Delicate

[AllenMares]

(Hey everyone! If you don't remember me, my first story was Scoundrels. This is a sequel, but this post is sort of just a prologue. I might not be able to add on to this in a timely manner for a while, but I wanted to get this out there.)

Picture:

A dark alleyway, lit dimly by flickering torchlight coming off the main streets, lined with garbage and damp sewage.

A beautiful woman barely more than a girl, dressed, it would seem, for a carnival, in a green silk dress, feathers in her hair, wearing the mask of a bird. She is on her back, hands thrown up to defend herself against-

A figure in black, blending into the darkness of the alleyway, what little light there is gleaming off his mask, that of a wildly grinning...thing, all teeth and wide eyes.

The woman gasps, scrambling to get away, to get back to the light of the main streets, where a celebration is drowning out her cries for help.

"No," says the figure in black with the demon's mask, chuckling hideously. "No, so sorry." And with a movement so swift it seems barely more than a flickering shadow, there is suddenly a bloody gash across the woman's left arm.

The woman screams, clutching her arm to her, spilling blood all over her beautiful green dress. Her bird's mask is skewed now, and she can barely see what is happening. All she knows is that the figure in black is close enough for her to hear the rasping of his breath behind the mask.

"How is it that you do not struggle more? None of you ever do." comes his voice, after a few seconds of horrifying blindness. "What are you expecting here, for me to simply rob you? What baubles you keep on yourself are worthless to me."

At these words, the woman tenses up and begins screaming wildly, flailing her arms about her-uselessly, as it turns out. With a mild grunt of annoyance, the man pins her arms at her side, and suddenly, like a shadow with weight and substance, he is on top of her.

"No, I do not want that either," he says wryly as the young woman clenches her legs together as tightly as she can. "I can have that whenever I want, from women as equally beautiful as you or more so." He reaches out with a gloved hand and removes the woman's bird-mask, revealing piercing blue eyes.

"What is it you want from me?" she says now, fear making her voice tremble. She stares intently into the demon's mask, trying desperately to appear unafraid. This man was talking to her too much to be a normal criminal. Perhaps he was merely insane. Perhaps she wasn't in as much danger as she first thought.

"Well, I don't want anything, personally," says the figure, demon's mask inches from her own face.

The young woman relaxes, ever so slightly.

"But he, I'm afraid, is a different story."

The figure in black produces a long, slim knife, a pale, glimmering shard in the darkness of the alley.

"He is going to need your eyes."

Before the woman even has time to draw another breath for a scream, the knife flashes once, twice, three times, again and again and again, and the pretty young woman's blood splashes out against the walls of the alley, and her dress is full of holes now. And eventually she stops moving. And after crouching over her for a few moments, the black figure in the demon's mask melts back into the darkness.

And the alley belongs to the rats again, and now they have a feast for themselves.

[AllenMares]

Inspector Richard Malogne carefully rolled a cigarette, his long, stained fingers pinching the paper tight.

He was not a young man, his hair was graying and his face was deeply lined, and beneath his vest he had a bit of a paunch. He walked and breathed weariness, every movement he made seemed to suggest he was fed up with the world.His eyes were still bright and sharp, however, and darting, always taking everything in.

He noted all the faces in the small crowd behind him as he stepped into the alleyway, brushing back the two guards keeping people away. "Inspector," he sighed at them as he passed, leaning into his cupped hands where a match flared, lighting his cigarette.

It was a mess in the alleyway. A lieutenant of the guard stood to one side, observing the scene with a handkerchief held to his long nose-a young man, but not shaken by this, no, the stench was just that bad. Richard didn't need a handkerchief, however. Years of scenes like this had made him immune to most aspects of murder, and his cigarette covered up much of the stink. His eyes darted, noting the splashes of blood on the alley walls, the direction they went in, how far, how much.

"They sent us an inspector?" the lieutenant asked.

Richard shrugged. Not all crimes had an inspector sent to them, but it wasn't up to him to which ones he did appear at.

He looked down at the poor, chewed remains of the corpse before him. Most of it was chewed up badly by rats and whatever else may have been on the streets at night before it was discovered.

With his foot, he nudged the corpse over so it faced upwards.

"I see they took her eyes," he murmured.

"Who, the rats?" asked the lieutenant.

"No. Her was on the pavement and could not be chewed. I am assuming whoever killed her, they took her eyes." Richard knelt down to examine the sockets. "And they were apparently pretty careful about it as well."

"Shouldn't you wear gloves?"

"I wash my hands." Richard took out a small knife and cut away the remnants of the corpse's dress, taking a good look at the wounds. There was a small slash across the woman's left arm, and nine stab wounds ranging from her neck down to her gut.

"No signs of rape...anything of worth was taken from her, but other than that.." Richard sighed, leaning back on his feet. "She just has the missing eyes."

"Are you done here, then?"

Richard gave the lieutenant a baleful glare-technically, he outranked the man-then stood, taking another drag from his cigarette. "Yes. I am done. You and your men may remove the body and bring it to the morgue. Did any of you find anything else in this alley?"

"No, inspector." The lieutenant eyed the corpse, shuffling away from it a few feet. "We have canvassed the neighborhood for witnesses, but since this was during a festival, anyone in the city could have seen her that night."

"I would like for you to get me a sketch of the corpse, before it is buried. Find a good artist. Your Captain will compensate you for the expense."

As he walked back out of the alley, Richard closely inspected the faces of those still remaining there.

