Nightshift reformed in front of the Daxton County morgue. He easily slipped off the shadows and fell back into the physical world. Re-piecing himself together was a comfortable transition, though as a child it had taken him time to get used to. His parents taught him to hide it, as they had.
He watched the front entrance to the morgue as he approached knowing the doors would be nothing to keep him back and he could easily slip inside, but experience had taught him a quick survey of the area was always a simple but necessary precaution. Misting into a place blind wasn't a concern, but if he had to make his way back out, it was better to know his way around the place.
Nightshift lifted his cane and pressed it against his clothing. It melded into the fabric as if it belonged, like a drop to water. He had a skilled artisan craft it out of shadow, coaxing it from the darkness and tempering it into a sturdy cane. It was because of Nightshift's people that artisans could work with darkness. His kind bridged the gap between the physical and ethereal. The man who had crafted his cane had done a remarkable job with Halak's motorcycle, thanks to Nightshift's recommendation.
Nightshift stepped forward quietly and paced his way around the building. Looking around while riding the shadows would have certainly been much faster, but seeing things in that way skewed his perspective. He preferred rather to keep his mind in the physical as much as possible when trying to utilize spacial reasoning and predicting the routes of his enemies.
He stepped right and circled the building in a lazy strut, sliding his hands into his coat pockets. The air was cold, but he didn't feel it. Distant city lights glinted off the horizon like feral eyes and industrial night-lights shined along the outer walls of the morgue. He passed one with a graveyard of bugs stuck to the inside of the plastic covering, their kin buzzing in futility on the outside. It was like a zoo for the dead. He chuckled as he realized he was essentially doing the same thing. Nightshift made the rest of his survey of the perimeter quickly. He wanted to be careful, but he didn't feel like wasting any more time. Besides, it was only a morgue.
Rounding the other sides of the building and finding himself at the front again, he stepped up to the door. He tried it, giving the handle a careful pull. The doors were locked. He peeked through the crack one more time and saw no light shining through.
Nightshift dissipated into the cracks between the doorways. It was a strange sensation. It wasn't like falling apart and being brought together again, it was more like expanding to fill the space between, and then shrinking down again wherever he wanted. He passed through the door and made his way through a second set of doors on the others side.
Nightshift felt himself slam back together. He stumbled and caught himself against the wall blinking to adjust to the white light that filled every direction. They were bright and piercing and made the hallway feel coldly sterile, like nothing could live under such an intense glow. Nightshift covered his eyes. It wasn't that it hurt, but being slammed together so abruptly, especially when he wasn't expecting it, was jarring. He couldn't ride shadows were there were none. Shading his eyes and still blinking away the dizzying effects of the light he walked forward, feeling along the wall. He found the switch and flicked it down. The light dimmed but the hall was still illuminated from fixtures in adjacent hallways. At least he wasn't blinded anymore.
Nightshift walked along the hall, flipping off each light as he went. His eyes had already adjusted but the darkness would be useful if he needed to make a quick exit. As he approached another intersection of two hallways, he stopped. He heard a door creek shut down a hallway. He reached into the shadows and extended his senses, feeling for any activity, but his reach only went so far, dissipating where the lights grew bright again.
He pulled back and waited, peering around the corner and watching for any movement. At the end of the hall, two swinging doors sat unmoving, with a small plexiglass window in each. After a few moments, someone moved beyond them. He caught a glimpse of the person, only the back of his head and a white coat. It seemed someone had decided to stay late. It explained why the place was lit like a Petri dish under the scope. Nightshift pushed off the wall and bobbed on his feet. He reached over and flipped the switch. The lights in the hall flickered to grey. He pushed himself, grabbing the whisper of shadow that now hovered around him, dissipated, and rode it to the next hall. He snapped back together and fell into an easy gate. The mortician had seemed busy and Nightshift was likely to be out again before he noticed anything.
Nightshift continued down the hall until he passed a receptionist desk. A computer monitor peaked over the top. He circled around the desk and pushed the chair out of the way, shaking the mouse so the screen winked to life. A blue background and a police shield illuminated the monitor, with an icon labeled user in the center. Nightshift clicked it and a text box appeared asking for the password. Without sitting, he pulled the keyboard out on a sliding tray from under the desk. His halted as it reached the end of it's track and Nightshift keyed in the word "password." The computer unlocked and revealed a desktop. He pushed the chair away from the desk and fell into it, pulling a phone from his pocket and dialing Clif's number. As it rang, he scanned the desktop until he found an excel file titled 'directory' and opened it. Clif picked up.
