Post by morciel on Nov 8, 2010 15:43:46 GMT -8
The Jason Iutus Chronicles
By David Castro
Part I: The Hero of the Night
Jason smiled, looking deep into the darkness within the barrel of the gun. Mumbled whispers, something about money, or his wallet, nothing that mattered now. A loud burst of sound and light, and it would all be over. Just wait a bit longer, refuse the gunman for a moment longer, and it all would be finished and done with, only Jason wasn’t done yet.
A sudden flurry of movement, and the heavy, black gun had changed hands. How fickle the weapon, that it would bend to the will of anyone who handled it. A small force of his will, and a squeeze of the finger, and the world was one less scumbag. Jason smiled and laughed, kneeling and removing a napkin from the now dead man’s pocket, wiping down the gun and spattered blood off his cheek. He placed the gun down on the chest of the corpse, then pulled an ornate silver lighter from his pocket, setting the napkin aflame, letting it fall on the asphalt beside the body. He waited to see if the paper completely brunt, then he exited the alley, smiling brightly.
Jason was dressing in the garb of the nightwalker, plain black jeans and tee shirt, a long leather coat billowing out behind him in the cool summer wind. He walked the filthy side streets of his city, doing the work that no other could or had the heart to do. Culling the herd. The laying out of the rotted blood of the race, ending that branch of their trees, so that they could not poison or dilute the blood of others and leave the purity of the next in line pure. It was a tiresome job, unending and cold, Jason never finding a night where he didn’t have to perform his duty, someone had to do it.
The city guard and lawmen tried their best, but they couldn’t keep up with the flow of the bad guys, or match the severity needed to deal with the people of that kind. Jason thought himself a hero, cleaning up the streets and saving others, those people never knowing how they have been saved or that he had even existed That was the meaning of a hero, or at least that’s what Jason liked to think. He mulled over these thoughts as he concluded his nights works, culling a drug dealer, two whores, and their pimp, the knives hidden within the inside pockets of his coat stained red. He then traveled to a nearby tavern, ordering an ale and siting, remaining there until the sun graced the sky with it’s light. He then traveled to his shabby hut of a home.
The house had only three rooms, a common room/kitchen, a bedroom and a privy. A fitting fortress for a hero, Jason thought, entering the home and removing his knives and coat. Throwing the latter the small table in the dusty corner of the common room, he cleaned his blades then returned them to his coat. God save the King. He removed his clothes and went to bed, and slept dreamlessly.
********
Inspector Sarah Blane arrived to the alleyway crime scene. A leather-clad pimp lay sprawled down the alley, a pair of savage cut deep in his throat, washing the street in blood. A few feet further down the alley, a pair of whores lay in similar puddles of blood. The inspector wore a plain white blouse and black pants, the long midnight blue coat of the city guard flowing behind her. The coat had a pair of crimson stitches lined the coat, denoting her rank. The guardsmen at the mouth of the alleyway saluted between holding the press back with stun staves. It was all they could do to stop the newspapers and tv stations from stomping them flat and doing gods know what to the bodies. The guardsmen held them back, but they still got their pictures. From the reporters on the scene, to paid guardsmen and women in the force itself making copies of the pictures taken on the scene and selling them to the highest bidder. Sarah sighed, how far we have fallen. She knelt next to the pimp’s corpse, beside a guardsmen in a coat stitches of white.
“What happened here?” She asked.
“The same as the rest. Cut to the throat, cleanly severing the carotid and jugular in half. Again, no bloody footprints, fingerprints, fallen hair samples, or pretty much anything. This guy is very good at what he does.” said Frank Van, the chief medical examiner in this quarter of the city. He rose, taking a pad and a charcoal pencil from one of his attendants, their blue coats having single white stitching. “Have you heard what their calling him, Sarah?”
“The Slayer of the Fallen, at least that was what it was in the last paper I read.”
“The Slayer of the Fallen, catchy, very catchy indeed.”
“If you say so. Lets just hope that we’re as good what we do as he is. The other bodies?”
