Weaving Yarns

She arrived home far too late to have been just studying at her friends house. Her combat boots also squelched far too wetly for her to have just travelled there on the dry footpath. Yet, instead of getting the Spanish Inquisition Cassidy's house was nearly as quiet as a mouse. "Mama?" she tried, taking the chance to take off her boots and carry them before she treked footprints all over the house. She walked down the hallway quickly, closing the bedroom door behind her as she swapped her sodden clothes for similar, dry ones. Her time would have made a chick fifteen minutes late for a date very proud. Cassidy found them in the living room, her mother streaming abuse/helpful suggestions as her step-father slaved away at a pile of electronics. Her face went pale. "<Ah, Cassidy! It's terrible! The whole apartment short circuited after you left! Most of the appliances have surge protectors... but the TV!>" Cassidy kept very close to the door frame, leaning heavily on it. "You haven't seen the-" "<Cantoneese!>" A tired grumble from Cassidy, then, "<You seen...> the news tonight? On the television?" Her mother wasn't happy with her language attempt, or so the tut told her. But her shaken head gave Cassidy all that she needed to know. She slunk into her room after exchanging plesantries, flipping open her laptop and doing a quick search. It was supposed to have been a quick street fighting lesson. All Cassidy had to do was punch Tyson as hard as she could in the shoulder. She didn't mean to burst the main pipe line under the street with her movement, but the twist in her gut told her that's what had happened.

Life is a throbbing, colour-changing passageway of fluro spears, and we are all small white squares flying and falling, soaring and sliding, crashing and dying into all of them.

Three days later, during the early hours of the morning Mr Stevens bolted upright in his bed. His craggly teeth had lengthened, turned into sharp canines in his mouth while he could feel the beginnings of bone elongation in his body. He didn't have time for this. Slowly, painfully slowly to his memory, he reverted back. By the time he'd returned to his human form proper he must have made quite a complaint, as Miss Pewter hovered by his door. "A body?" she asked, eyes twinkling. John took a moment to briefly flick his gaze over her night gown. If he were only thirty years younger... maybe even fifty. "Yeah. Close by. Woke me up in mah sleep, gawd damn it. Within two blocks at least." He swung his legs over the side of the bed, grinding his palms into his eyes. The scent was hanging around the area, like humid air. "It's gonna be fuckin' messy." When he looked up Miss Pewter had already gone, and from the sounds of commotion next door was getting ready. "We better get a move on then. When the cell police arrive they'll cordon off the area. This is our chance to get a lead!" Mr Stevens had stumbled to his dresser and pulled out a pair of trousers by the time she came to his door again, fully dressed. "What's taking you so long? We need to-" "Ya either leave me t'get dressed or Ah go down there in mah long johns, aight? Whatevuh ya prefer." Her quick closing of the door told him her choice succinctly, though by the pacing he could hear next door she wasn't exactly thrilled by it. Oh well, the young would have to learn patience.

The shots sizzled the air next to her body, and it didn't take much to imagine the pain that would be caused if she wasn't so lucky. She'd experienced it before, at the hands of the same woman who was now shooting at her, except twelve years prior. The unicorn quickly turned into the alleyway, vaulting as quickly as she could over the chain link fence, jeans snagging on a wire. "I don't want to spill your blood!" the woman's voice called, Vivian was what she called herself. "Nasty stuff, isn't it?" Panic was rising in the unicorn's chest now as the clack of Vivian's shoes against the pavement echoed closer and closer from the bricks around her. How stupid had she been to fall for the trick that landed her with an iffy ankle? An apple offered by a virgin, how was she to resist? "Please, leave me be!" Her voice was pathetic even to her standards. The cocking of the revolver was all the unicorn needed to know. Pain exploded in her leg.

