In broad daylight, Helios blisteringly bright overhead and scorching the ground dry, a visitor had come wandering to the Zen Gardens.
Travelling cat-quiet, subtle as a wisp of smoke and easily lost amongst the crowds converging on the thriving complex he might easily have gone unnoticed, and yet the Foo Dogs guarding the stylishly arched entrance stirred from dormancy at his passing. The bronze sentinels did not leap from their pedestals to rend him limb from limb, but their slumber was restless enough to cause a hitch in the man?s stride. He was wary enough to cast a glance backward over the slope of a sun darkened shoulder, just to be sure they would not come prowling in his wake.
?I?m not telling you where I live!? She?d told him, seeming more amused than shocked by his audacity perhaps, but he hadn?t needed her to.
Information was his business, and he didn?t necessarily always extricate it by the fairest of means.
When a troupe of youngsters hurried past him en route to a dance class, he put his back to a wall and kept a snarl from curling his lip only with determined effort. Typical that she would infest her territory with younglings; they were more a deterrent than any wards, vigilant guardians or once-upon-a-time Watchmen might be. His skin crawled, and he rolled a shoulder which set the canvas bag swinging lightly in his hand to rustling.
No one so much as glanced at it. It was not particularly weighty, and the contents were well contained. They needed to be, or risk giving him away before he?d finished his little misdeed.
With the children safely ensconced in their dance studio, he prowled onward towards the first flight of stairs he caught sight of, striding up them two at a time and into the comparative quiet of the second floor. Here he paused, shrewd eyes narrow, every muscle in his body still as something stone carved?and he listened. Listened for some betraying sound of life.
Pleased, when there was nothing to alarm his senses, he nevertheless approached the doorway surreptitiously, and didn?t risk fate by loitering longer than he needed to. From the canvas bag he drew a small, wrapped box, no larger than a pair of the cat?s ballet slippers might require, wrapped in silken fabric the colour of burnished bronze. Softly iridescent, it flashed like fools gold when the light caught it just right. A gift, surely?
And it was of sorts.
She?d been desperate for the remains of Judah Bishop. The remains of three corpses she?d personally assisted in butchering as they roused from death and mindlessly pursued violence in the sterile cleanliness of a Sadist?s morgue. Now she had what remained of them.
Tightly sealed in an air-tight container were shrivelled scraps of flesh, some indistinct and others less so. Here a flat of skin had a thick growth of dark hair attached (scalp, or worse) and there the tough, dark tissue of a partial heart. Bone fragments glinted white, their splintered sides dark with marrow, and a pair of severed fingers joined by scraps of tendon lay curled in the centre. Worst perhaps, the remnants of a jaw, a row of molars with dried scraps of gum still clinging resolutely.
The smell of it was putrid, the pieces well rotted, and yet after only a few moments of the box being open they writhed fitfully. The fingers squirmed like dying slugs, the heart struggling a beat or two until viscous, jellied vitae was exude from the torn, tubular ends of severed arteries.
She had what she wanted, all that remained, but the man with the blood and gold hair leaving the Zen Gardens as casually as he?d strolled in wore a shark-sharp smile.
Travelling cat-quiet, subtle as a wisp of smoke and easily lost amongst the crowds converging on the thriving complex he might easily have gone unnoticed, and yet the Foo Dogs guarding the stylishly arched entrance stirred from dormancy at his passing. The bronze sentinels did not leap from their pedestals to rend him limb from limb, but their slumber was restless enough to cause a hitch in the man?s stride. He was wary enough to cast a glance backward over the slope of a sun darkened shoulder, just to be sure they would not come prowling in his wake.
?I?m not telling you where I live!? She?d told him, seeming more amused than shocked by his audacity perhaps, but he hadn?t needed her to.
Information was his business, and he didn?t necessarily always extricate it by the fairest of means.
When a troupe of youngsters hurried past him en route to a dance class, he put his back to a wall and kept a snarl from curling his lip only with determined effort. Typical that she would infest her territory with younglings; they were more a deterrent than any wards, vigilant guardians or once-upon-a-time Watchmen might be. His skin crawled, and he rolled a shoulder which set the canvas bag swinging lightly in his hand to rustling.
No one so much as glanced at it. It was not particularly weighty, and the contents were well contained. They needed to be, or risk giving him away before he?d finished his little misdeed.
With the children safely ensconced in their dance studio, he prowled onward towards the first flight of stairs he caught sight of, striding up them two at a time and into the comparative quiet of the second floor. Here he paused, shrewd eyes narrow, every muscle in his body still as something stone carved?and he listened. Listened for some betraying sound of life.
Pleased, when there was nothing to alarm his senses, he nevertheless approached the doorway surreptitiously, and didn?t risk fate by loitering longer than he needed to. From the canvas bag he drew a small, wrapped box, no larger than a pair of the cat?s ballet slippers might require, wrapped in silken fabric the colour of burnished bronze. Softly iridescent, it flashed like fools gold when the light caught it just right. A gift, surely?
And it was of sorts.
She?d been desperate for the remains of Judah Bishop. The remains of three corpses she?d personally assisted in butchering as they roused from death and mindlessly pursued violence in the sterile cleanliness of a Sadist?s morgue. Now she had what remained of them.
Tightly sealed in an air-tight container were shrivelled scraps of flesh, some indistinct and others less so. Here a flat of skin had a thick growth of dark hair attached (scalp, or worse) and there the tough, dark tissue of a partial heart. Bone fragments glinted white, their splintered sides dark with marrow, and a pair of severed fingers joined by scraps of tendon lay curled in the centre. Worst perhaps, the remnants of a jaw, a row of molars with dried scraps of gum still clinging resolutely.
The smell of it was putrid, the pieces well rotted, and yet after only a few moments of the box being open they writhed fitfully. The fingers squirmed like dying slugs, the heart struggling a beat or two until viscous, jellied vitae was exude from the torn, tubular ends of severed arteries.
She had what she wanted, all that remained, but the man with the blood and gold hair leaving the Zen Gardens as casually as he?d strolled in wore a shark-sharp smile.