"Miss me already?"
"What did you say the girls name was?"
"You left before I could," Clif said.
Nightshift waited on the line as the directory opened and began scanning the names.
"Brittany."
"Last Name?"
"I can't remember."
Nightshift continued scrolling, looking for any Brittanys. Unfortunately, there were more than a few.
"C'mon, Clif. I really need you to remember."
"Why?"
Again, Nightshift didn't say anything.
"Whatever you're doing, don't get me in trouble. Give me a second." There was a pause and Clif began mumbling on the other side of the line. Nightshift waited.
"Taylor," Clif said abruptly. "Brittany Taylor."
"Thanks." Nightshift said, then hung up the phone. He opened up a search in the document and typed in the name. It was highlighted in the document. Nightshift memorized the number next to it. 203.
He stood up and looked around. On either side of the waiting area were observation windows into rooms lined with square, metal doors. He recognized them as the cold storage units used to keep bodies that had arrived. It wasn't his first time in a morgue.
Nightshift noticed a directory on the wall and approached it, scanning through the numbers marked next to each room. Numbers "180-210" were assigned to the room just a little further down the hall. He walked past the directory and made his way to the door at the end of the hall, switching off another light as he did.
The hall fell into darkness. There were finally enough lights out that he could, if he had to, move easily on the darkness. He reached the doors and pushed them open. They swung wide and he stepped into the room. The doors swung shut again behind him, like saloon doors after a grand entrance, and Nightshift watched the air puff white with his breath. There were no lights on in this room, and it faded too a glossy dark as the doors closed behind. Slowly he scanned the metal doors, large and heavy and each equipped with a metal handle that fastened them shut. Small plaques were on the face of each door, reading a different number.
"One-ninety-two, One-ninety-six, two-hundred," Nightshift read through the plaques on the morgue refrigeration units. He spotted Brittany's directly in front of him.
"Two-oh-three," He finished. Nightshift misted forward and landed in front of the hatch. He grabbed the handle, and with a grunt, forced the latch down. It swung open smoothly. Inside the unit, a black body bag lay in the shadows, contouring to the shape of the corpse inside. Nightshift pulled the tray and it rolled noisily to a stop next to him. The air grew colder with the refrigerated cadaver so close, colder still when he opened the bag. He carefully unzipped it to the shoulders and folded back the cover so he could see the woman's face.
She was young. Her face was a frigid blue but her eyelids were black, as if marred with ash. He shook his head; she couldn't have been more than eighteen.
Nightshift continued to unzip the bag. He reached inside and found her wrist. Pulling her hand out, he turned it over in his own, looking for a mark but finding none. He rested the hand on the metal tray and walked around the body to the other side. He reached inside and pulled out her right hand. He didn't have to look long.
A triangle had been carved into the flesh, pointing up the arm and towards her face. The wounds were puffy and red though there wasn't any blood. Her heart had stopped pumping weeks ago and the morticians had cleaned the wound, but that only made it more disturbing. The way the dead skin had swollen and-
The woman grabbed Nightshift's throat. He hadn't seen her move or felt her hand leave his grip, only the pressure squeezing against his trachea. Nightshift instinctively raised his arm and brought it down against the woman's but her grip didn't weaken. He hacked at it again and again as he stole a confused glance at her lifeless face.
Brittany's eyes now watched him. Her eyelids were peeled back and a fire now danced behind them. Literally, flames filled the space where her eyes had once been. The air smelled of burning flesh though her features were relaxed as if she were merely observing.
Nightshift hit her arm again, too desperate too wonder, when a burning sensation began pricking at his skin. His eyes watered and he tried to vanish into the shadows, but only puffs of black smoke popped around him and disappeared, leaving him trapped in the physical world. Panicked and suffocating, he grabbed the woman's wrist and twisted away, wrenching his neck free and earning the jagged scratch of her nails as they dug into his skin.
Nightshift leapt into the air, grabbing the shadows and falling apart to become one of them. He was elated, the fear receding as he caught hold of his escape until the motion reversed and he was slammed back together. The physical world crashed around and he jerked to a stop midair. His chin slammed onto the glazed cement floor and his teeth rattled in his head. The burning sensation of her grip bit into his ankle but the pain was so much worse than before, the heat so much greater. He pushed himself onto his back and his leg twisted painfully in her hand.
The cadaver of a woman now sat upright in her tray. The fire in her skull licked at her eyelids, darkening the ashen scars that tattooed her face. The mortician's bag wrinkled and melted to her skin. Holes burned through with discolored flames as the plastic formed to her body. She lifted her leg off the tray and stepped onto the floor.