'The trail is getting thinner,' the demon who had named itself Alexis commented, thrumming with slight displeasure along Laura's nervous system. She punched a wall in response, startling the pigeons which had gathered by it. "Fuck! How much longer do we have?" It took the odd stares from a group of teenagers walking by for her to realise she had spoken outloud. 'Shut up Alexis. This isn't funny.' 'Oh but it is. What if someone thought to lock you up. All of this would have been for nothing. How much of your life force is it taking to keep me in check, I wonder? Not to mention the amount taken to keep me tethered here. Is it worth-' 'Of course she's worth it!' Laura punched the wall again, wincing as she pulled back to see bloodied knuckles. The demon's prescense swirled a little quieter while she got her anger under control again. Everything a step at a time. 'Don't you say any different.' 'A sore point then? My oh my, I never meant to offend-' 'But you did.' Laura straightened herself, delving the slightest into the demon's powers to try and see the white luminescnece that the angel left behind with every step it took. The specks had always been faint, but now she could see the lack of intensity in them. Alexis didn't make any other move to further apologise, but Laura supposed that the demon wouldn't bother. Her silence was enough. 'How much longer do we have to track him down?' The demon's senses intensified and Laura was vaguely aware of it thinking to itself. What a luxury she could use. 'We just have to find where it's rested. Unless your sister can keep going for the whole night she probably needed a place to sleep.' A small shriek from the creature let Laura know that she had smarted the demon a little. Good, if it was going to make comments like that... 'Lets keep going then.'

It had been a long time since anyone new came into the house. During daytime the ghost was quite unable to do anything when the girl with auburn hair sat in the hallway with an Ouija board, asking it questions it wasn't too sure how to answer when it was so very bright outside. "What's your name?" I don't know, it wanted to tell her. "It's all right to be shy. I'm shy too. Did you use to live here?/" I died at the bottom of the stairs; that's where my spirit is tethered.  So I suppose I lived here too. "Are you lonely?" ...What? "Do you want a friend?" The ghost pulled away a little at that, suddenly feeling that her gaze which had been random up until then. Now it seemed to be pinning his incorporeal form rather accurately. I'm fine- "I don't have any friends, so if you don't have any either, why don't we make each other less lonely?" I'm not... I'm not lonely. "Please don't go I-" But it was too late. It had already phased up through the ceiling, leaving the girl down below in the dusty entrance way.

It was hard to conceal himself sometimes. Especially when he was treated as a lesser being all of the time by those who had the ability to understand. It didn't help that he was surrounded by perhaps the most annoying type of human to exist in the world. The prepubescent child. Rakesh mentally growled as the children swarmed around him, the mere thought enough to scatter a few of the more sensitive ones. How he wished for his true form, to be able to swipe at them and lick away their blood on his hands. But he'd made a deal with the girl when they'd swapped, and no murders was part of their deal. "Bansuri!" Two girls a little older than his form stood in his spot. His lip curled a little upon seeing them there, had not the scratches by the side of the building he'd created with the blunt fingernails been enough? He'd forgotten their names (even Rakesh was a construct created by the child) so he merely nodded. That was all the acknowledgement they really deserved, really. "Wh... What is it?" he asked, the human words falling slowly from his tongue. The prettier of the two sneered at him. "We were just wondering why you chose to be even more alone now. What did happen at your uncle's house?" The two girls laughed together and Rakesh almost saw red. If he had been in his true form they wouldn't have laughed harder at his glower. But violence didn't seem to be an acceptable response here. He'd already been told off again and again when he'd punched or scratched (or bit) others, though the males never seemed to be treated the same. "I sit with intelligent company." The girls gasped at that and Rakesh smiled. He liked it when his words acted as his claws. "You... You just think you're better than us!" "Yes." Rakesh wasn't surprised when his desk was badly vandalised when they returned to class. His lack of surprise did not equal a lack of rage, however. He wasn't sure how much longer the soul of a tiger could survive in the body of a twelve year old girl.

