Cassandra Pratt flashed her badge at the officer standing at the entrance of the alley, ducking under the yellow police tape. The officer, a young man with a weary look in his eyes, nodded and lifted the tape for her.
She'd walked onto multiple homicide crime scenes in her career but she'd never quite gotten used to the feeling of it all. The buzz of forensic techs, crime scene investigators, and officers like a hive of tiny bees all hell bent on collecting potential evidence was familiar. So was the overwhelming weight of responsibility that wore her down like a millstone around her neck.
Sighing, Cass took a deep breath of the cold November air. The frost bit at her lungs, the stench of death thick in the air, mingling with the familiar scents of the city. She walked slowly, taking in every detail of the scene around her. It was a small alleyway, the kind with a single green garbage bin pushed to the corner, tucked between a dingy bar and a laundromat. Now that it was illuminated by harsh, white floodlights it looked even less impressive than it would look in the daytime. The victim, a man in a black hoodie and blue jeans, lay slumped against the back wall, his arms resting on the ground, legs outstretched. His face was pale, eyes glassy, and a dark wound gaped at his neck. Blood had splattered the wall behind him in a thin crimson arc.
It was a horrible way to go. Tossed to the back of an alley like trash.
"Detective Pratt," came a voice from behind her.
Cass turned to see Chief Patrick Laughlin approaching, his large black coat flapping slightly in the wind. He tipped his hat at her, a gesture that made him look more like a 19th-century cowboy than a 21st-century police officer.
"Chief," she greeted him, "Rough morning?"
Laughlin grunted, nodding in the direction of the body. "What do you think?" Then he added, "It's fucking freezing, though, I'll give it that."
Cass chuckled mirthlessly. "That it is."
It was almost the end of November, and winter was coming with the frost of a vengeful wife. They could all feel it.
Laughlin's eyes flicked over her attire, a mix of concern and amusement in his gaze. "You think that old jacket you've got on will keep you warm enough?"
Cass glanced down at her white button-up shirt, black suit pants, and the black tie hanging loosely from her neck. Her black suit jacket felt like a flimsy barrier against the cold. "I'll live."
Laughlin shook his head, a small smile playing on his lips. "Donna's been asking about you, you know. You should start coming for dinner again."
Cass forced a smile, her thoughts drifting to the uncomfortable air at those dinners. The awkward silence while their forks scraped porcelain plates. The forced conversations. Donna's thinly veiled disdain. "I'll consider it."
The police chief barked out a laugh. "That's what you said last month. And the month before that. And—oh, what do you know—the month before that one too."
Cass shrugged. It was definitely what she'd say when he ultimately asked her to come over for dinner again. Havenfield was a small town, and the Havenfield Police Department was a family. In the five years she'd lived in town, she'd received invitations for cookouts and picnics and dinners. She'd gone for the first few, then stopped. The invitations stopped coming too; her other co-workers had figured out she was a loner, but Laughlin remained persistent.
"Donna's been asking about you again, and Megan's been practicing her chess. You should stop by for dinner—bring your appetite."
He was selling her a pipe dream; a nice dinner, cozy desserts, and a fun game of chess with his 10-year-old daughter before her bedtime. It was all a mirage. Her jaw tightened at the thought of another awkward dinner, the memory of strained smiles and Donna's thinly veiled disdain flashing through her mind. She felt the familiar pressure building behind her temples and pushed it down.
"Maybe," she muttered, already knowing she wouldn't.
Slipping off a worn-out rubber band from her wrist, she pulled back her strawberry blonde hair into a messy bun and tied it. A few stray strands escaped and hung loosely around her face, swaying as she walked.
"I'll think about it," she said, redirecting her attention to the alley. "So, what do we have here?"
Laughlin responded with a single, firm nod.
They walked deeper into the alley, passing through another cordon of police tape. Cass made a mental note of the officers and CSIs working on the scene, their breaths coming out in puffs of smoke in the chilly air.
As they approached the body, Cass crouched down, examining the dead man closely. His face was young, his hoodie rumpled, his head almost completely detached from his neck, pushed back so he was staring directly at the sky. The killer had pulled his lips into an eerie smile.
She couldn't help but think of the old man found dead two weeks earlier in the woods around Havenfield. He had the same uncanny smile but his stomach had been cut instead, his guts left to spill out like the remains of an unholy feast. She shivered at the memory of it, of the maggots they found writhing their way through the man's insides. Two murders in less than a month in a town that had such a low crime rate was unnatural and the connection gnawed at her, two puzzle pieces that refused to fit.