Nightshift tried to crawl away but her grip was too tight. He laid back against the floor, lifted his boot, and slammed his heel against her knuckles. She cocked her head to the side as she watched him, not sparing a glance for her tearing knuckles. Tears pushed to the corners of Nightshift's eyes as her touch became unbearable. His foot collapsed to the floor but the burning deepened to a numb thudding in the back of his mind and a heavy pulse in his veins.
"You have darkness in you," Brittany said. Her voice reverberated in the room, partially a feeling and partially a sound. It thudded against his ears and chest and mind. It wasn't loud but it was... encompassing, like it was too big a sound forcing itself through too small a body. His vision grew hazy and he didn't know if it was from the pain or the sound of her voice. Unconsciousness washed over him like cool water and the room fell away as he sunk beneath the surface.
"Don't sleep," the woman said.
Nightshift's eyes snapped open and her face was inches from his own. He wasn't lying on the floor anymore but hanging, feet dragging against the ground, as she held him by the lapels of his jacket. Her breath was hot and rancid, a cocktail of her rot and whatever she had eaten the day she died. In her eyes, the flesh still burned and boiled against the flames. Something inside of him twisted while looking at her, a feeling like his blood was mixing with poison.
Nightshift lifted his arms, slipping from his coat-sleeves and falling to the floor. He collapsed on his knees and rolled away, his jacket dragging over him like a curtain. He wavered as he stumbled to his feet and eventually found his balance. The room was spinning. He looked to the woman and she lowered the jacket to peer at him. He could still feel her fire even from here.
Nightshift tried to dissipate again, but couldn't. The puffs of smoke popped around him as they had before. He looked down and saw every part of his form flicker, stuttering into darkness, except the place where her hand had melted his jeans to his leg. Somehow, she had anchored him in the physical realm.
Nightshift looked up, head swimming, and met the woman's gaze. Something in her eyes told him that turning his back on her, even to run, would be a mistake. Nightshift tasted coppery blood in his mouth and smiled. He hoped his teeth were painted red with it, because he didn't have much to compete with the fire dancing in her eye sockets.
He moved and she moved faster. As they approached each other, Nightshift ducked under her outstretched arms. He cleared them and sprinted but something caught his wrist. Brittany wrenched him around and his muscles strained to keep his arm from dislocating as he was thrown into the air back the way he'd come. The strange weightless feeling didn't last long as all of his mass slammed into the wall. He collapsed on the floor, curled on his side and grabbing at his wrist. It burned as black smoke rose from his skin, though the pain began to fade. Luckily, she had only held it for a moment.
Rule one, don't touch her, Nightshift decided.
He tried to look towards her but the woman was already standing over him. She raised her foot and stomped down. Nightshift flickered and, when he stopped, was curled a few inches to the left. He glanced over his shoulder and saw her foot pressed white against the ground where his head had been a moment before. His burns kept him from escaping, but it seemed his powers weren't completely useless.
Nightshift grabbed the shadows again and let them tug him to her other side. The woman's head snapped in his direction as he fell back into the physical world and rammed his palm under her kneecap. The knee bowed at a strange angle and she canted awkwardly to the right. Nightshift didn't hesitate. Pushing off the wall, he scrambled to his feet and ran past her. The slap of her bare footsteps were only a few feet behind.
Just a little further...
He felt her searing grip press against his back and winced at the expected burning but, instead of grabbing him, she pushed him.
Nightshift was thrown forward. He fell toward his jacket and angled his shoulder to the ground; it wasn't going to be a graceful landing. His shoulder hit and the shock quaked through his bones as he let the momentum carry his body over. He pressed his hand into the woven shadows of his trench coat and his hand wrapped around the pommel of Kaur Devek, his "Ugly Stick".
Nightshift tumbled over and his back came down hard, the soles of his feet slamming into the ground. He let the inertia carry him into a stumbling yet standing position and, in his hand, he held his cane.
Nightshift didn't wait to gain his balance. He turned and swung. The woman, still running just behind him, caught the blow across her face. She squeezed her eyes shut as it splintered and shattered over her cheekbone, the fragments exploding as shrapnel behind her. Nightshift's eyes grew wide. Shadow matter can't break.
Her fiery eyes were on him again and Nightshift's stomach twisted into a knot. He raised the jagged broken half of his cane, not knowing what else to do, and swung it again. It shattered a second time over her head but, even this time, it had nearly been whole.