Alexandros wheeled backwards into the shrubs, hand squeezing tighter around the shaft of his spear. He should have listened to his father and stayed away from this patch of the woods he knew was told yet! Heart pounding in his chest like the drum beat of a battle ship he got slowly to his feet, keeping his body low. His chlamys offered no real protection against the beast which had knocked him off the path, and the quiver present in his spear head revealed his lack of certainty. "Come out then!" he shouted, pivoting to face a sudden snap of a dry branch. A boy, a year or two younger than him, climbed out of the forest into the clearing Alexandros had found himself in. He looked normal at first glance, a tanned, slightly grimy villager. However, it became increasingly apparent that the boy was anything but normal. His curly hair hid the horns at first glance, and the goat legs had been hidden behind a bush. "S-Satyr?" he asked, spear lowering for a second before coming right back up again. "Why did you hit me?" The satyr-boy looked down at his hooves, looking up at Alexandros through his hair. "I'm... My name is Leonidas. Not... Not 'Satyr'. I was... I wanted to play... Mama said not to bother with humans, but I'm the only one my age around here and I've seen you walking past here before and-" "How does knocking me off my feet mean you want to play with me? It's more like a threat." Leonidas winced at that, fiddling with his thumbs. Alexandros found it hard to keep up his guard though when this boy was everything opposite satyr were said to be. "I head-butted you. Don't humans do that when they want to play?" "Normally they just ask," Alexandros supplied, pausing before pointing his spear away from the creature. Leonidas took that as a hopeful gesture, or so Alexandros speculated when he looked into the satyr's disconcerting split eye. "Do you want to play with me?" "Yes."

Through her eyelashes she could see the rising sun. You weren't supposed to look at it, lest your eyes get ruined. And that was exactly what happened. Everything the light touched immediately turned grey and hard and cold. It was her eyes that went first, so that she could no longer see the world in its nighttime glow as she loved it, that being taken rudely away from her. Before she had a chance to move away from the cruel light into the forgiving shade the sun was upon her again, falling on her head and her side. But just when she thought it was over, when the paralysing agony was gone, the touch spread without the sun's help. Like ice forming over a near-freezing puddle the stone lashed out at the rest of her body, slowly encasing her in an egg. However she couldn't stop one traitorous thought escape before her demise. The warmth felt nice on her cooling skin.

Kaitlyn didn't know quite what made her follow the black doe away from her family. The picnic had been set in the woods, a family get together passed down every generation or so. A memory urged her to turn away from the black doe, something about not trusting strange animals, but like an obedient fawn she scampered after the beast. Minutes passed into hours, metres into kilometres before Kaitlyn managed to gather up the courage to stop mid-pace. The doe looked back at her with wide green eyes, breath forming a mist as she breathed out. Those green eyes turned narrow as Kaitlyn felt something wander up behind her. Breath fluttered softly against her neck and she didn't have a chance to turn before a white stag was standing next to her. Is fur glistened like water creating a rainbow, rather than the simple blackness of the doe's own pelt. The stag was so beautiful and... and although his eyes were red they were a soft red that made Kaitlyn think of nights in front of the fire. It reared its head at the doe, then turned around and walked back where Kaitlyn had come from. The doe glanced at her and continued down her own way. Stuck between the two decisions she made one on impulse. She turned around and followed the white stag. The forest turned sinister the further they walked. Where springtime growth had been now fungus and death sprung upon every branch. Dead leaves beneath her feet turned sticky and slimy with decomposition and occasionally she stepped in a pile of maggots. Unlike the black doe, with the white stag time passed quickly and it appeared they'd walked only a few minutes by the time Kaitly started to remember a few landmarks here or there. She almost raced past the stag then and there, almost sobbing with relief to have found her family yet again. The scene where the picnic had been prepared her for sobbing, all right. Whereas Kaitlyn had stopped at the edge of the clearing the stag continued, hocks becoming dyed red in the carnage it dutifully plodded through. When it reached the other side it turned around, sending Kaitlyn a long blink of its red eyes. The black doe was at her side again, nuzzling her hand for a pat. They were asking her to make a choice again. Though what the correct answer was, Kaitlyn wasn't sure she could figure out.

Jordan could only move her eyes about her sockets when she came to. The room was white, suffocatingly so, and the only thing that seemed to define it was a small, silver vent screwed tightly into the ceiling. Other than that she couldn't tell where one wall began and the other stopped, everything was seamlessly white, illuminated from some unknown light source. While her body remained obscure and detached from her consciousness Jordan closed her eyes and tried to remember quite what had happened. They'd been lying on the hill, hands entwined. She'd heard them coming, then suddenly there was a shot and something wet fell against her forehead an- where the hell was Cyndie? Her vocal chords could apparently push through whatever paralysis the rest of her body was under, because the orderlies came rushing to pull down her slacks (not the skirt she'd been wearing before) and stab her with sedatives. Just before the world faded to black Jordan wondered what Cyndie would make of a cloud shaped like a vent.

