Sacreligous: A Fantasy Noir Novel.

SACRILEGIOUS

a fantasy noir novel

Mark Krijgsman

Copyright © 2012 Mark Krijgsman

All rights are reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without the written permission of the author.

The flashing of the emergency lights made me think back to the days I was one of them, a police officer. I was kicked of the force for being possessed, it was my own fault; who sleeps with a blue-skinned horned demon girl?

I parked my car and got out, new reporters were there already; the human once were demanding the truth and access to the murder site. Humans, I still hated them; they appeared here ten years ago, bringing their religions, diseases, money, taxes and corruption. Not that our world was a perfect utopia, but at least we did not kill each other over small trivial things. I still remember the first murder that happened here in New Billingham, seven years ago a poor furry prostitute was clubbed to death by her human client, for being in the possession of a same set of reproductive organs he had. Unfortunately because we did not know what to do with him, we were forced to let him go; which resulted in the second murder... his. The humans always wanted involvement with the way we did things, which resulted in the creation of what they called a police force nine years back. I felt so proud to be in that police force, I was still young and didn’t hate humans yet, but seven years of being treated like the zombies that run the mail room, made me bitter. The possession Fraza gave me came as a nice change; it meant I was being fired dishonorably, not that I gave a shit about that; it was a human thing. And although I now suffered from a severe pepper leaf addiction, it kept the voices at bay at least for a little while. It had gotten me this job as a private detective, my own office and enough cases, that were considered too small for the police force to handle. That was why I was curious to why I had been called to assist on this one; it was murder not a stolen pet or twins accusing one and other for copying their style, this was serious. When I walked into the building where they had found the body I gasped, the smell was horrid, even for this part of the town. In the strobe-like flashing of the lamp I recognized I was in a Cantina, I had no trouble in locating where the corpse was, I just followed the murmur and flashing of the police force.

The werewolf special forces were combing the small cantina’s corners for hair, spit and reproductive fluids. One of them I knew as Jackson growled at me in a greeting manner that was normal for lycans. I put a pepper leaf in my smoker and lit it. Walking up to the police chief, a big fat human that hated to come out of his office and loved spraying his food over you when he was shouting orders, damn I still hated that man. But no time for that now, I was hired by them, offered a payment that would get me enough money to pay the rent for my office for a year and leaf me enough to buy enough pepper leaves to shut the voices up for a long time. The body was a human, something that filled me with a strange sense of joy, seeing one of them killed. It was a pretty auburn haired girl, which was all I could say about her, her eyes were stolen, zombie muggers most likely; and her face looked like it was held in a smile for hours. She was naked, and voluptuous curved, which was why this girl was out of place, this was ghoul turf, no human girl looking like that would come here willingly; ghouls hated humans the most of all.

The police chief looked at me and snarled that I was late; they had solved the case already, Vampires he said did it.

I could see why he would think that, the girl’s body was completely drained of all her blood; they had used a ketchup dispenser to get it out of her, which did not seem to make sense. As I walked closer and looked at the girl I knew he was wrong, Vampires never drained a person completely they always caught the last drops in a hanger and placed that on the neck of the victim. It had happened before, but mostly it was people that did it as a last resort, humans did it to commit what they call suicide, but in such a manner they went to a place they called heaven. I looked at dragon, my former partner, a dragon with weak wings so that he could never fly, he smiled as he greeted me and threw me a small in brown paper covered package, telling me it was a gift for good time’s sake.

I pointed at the police chief and asked dragon if he needed to go fast, the police force never claimed to have solved a murder this fast before. He smiled and nodded, I was right, he didn’t knew shit, it was too obvious that it had been a Vampire, almost like someone wanted us to believe that it was them, but why? One of the werewolf specials came back and growled that besides the place was disgusting, it was clean, not a single drop of sweat nor a single part of hair was found, which made it clear for me that it could not have been a Vampire in Bloodcraving, they tended to drool at those times, and ghouls were always loosing hair as fast as it grew.

When I asked dragon why they had called me in, he told me that because this was considered my area, it was true, my office was located at the border between ghouls and the favored turfs, not that I was all that happy I was a favored, we looked human, which annoyed the humans, we looked better, they tried to make us wear a big F on our clothing to show that we were favored and not human, we refused.

It felt good hearing they considered this my area, but it also meant trouble. In the two years I had been a private detective they never had called for my help before, there had been more murders, and robberies here than I could count, and never had they called for my help, not once, something was wrong horribly wrong.

But I did not care, I needed the money, hell I wanted the money badly.

Much could be said about the zombies in the police force, but as coroner they were unmatched, the ones lucky enough to be reanimated with a fully functioning brain that was. Doctor giggles, we gave him that nickname because of his persistent giggling, something he picked up when was reanimated, was one of those with a brain.

He greeted me as I entered the morgue; it was nice to see he still remembered me.

The police force was mainly male oriented environment and I being one of the first female favored to join them was a reason I was being remembered, being possessed also helped with that.

