A Detective's Suffering

Pain carved territories across my shoulder as I ricocheted between the narrow walls, following the abraded path of gouges left by dragging metal. Each scrape told part of the story—here the creature had stumbled, there it had deliberately marked its path. But the trail was fracturing, splitting into tributaries that led nowhere.

The fey oil worked through my flesh, converting nerve endings into dead zones. My arm hung at an angle that belonged to someone else's body.

I pressed my spine against the cold concrete wall and let stillness claim me. The creature's deception became clear—scratches scattered in every direction, a maze of false leads designed to scatter pursuit like seeds on barren ground.

Then, I began to hum.

It was nothing elaborate, just the wordless melody that had once soothed me through long nights of paperwork in Hong Kong—a tune my mother had sung while braiding my hair… the same one I sung in the forest. The sound created a pocket of calm in the industrial chaos.

And within that calm, I heard it.

The double percussion of a heart that beat with mechanical precision, each valve closing with the finality of a judge's gavel. I held the rhythm, memorized its signature, then let my humming fade.

The heartbeat vanished with it.

I began again, that simple lullaby weaving through the alley's acoustics, and the sound returned—a beacon pulsing through the concrete. Resonance. My vampiric nature had found frequency with my quarry's life force, creating a bridge of sound between hunter and hunted.

The numbness had claimed my shoulder entirely now, spreading down my arm. I followed the rhythmic guide at half her earlier speed, conserving what strength remained while maintaining the delicate musical thread that bound me to my prey.

The heartbeat led me to a building that wore anonymity like camouflage—another warehouse in a district built from identical ambitions. I scaled its face with my remaining good arm, hauling myself to the skylights that crowned its roof.

Darkness pooled below the glass like stagnant water, offering no purchase for my eyes. But an adjacent window gaped open—an oversight in the creature’s haste I could verily assume… unless it clocked me coming. Could it be an invitation? I slipped through the frame and descended.

The space that greeted me belonged to fever dreams and surgical nightmares. Tables bore the remnants of anatomy lessons conducted by madmen. Instruments gleamed with the dull shine of frequently used steel, their surfaces stained with fluids that caught the meager light filtering through dirty glass. The air itself seemed diseased, thick with the perfume of decay wrapped in antiseptic pretense. This was where the creature made its home—part laboratory, part slaughterhouse, part something else entirely that had no name in any civilized tongue.

I turned the corner and bile rose in my throat like a tide of undercooked meat. The walls breathed with obscene life—surfaces that had once been concrete now pulsed with organic matter, flesh stretched taut as canvas to display the creature's grotesque gallery. Fey limbs hung like meat ornaments: delicate wings that caught what little light filtered through the filth, severed arms arranged in supplicating gestures, heads tilted at angles that spoke of violent separation.

The stench wrapped around me like a burial shroud—blood left to congeal and rot, sweet decay mixed with something… more chemical. I found myself wondering if this was how Ashley had experienced the taste of my blood, that bitter corruption she'd complained about. The thought almost dragged a laugh from my throat, dark and inappropriate.

Among the mounted horrors, a familiar shimmer caught my eye. Pixie wings, gossamer-thin and still faintly luminescent, pinned to the flesh-wall abrupt and sloppy. My enhanced night vision—when had that happened?—picked out details I shouldn't have been able to see in this murk.

Movement flickered at the edge of my sight.

The creature launched itself from the shadows, and I twisted aside as its blade carved empty air. My pistol bucked in my hand, the shot punching through its shoulder and shattering the chitinous plates like ceramic. Its scream belonged to no earthly throat—a sound like radio static given voice and malice.

I fired again. And again. Bang. Bang. Bang.

Click.

The creature's back resembled a honeycomb carved from living tissue. It turned, blood streaming from the wounds, pooling at the corners of its mouth like fresh tar. As it lurched forward, metal scraping against—

The floor. Goddess, the floor was made of flesh.

That moment of repulsion cost me everything. The creature pounced, driving its remaining blade deep into my stomach, then my arm, then my thigh. Pain exploded through my nervous system in brilliant cascades. Death approached with the patient certainty of the never dying citrus twilight.

But if I was dying, I would drag this monstrosity into darkness with me.

My fingers found its elongated neck—those articulated vertebrae that had telescoped from its spine like some mechanical nightmare. I squeezed with every ounce of remaining strength until the bones gave way with a satisfying crack. Its shriek turned liquid, bubbling through a ruined throat.

I threw my weight behind a punch that shattered its jaw, then used my good leg to snap the arm that lodged its weapon. The blade thudded across the fleshy floor…

As I limped toward the writhing creature, something else caught my eye. A jacket—familiar fabric draped over a nearby table. Mary's jacket. The one she'd worn during those final moments in Hong Kong, before the circle closed and the world ended.

My hesitation was a gift the creature seized. It lunged upward, pinning me beneath its weight, that ruined mouth opening to release a wail that scraped against my sanity. Its remaining weapon drove toward my heart—

My hand closed around the blade, slicing through palm and fingers as I held death at bay. The scream that tore from my throat could have shattered glass. It renounced me, oh it did ever so: it seemed to tear syllables from the very air that inflected to say "it is already here". With my free hand, I gripped the broken weapon I had claimed and drove it deep into the creature's single functioning eye.

It paused—a moment of perfect stillness—then collapsed.

I kicked the corpse aside and crawled to the wall, my body singing hymns of agony. The jacket hung there like an accusation. Mary. Had this thing taken my partner? Was there more to discover, more horror to unravel?

And yet, my vision began to gray at the edges. Blood pooled beneath me, warm and sticky. Was this how it ended? Would I join the violin banshee in some arrayed existence, another ghost haunting the Makai's endless twilight?

The last image that flickered through my fading consciousness was purple eyes and black hair—Xiao Ru's face painted with worry and gentle concern. I hummed briefly, and then… darkness claimed me resolutely.