"Four deaths in as many weeks," Miss Pewter recounted, flipping through the papers she'd scrounged up. They amounted to what little had been released to the media, unfortunately for the duo this town of nigh ten thousand didn't warrant it's own correspondence and it'd take a while for the Company to arrange for any transference of the more sensitive material to them. "The police are calling them stab wounds to the neck, but I think it's safe to assume we know better, hm?" "It's nah a wolf, if that's what yer askin'. Ah'd be able to smell it were it that." They stood at the little alleyway the latest death had occurred in, recently relieved of its tape. Miss Pewter kept watch at the mouth while Mr Stevens worked his way along the walls, breathing in deeply through his hooked nose. "Smells like... blood. Just blood. Like th'boy was attacked by nuthin' at all." "This isn't a ghost. So if it isn't a werewolf the only logical explanation is-" "Vampiuh." Miss Pewter straightened at that, sending Mr Stevens an almost scathing look. "The only logical explanation is vampires, yes. I would say that for every one body we find, one more has been turned, if not more. This string of murders is probably due to..." She trailed off as John bent down to the slightly red patch of concrete knees cracking at the effort. "What is it?" A single, long, curly blood-stained black hair hung from his calloused fingers. "It's tah old t'get a scent, but it's from th'same time." Miss Pewter stepped forward at that, looking at the hair with her grey eyes in that calculating, curious shade. "That's great and all, but if that's all we're going to get from this crime scene... Where do we go from here?" Mr Stevens' face was grim. "We sit an' wait fer th'next body. Hope t'get t'it beforuh th'coppuhs. Watch our backs fer ladies wit' long, black hair." He could tell that Miss Pewter wasn't happy about this, that she'd planned on arresting the malignant as soon as they got into town and returning home a hero and all that, but her face was determined when she lifted her gaze. "However terrible it is, I hope the next one comes soon. The colony will only grow bigger and when that happens it won't be just one body any more." They didn't have to wait for long.

Urbi was halfway to her ideal pane of inebriation at midnight. The alcohol made everything easier. Her worries and thoughts melted away and the warmth that the alcohol brought mimicked the warm, carefree emotions that came to the surface. Enjoyment, elation, excitement. As her muscles wound down Urbi found herself relaxing deeper and deeper into the chair. The beer was excellent and the music wasn't too loud. She could get used to keeping the bartender happy with her considerable tab. That was until she became increasingly aware of a pair of men lingering about the bar. One, lean and  dressed in a not-too-formal suit was all charm and flattery while the other, brawny and chiselled in a more relaxed get up acted as a wing man for his friend. They went for women on their own, at least until their friends came and whisked them away. All she could say for certain was that they were creeps, but creeps visited every bar. Something was wrong, Urbi was sure of it even with the room swirling a little at the corners. She was content to leave them be for now, sipping at her beer as she tried her best to ignore them. And then she saw the lean one's hand linger over a giggly blonde's cup. Urbi saw red. When she came to there was a ring of people surrounding her and both men were on the ground, the blonde having merged into one of the spectators. Their blood was on her knuckles, and from the look of the sculpted one's leg possibly in need of medical attention. Fuck, she'd let Sekhmet come out again. Her nerves shattered, Urbi walked to the bar, chugged down the rest of her beer and slapped down enough bills to pay off roughly double her tab. For added measure she smashed down the glass the blonde had been drinking from down on the groaning face of the tall one, muttering "roofies" to those close enough to hear. Then she picked up her coat and left. The bar would only keep quiet for a few moments longer.

After you shifted into a thousand or so different faces, it was hard to remember which one was yours and some times you forgot other things as well. Like your age or where you were from... and sometimes even your name. Because to shift into someone else you had to kill them, and in those last moments where your consciousness and their consciousness mixed together memories would be exchanged, and after becoming half a dozen people and losing half a dozen pieces of yourself it was hard to keep tabs. But for our shifter something clicked when she (she was currently in the skin of some skinny, big eyed thing and felt like a woman) saw a man walk into the coffee shop. There was something about the way he smiled that was heart breaking in the most ordinary way. It was only when he spoke and told the cashier his name that something clicked in the shifters mind. Her twin.

