#the worldbuilding was also dripped in a way that was like. just uneven

[overelegantstranger]

been reading a run of horror/thriller novels lately. i've specifically been looking for ones that aren't too intense, ones that are a bit generic or not intended to be especially earthshattering. and i've been largely enjoying it, but, for anyone else who also enjoys reading horror/supernaturaly thrillers, i just wanna stake a quick red flag over J. H. Markert's The Nightmare Man. Not gonna say "don't read". however. AM going to say two things: thought it was a first novel until i saw the six other titles at the back; was astonished at the amount of gratuitous ableism throughout. Also felt it was a bit racist and sexist but not in an overt way, in a nagging uncomfy way.

[entomancy]

Fic: A Dawning realisation

Another worldbuilding one-shot. A different night, and another incident for Denis Joplin, Sheriff of Vegas Below - but this time it’s much worse than mutant vampiric housecats.

Title: A Dawning realisation   (Wattpad) Setting: VTM-with-the-serial-numbers-filed-off. Also, Vegas. Warnings: Gore. Words: 1912 Summary: It’s three in the morning, and there have been at least two murders. You’d think that would be the worst part of the night.

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There certainly was an impressive amount of blood.

Ducking under the hastily-installed barrier of crime tape – and feeling a shiver in his fingertips mirrored behind his eyelids as the glamour fell away – Denis Joplin found himself stopping short at the revealed scene.  This far into Fremont and two alleys deep behind a derelict convenience store, it’d be reasonable to expect at least something nasty lurking around the dumpsters.  But this was way beyond even cynical assumptions.

The alleyway itself was less of a single passage than a collision of other spaces – one leading north, half-blocked off by the rusting carcass of a long-fallen fire escape; one going west that seemed to be where pallets came to die; and a sagging hole in the southern wall that opened into more rat-runs beyond. Garbage was ankle-deep, except for on the pathways newly torn by desperate footfalls and scrabbling fingers.  One body – still at least roughly the shape it should be, except for its angles – lay cradled by the bashed-in side of a dumpster; a gory, inverted waterfall of crimson splattered up the wall behind it. The head lolled against its uneven chest, barely held on by naked tendons and raw flesh, and the jaw had been torn clear away.  

The second body was more… dispersed.

Yet even that wasn’t the strangest part.  Sure, it looked like somebody had tried to pressure-wash the walls with arterial spray, but what really drew the eye were the weird, congealed blobs of black-scarlet scattered for a storey up the walls. They looked like something out of a particularly nasty fungus documentary: glistening and swollen with half-solid bubbles of wet scab.  There were a lot of them, too.

Je-sus.  It had been one of the bike-lads that called this in, and Joplin made a mental note to check in on the kid later.  Hell of a thing for someone to walk in on.

Of course, some of them were more used to this kind of shit than others.

“Bad night,” he said, partly in greeting, as his attention shifted to the other upright figure on the scene: clad in baggy forensics white, squatting down over a scattering of viscera with a camera in her gloved hands.  She took the picture and made a note before straightening up and turning to him.  One neat eyebrow arched as she pulled her mask down, revealing pale lips set into a tight line.

“Worse for some,” Dawn replied, sweeping a disapproving gesture around at the alley. “Honestly.  I have fourteen active cases right now; the last thing I need is someone breaching like a Screamfest wet dream all over my Thursday night.”

Joplin hesitated – but this was Dawn, after all.  Dawn Miller: Senior Forensic Investigator for the City of Las Vegas (Above and Below), five foot three of permanently-caffeinated brunette; most usually found within a baffling subterranean lair of sterile worktops and extremely expensive scientific equipment that just so happened to have no external windows whatsoever.

“Definitely not just someone with delusions of Dahmer?” he asked carefully.  Dawn sighed as she placed her camera back down then pulled out a small laser pointer, with a hint of dramatic flourish.  The tiny red light danced like a forensic firefly across the stained walls, sketching and circling in after-images.

“It’d be very difficult to get this sort of pattern any other way.  Now, tearing open an artery will do that.”  She gestured towards the crimson mark that was a bit higher than the dumpster-corpse’s head would have been.  Then she jabbed a latex-cased finger further up, towards one of the dripping clots wedged against a drainpipe.

"That? Not so much. I mean, I’ve got my suspicions about your blood pressure, Sheriff, but I figure even you’d have difficulty getting that far up on irritation alone.”

Joplin looked back down to the neatly-circled sections of corpse, tilting his head this way and that as he tried to work out what each bit had been.

“Any clear weapons?”

“Not lying around.” Dawn pointed at a piece of arm. “I need to get this all cleaned up to be sure of anything.”

“Thinking teeth or claws?” Joplin pushed, and recieved a cold stare in return.

“All I’ll say before he’s on the slab is that it took significant force to do some of this.  Arms don’t pop off Barbie-style for just anyone – present company notwithstanding.”

Joplin snorted.

“I ain’t a wookie, y’know.”

Finally, a flash of amusement made it onto Dawn’s face.  It was probably possible to be a science type without being able to spot a Star Wars reference at forty feet, but Joplin sure hadn’t met many.  Hell, she’d probably seen them on release.

“Yub-nub, Sheriff.  Anyway,” she continued, and her brows dipped again as she pulled a fresh swab out of her pocket. “I’ve put this off for long enough.”

