Halo of Fire

Into the Woods

I had never expected it possible to be headed at break neck speed towards a crime scene with a convicted serial killer clad in a dusty dark grey trench coat/over coat and yet here I was; it was happening and a lot faster than I had ever known anything to happen before. my newfound ideas about demonic existence were placed atop my egg; a fragile little egg of ideas concieved by my furiously working mind and too fragile to move without cracking and unleashing a stupidly real idea onto the extremely grim world. In my days at the mansion the sky had become grey velvet. The air was heavy with the stale stench of decay, despair, loss and death. Huge bloated bodies lay in warped, twisted piles on either side of the roads. Human life was scarcely seen; the occupants of the streets vacantly moving back and forth with empty, dead eyes fixed upon the world to leech it of colour.

Lestat fit into my car almost like he was some kind of beautifully scary porcelain and alabaster statue I had stolen and dressed in human clothes in an attempt at getting away with. The dark sunglasses I wore sat heavy and important upon the bridge of my nose; curtaining my human eyes susceptible to falling prey before prying eyes of skin crawlers. I found my eyes repeatedly, tentatively flickering across to where Lestat sat, my hands gripped painfully tightly upon the steering wheel. The scent that made my head heavy and eyes water had revealed itself to me as his scent and I was shamefully and secretly enjoying it, using it to strengthen myself and prepare myself for what lay ahead of us.

I parked the car as quickly as I could outside the rundown house. Already, a ribbon of yellow had been wrapped around thorny, barren hedges outside it; ribbons on a gift for my mind to unravel and reveal. I wondered at the swollen, putrid fruits that awaited us inside.

A burly policeman was suddenly towering over me, dark gaze fixed upon Lusciano who had become my shadow. I had become so used to him that it felt normal to be around him.

Velvet lips..

"Inspector." I nodded at him courteously. "I would appreciate it if you could let us through." My tone was sharp and clipped to an oddly higher tone than normal; flowing fluidly from my badly bitten lips.

"You-"

"Detective Cole." I raised my badge that felt like a shield before his scrutiny.

His eyes drifted to Lestat.

"Detective Lestat." I pointed at the badge I had forged for Lestat under orders from Collin. "He is working from abroad and a professional at cases similar to this one."

The burly policeman stepped back to let us in.

The air inside was heavy with staleness and dust that penetrated me through my nostrils and coated my throat and mouth in a thick coat of sand-like dust. I was struggling to breathe as tiny fingers of stale air tightly clutched at my throat and poured even more dust down my nostrils into my throat and mouth. There were white lab coats floating around. On closer inspection I managed to make out the people wearing them, drifting around with whispered footfalls heavy in the stale air streaked with the decaying scents of death.

Collin was talking to someone, grey hair like messy spikes of thick wire with eyes wide and anxious in a face that filled me with dread at its child-like state of frustration. I watched his struggle in silence, a thin wire fence of patience stretched tight before me, forcing me to hold my breath and stay back, away from the highly importunate scene in pastels and swirly greys before us.

Collin was suddenly walking straight towards us, face expressionless; eerily like that of the serial killer whose presence was wearing heavy on my back as though his shadow was a block of steel unable to stand on its own, forced to throw pressure on my brittle structure.