Perry strode into the store front with the quiet confidence of a customer, a brand new partner who could understand signing following a step behind. Jones was quiet, which he appreciated. A detective who'd been stuck in the title for ten years wasn't who he usually beelined for when it came to contacts with local police, but she spoke clearly and only when he had something to say. It made lip-reading a whole lot easier. The shop was set up like some racist caricature of an Eastern medical shop. Red and gold decorated the interior like they were trapped inside a lunar new year's card, and everything from the mismatch of Korean and Chinese on the counter to the lack of stock behind the first available items was enough to have SA Perry's suspicions up. They approached the server behind the counter slowly, a middle-aged woman, who proceeded to greet them in a heavily accented voice, or so he guessed from the difficulty he had in reading her lips. Detective Jones responded as Perry had schooled him to and quickly the accent dropped. 'Come to the staff entrance, quickly,' she said, pressing a button underneath the bench. A section of the counter slid away creating an opening Perry walked through. While shimmeying sideways he signed Jones a quick, 'Well done,' before having to follow the shopkeeper through a door labelled STAFF ONLY. The room past the storefront was much more sparesely stocked. Refined white and black and blue characterised the colour scheme, and an air of elegance hung over the area like the scent of a good cologne. There were security cameras everywhere as well, his keen eyes noted. Oh well, it couldn't be helped. Their guide left them standing in the middle of the room, on a large silver and grey rug. Seconds passed and then a man dressed in a crisp suit  SA Perry knew to be the elusive Jonathan Kim appeared out of a seamless door, smiling at them with bright teeth. He welcomed them to his proper shop and spread his arms wide, grinning wolfishly. Perry's usual outfit made him appear to be more of the sort of a client that Kim would look for, and Jones had changed from his work-gear into a smarter get up upon learning about the nature of their mission to better play the part. 'We are interested in a very specific product, Mr. Kim,' Jones started, Perry standing in the background pretending to be the aloof millionaire who wouldn't bring himself to talk with his clients directly. 'You see, my boss here has quite the refined taste, and he's heard that there's a new fish on the market.'

After seeing an ad in the newspaper Bryan left the kitchen in a frenzy. When Katie, his co-worker stumbled upon the classified section she couldn't see any reason for him to take off in such a hurry. What grabbed his attention was quite small and inconsequential to all those who were not there to witness it. 'To the wolf who changed coats on the corner of fifth street last night; you dropped your wallet.'

When he skated down the sidewalk everyone was in a hurry to get out of his way. It wasn't just because of the primordial sense of evil he naturally exuded either. Most people got out of his way simply because he looked terrifying, what with his skater helmet custom painted to look like a brain, a black scarf pulled right up to his sports sunglasses. That and the fact that he skated hard and fast straight down the sidewalk at breakneck speeds. It was a spectacle then that he should swerve straight in the middle of the street, turning swiftly into the yard of an abandoned house, which was strange considering that the fence's gate was locked with a padlock before and after he entered... At the end of the driveway he came to a succinct stop, wheels shredding up leaves. A great oak stood in a roudabout, and he stared up at the branches. Soon enough a pitiful mewl came from the higher branches. Seconds passed after that sound, with the skater reaching into his pocket and pulling out a plastic card which said 'BENIGN (ON PROBATION)'. Carefully he turned around toward the street, eyes impossible to see behind his glasses, then looked back up at the cat again, shoving the card back. With a swift movement he took off his head, helmet, scarf and all clean from his neck and threw it up into the top branches of the tree. Through his neck he could feel a tight pulling, and when his eyes saw the cat something clicked and his body was flying up to join with his head and his gloved hands found the trunk of the tree just above the cat. Getting the cat proved to be more difficult that he would have thought, but eventually it was gripping him instead of the tree and when that happened he dropped his head to the ground, body pulling back to it at a just higher than standing height. The cat gratefully ran out of his arms then, taking off into the madness of the abandoned house. If dullahans could have smiled, he would have.