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Noxumbra Files

Case 5: Ancient Stalker

Part 2

By XP Author

Tag groaned a little, shaking his head. "Nothing." The three rodents had gotten to La Plat d'Or, and he had started trying to do his thing. He had seen visions of several couples having varying degrees of a good time, several people who were definitely married to someone else they sat across, and accidentally discovered a three-tailed kitsune in disguise. Unfortunately, she did not have any useful information either, and since she was just on vacation and not causing trouble, was left to enjoy her evening. "Did you two find anything?"

Rachel, now dressed far more normally in a t-shirt and jeans, shrugged. "Well, I'm not really a tracker, so I'm not sure how much help I can be."

He tilted his head. "Didn't you hunt down the woman that killed your sister?"

The mouse winced. "Uh... yeah, but I literally saw her leaving the crime scene, so I had a lot more to go on." She sighed softly. "Plus, the woman was not exactly being subtle in that bar. A lot different than trying to track down someone actually trying to hide."

He nodded, then looked up to ask Ginny, only to realize that the woman was nowhere to be found. "Where did she get off to?"

"No clue. Probably avoiding me. Getting some real hostile vibes from her." He gave her a look. "Fine. More than her usual hostile vibes."

He nodded, looking around and feeling very out of place in the fancy part of town. "Yeah, something's bothering her, but she won't tell me what."

"Can't you do your...?" She wiggled her fingers at him.

He shook his head. "No. It doesn't work on her."

"It doesn't? Why not?"

"No clue. Probably due to how she exists." He shrugged. "Besides, it would be a massive invasion of privacy to do that intentionally. And I do what I can to avoid doing it accidentally."

"I keep telling you to wear gloves." The two nearly jumped out of their fur as Ginny spoke from behind them.

Rachel let out a breath. "You nearly scared me to death!"

Ginny scoffed. "If only." She turned look up at Tag. "Hey, speaking of not being able to read me, a thought crossed my mind. Think you're not picking anything up because the people we're looking for are also undead?"

He had to actually think about that. "It's possible. I've never tried to get a vision from an undead other than you."

The rat grinned wider. "Then let's test it out. I found something."

Rachel frowned. "Way to bury the lead!" Tag just chuckled.

They followed as Ginny led them a few streets down, then around to the back lot behind a fancy cafe. "Here. This whole place smells like old coffee and walking dead things." He gave her a dubious look. "This isn't the first vampire I've dealt with. They have a very distinctive smell. Death, old blood, and usually too much hairspray."

Rachel nodded slowly. "It's subtle in the background mana, but I'm sensing something dark here, too. This could be a hunting ground."

He sighed. "The subtle smell of dead things and background mana sensing. This is all way beyond me."

She chuckled. "Says the man who gets visions."

"Touche." He looked at Ginny. "Alright, Miss subtle scent. Any idea where I should look first? I've already taxed my visions pretty hard today. Can't do too many more."

The rat closed her eyes and let her nose pick her direction. She turned, slowly walking towards one spot. She stopped in one place near a wall. "Here."

"There." Rachel said at the exact same time. Ginny looked up with a glare, only to see the mouse's eyes had a white glow about them. She was pointing at the exact same spot she was standing. A moment later, the glow ended, and she blushed a little as she realized she was pointing at the rat. "Oh... sorry. The darkness in the mana is right there, too."

Tag chuckled. "Seems like a good place to start then." He walked over to where the two women had pointed and crouched down. He didn't see anything with his naked eye, but that didn't always mean much. "Let's see if your theory is correct." He touched the ground. Nothing. Moving his touch a little, he still got nothing. Though the moment he touched the wall...

* * *

Two bodies slammed against him. He had been solid surfaces enough to know when it was a couple in a make-out session. It was hard to pick out exact details as a mass of bricks, but he did manage to get a few things. The woman was something slight, a mouse or a rabbit. Definitely rabbit by the feel of that tail twitching against him. And his assumption of woman was definitely not wrong, either, as he felt a set of tits mashed on him as she was flipped. She was panting heavily, but not from fear. Definitely arousal.

He could not quite get a good read on the other person. They were bigger than the woman by quite a bit, probably a man. Their hands were cold when they touched him, and he felt claws. Possibly some kind of cat. And definitely grinding pretty hard on the woman by how much she kept pressing against him. They were probably fucking. He really hoped this was not just some vision of a couple doing it in the back alley.