Laughlin leaned over her shoulder, peering at the body. "Dead as a dormouse," he muttered.
Cass turned to look at him, the incredulous look echoing one silent question; 'Seriously!?'
Laughlin noticed her disbelieving stare. "What? He is!" he said in defense.
But Cass wasn't paying attention to him anymore. She closed her eyes, letting her heightened senses take over. Cass clenched her fists as the familiar rush of heightened senses flooded her—sharp, unbidden, and always a reminder of what she was. The scent of blood was too strong, too vivid, clawing at her control. She exhaled slowly, steadying herself. Not here. Not now.
She hated the constant struggle to hide her true nature, the fear of losing control, the isolation from being different. She hated living with the constant torment that those who claimed to love her would realize she wasn't like them. The fact that her powers were useful for keeping criminals off the streets was the only positive. If only she could harness these abilities without the baggage that came with them, without feeling like a monster in human skin.
She drew in a deep breath, and focused on the various scents that filled her nostrils and materialized in her mind: the victim's vanilla-based perfume, the musty smell of old books, and... pizza? Each scent told a story, painting a picture of the victim's final moments. The sharp sweetness of vanilla clung to the air—a recent encounter, someone he'd wanted to impress. Cass inhaled again, the musty scent of old books cutting through the perfume, grounding her in the details. He'd been studying—or pretending to—before the end. And the lingering aroma of pizza, likely from a recent meal, provided a timeline—he had probably eaten not too long before he died. But nothing unusual. Nothing that pointed to the killer.
She opened her eyes, her frustration mounting. "He was probably a student," she said, more to herself than to Laughlin.
"We haven't ID'd him yet, so we don't know that," Laughlin huffed. "Looks like everyone's fooling around. I don't think the techs have found anything."
Cass nodded absently. She knew they wouldn't find anything. She couldn't find anything either. Usually, the perpetrators' scent hung in the air, a musty curtain over a poorly hidden crime. Her nose was strong enough to detect it even when a week had passed and she could track it the moment she'd caught it. Her successful career in policing was in part thanks to her ability to find any evidence that human investigators might miss.
This time however, she was just as clueless as the humans.
She stood up, scanning the scene once more. The victim's footprints lined the alley, a straight walk down from the street to the place where he was cut down. His palms were bloody and a faint palm print was pressed into the dirty, mossy brick walls. Cass could picture that brief moment where he desperately held onto his throat and realized the skin was no longer connected. His helpless flailing as he tried desperately to cling on to life. There was no murder weapon, no footprints that didn't belong to the victim. Nothing. It was just like the last murder; it was as if a ghost had killed the victims, arranged their bodies, and disappeared.
A crowd had unsurprisingly begun to form at the mouth of the alley. It was about 6:00 a.m., and Havenfield's residents were getting started on their days. The crowd wasn't too large; there were only about five people receiving the stink eye from the officer guarding the scene, but those five people had their phones out. Cass knew, if this dragged on, half the town would be on scene soon.
"Ask the store owners around for CCTV footage," she ordered a passing officer, "Tell the CSI and techs to hurry up. We should be done he—"
The words froze on her tongue before she could even get the full sentence out. She gasped as a new scent hit her—cold, metallic, and unmistakably supernatural. She was out of the alley in a heartbeat, ducking under the police tape and darting down the street while Laughlin yelled her name.
Ignoring Laughlin's calls, Cass ran down the sidewalk, her focus narrowing to that one scent. She followed it down the street, her senses on high alert. The streets were starting to come alive, shop owners opening their stores, early commuters hurrying along.
She stopped in front of a coffee shop, her breath hitched as he stepped out, the world narrowing to a single, primal instinct: run. But she stood her ground, eyes locking onto his.
"Vampire," she breathed. Her heart pounded in her chest, a wild, frantic beat that echoed in her ears. A reminder of her own fragility in the face of something far older, far more dangerous.
She swallowed hard, forcing herself to hold his gaze, even as a shiver ran down her spine.
He smiled, slow and deliberate, his fangs catching the light. The air around him seemed to chill further, the scent of cold steel and ancient blood heavy between them. Cass fought the urge to step back—he'd already seen the flicker of fear in her eyes, and his smirk only deepened. "Well, hello to you too, gorgeous."