The Eyes:They See

Work, work, work
I do not own any of the characters. I’m not that talented, yet.

The Eyes: They See

Chapter 2: Work, work, work

On Monday morning, Anita dragged herself out of bed, and turned off the alarm clock on the night stand. Micah was away on a business trip discussing lycanthrope rights in New York. Nathaniel had woken up about an hour earlier and had a hearty breakfast starting for him and Jason. Jason had come over since the two of them were going to go shopping for new costume ideas. Halloween was less than a month away and it was a time where they could show their costume creativity at Guilty Pleasures, the vampire strip club, where they worked. Nathaniel had the table covered in various patterns and his sewing machine set up in the living room.

Anita stumbled into the kitchen grumbling about how it was too early to be awake. Nathaniel got up and handed her penguin mug full of steaming extra strong coffee.

“How many clients are you seeing today?” Nathaniel asked.

“Four. I usually leave the meet and greet to Bert but some of the clients insist on meeting the animator.” Along with being the human servant to the Master of the City of St. Louis, Jean-Claude, Anita was also Nimir-Ra (queen) to the leopard’s Bolverk (enforcer) to the wolves, The Executioner, licensed executioner of vampires, a federal marshal who worked on preternatural crimes, necromancer, she officially raised the dead for a living and was employed as a full time animator at Animators Inc. As an animator and the rest of her jobs she worked nights often times not getting to bed until four, five, and sometimes six o’clock in the morning. Many times the precious few hours she would have slept she would be called in to see a crime scene that took place during the night and was only found in the morning. Add that to amounting politics in both the vampire and lycanthrope community and well she was tired. Neither her clients nor her boss Bert liked to respect that she worked nights and often times called her in to meetings and paper work during “normal” business hours.

After guzzling her second cup Anita was coherent enough to notice that Jason was in the room. The ostentatious flirt was making eyes at her and she could tell that any moment now he would be making a comment and hitting on her. “Not now Jason, it’s too early for your flirting.” She scolded him.

“It’s never too early to flirt.” He responds giving her a wink.

“Anita if you have time, Stephen should be here in fifteen minutes and we will be having breakfast. The batter for the french toast is mixed and the bacon, sausage, and ham are defrosted. I’m about ready to start cooking?” Nathanial asked as he started pulling a large frying pan and a cast iron griddle from the cupboard next to the sink.

“Four coarse breakfasts were never my thing.” Anita told him.

“Oh.” Nathanial’s face fell as he uttered that syllable. “At least have a bowl of cereal or toast before you go.” He said as he reached into the cabinet pulling out a bowl.

“I’m not hungry.” She growled causing Nathanial to look at her with a sad broken face. She loved Nathanial but his submissiveness was getting on her nerves. She wanted him to be more independent. She did not need a mother or a child and sometimes Nathanial was both. Always trying to serve her and then looking dejected when he wasn’t needed. She did not understand how a striper could be so childish. Evidently her original opinion, that strippers were independent and stubborn, was wrong. Not all of them were like Demi Moore.

“Besides I have to get going. My first client will be arriving at nine, that gives me twenty minutes to drive their and ten to try convince Bert to have me stop meeting clients in the morning. I have the perfect new coffee mug to annoy him with.” Anita moved over to the cupboard and pulled out her new mug. She had found it on e-bay last week and had received it in the mail yesterday. She held it up for the boys to see. It had a trademark witch, black conical hat and all, with a zombie penguin eating man with little blood droplets that wrapped around the mug. It read, “Raising my zombie penguin army.” It was cute, disturbing and best of all it would irritate Bert, thus making her morning at work infinitely better.

Anita put the mug on the counter and moved over to the hall closet grabbing her leather jacket. It was getting cold again, now that fall had firmly set it, early fall was often just as hot as summer and made wearing a jacket difficult. Anita needed a jacket to conceal her shoulder holster and she never went anywhere without a gun. While the business jacket worked well enough sitting down at her desk the leather jacket was her favorite for walking around and movement because its thick fabric was her best wardrobe choice for completely hiding her gun. She adjusted her suit jacket and straightened the black leather jacket over it, grabbed the mug and kissed Nathaniel before heading out the door.

**

Anita had finished with her first client and set up the raising at midnight Saturday, she was going to need the extra boost of power with a midnight rising to raise this body. When it came to raising bodies this old few could do it without a human sacrifice. By now the body would have finished decomposing down to bones and well bones don’t have vocal cords so it would take extra energy to raise it with the ability to speak.

Mrs. Anna Mc Gillicutty wanted her great grandmother raised to find out where and in which of the family eight manors was the jewelry hidden. When the great Mrs. Ruth Mc Gillicutty was diagnosed with tuberculosis she had hidden the family heirloom jewels from her sister. She hated her sister and the feud between the two sides of the family has lasted for a hundred years. Now that Anna was the last of the line she wanted to find the jewels and donate them to a museum. The Mc Gillicuttys were once the head of the largest Dukedom in Scotland and the ruby necklace was said to be one of the most beautiful in the world, set with the famous Hunter’s Moon Ruby.