As walked to the table where the corpse was put on he took a finger from a jar and put it I his mouth rolling it around on his lips like it was a cigarette; the small tuft of hair on his head was white and disorderly, he had been up for a long time, the fact he was chewing on a finger made it clear he was worried. And a worried zombie was not something I wanted to see.

He giggled as he told me that this could be what the humans called the perfect crime, nothing that could be used as evidence to find out who did it, so the werewolf’s were right.

I lit another pepper leaf and inhaled deep, I needed to calm down, and the voices were getting louder, their maddening chatter filled my head, only to be cut by the giggle of doctor giggles.

He had found something, something small, but it was something, on her scalp under her hair was a marking, it was old, but it was there, we both did not know what it was, it looked like two X’s and two I’s, nothing that we had seen.

Doctor giggles called to the cops above us to send a human down, it looked like it was something they would have thought up.

Dragon came down with his new partner, an angry looking human named Paulus. I disliked him already, he shoved Giggles roughly aside as he was shaving the girls scalp to reveal the marking better.

He snorted as he told us it was the number twelve, in what he called ancient roman numerals.

There went all the hopes I had that this case could be cracked easy. It did not mean anything, it was just a number, no deeper meaning; nothing I could use to ask the ghouls about.

As looked at dragon he nodded, he understood what I wanted to say, we had to find out who she was. That could get me a nice lead, I lit another pepper leave and walked out; I needed to talk to a ghoul street hustler, better known as Ghoulie.

Ghoulie knew nearly everything that was going on in the ghoul turf; I wondered why I did not think of him in the first place.

I knew the information he had would not come cheap, he was obsessed with hair, it was nearly the second currency in the ghoul turf, I had stolen a bag of hair from the morgue; I hoped it was enough for him.

I found him rather quickly; he was in one of the local bars, drinking a bloody Mary. Back in the days I was with the force, Ghoulie was a snitch selling information for immunity. We were rough with them in those times, something that had gotten us hated by them.

I threw the bag with hair down in front of him and he greeted me with a greedy smile as he took another sip from his drink. I did not wanted to waste time with being nice to him, I needed information, and anything would do. I would love to get a name from him, the name of the dead girl, or the name of the murderer; either would work. I got the first.

He had opened the bag and was smelling the hair, telling me he knew who this hair belonged too; she was a lowlife human, one that actually enjoyed the ghouls company, her name was Jude Isca, she worked near the cantina and always hopped in for a coco, he did not know who wanted her dead, but now I could start somewhere.

I planned on going to the place she worked. Many suspicious eyes followed me as I walked into the garbage processing plant, the smell was awful but I could not say if it was the garbage or the ghouls, not that it mattered. It was surprising that nobody knew much about Jude, she was just another gear in this soul grinder of a place.

A twitchy scared looking female ghoul finally could tell me something I could use, Jude apparently had been spending more and more time with a lycan scholar, she could not give me his name, but knowing it was a lycan I now knew my next step. A shiver ran down my spine; I had to go to the Lycan territory.

I would go there first thing tomorrow, the lycans were always a bit duller in the morning, and I did not like the prospect of meeting their leader in her full power and she was the only one who could tell me who the scholar was I was looking for. As I drove home it once occurred to me that they had changed since the humans came. The city was the living version of a human dish called Sheppard’s pie; it was a dish of combined leftovers. On the outside she looked like a high price call girl, but on the inside she was like a rabid wolf-whore; the type people would turn to in search of excitement and danger, but hazardous for your health.

I was born in this city, I knew her quirks and loved her for them, and she was as a big part of me as I was of her. Feeling bored I turned the radio on, damn static again, it was becoming a trend so many radio stations shut down lately, only to be replaced by humans ranting about their religion; due to that it was hard to have a favorite station.

I started sliding the selector wheel from left to right until I heard the soothing voice of a female D.J.; she was speaking to, or actually more trying to speak to a zombie which made the entire conversation sounded like those black market pornographic radio plays.

Another trend in the world of the radio shows, most of the night shows were plagued by these kinds of calls, most of the female D.J.’s started pretending to sleep with the zombie caller, moaning and groaning in unison with them, I had to admit it sounded convincing.

The neon lights of the human territory flashed on, meaning the night live was starting, vampires and lycans would come out, it was good thing they had a truce they used to love to fight where and whenever they could.

The city was getting ready for the night and so was I or at least I thought I was. As I searched in my pocket for a pepper leaf I noticed I was out of them, hoping that small package Dragon gave me was some pepper leaf from the evidence locker. I rushed up the stairs to my office and tore open the package, it was a picture of Dragon and me posing like we were in some kind of buddy police movie, but no pepper leaves I sat down in my big chair and felt a surging pain in my head, I screamed as the voice started ranting in anger, the world turned dark in front of my eyes.

I was in a lush green field, the sun stood high in the azure blue sky; I felt the warm rays on my body and sighed in delight, it had been ages since I had felt the sun on me like this. In the distance was a form, it looked favored or human, but the fact the form