The following fanfiction story takes place using the mythos of supernatural creatures from White Wolf Publishings' Vampire the Requiem. Therefore, clans and covenants referenced in this series are owned by CCP games. Enjoy!
*****
The call had been put out, someone heard a disturbance in one of the student apartment complexes. Someone heard screams coming from outside an apartment room and what sounded like an animal gnawing at the victim. What made it unnatural was that this was in the heart of downtown Ann Arbor, Michigan.
The only animals within that district could have been deer and they were incapable of doing what Detective Kirstin Delaney saw. She was already in downtown when units had been called to the apartment complex. One squad car beat her to it, the sirens lighting up the sidewalk and tainting the street lamps. With any luck, they would've done some crowd control and kept people out of the room.
A black Sedan parked behind the police car and out stepped Kirstin, dressed in jeans, black leather shoes and a shortsleeve button up shirt under a brown leather jacket. Kirstin fixed her blonde hair that was tied back in a ponytail and made sure her badge hung around neck. Despite being in her mid 30's, she still possessed the determination and energy of a graduate student in their mid 20's, experienced enough to know what to expect but still new to her detective status to have some nerves with taking control. She jogged up the steps and pushed past a couple of students to speak with the person at the front desk, holding up her badge to say, "Homicide."
She was sent to the top floor, as she made her way up the steps, Kirstin would occasionally pass other tenants, all of them college students, scared, confused, feeling vulnerable as they stood out in the hallways in their pajamas. Kirstin caught sight of one young woman in her 20s wearing a tight shirt with a sports number on it and tiny short shorts that hugged her tight buttocks.
Kirstin tried resisting the urge to stare, but seeing how the outline of the womans' posterior curved under her shorts made Kirstin envious of her own college years and how she'd missed out on the fun in dating an athlete.
Shaking her head, Kirstin ran the rest of the way up the steps. Fortunately, the two officers who answered the call had kept the tenants on the floor out of the room. Kirstin pushed her way past some students, almost brushing against a college woman wearing just a robe, and entered the room, the scent of the woman's shampoo making Kirstin feel a ting of warmth, but just for a moment.
"What do we have to-oh jesus." Kirstin exclaimed as she walked into the living room, her heart stopping for just a moment.
He was laid out in the living room, shirtless and with a pool of blood surrounding his upper torso. The side of his neck looked like a Pez dispenser, split open at about a thirty degree angle, as if his attacker tried to chop his head off and then got bored. Kirstin felt her stomach tighten for just a second before she took a deep breath to relax.
"Who made the call?" she asked as she kneeled down.
"Tenant next door, heard a loud bump and then a scream. She's being questioned now." The police officer said.
"What do we know about this guy so far?"
"Um..grad student, business college I think. New Jersey ID. That's about it."
Kirstin was half listening. She knew the call was still fresh and wanted to survey the area before the cleanup crew messed things up. Despite the blow, there looked to be hardly any signs of struggle. No broken glass, no bruises on the body, just a chair moved a few inches from its resting point. It hadn't even tipped over. Kirstin stared at it for a moment and then looked past the chair at the wall where a window revealed the outside fire escape stairs. "Who opened that window?"
The officer looked up from his notepad and stared at it. "...no one detective."
She grit her teeth as she reached for her pistol. "God dammit. Call back up, tell them to seal the building." She didn't wait for a response, she ran to the window and hugged the wall, bending down to look outside to make sure it was clear. Just as she was about to relax, she heard the rattle of the steel steps shake and what she swore was movement in the shadows above. "One of you stay here the other follow me!"
Kirstin stepped out of the window and aimed her gun upward as she ascended the steps. She knew she should wait for the other officer but her adrenaline was too high to control the impulse to bolt. As the only female detective in homicide, Kirstin felt the pressure to prove all of the skeptics wrong in her inability to do her job. Nabbing this person quickly would not only get her peers to take her seriously, but it would also get the department some good publicity, something it needed given that this was a student being murdered.
The steel steps shook below her as her feet landed on each one, rising higher and higher until she saw a shadowy figure climb up the ladder and onto the roof. By now she was so high up she couldn't make out what the uniformed officer below was shouting.
