Murder On The Waterway: The Case Of The Kanaima Demon

Chapter Thirty

I couldn't help but reflect on the transient nature of life, love, and time as I stood amidst the enigmatic puzzle that had engulfed our lives. "Fleeting," that's how I'd describe them. Time had slipped away like sand through our fingers. Life had proven to be a fragile, temporary thing, and love, especially for me, had been a rare and elusive presence.

The ominous message we had uncovered, written with chilling intent, continued reverberating: "Her heart wanted what it couldn't have, yet she took it anyway. Now I take hers. Your heart wants what you're too scared to have." But it wasn't fear in the conventional sense that held me back. It was the relentless presence of the wolf within me. The thought of Ellena getting hurt, of her struggling to comprehend what lay beyond the ordinary, was what I feared the most.

The question that nagged at us was: Who else could have known about the spark between Ellena and me? Michael was the obvious answer, and there was also the unsettling possibility that Ellena had confided in Natasha before her suspicions took root.

To keep Natasha distracted, Michael had enlisted her help in swabbing for blood and dusting for fingerprints, tasks that we both knew were unlikely to yield any results. We needed her out of the way, allowing us to search for any additional clues Ellena might have uncovered and to devise our next move.

We found ourselves in the lounge, a space that mirrored the neat and sparse decor of my apartment. There was a television to the right and a long sofa beneath the window adorned with stacks of books that revealed Ellena's affinity for horror. The coffee table seemed to be her workspace, scattered with maps that suggested she had been dedicating extra hours to our case, all without our knowledge.

But it was the horror novels that piqued my curiosity. Ellena's literary taste ranged from Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" to Stephen King's "Cycle of the Werewolf." I couldn't resist the urge to explore these texts, to see how our kind was depicted in fictional works, even though films had reduced the dreaded silver bullet to mere brass for us just last month.

Stephen King, a master of storytelling, had created intriguing characters and nested stories within stories. But it was Ellena's bookmarks that commanded my attention. They held profound revelations about her discoveries and the secrets she had unearthed.

The first bookmark contained a fascinating note: "Red eyes belong to an Alpha, yellow for a Beta, and blue for an Omega. From what I can gather, and meant to be fiction, other shapeshifters exist with different colour eyes, especially... Green. As much as Georgie told me differently, claiming to be tired, I saw his eyes go red with black around the edge. Is he a wolf?" It was a stark reminder that Ellena had observed the subtle transformations in my eyes during moments of intensity.

The second bookmark raised even more unsettling questions: "Michael hasn't changed, but I overheard a conversation about green eyes and our murder suspect. I'm quite level-headed and would usually say it's bullshit. There's a part of me that hopes it's true. Excited by it. Yet, that also means our murderer is dangerous and likely to kill again, and there's no normal way to stop it or them." These words underscored the danger that Ellena's curiosity had drawn her into. The supernatural world had seeped into the shadows of our investigation, hinting at a murderer more enigmatic and lethal than we could have ever imagined.

As Michael examined the bookmark, I couldn't help but ponder the implications of these revelations. "Yeah, but also aware of the 'green eyes,'" I acknowledged.

Michael, ever the astute detective, posed a poignant question: "Makes you wonder how Ellena got the attention. If and could be a big 'If,' what we say is right. Do you think relationships were used?" He read between the lines, feeding into my mounting fears. Ellena's insatiable curiosity had led her into the supernatural world, and her friendship with Natasha might have been exploited for sinister purposes.