Prophecy: Tome of Embers

2. Not Quite Human

Still she came, and when he'd exhausted all his options he aimed at her forehead and pulled the trigger, the bullet going clean through her skull. It was the only thing that froze her in her tracks, and her head whipped back from the force. Markowski lowered his weapon, breathing heavily as he waited for her to hit the ground. Yet she didn't fall, and after only a moment her attention was pointed back at him, and as if she were willing it to her hair fluttered away from her face.

The cop felt sick looking at her eyes, which were almost not even eyes at all, but sunken holes where they should've been, and a decaying pool of death and rot to stare back at him. Yet this time he could feel the paralysis go through his body—actual paralysis as his legs and arms went numb. When he was completely helpless the woman, rather creature, made her way to him, slowly again as there was no rush, almost like she was enjoying his fear. She was, she could taste it, rolling off of him like a sweet scent.

"Hungry," she whispered, coming upon him while all he could do was scream.

Over on the other side of town, back at the police station, his colleagues continued to work just the same, unaware of his situation. Toby was just being escorted to a small room with a table and two chairs where he was told to wait—as if he had any other choice. After only a few long minutes the officer who had arrested him the night before came in, sitting down across from him and looking him dead on without saying anything. Toby figured it was probably an attempt to intimidate him, a means to scare him into whatever they wanted him to do—only it was wasted because he didn't scare so easy.

"I want to believe you, I really do, but look at it from our perspective. We get a call saying some guy got beat up and needs help, but when we get there and find him—just like we were told—you were the only other person at the scene. And you weren't looking too hot either." The officer, whose name Toby had learned was Cliff, shrugged his shoulders and settled back into his chair.

"Did you see him before they carted him off? He was a little guy, do you really think he could have done this to me?" Toby wasn't trying to be argumentative, but the clear failure in logic that the precinct had demonstrated had given him reason enough to be irritated.

"Probably not." Cliff nodded. It wasn't much of a stretch to accept it as fact; after all, he himself was a well-built man, so much so that Toby secretly sat across from him and wondered if he was on steroids. Despite that—or, perhaps, because of it—the officer was attractive, with brown eyes and short brown hair to match. Using those eyes the cop pried, trying to utilize his training in an attempt to understand what made his perp tick. "But tell me this, if you're as innocent as you say, what were you doing there?"

"Seriously? I literally already told you people this last night, I was passing by. I'd just got into town yesterday and I was exploring when I found him like that. If I was the one who did that to him, would I have called you?" Toby thought the entire thing was a waste of time.

"Maybe, if something happened. A drug deal gone wrong, or some other kind of exchange? I don't know, maybe things got out of hand and you accidentally hurt him, maybe you didn't mean to so you called for help." The cop worked through the possible scenarios, watching the prisoner's expression for any tell.

"Are you stupid? I'm done wasting my breath, either you charge me with something or you have to let me go—that's how this works, right?" Yet he didn't need to ask, because Toby knew very well how the whole system operated. His captor could tell that as well, and they sat there silently, not taking their eyes off of one another.

"Look, you don't seem like a bad guy, Toby. And all this? This is just a show for the other officers—they don't seem to believe you like I do. But I was the first one there, I saw a little more than they did." Cliff's words gave Toby a begrudging curiosity, and he was forced to wonder just how much he saw. Yet he didn't have to wait long for an answer as the cop finally put the folder he was carrying down on the table and pushed it across.