Got the next chapter out far sooner than the last one. Hope you're all still enjoying the tale. As always, please feel free to leave constructive criticism but outright abuse will not be tolerated and those comments will be immediately deleted. Thanks for reading! I appreciate each and every one of you!
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"A witch?" Ras repeated what Dana, his new lover, had just revealed to him. "How have you kept this secret from everyone in the clan? Especially Solomon and Elizabeth?"
"When they first met me," Dana began her answer, "I had no idea what I was, only that I could make things happen that I shouldn't be able to do. If Solomon and Elizabeth suspected anything then they never let on that they knew. After I did my research into my lineage and found out who I was, I began to concentrate more on my power and my craft so that I could keep Solomon and Elizabeth in the dark about it and possibly defeat them should the unthinkable happen. I'm still not sure I could do it alone, but I think you and I could defeat them together."
"Defeat them?! Defeat them?!" Ras mimicked in question twice. "There have been twelve instances that I know of where someone or some-'thing' has challenged Solomon and Elizabeth and no one has ever come close to defeating them. They are
immeasurably
powerful! I'm a very powerful being in my own right but I don't think there's any way I could beat them in a confrontation no matter who helped."
"But they've never gone up against a being as powerful as you
and
a High Priestess of the Dark Midnight coven. They would..."
"Tear through us like a buzz saw through lumber..." Ras interrupted her thought. "I've seen some powerful entities go up against them and lose quickly. You might get the best of one of them, but they're an unstoppable team. No, thanks, Dana. You should just keep up your charade and try to keep them at bay as long as possible until you can figure out how to escape from their reach."
"Are you that afraid of them?" Dana asked.
"I'm not afraid of anything, Dana." He replied, a little annoyed at her insinuation. "I'm being realistic. It would take a lot of power and even more luck to destroy the two of them."
At that moment, the alarm on Ras's cell phone went off. "Ten minutes until sunrise. Are you staying here today?"
"Are you kicking me out now that you know what I am?" Dana answered with her own question.
"I had a suspicion you weren't an ordinary human. It's a bit of a shock but nothing I can't handle. Officially, we're supposed to hate each other, yknow. It's been set down for hundreds of years that our two peoples do not get along."
Dana moved closer then pressed her moist lips to his and slid her tongue into his mouth. As she broke the kiss, she replied to Ras's statement. "Let's try to change that." With that, she switched the light off and the two new lovers snuggled close to one another to sleep the day away. Sunset was a little over eleven hours away.
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Detective Joe Abramson sat at his desk in the 44
th
Precinct building as Ras and Dana settled into bed and the sun began to rise. He hadn't been home in over two days, which did not worry his wife of twenty-three years. She was used to him not coming home for days at a time, as long as he called to let her know he was OK, just working on a case. Truth be told, she liked it when he would call and tell her that he wasn't coming home. Those were the nights that she would forgo dinner and head down to Remy's for a few drinks or possibly Maxxy's to watch the male strippers shake their packages at the frenzied female audience. Even more truth be told, Mrs. Abramson would, on those nights, wind up in the bed of a certain Latin lothario named Emmanuel that did landscaping work for her neighbor across the street.
Joe Abramson knew all about his wife and the Mexican gardener's secret trysts while he was working. His truth was that he didn't care. He supposed he still loved his wife but had no desire to be physical with her. His real love was detective work. It had been since he was ten years old when his father, also a cop, had given him his worn-out copy of
The Hound of the Baskervilles,
his favorite Sherlock Holmes novel. Joe read and re-read the old hardback until the pages began falling out, but it served its purpose: Joe was hooked on detective work. He just knew he wanted to be a detective and strived through school, college, and the lower levels of the police bureau to work his way there. His mind was sharp and analytical and he nearly always solved cases thrown his way, except for one that had been ongoing for many years- the case of the continually disappearing women.
For more years than he could remember, there were reports of young women disappearing in Gravel City and a larger area that stretched from Port Huron in the east to Holland and the lakeshore communities in the west. How many women? No one knew for sure. Records from The Depression era were spotty at best. There were a few newspaper clippings from the Thirties that spoke of young women at a local secretarial school vanishing. The Forties were consumed by the war so many of the disappearances went by the wayside. Rumors picked back up in the Fifties when UFO's were all the rage. The Sixties and Seventies were volatile times with Vietnam and Watergate- not much was said then. Every decade had reports of these women vanishing from the face of the Earth, but no one really took it to heart like Joe Abramson. He was determined to find the cause of the disappearances no matter what.
Both reverence and ridicule followed the good detective through the ranks of the police force and the community at large. They were all grateful to him for solving murders and robberies and considered him a valuable piece of the law enforcement puzzle. But everyone also knew that Detective Abramson was chasing a conspiracy theory. A story as big as the Loch Ness Monster or Sasquatch or Roswell in south central Lower Michigan. The Case of the Disappearing Women. And Joe Abramson was at the forefront of the case.
But Joe Abramson knew. He knew there was an explanation. People just don't vanish into thin air. They're taken by someone or something. But what kind of person or being is capable of abducting women for more than seventy years? That was the nut that the grizzled detective had yet to crack. Now there was a new missing persons case on his desk. One that fit the pattern of the last eight decades of missing women. But this one was different. This one had an actual lead.
Jennifer Sutherland, a mid-twenties beauty had been missing for a week. She had last been seen in the company of her new boyfriend, a tall dark figure approximately thirty years old who drove a rare bright red Japanese sports car. After cross checking the make and model of the car with DMV records, the intrepid inspector found that there were only six of those crimson machines registered in the state of Michigan. Three in Detroit, two in the Upper Peninsula, and one right here in Gravel City to a mysterious man with the last name of Delevan. Further internet sleuthing turned up the mystery man's home address but no driver's license or records. After a quick shower and change of clothes in the locker room, Detective Abramson would pay a visit to Mr. Delevan's last known residence to see if he had any knowledge as to the whereabouts of the missing Miss Sutherland.
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