The examiner turned, his coat billowing out, to reveal a small gun and a stun staff. The black metal glittered in the midday sun, the light absorbed by the dark blue crystal set in the metal, causing shadows to form around it. They walked over to the two other bodies. He turned other one of the bodies, the face of the woman pale and drawn. She was brunette, a strand of leather on the ground beside her, used to be worn as a choker around her neck, shorn by the killer’s blade. She wore simple clothes, a corset, elbow-high leather gloves, and a black shirt, heavy makeup around her eyes and on her lips. It took Sarah a second to remember the girl.
She had arrested her for prostitution over on Fisher’s Walk, two or three months past. She at the time was much thinner, her fingertips blue and eyes wandering, an effect of a narcotic called White Rose, derived from a flower found on a mountain on the other side of the Kingdom. She had to take her in, but not before she stopped by a tavern on the way, buying for the girl a hot meal and a cup of filling nectar. When the color came back to the girl, she brought her into the Guard House, the girl’s pimp arriving within a hour, saying that he was the girl’s uncle and paying the girls bail. When she thought about it, the pimp that had picker her up was a different person than that of the man that was dead behind her. He must have bought her after that event, and cleaned her up. She looked at the body of the other whore, she didn’t know her, but she saw that her blonde hair was thin and had split ends. She knelt and opened one of her eyes with two fingers, the whites grey. She pulled down the gloves of the whore and found that the inner elbow of the woman was pockmarked, scars from needles, from the rest of the body, chances are from the narcotic Maxin, a diluted venom from a river snake by the same name. The freshest of the scar seemed to be at least one to one and a half years old.
Sarah looked back at the fallen pimp. He might not have been the purest of hearts, but at least he had cleaned the girls up. She got the reports from the examiner, and then traveled by foot three streets down, where the fallen body of a drug dealer was, a wad of money and packets of White Rose, Maxin, and other outlawed drugs in small packets in his pockets.
This guy doesn’t care about the money. She thought. He leaves the bodies with their stuff, money, jewelry, weapons. He’s meticulous in his ways, a slice to the neck, but not meticulous enough that he would chance a victim getting away. She pulled away a torn piece of leather, revealing a stabbing wound. He threw the blade, to incapacitate the other woman as he killed the first. She called to the examiner. “Frank, does that woman have two cuts through her neck, like the others?”
He looked, and sighed. “No, Sarah, why?”
“‘Cause he threw the blade to this one first, to stop her from running away while he killed that one.”
“Right, sure.”
Sarah rose and told the doctor to send the rest of the reports to her office in the Guard House. She left the alleyway, and heard a call on her radio. ‘Murder on Fifth and Manor Walk. Single shot in the forehead, gun found on body. Calling ME and homicide inspector.’
Sarah responded to the call on her radio and jogged to the cross street. Manor Walk was one of the biggest misnomers in the city. The street was littered and filthy hovels, huts, lean-tos, and tenements lined both sides of it. She found the body on the sidewalk, the gun still on his chest. She called in the gun identification code as a guardsmen handed her a print out, the dead man’s face on it. Mark Cantos, his list of offenses filling the rest of the paper, most of them violent. She gave the paper back to the guard and stood over the body. She thought again to herself.
This one was different, not meant to have happen, not that it would have made him unhappy to kill him anyway. Cantos accosted him, trying to mug him, I’d bet. But this guy wasn’t having it at all, was he? No, he took the bastard’s own gun from him and shot him, before he had even known that he had been disarmed. Sarah sighed, trying the clear her head. She told the guardsmen to collect the evidence and to tell the ME to send her the report. She watched the eyes of the men, and knew they were thinking the same thing that she was. Was it so bad that his punk died? She wanted to believe that what had happened was wrong. She thought of the two whores, finally pulling their lives back together, but then she thought about the pimp, the drug dealer, and Cantos, all men that in some way, deserved what they got. Was it so bad that they died, even though it was illegal? She thought of Cantos. He had been in and out of jail his whole life, and it had appeared that he had no intention of stopping now. The list the guard gave her had three counts of murder on it, all dropped because the Ministry of Law didn’t have enough to put him in jail for life. She couldn’t find a single reason why he shouldn’t have been killed, despite herself. Sarah sighed again. After my shift, I’m going to the nearest Temple I can find.
