Broken Masks

Chapter 17 - Twisting Shadows

(A/N: Happy new year thots, lets get it poppin')

Lena chewed her lip. A body had shown up on the edge of the Pomroy river a day earlier; warm, fresh and frozen by rigor mortis. It was that of one James Hencourt, an podgy yet lovable, well natured businessman, who's fabric company was well known for its generosity and fair wages.

Yet there he was, pale, with his eyes glassy and staring in a look of horror etched into his face.

Lena clicked off the close up picture and onto his cause of death. A jagged slice across his stomach, surrounded by bruises and cleaned by the river water. Inside, his intestines had been removed haphazardly by what could have been the same knife that first opened him up. From the bruising patterns, it was likely he had been sliced open like a turkey while conscious and struggling, and had tried to hold his wound closed, but kept having it forced open again.

A horrible way to die, especially for a man as kind hearted as James Hencourt.

Yet it also tickled something in her memory. A case from 8 years ago. Her father had been a police officer at the time and had told his cadet daughter about it. A total of 18 bodies had shown up across the city mutilated and disemboweled, all covered with the DNA of a woman no one could identify. Everything from skin cells to hair and even saliva showed up, yet they never found her. Lena remembered it perfectly because it was around the time Klaus said he had moved to the city, a story Klaus didn't like to talk about.

Lena flicked her plait out of her face, flipping through the crime scene photos again. James' wedding band was missing, leaving only a pale line around his finger, and dried blood was caked around his fingernails.

The DNA taken from the body had pointed to a mixed race woman, with dark hair and dark eyes. There was no one in the criminal database who matched the DNA sample, but it did match the DNA from the string of murders 8 years before. Lena knew something was different though. The mutilation was worse, the suffering appeared longer, the torture more intense.

Whatever the killer had planned, it would be worse then what had happened last time. 8 years before, a bomb had gone off in the government's assessment field area, killing countless soldiers, and leaving the city defenceless for almost a year and a half till the base could be reconstructed.

Lena was terrified of what would happen next.

* * *

The woman sat like a statue; silent, cold and still. The little sound that came through the walls and broken windows did nothing to shake her, no even the screams distorted by blood. The rough concrete under her sent ice up her fingers, the air musty and old, the smell of iron and red hung like fog in the air.

The screams continued, but she ignored then further, blocking them out completely as she focused on her brother. Her comatose, pathetic brother, warped and broken by the life he had found; the people who surrounded him like dogs around a bone.

The woman reached with her mind, the brain and soul of her brother just out of reach. She saw it though, surrounded by white tendrils, shimmering like glass. Taking a breath, she reached again, finally touching the pulsating vines ensnaring her brother. She would have to get them off, but the process would need better conditions then this. The brain was flitting between peace and fear; memories most likely, and therefore it was too vulnerable. One wrong move and the soul would be destroyed, destroying everything, from personality to memories to the all important changes from conditioning. Though this action, her plan could be destroyed.

But she knew the brother needed to be awake for the process to start. As carefully as she could, the woman reached forward and touched a tendril. The thing snaked back like a python, its shimmering glass skin burning red before melting into the brain. Just a few more tendrils would would do it, but she pulled away, instead setting her eyes on the wires beneath the brain, watching as the messages of consciousness began falling through like marbles. The space was slowly beginning to fill with light, and she knew she had to do it. Glancing at the source of the light, she sneered at the face that situated itself through the single gap. She'd get him out of the way soon enough.

Soon, The Red Hawk would be no more.

A single reach.

The twist of a soul.

The movement of a shadow.

Klaus awoke.