Serena, Queen of the Underworld?

The streets of the maze district unfolded before us like the pages of a criminal's diary, each shadow harboring secrets that needed excavation. Building by building, I extracted information with a precision that would have horrified my former self. Where once I would have relied upon persuasion and procedure, now I found myself employing methods that felt disturbingly natural—a knee driven into soft flesh here, knuckles meeting jawbone there.

The ease with which violence came to me was a revelation wrapped in revulsive mirth. Each blow delivered felt like sliding into well-worn clothing, comfortable and familiar in ways that made my stomach turn. Was this the vampire's influence, or had some darker aspect of my nature simply been waiting for permission to emerge?

Our inquiries led us eventually to a subterranean establishment where the air hung thick with smoke. The moment we crossed the threshold, a figure at the bar—red hair catching the amber light like autumn leaves in flame—bolted for the rear exit with the panic of prey recognizing predator.

"Go," Ashley murmured, already turning toward the bartender. "I'll be here when you return."

The chase began in narrow alleyways that climbed skyward until the walls seemed to scrape against the very firmament. The rhythmic percussion of heels against stone created a percussive symphony that my enhanced hearing could follow through the labyrinthine passages. I moved with inhuman grace, my feet finding purchase on vertical surfaces, rebounding from wall to wall in a deadly choreography of pursuit.

When I finally cornered her, dropping from above with the silence of falling snow, the creature before me possessed an incongruous elegance. Her dark orange vest complemented a white blouse whose large cuffed sleeves spoke of pretensions to gentility, while a silk double ended tie—reminiscent of a bowtie if naught for the long strands—of vibrant orange completed an ensemble that belonged more to drawing rooms than criminal enterprises.

Against the wall, she flushed sanguine as roses in summer heat, perspiration beading along her pale brow like dewdrops on a beautiful sculpture.

"Have you purchased pixie wings from a creature bearing strange bandages?" I demanded to know.

Her denial came swift and sincere—so much so that some instinct I could not name assured me of its truth. The wings, it seemed, had found no market among the usual collectors of grotesquerie.

I pressed closer, feeling her breath quicken against my approach. "Fey oils," I hissed. "Have you sold them to blade-wielding creatures?"

Recognition flickered in her eyes like candlelight in wind. "Rumors," she whispered, her voice barely disturbing the stagnant air. "Dealers complain of midnight thefts. Their supplies… violated."

The pieces arranged themselves with crystalline clarity. Our quarry was no purchaser but a common thief, stealing what it could not afford to buy… to exchange, as it were, legitimately… or perhaps it simply did not wish to trade anything at all.

I released her, stepping back as realization completed its work. "Have you suffered such thefts yourself?"

She rubbed her throat where my grip had left its impression, her expression shifting from fear to indignation with startling swiftness. "You ought to practice more courtesy when addressing a lady of distinction!" she declared, crossing her arms with the hauteur of offended nobility.

The absurdity of receiving etiquette lessons from a black market dealer left me momentarily speechless, heat rising in my cheeks.

"I… apologize," I managed, the words feeling foreign on my tongue. "I am Detective Mei-Ling."

She regarded me with one eye open, skepticism and curiosity warring in her expression. "Serena," she replied at length, her chin lifting with renewed pride. "Queen of these particular shadows."

"Might I stake out your warehouse?" I ventured. "To observe any potential thefts?"

Serena's eyebrow arched with theatrical suspicion. "How do I know you won't pilfer my inventory for your own purposes?"

I gestured to myself with genuine bewilderment. "Do I appear to be someone who traffics in stolen fey essence? Or anything of such a nature…?"

The question hung between us until Serena's face bloomed scarlet with embarrassment, as though she had just asked whether vampires drank blood. "Perhaps," she conceded with grudging grace, "I might utilize you after all…"

---

The warehouse stretched before us like a cathedral built for commerce rather than worship, its steel rib-vaults disappearing into a sepulchral darkness far above the towering piers of shelving. Ashley surveyed the space with the dulled recognition of someone revisiting an old neighborhood—familiar, but no longer home.

Serena had walked us through the geography of her domain with the precision of a military briefing: guard rotations, blind spots, the locations of her most valuable inventory. The one-way tarp she'd arranged for them created a pocket of invisibility among the crates—a watchtower that looked out but remained unseen. The material felt strange beneath my fingers, like fabric woven from spider silk but thick and stern.

"Soundproof too," Serena had assured us before departing. "Speak freely."

We settled onto the hard resin floor, surrounded by wooden boxes and metal containers that held secrets I preferred not to contemplate. The silence stretched between us until curiosity overcame discretion.

