondering whether she even wanted to know the details.

"I try to avoid involving any type of deity in my cases: they play by their own rules and have the ultimate in diplomatic immunity; it's not a combination I feel comfortable inviting into an unsuspecting city," Fox replied, with a resigned sigh. "That being said, we need the help and Perdita's our best choice: she's got the kind of skillset we need; she's adopted worse than our little friend; and she at least tries to do what's right most of the time, despite the disadvantage of having been born with a roulette wheel where her moral compass should be."

Karen decided to let the 'deity' thing slide until she had enough mental traction to get a grip on it, instead muttering, "...Not sure I want to meet someone who would adopt an eldritch hell-beast."

"That's a shame; I think she'll like you."

*****

https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/331582.html?thread=1910708286#cmt1910708286

"I don't understand why you people can't just leave dead things in the ground where they belong," Abby snarled, "and don't give me that 'learning from history' bullshit, because I've been around more than long enough to know that you never do!"

"He'll apologise when he's calmed down, love, tell me what you've found," Griffin said to DC Witman, who was shaking a little from the outburst.

"An archaeological dig last year, exactly where I was told to look - there's nothing in their findings that sets off alarm bells, but they reported some looting that..." She trailed off and stared at Abby, who'd put his head between his knees and was rocking slightly, his pale hands clutched together at the base of his skull. "Um, is he okay?"

"He'll be fine; we should probably keep him away from archaeologists for a decade or two, but he'll be fine."

*****

https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/331885.html?thread=1912472685#cmt1912472685

"Who's Bayal?" Karen whispered to Fox.

"He knows about as much as you do, Detective; when I bury someone for good I don't go around talking about them - although I'll admit I should probably revisit that protocol now humanity has started finding so many lost cities," Abby said. "But to answer the question: Bayal was a very bad man with very big ideas, and he wanted to wake up things that should stay asleep; at one point he tried to sacrifice me to do it."

Judging by the way Fox and Griffin shifted in place and glanced at each other, that was another 'weird' thing even by their standards.

Abby saw that she'd noticed the reaction, and said, "I'm something of a non-traditional offering, but then, so is a nature spirit."