She uncapped the plastic tube and Joplin caught The change in her eyes.  It wasn’t in anything so crass as pigment or reflection, but nonetheless the sheen there had altered, struck through now with very familiar sharpness.  She undid her mask, placing it carefully down on top of her kit, and moved over to the bloody wall with the swab raised.

When he’d first heard they had a vampire in forensics, Joplin had imagined she would employ a much more gruesome methodology.  He hadn’t figured that maybe she’d want to lick an alleyway wall about as much as he did.  

Dawn swiped the blood, then brought it back and pressed the stained cotton tip into the roof of her mouth, accompanied by an expression of contemplative disgust.  It had to go past the teeth, she’d told him once.  Something about how the whole vitae situation actually worked.

After a moment she withdrew the swab, slotted it into her clinical waste pot, and spat in after it.

“Yup, that was live when it hit. Initial attack either non-feeding, or the idiot’s never tried to drink a shaken soda.  But that…” she trailed off, looking up at the weird blobs overhead, and her lips twisted again.  “Give me a leg up, will you Sheriff?”

Joplin obliged, cupping his big hands together into a platform, and Dawn hoisted herself up onto a level with one of the congealed lumps.  Swab – suck – and this time she gagged, clapping the back of her hand over her mouth as she did so.  Joplin quickly put her down.  She threw the swab away like it had burned and began aggressively gargling bottled water. Once the dry heaves had stopped she looked back up at him, wiping at her eyes.

“Yuck.  I mean, yes, obviously, but – yuck.  No, that was dead on impact.  I’d say refractory emesis, but that’s – ” she hesitated again, glancing between each blob “- a lot.  Even if they were trying to dry them out, just eyeballing it, I’d say there’s enough blood mass here for a minimum of two victims.  And this guy might be a jigsaw, but I’d say we’ve got all the bits for him.”

Joplin sighed, and leaned back against a cleanish piece of wall.  So there might be another body to find tonight.  Which meant someone on a frenzy, because nobody needed two-and-a-post-spray-remainer’s worth of blood in one night for any sort of legal reason.  And someone with their faculties intact wouldn’t be out massacring by the bins.

Dawn pulled out her second kit: the much smaller, black metal box that had neither insignia or visible method of opening, and blew gently on its surface.  Faint patterns swirled under her breath before the lid popped and she drew out a different set of vials, and a set of small, oddly-shaped tools.

“Taking the specialist samples,” she muttered, half to herself as she selected one and crouched back over the remains. “Because of course, developing anything field ready that isn’t ‘suck on the corpse’ is never at the top of the funding lists, is it?”

Joplin shrugged.

“Don’t ask me.  I ain’t sure what any of you lab goblins do with half the stuff you collect; I ain’t gonna notice if you take a few more weird prints.”

“Liar.” She didn’t look up from whatever she was doing at the head end, but Joplin could hear a smile around her words.  He let her get on with it, instead returning his attention to the utter mess of a scene.  There was a time when this would have upset him a lot more – and he knew this sort of thing tended to get to Mitch in ways the cheery lad was crap at dealing with – but this wasn’t just the normal revulsion and muted horror that settled on him now.  Something about the sheer splatter of the scene was unpleasantly familiar.

He waited until Dawn had clicked the lid back on her little box of vampire tricks before he spoke again.

“Got a theory for me?”

“Always have a theory, Sheriff,” Dawn replied, stowing the box. “The trick is finding evidence.”

“So… if I were to say ‘Bel–’” Joplin started, but cut off as Dawn held up a finger warningly.  The look she gave him was old; far, far older than the ever-stilled thirty-ish of her face.

“I’ve confirmed a potential breach. I’ve got samples.  You’ve got another body to find, and I’ve got analysis to do.  Then, and only then, will I stick my neck out over that block.  Clear?”

“Y’always are,” Joplin conceded, and let out a long breath as he felt some of the sudden tension drop. “Want the rest of the crew in?”

“Oh hell yes.  I’m not scraping this all up by myself.”

Joplin left her to it.  He gave the nod as he passed the glamoured tape, signalling to the waiting figures that they could go in.  Dawn had finished the secret-squirrel bit of her work, and the crew understood enough about trouble Below to know what they were dealing with.  He made his way back to the car and slid in, resting his head back against the seat as he let out a long sigh.

Dawn was cagey – had to be, given who was not-breathing down her neck – but she’d said enough.  Frenzy either meant an orphan, a bastard or a break, and none of them were exactly appealing prospects.  Joplin drummed his fingers together, considering.  Orphan was unlikely – the clan-pires were real careful these days about their new bloods, and the loony market was still depleted from last time someone tried something Big And Stupid.  Bastard seemed most likely, since there was always some little fucker unable to keep it in their gums.

The idea of it being a break…

Joplin felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise, and tried to shake off the unease.  Okay, so there had been a familiarity to the scene, but it wasn’t like a signature.  Brutal, sure, but too messy.  Too much feeding. Any feeding, really.  But the way the bodies had been torn apart like that – that, that was setting off unpleasant shivers of recognition.

Not a break, then.  Not that particular potential nightmare and the shattering Breach it would entail, but… something related?

Bastard’s the most likely.  Jesus-Christmas; can he even sire anymore?

Joplin stared out through the windshield, at the distant fever-dream glitter of Vegas’ early morning, and felt the ghost of a few old wounds twinge.

“Fuck me,” he muttered.

He was going to have to question fucking Belton.

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