"You've changed," I observed, studying Ashley's relaxed posture. "When we first met, you could barely speak without stammering. Now you interrogate dealers like you were born to it."

Ashley's scoff carried layers of memory. "I was alone then." The admission slipped out before she could catch it, color creeping up her pale neck. "And this place… I know its rhythms and rhymes. These streets were my world before I found the nerve to leave."

"Why did you leave?"

"Because hiding grows tiresome. Living in constant anxiety, always watching the shadows…" Ashley's voice dropped. "Dealing with Jun."

"How long ago was that?"

"At least 50,000 rotations."

My enhanced mind performed the calculation with startling speed—no fumbling with numbers, no need for external tools. The mathematics unfolded themselves with crystalline precision. "Zero point zero five years," I thought aloud, impressed by my own facility with computation.

Ashley turned then, and something in her expression made my breath catch. The usual mask of cynical boredom had slipped, revealing something almost… vulnerable.

"That Serena," Ashley said, her voice carrying an unfamiliar note. "She has quite a presence, doesn't she?"

The observation hung between us like a question wrapped in statement's clothing. I felt my lips curve upward.

"You should talk to her," I suggested, giving Ashley a gentle nudge with my elbow.

"W-what?" The transformation was instantaneous—Ashley became once again the trembling creature by the river, all stammers and wide eyes. "I don't—I mean—why would you—"

My laughter bubbled up despite our circumstances, delighted by this glimpse behind Ashley's carefully constructed defenses.

The sound shattered like crystal against stone.

Glass exploded somewhere in the warehouse's depths, followed by the wet percussion of bodies striking concrete. Metal scraped against the floor with the hungry persistence of a blade seeking bone. Blood painted the air in arterial sprays, punctuated by the drowning sounds of punctured throats.

We burst from our makeshift shelter into pure chaos.

In an instant, we stood pressed against each other's backs, a small island of warmth in an ocean of carnage. Seconds—mere heartbeats—had transformed the orderly warehouse into an butchery. Bodies lay twisted among spilled crates, their wounds already blackening at the edges where the fey oil had done its work, flesh withering like flowers touched by winter's first breath.

My mouth felt lined with sand, and my eyes swept the devastation, cataloguing the methodical brutality, when the sound of splintering wood drew their attention—a crate being pried open in haste. Then, a shriek.

Acting on instinct, we vaulted over scattered boxes, following Serena's scream to its source.

The creature that turned toward us defied comfortable categorization. It wore anatomy like ill-fitting clothes borrowed from a morgue. Bandages erupted from its form in wild tangents—some clean as fresh snow, others baptized in rust and amber fluids. Its neck telescoped upward from the spine in a series of segmented vertebrae, each joint clicking as the head swiveled to regard them with the mechanical curiosity of a broken music box ballerina.

Half its torso had surrendered to chitinous transformation—plates of what might once have been skin now gleamed like beetle shells slick with condensation. The other half retained the soft geography of flesh, including a single breast that hung like a mournful punctuation mark against the horror. Bandages streamed from every surface, creating a taxonomy of wounds both old and weeping.

It clicked—not with vocal cords, but with… something hidden beneath its wrappings.

Ashley's body had become a memorial to stillness. Not frozen—memorials implied choice. Her form simply ceased all motion, as if time itself had decided she was exempt from its forward march. Her eyes tracked the creature's movements with the mechanical precision of a compass needle seeking magnetic north, but her limbs had been carved from ice.

The thing coiled and sprang at her motionless figure.

Without thinking, my shoulder met Ashley's ribs, sending her tumbling clear as the creature's improvised blade found flesh instead. Pain lanced through my shoulder, but I managed to close my fingers around the articulated vertebrae of its extended neck, its skin feeling like wet paper over bone. My pistol spoke in rapid succession, each shot punching holes through the bandaged torso.

Its shriek belonged to no earthly throat—a sound like glass being born and dying simultaneously. The creature flipped backward with inhuman agility, scrambling up a tower of containers like some enormous, wounded spider.

Ashley had positioned herself before Serena, who crouched among the scattered goods with blood streaking her elegant vest. The three of us stared upward as the creature perched above, its neck retracting and extending in accordion movements.

Then it screamed—a sound like metal tearing, like children weeping in empty houses—and launched itself from its perch. Containers crashed in its wake as it bounded through the shattered window that had granted it entry.

But I was already moving, feet carrying me over debris and corpses with the fluid grace of my transformed nature. The hunt had begun.