Anita was just getting up to get her next cup of coffee when Zerbrowski called telling her to get her butt over to West Forest Park for a preternatural homicide. Forest Park was one of the most historic parts of St. Louis and as such a landing ground for a cornucopia of tourist. Tourists were in Anita’s opinion worse than locals at crime scenes. Tourist seemed to think that a crime on a vacation is a source of entertainment, and since they don’t live there their common sense seems to tell them that there is no danger, every moment is a photo opportunity. Some locals are just as curious and obnoxious but many feel like they rather observe from a nice safe distance or they ignore it telling themselves in their minds that their neighborhoods are safe and that won’t happen to them. Well at least until it’s a serial and them they yell for lynch mobs and hide in their homes.

**

Anita ducked under the yellow tape flashing her federal marshal badge to the cops on duty. It was, as she thought, a mad house of tourist with flashing cameras and bony elbows. The reporters were already there demanding statements and generally being a pain in the ass.

“Take me to Dolph he’s expecting me.” Anita told one of the cops, a tall muscular man with a shaved head. About ten years ago he would have been called a skinner and a member of a gang and never would have been allowed in a police uniform, even military men had a crew cut back then, but now bald was the hippest trend. Why go bald naturally when you can just shave it all off now. Anita had to admit she loved hair, most of the men she is with now have at least shoulder length and longer. Even her own hair was a mid back length when straightened and just past her shoulder blades when curly. The Mr. Clean look was just not one of her turn-on’s.

Anita followed the officer through the trees and stopped in front of Dolph and Zerbrowski who were talking to the medical examiner. “You going to tell me what’s going on here?” Anita asked the group. The ME opened his mouth to speak but Dolph beat him to it.

“Where’s the fun in that. Why don’t you go take a look and tell us. It’s what you’re trained to do.” Dolph for the past year had been a right ass to Anita, taking out his frustration, with his son marrying a vampire, on her. She was the embodiment of everything he hated, she dated the monsters and his wife would not yell at him if he took it out on her rather than his son. Lately though, after the rest of the R.P.I.T. (Regional Preternatural Investigative Taskforce) started to try and talk down his anger, he’s been getting better, almost like he had been before the mess with his son. He still refused to accept his son or Anita’s life style and as things came up related to her choice in partner he still had several snide, angry comments.

Anita put on her gloves so as to not mess with the crime scene and walked over to the body.

“Shit! This man’s been skinned alive.” She exclaimed. The body was lying face down in the grass naked and his muscles exposed. Luckily the body was still fresh, she thought, the smell was not too bad, and the cool temperature kept it from decomposing too quickly. “Looks like a body dump; this man was not skinned here.” She told the men going right back to work examining the body. “He looks to have been in his mid twenties about 5’10’’ and fairly imposing in stature. Someone pretty strong had to have done this.” She moved up to stand at the head of the dead man. Turing to the ME she asked, “Can I touch the body?”

“I finished with him and the detectives have taken photos. He’s all yours.” The ME responded as he finished packing his tools into his kit.

“There is a pentagram carved onto his forehead and two more on each of his hands.” She said as she lifted his head off the ground to get a better look. “If I had to guess I’d say he would have the same markings on each foot as well.” Anita moved around the body to the feet to prove her statement. “There was defiantly magic used here. Not for the actual skinning, there are knife marks, but it was part of a ritual. Lingering magic clings to him. I don’t know what kind of ritual though.” Motioning over to Dolph she knelt by the body. “Can you help me flip him; I need to see the front.” She noticed that Zerbrowski and a few other male officers wince and look away. “Castrated,” she said.

“How’d you guess?” Dolph asked as he moved to flip to body.

“Your men; men always flinch when there’s a castrated body.” When she saw the front she quickly got up. “Dolph you need to call a sanitation crew in immediately this man was a lycanthrope.” She told him. Sanitation crews were now required at all lycanthrope crime scenes as people still had a strong fear of contamination regardless of the fact that dead lycanthrope blood held no chance for infection especially if the lycanthrope was in its human form.

“Zerbrowski get on that.” Dolph ordered. “How can you tell? The ME said he was human.”

“Look at his rib area. That was where he was cut first. You can see where he was trying to heal. Humans don’t heal that fast. He could be a strong witch doing a healing spell but they don’t work that well on yourself and they take a lot of concentration and meditation, and frankly I don’t think one has a lot of concentration when they are being skinned alive, and he was alive the whole time.”

“Why skin a Were, I thought their skin returns to human when severed?” Zerbrowski asked. “Sanitation is on its way.”

“It does. I’ll need to see x-rays to see if he was shifted at the time he was skinned, and DNA to find the species. I suspect that this was done as part of a ritual, but I know of no rituals that call for skinning a were. To inflict this kind of damage I speculate that the knife used was silver.” Anita said as she stood up and removed her gloves, with extra care, and quickly moved over to the portable sanitation. She made quick effort to wash her hands with the iodine solution. She use to not worry about it because she knew that the man was not contagious once he was dead, but she was taking no chances. And although, she didn’t have to worry about becoming a lycanthrope because she carried so many strains in her already, but she didn’t want the others to know that, she could lose her job. She also did not want to have a new strain in her. From what she could tell this was no wolf, leopard, tiger, or lion. It did not feel like any feline and she did not recognize the man as anyone she knew. True she did not know every lycanthrope in the city, but she did know a large portion, through her work with both Jean-Claude, as his girlfriend, and Micah through the coalition.


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