By David Castro
Part I: The Hero of the Night
Jason smiled, looking deep into the darkness within the barrel of the gun. Mumbled whispers, something about money, or his wallet, nothing that mattered now. A loud burst of sound and light, and it would all be over. Just wait a bit longer, refuse the gunman for a moment longer, and it all would be finished and done with, only Jason wasn’t done yet.
A sudden flurry of movement, and the heavy, black gun had changed hands. How fickle the weapon, that it would bend to the will of anyone who handled it. A small force of his will, and a squeeze of the finger, and the world was one less scumbag. Jason smiled and laughed, kneeling and removing a napkin from the now dead man’s pocket, wiping down the gun and spattered blood off his cheek. He placed the gun down on the chest of the corpse, then pulled an ornate silver lighter from his pocket, setting the napkin aflame, letting it fall on the asphalt beside the body. He waited to see if the paper completely brunt, then he exited the alley, smiling brightly.
Jason was dressing in the garb of the nightwalker, plain black jeans and tee shirt, a long leather coat billowing out behind him in the cool summer wind. He walked the filthy side streets of his city, doing the work that no other could or had the heart to do. Culling the herd. The laying out of the rotted blood of the race, ending that branch of their trees, so that they could not poison or dilute the blood of others and leave the purity of the next in line pure. It was a tiresome job, unending and cold, Jason never finding a night where he didn’t have to perform his duty, someone had to do it.
The city guard and lawmen tried their best, but they couldn’t keep up with the flow of the bad guys, or match the severity needed to deal with the people of that kind. Jason thought himself a hero, cleaning up the streets and saving others, those people never knowing how they have been saved or that he had even existed That was the meaning of a hero, or at least that’s what Jason liked to think. He mulled over these thoughts as he concluded his nights works, culling a drug dealer, two whores, and their pimp, the knives hidden within the inside pockets of his coat stained red. He then traveled to a nearby tavern, ordering an ale and siting, remaining there until the sun graced the sky with it’s light. He then traveled to his shabby hut of a home.
The house had only three rooms, a common room/kitchen, a bedroom and a privy. A fitting fortress for a hero, Jason thought, entering the home and removing his knives and coat. Throwing the latter the small table in the dusty corner of the common room, he cleaned his blades then returned them to his coat. God save the King. He removed his clothes and went to bed, and slept dreamlessly.
********
Inspector Sarah Blane arrived to the alleyway crime scene. A leather-clad pimp lay sprawled down the alley, a pair of savage cut deep in his throat, washing the street in blood. A few feet further down the alley, a pair of whores lay in similar puddles of blood. The inspector wore a plain white blouse and black pants, the long midnight blue coat of the city guard flowing behind her. The coat had a pair of crimson stitches lined the coat, denoting her rank. The guardsmen at the mouth of the alleyway saluted between holding the press back with stun staves. It was all they could do to stop the newspapers and tv stations from stomping them flat and doing gods know what to the bodies. The guardsmen held them back, but they still got their pictures. From the reporters on the scene, to paid guardsmen and women in the force itself making copies of the pictures taken on the scene and selling them to the highest bidder. Sarah sighed, how far we have fallen. She knelt next to the pimp’s corpse, beside a guardsmen in a coat stitches of white.
“What happened here?” She asked.
“The same as the rest. Cut to the throat, cleanly severing the carotid and jugular in half. Again, no bloody footprints, fingerprints, fallen hair samples, or pretty much anything. This guy is very good at what he does.” said Frank Van, the chief medical examiner in this quarter of the city. He rose, taking a pad and a charcoal pencil from one of his attendants, their blue coats having single white stitching. “Have you heard what their calling him, Sarah?”
“The Slayer of the Fallen, at least that was what it was in the last paper I read.”
“The Slayer of the Fallen, catchy, very catchy indeed.”
“If you say so. Lets just hope that we’re as good what we do as he is. The other bodies?”