He got his answer when blood splashed against him. Rabbit blood. That answered at least one question. It was not a lot of it, and the way she reacted, it was... willing? Though maybe not for long as she started to slump more and more. He felt her slide down his surface, until she was at the corner of the ground and him. She was dragged away a moment later, but he was still able to feel more. It was not long before he felt a damp cloth against him, wreaking of ammonia. Cleaning the blood. Who carried ammonia with them? After this was done, he felt the hand press against him much farther down, near the shop itself. The vision ended a moment later.

* * *

He flinched back a little as he was slammed back into a body of flesh and blood instead of brick and mortar. He took a second to collect himself. "Yeah, something happened here. Someone was either badly wounded or killed... while being fucked. A rabbit. Female, about 5 and a half feet tall? Bit skinny, big tits." When he saw both women giving him a suspicious look he shook his head. "What? They were pressed right against me... the wall. Kinda hard to miss that." He stood up again, brushing his long ears behind his head again. "Anyway, I didn't get a good... feel... of the other person. Tall, maybe a cat by the claws... and really cold to the touch."

"How do you know someone was wounded?" Rachel asked.

"I felt the blood splatter. Definitely rabbit blood. I wish I didn't know that from experience by now... but yeah." He pointed to a spot at about the height of the woman's neck. "Here. Though there won't be much evidence there. The bigger person cleaned it with ammonia right after."

The mouse blinked. "Who carries ammonia with them?"

He chuckled. "I know right?"

"Serial killers knowing they need to clean up the scene." They both looked at Ginny. "What? Am I wrong? A little bit in a bottle is all they would need for each night."

Rachel frowned. "The fact that you just instantly think of that worries me."

"The fact that she's right should worry you more." He shrugged. "Or less. We're cops. Gotta know that kinda thing. Anyway, it wasn't totally useless as visions go. He ended up moving back down to the coffee shop. If we're really lucky, he got caught on camera." He sighed a little. "The bigger issue is going to be... how do we convince them to let us look at said tapes?"

Rachel smiled. "I'll handle that. I'll just need to borrow your notebook."

* * *

"Okay. How?" Tag and Rachel were sitting in the cafe's manager's office. It was a bit too cramped for all three of them to be inside, so Ginny was standing just outside, looking intimidating to keep anyone from peaking in to overhear.

Rachel giggled softly, holding up the small notebook she had borrowed. "I used this." He quirked an eyebrow as that explained nothing. "My forte is air and light magic, so illusions are really easy for me to conjure. I just made the manager think that we were government agents on a secret mission, that this was a warrant to look at his security tapes, and insinuated that if he told anyone we were here that he would be black bagged."

The jerboa looked at the little mouse. "And he bought that?"

She nodded in the direction of the door. "Ginny's naturally terrifying aura helped to sell that last bit."

He looked up, seeing the rat's tail sway a little. He was sure she had a big grin, as well. "Yeah. That tracks." He turned back to the computer sitting on the desk. For such an expensive place, the computer looked like it was over a decade old, and it ran on an operating system two versions behind. Thankfully, there was almost nothing on the thing but what one would expect on a business computer. Not that he was going to go digging around for the hidden porn folders he just knew were there. The security files were all stored on an external hard drive connected to the thing. While booting everything was slow, it at least functioned.

He blinked when he saw the sheer volumes of files. "Wow. This thing is a detectives wet dream... and nightmare." He looked at the oldest file. "They have security videos going back to the middle of last year!" He had a glance at the little box that was the external drive. "Just how big is this thing?"

Rachel frowned. "How many of these are we going to have to go through?"

Tag sighed. "I don't know. Hopefully not a lot. I didn't bring my own external to copy this... though I don't think it would be big enough." He grunted. "And considering how old this rig is, it would probably take hours to copy it anyway." He just picked one of the files, and breathed a sigh of relief. The program that played them back could be sped up all the way to 8x speed. Plus every hour was marked. "Well, that will help. We'll just have it skip to around the start of night and watch from there."

"Why?"

He started the first video going. "Because the attack I... 'witnessed'..." he made air quotes at the last word, "happened at night."

The mouse blinked at him in confusion. "Wait, didn't you experience that as a brick wall? How could you possibly know it was night?"

"Two reasons." He held up one finger. "I have experienced being a wall way more often than you could imagine. You start to learn the differences in how day and night feel. Not as many cars vibrating you as they pass by, the feel of the air, and the kinds of insects moving around on you." She grimaced at that last part. He held up a second finger. "Two, the thing we're looking for is, hopefully, a vampire. Young or not, I imagine they would prefer to feed at night."

