Nightingale

The Victim on the Dock

The Atlantic crashed outside the dockside teahouse in its fury, water washed up on the bay sands and sucked tiny particles back with it by the hundreds. Gray clouds hung over the horizon, ominous and threatening to spill themselves at any moment. Ships docked in the harbor rolled up on the swells and sank back with their retreat. Cargo workers hustled to get their ships loaded before the storm broke free and flooded the bay for a week to come.
Seventeen year old Milena Errin sat cross legged in a booth inside the teahouse, Dell Insignia laptop opened up on the tabletop in front of her. A pair of black SkullCandy headphones sat ontop of her mess of jet black waves, a sound sequence on the screen jumped and dipped when played over and over again. She'd been there for an hour, listening to the same thirty second EVP that WSCA director Charles Dorin had sent via secure Email. Every time she listened to it, it made her sick to her stomach. It was twenty seconds of hissing, crackling language she only knew by identification, and then ten seconds of the most horrific screaming she'd possibly ever heard.
Not too far from where Milena sat, a teenaged tourist's body had been found lying half in, half out of the bay waters. Her insides had been trailed along the beach, her eyes were missing from her face, and there was a rugged bloody hole where her heart should've been. Her cell phone had been found several feet away, under the loading dock, still recording. Analysts at WSCA had cut off the nearly three hours of nothingness recorded and sent her the thirty second clip in which had made one of them quit their job. Her task was to slow the clip down, analyze the sounds to make out any words, and send her results back to Dorin as soon as possible. She shuddered, took a sip of her diet Coca Cola, and pressed play for the thirtieth time, bracing herself for the hellish screams at the end.

Lenore Nightingale was cranky. Very, very cranky. He hadn't eaten in almost twelve hours, his legs hurt from walking circles for most of the provided daylight, and he was no closer to finding any clue as to what had attacked the girl at the Bay. He'd been called to the Unseelie Queen's meeting room at nearly the crack of dawn for briefing, and had been sent out into the human world not too soon after that, half asleep and reeling from the sheer amount of information that'd been thrown at him. Finally giving up prowling the bay in case the thing came back, he trudged up the bay and along the dock. His stomach rumbled at the smells of fresh baked cookies and hot brewed tea, and he clutched at it slightly, feeling around in his back pocket for his wallet. If he was going to spend the next few hours prowling about, he'd might as well get something to calm the biting hunger.
The teahouse was warm compared to the winds rolling in off the water, and feeling slowly came back into his fingertips when he sank down into a booth with the biggest Styrofoam cup of Earl Grey the teahouse had to offer. He moaned at the warmth, biting into the sandwich he'd ordered with a sigh. He was frustrated, no doubt. They'd given him so little to work with, but he was notorious for hunting down the things that turned their coat to the Unseelie crown, and this was no exception. He rubbed at the branded insignia at his left pectoral as if to remind himself he'd dealt with much worse than a mere stalemate in a case. Besides, he'd truly only been at it a few hours. He let his eyes wander the teahouse while he savored the admittedly large sandwich he'd ordered, but found almost nobody of interest. Aside from the girl in the booth across from him, who was too immersed into whatever she was listening to on her laptop to notice his staring.
She wore a leather jacket, and despite the frigid cold, what looked to be a red sleeveless dress underneath it. A pair of multicolored converse sneakers came just above floor level. He noticed that she was wearing ankle socks, and that there was a small tattoo of a catholic cross on her left ankle. He also noticed the dangling bat shaped earrings she wore, and the lack of makeup and other facial piercings he might've expected from someone wearing neon Converse. She was small, a bit comically so, but had the skilled fingers of someone who might've been deadly with a knife. Lenore caressed one of several daggers slipped into his guard's uniform with a shiver. There was nothing more satisfying than landing a good, clean throw into a target's heart. He caught the glimmer of a name tag, but from his position the light kept that little bit of information a secret. Curiosity burned at him, and he shoved the rest of the sandwich in his mouth and wiped his lips free of anything, checking himself over in the silver napkin dispenser.
He was devilishly attractive, glamoured enough to keep his Unseelie body from terrifying everyone on the dock. No pointed ears peeked through the thick mess of jet black hair, no fangs pushed up either of a full set of well colored lips. He still had the high, overly beautiful facial build of an Unseelie fae, there was no glamouring that down. He'd glamoured himself to just above six feet, where his average height lumbered over the seven foot mark. He'd given himself awkward proportions where his fae body was perfectly measured, lean, and well muscled. He'd even went as far as bronzing otherwise snow white skin. He still wore the black long sleeved v-neck sweater emblazoned with a silver rose inset in a circle of twisted thorns and vines, leather trousers, and black fingerless gloves of the Unseelie Court guard, but had left his cloak in his quarters. An earring set with the same design on his sweater flashed in his right ear. He looked like any normal English teenager, perhaps in love with some neo-gothic band.
Perhaps that was why it took the girl several minutes to look up and nearly jump out of his seat after he'd slid across from her in the booth she sat in. Or maybe it was the absolutely terrified scream ripping through the storm tossed air outside the teahouse that tore her from her computer screen.