The examiner turned, his coat billowing out, to reveal a small gun and a stun staff. The black metal glittered in the midday sun, the light absorbed by the dark blue crystal set in the metal, causing shadows to form around it. They walked over to the two other bodies. He turned other one of the bodies, the face of the woman pale and drawn. She was brunette, a strand of leather on the ground beside her, used to be worn as a choker around her neck, shorn by the killer’s blade. She wore simple clothes, a corset, elbow-high leather gloves, and a black shirt, heavy makeup around her eyes and on her lips. It took Sarah a second to remember the girl.
She had arrested her for prostitution over on Fisher’s Walk, two or three months past. She at the time was much thinner, her fingertips blue and eyes wandering, an effect of a narcotic called White Rose, derived from a flower found on a mountain on the other side of the Kingdom. She had to take her in, but not before she stopped by a tavern on the way, buying for the girl a hot meal and a cup of filling nectar. When the color came back to the girl, she brought her into the Guard House, the girl’s pimp arriving within a hour, saying that he was the girl’s uncle and paying the girls bail. When she thought about it, the pimp that had picker her up was a different person than that of the man that was dead behind her. He must have bought her after that event, and cleaned her up. She looked at the body of the other whore, she didn’t know her, but she saw that her blonde hair was thin and had split ends. She knelt and opened one of her eyes with two fingers, the whites grey. She pulled down the gloves of the whore and found that the inner elbow of the woman was pockmarked, scars from needles, from the rest of the body, chances are from the narcotic Maxin, a diluted venom from a river snake by the same name. The freshest of the scar seemed to be at least one to one and a half years old.
Sarah looked back at the fallen pimp. He might not have been the purest of hearts, but at least he had cleaned the girls up. She got the reports from the examiner, and then traveled by foot three streets down, where the fallen body of a drug dealer was, a wad of money and packets of White Rose, Maxin, and other outlawed drugs in small packets in his pockets.
This guy doesn’t care about the money. She thought. He leaves the bodies with their stuff, money, jewelry, weapons. He’s meticulous in his ways, a slice to the neck, but not meticulous enough that he would chance a victim getting away. She pulled away a torn piece of leather, revealing a stabbing wound. He threw the blade, to incapacitate the other woman as he killed the first. She called to the examiner. “Frank, does that woman have two cuts through her neck, like the others?”
He looked, and sighed. “No, Sarah, why?”
“‘Cause he threw the blade to this one first, to stop her from running away while he killed that one.”
“Right, sure.”
Sarah rose and told the doctor to send the rest of the reports to her office in the Guard House. She left the alleyway, and heard a call on her radio. ‘Murder on Fifth and Manor Walk. Single shot in the forehead, gun found on body. Calling ME and homicide inspector.’
Sarah responded to the call on her radio and jogged to the cross street. Manor Walk was one of the biggest misnomers in the city. The street was littered and filthy hovels, huts, lean-tos, and tenements lined both sides of it. She found the body on the sidewalk, the gun still on his chest. She called in the gun identification code as a guardsmen handed her a print out, the dead man’s face on it. Mark Cantos, his list of offenses filling the rest of the paper, most of them violent. She gave the paper back to the guard and stood over the body. She thought again to herself.
This one was different, not meant to have happen, not that it would have made him unhappy to kill him anyway. Cantos accosted him, trying to mug him, I’d bet. But this guy wasn’t having it at all, was he? No, he took the bastard’s own gun from him and shot him, before he had even known that he had been disarmed. Sarah sighed, trying the clear her head. She told the guardsmen to collect the evidence and to tell the ME to send her the report. She watched the eyes of the men, and knew they were thinking the same thing that she was. Was it so bad that his punk died? She wanted to believe that what had happened was wrong. She thought of the two whores, finally pulling their lives back together, but then she thought about the pimp, the drug dealer, and Cantos, all men that in some way, deserved what they got. Was it so bad that they died, even though it was illegal? She thought of Cantos. He had been in and out of jail his whole life, and it had appeared that he had no intention of stopping now. The list the guard gave her had three counts of murder on it, all dropped because the Ministry of Law didn’t have enough to put him in jail for life. She couldn’t find a single reason why he shouldn’t have been killed, despite herself. Sarah sighed again. After my shift, I’m going to the nearest Temple I can find.