Ginny spoke up from the doorway. "Even if it's not a vampire, it's still the time most killers do their thing. Less people around, and it's easier to hide in the dark."

"She's right."

Rachel nodded slowly. "Okay, that makes sense..." She turned her attention back to the monitor as the video sped on through the night. "So how will you know the guy if you see him? Didn't you say you didn't get a good feel of him?"

He nodded. "I'm not looking for him. I'm looking for the girl. Rabbit, average height, large chest, about college age."

"How do you know that she'll even be on the camera?"

He shook his head this time. "I don't. I'm running on a hunch. Do this enough years, you learn to trust those." As the video ended with nothing useful, he started the next. "People usually follow patterns. If he's willing to kill someone in a back alley, then he probably didn't find her too far from it. She was definitely into everything before the blood hit the bricks, so that means it's even closer. She wasn't dressed like a hooker, so he found her in a nearby building. The first logical place to look is the shop in front of the alley."

Rachel smirked at the tall man beside her. "Wow. I'm impressed."

He shrugged. "This has been my job for a long time now." He paused the video a few seconds later. He pointed at the screen, at a short rabbit that walked in, wearing a t-shirt with AFU's logo on it and a short skirt. "There. I think that's her. The outfit looks right." He let the video play at only 2x speed. She went to the counter to order whatever drink. While she waited, a large tiger approached and started to talk to her. She seemed standoffish at first, until he reached out and touched the side of her head. From then on, she couldn't keep her hands off of him. "That's our man. Looks like some kind of influence or something right there. Mom... The Director... said that was one of their powers." She ended up leaving with him before even getting her order, her lips pressed to his neck and body practically wrapped around his. "And that would be where they go to the back and he kills her."

The mouse grinned even wider. "Okay, now I'm _REALLY_impressed."

Ginny chuckled. "Don't inflate his ego too much. His head's far enough from the ground as it is."

After around ten minutes, the man walked back in and got the order the rabbit had left behind. He turned, and the camera caught a great shot of his face, shit eating grin and all. He paused the video. "There! Perfect." He pulled up a browser and opened it to a cloud storage site. He signed in and dumped the video onto it. He frowned when it said it would take around five minutes to copy.

Rachel asked the obvious, "Making a copy?" He knew it was more asking why.

He pointed to the computer. "You see a printer on this thing? I can bring this up back in my office and run this guy's face through the databases I have access to. See if I can find some hits. If we're lucky, he has a record."

"How long will that take?"

He sighed. "Probably a few hours, unfortunately."

She frowned, her shoulders slumping a little. "Oh. Kinda hoped I could see your office, but if it's going to take that long..."

He shrugged. "I can still show you around the place. Not that it's really impressive." He heard the groan from Ginny, but she didn't say anything. He looked back at the computer as the file finished copying. He was sure to log out of the site and erase the browser's history for the last hour, to make sure someone couldn't just pull it up and log in from here. "Alright. All done." He stood up, Rachel doing the same so she could get out of his way. "Guess I'll head to my office and I'll start running that through the databases. Did you want that penny tour?"

"Yeah! I mean, I've been so cooped up in the headquarters, it's nice to just be out." She licked her lips slightly. "Plus, they did say I needed an escort at all times..."

Ginny shook her head, already turning to walk away. "While you two do that, I'll stake the place in front of the cafe out. I'll give you a call if our white wolf shows his ugly mug around there."

He nodded, reaching out to pat her shoulder. "Good thinking. I'll call you if I find anything on my end, too." Ginny glanced over her shoulder, but did give him a smile and a nod. The three walked out of the cafe, the manager being rather obvious about wishing them a good night. Though he did still flinch when the rat just looked at him. Once the three were outside, Ginny turned to start walking back down the alley.

Rachel tilted her head. "How is she going to stake out the place from back th-" She glanced down the alley, only to see the rat was gone. Tag tapped her shoulder, then pointed up. She looked, and flinched as she saw the woman scrambling up the wall, already at the top of the building. "Right. Revenant. Impressive. Terrifying... but impressive."

He smiled, nodding slowly. "Yeah, that pretty much sums her up." He turned and motioned for her to follow. "C'mon. My office is on the other side of town. Since we can't bound across the rooftops like a comic book character, we'll take the subway."

* * *