Nightshift raised the broken cane as the jagged pieces of shadow matter returned from across the room, reconnecting themselves at its tip. Each one zipped past the woman, scratching small cuts into her cheeks and arms. She didn't pay them any attention.
He hit her over and over again, the cane reforming in his hand every time he brought it up for another attack but she didn't fall. If the condition of her face was any indication of his effectiveness, she should be dead. Again.
As Nightshift swung another time, the woman turned and struck his arm with the edge of her hand. Nightshift's fingers went numb and he dropped his weapon. Brittany caught it before it hit the floor and the knot in his stomach retightened as she swung it towards him.
Nightshift raised his hand to block the attack and felt something crack as he caught it across the forearm. He froze with the explosion of pain and she grabbed his face, her white-hot fingertips pressing into his cheeks. The searing heat made him forget about his arm.
She pulled him close and looked into his eyes. Nightshift tried to breath, but it was difficult. Black smoke fuzzed his vision. He couldn't tell, but it looked like it was coming from him.
"You are tainted," The woman breathed. "You'll be purged." The voice quaked inside of him, as if it passed through her fingers and into his skull. His eyes rolled back and Nightshift felt himself fading, this time not to wake up again. His heart slowed to a wavering thud.
Unable to do anything else, he reached for the cane. The woman turned and threw him to the ground before he could lay a finger on it. Nightshift tripped and fell, turning just in time to land on his back... but his landing was softer than he'd expected. He moved the fingers of his unbroken arm and felt the worn fabric of his jacket beneath him. Brittany watched him with her flaming eye sockets and he could almost see himself burning inside them.
Nightshift melted into the shadows but he wasn't attempting to go anywhere. He just fell into the empty space inside his jacket. When he re-solidified, it was wrapped around him. For him, it was something familiar, a warm touch. Like home.
Nightshift rolled over and, bracing his broken arm against his body, pushed himself onto his knees and staggered to his feet. He wavered as blood rushed to or from his head, he wasn't sure which. His coat hung like a shroud around him and he looked up through bleary eyes as the very much alive and monstrous Brittany Taylor approached. She took thoughtful steps as if curious to see what he would do, but Nightshift only waited. Brittany stepped to within a foot of him and narrowed her burning eyes.
"I am more than you. You are less than me," she said, with a smile.
"That's redundant," Nightshift said.
Her smile faded. Like lightning, she lifted the cane and swung at him. Nightshift didn't try to block the attack. He turned his back towards her and reached across his body with his good arm.
He felt the cane strike his body, saw the flames in her eyes grow still as it vanished from her grip, and felt the cool weight of Kaur's pommel on the other side.
Stepping left, Nightshift unsheathed his cane from the shadows woven into his coat. He whipped it around in his hand, point out, and rammed it as hard as he could into Brittany's back. The point halted several inches deep in her shoulder blade.
Brittany shuttered and fell to the floor.
Nightshift breathed, quaked, and bled. He had suddenly become more conscious of the blistering pain in his leg and face and the dull thud of his fracture forearm. He learned early on that shock was an unwelcome guest and now he tried to prepare himself for it's arrival.
As he did, Nightshift peered down at the body he had re-killed. Despite everything he had just gone through, the woman- the girl still seemed innocent. Whoever that was, he was willing to believe it wasn't the girl who died on the street a few weeks earlier. At least not completely.
Nightshift pulled the cane from her back. It was coated in coagulated blood but, as he drew it closer, he noticed some of it ran redder than the rest. Too exhausted to think, he touched the pommel to his jacket and it puffed into black smoke, absorbing into the fibers and leaving the blood to patter to the floor.
He heard footsteps from the hall.
Nightshift tried to dissipate, though he knew he couldn't go anywhere. A second later a man in a white lab coat shoved open the doors, spilling muted white light into the darkened room.
"What is going on?" The man shouted before stumbling to a halt. He looked at Nightshift and, from him, to the body of the woman. Nightshift looked down at himself. As he'd hoped, his body flickered in an out of the physical world. He couldn't get away quickly but at least this man wouldn't be able to get a clear look at him.
Nightshift walked towards the heavy set of double doors where the mortician stood frozen. As he drew closer, he could see that the man was shaking and muttering. Nightshift couldn't understand what he was saying until he passed him directly.
"It's not real. It's not real. It's not real," He whispered to himself, closing his eyes as Nightshift passed. Nightshift grunted, but was too beaten to do anything more than that. He pushed through the doors and limped into the hall. Luckily, in the doctor's haste, he had turned on only a few lights.