As she reached the top, she saw the figure dashing across the roof, a slender body dressed in business slacks and a jacket of all things. Kirstin also squinted as she wanted confirm that she actually saw a suspect running in women's pumps and how they were able to do so with such speed.
"Police! Stop!" she shouted as she tried to pursue the attacker who didn't even respect the command with a turn of a head. Kirstin could see the building adjacent to the one they were on, another apartment complex under construction. The outer walls hadn't been built but floors and drywall were already put up within the interior of the building. It was a shame the building wasn't close enough for the suspect to reach. "You have nowhere to go!" she shouted as she picked up the pace.
The woman's arms moved forward and back, giving no indication of slowing down as she stepped onto the ledge and kicked off of it, soaring in the air before landing on the third floor of the building that was half finished. Kirstin stopped in her tracks, mouth open as she saw the woman stick the landing, rising to her feet that should have been shattered from the impact. Kirstin didn't hesitate in grabbing her radio and shouting, "Suspect is in the building next door! I'm on my way down, someone get to State Street now and cut her off!"
"How'd they get there so fast?" the officer on the radio called.
Kirstin didn't respond, instead she found the escape ladder on the other side of the building and slid down, leaping down flights of stairs to get to the ground as fast as possible. If she could just get to the entrance of the building next door she could possibly cut the woman off. Once she reached the last level of the fire escape, she was halfway down the ladder before she jumped down, almost stumbling forward as she jogged across the street.
She cut across the grassy mound to check the other side of the building, looking for her superpowered escapee to come flying down the road. All she saw was a few students walking together and laughing about something unimportant to Kirstin at the moment. This left only one other option and Kirstin ran to the doorway of the building.
Finding the first wall to hug, Kirstin kept her back to it as she held her gun up, inching her way across the room as her eyes scanned across the drywall that had been placed. Several sections of the building hadn't had walls put up and the steel framing of the building looked like a silver forest of bars, all planted to provide the best hiding space. Kirstin was reaching the end of one side and was coming around to an area that had plastic tarps hanging where doors were meant to be installed.
Kirstin aimed her gun and circled around the doorway, using her pistol as a lever to push open the tarp and get a glimpse of then next room. Inside was a work bench that had several two by fours lying on it and a buzz saw laying on the floor. Kirstin was about to leave when she heard something move, the light tapping of footsteps coming from the corner. It was when Kirstin turned and she saw the sleeve of a business jacket sticking out that she turned and shouted "Freeze!"
The hand froze, along with the rest of the body it was attached to. Standing in the room was a woman in her early 30s, a close-cropped pixie cut made it seem like she was a liberal arts professor. She had no makeup on, in fact she looked rather pale, almost like she'd been standing in a freezer for several hours. It was her full lips and double pierced earrings that made it seem like she was out on a date, a date that didn't end well. Despite being caught, she didn't seem concerned, staring back at Kirstin with bored eyes. Kirstin kept her pistol aimed and slowly approached her, "Get on your knees."
Kirstin almost fired her gun when the woman smiled, eyebrows raised as she said, "I'm impressed you saw me." The inflection in her tone made it seem like a game, like she was testing Kirstin's endurance while also testing her patience. Even the way she stood didn't indicate that she would follow orders, her long legs standing apart, her left foot pointed to the side as if she was modeling that stylish business garb.
"Yeah well I'm impressed you're cute little ass didn't break from jumping across the building. Are you injured?"
"Aw you think I'm cute." She said, flashing her pearly whites.
Kirstin hesitated, why did she call the woman cute, besides the fact that she admittedly was attractive. "Just shut up and get on your knees."
The woman's lips puckered as she tilted her head, making Kirstin sweat under her clothes, the heat rising in her chest a sign that she was getting pissed off. The woman didn't answer for about a minute until she said, "No, I don't think I'm going to do that. I think I might do this instead."
It took just one blink for the woman to vanish from Kirstin's sight and then another blink to see a dark blur flash in front of her face. "Hey I said freeze!"
In just one more blink, the woman was back in place, hands held up with her eyes wide, "But I am freezing like you said." Her tone was that of an innocent school girl, a school girl who held a long black rectangular object in her hand. "I just wanted this." Her smile returned as she waved the clip to Kirstin's gun in the air.
Kirstin looked down and saw the hole where the clip was and stuttered, "H-how'd you do that?"