Some young, some old, some curious, others just blankly staring, men and women-he tried to memorize them all.

Richard had had experience with this kind of murder before. A murder, usually, is an accident, or not the goal of the murderer. There are some, though, who murdered for the sheer thrill of it, or because they were sick in the head. Those were the worst, because there was no logical motive, no purpose to what they did, and it could never be predicted what they would do next. And they always, always killed again.

Richard had a feeling that this might be one of those kinds of murders.

Because they usually took trophies.

[AllenMares]

Richard sat in his study at his home, smoke curling lazily up toward the ceiling from his pipe, sipping from a glass of dark liquor.

The job of inspector paid well, and Richard had always been smart with his money. His house was a practicaly a mansion, large and well-decorated. The study, a room of dark wood furniture and lush velvet curtains that were drawn together, concealing an open-air balcony with a beautiful view, was Richard's favorite. Bookcases lined the waslls, containing records of documents from past cases, as well as his collection of western literature.

Richard rubbed weary and drooping eyes, blinked, and took another long sip of his drink before turning his attention to the document in front of him. It was a report on the corpse in the alley today, complete with his comments to the captain exactly what sort of murder he suspected this was. There were those who occasionally accused Richard of seeing these sorts of murderers everywhere, who even accused him of wanting a murder to be of this sort.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Investigating these sorts of murders made Richard feel like a coward.

He lost sleep at night, drinking with the darkness as his only companion, his mind filled with paranoid horror at the idea of someone like that in his city. His stomach clenched whenever he was sent to another corpse suspected to be a victim of the same killer. His blood ran cold in his veins at the prospect of actually having to face, to arrest these madmen. He always imagined them as these terrible things barely human, so full of malice and hatred that he was easily overwhelmed and then subjected to the same gruesome deaths that their victims faced.

The only problem was, he seemed to have a penchant for tracking these butchers down.

Something deep in him knew their instincts, knew the way that they reasoned. Nothing was predictable with them, but Richard seemed to understand them in a way that others did not. He knew the logic of their madness, the deep, primitive emotions that moved them, the ancient, abandoned urges that made them so horrible. And he had the experience. He had caught five of these slayers over his terrifying career.

And, perhaps, he had the personal drive. His brother had been a naval captain for the republic, a competent leader and talented mage in his own right...before his family had been tortured and butchered by one of these madmen.

It had been Richard's first case in which he had tracked one of these sick men who were driven to kill. It had taken nearly two years for him to track down the killer, a rather innocuous young man, seemingly normal in every way, maybe even a bit handsome and charming. He had maintained his innocence-until the guard investigated his house and found jars of his victim's teeth in the basement. Then he had laughed and laughed, not like a madman, but like someone who had just heard a good joke. He had been hanged and put in an unmarked grave.

Richard's brother had never recovered from that day when he had come home from sea and found his family strewn and rotting all over his home. He lit his ship on fire, being discharged from the navy dishonorably-the only reason they did not execute him was because of his years of valiant service. He now spent most of his days in a mansion he had built on the outskirts of the city, overlooking the beach. Mad Jack, they called him. He had not spoken to Richard in years.

No, no-Richard could not live in a city like that, could not let these wolves in human skin stalk the city unchallenged. Because it may have been his brother's wife and child, but it just as easily could have been his.

There was a gentle knock on his door now, one that Richard instantly recognized as his wife's. "Come in, dear," he called, putting the cap on his pipe. She hated his smoking habit.

Richard's wife entered the room, smiling wryly once she saw the paperwork on his desk. Sara was her name, and she was young and beautiful, with long dark hair, pale skin, and large, dark eyes, sixteen years younger than Richard himself. There were those who considered Richard a scoundrel for marrying a woman so young, but Richard invariably had short, four-letter words for them in response. Their relationship may have been a strange one, but he loved his wife with all his heart, and had not simply married her for her beauty. Though it had helped.

She wore a long, chaste nightgown, but managed to make it look scandalous as she waltzed on over to his desk, picking up a page of his report. Richard did not stop her. He didn't try to baby her, or to hide her from the fact that there were awful people in this world, people that he had to deal with.

"Took her eyes? Appalling," she murmured after a few moments, but with that sound of fascination in her voice she always had when hearing about such things. Sara, sensible though she might be, had a strange predilection for the disturbing, and not a few of the books and plays she enjoyed the most were those about madness.

Richard forced himself to smile, then reached for his glass and took another sip of liquor. "What is it you wanted, love?" He did not forbid her anything, but she usually left him his peace while he was in his study, unless there was something wrong, or...

Sara cast her eyes down and ran her finger in small circles against the polished wood of his desk. "Well...Tory is asleep, and I was wondering if you were going to be coming to bed, or just sit up here drinking all night." Victoria was their five-year old daughter. All of this was said in such a perfect pantomime of innocence that Richard never would have thought she was suggesting anything if he hadn't known her so well.

"Well, I did want to finish this report for the Captain by tomorrow," he began, when she leaned over the desk and kissed him. She kissed very much like she had kissed him the first time, almost hesitantly at first, and delicately, closing her eyes, and it always amused Richard how much of an act all this feigned innocence was.

"I suppose that I could finish this tomorrow," he breathed once her lips had left his. She smiled, leaving wordlessly with that enchanting waltz of hers.

Richard finished the rest of his drink in one gulp, made sure his pipe was out, and extinguished the candles in his study. Taking one with him to light his way, he glanced once more at the report in front of him, the candlelight providing one last disturbing flicker over the sketch of the corpse.