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September 23rd, 2011

"Conor, that was the Deputy Commissioner.. says there was another D-killing last night." My brood mate Marco had just gotten off the phone with second in command of the London Metropolitan Police. Marco's voice was loud in my head.. I hated when he spoke.. thought.. loudly like that. If I wanted a human alarm clock I'd have a kid. "You'd be a lousy father Conor, so the viking is the best you've got." I gave him the mental equivalent of the finger.

I opened up my bloodshot eyes, groaned a moment and checked the arms of my recliner. Pistol on the right arm just under my hand, that lovely bowie knife still clutched in my left and a worn granite statuette in my lap. I set the granite statue on the little desk by my chair and sat it up. "Don't try that groaning bollox, I'm not gonna make you any coffee and you aren't getting an extra five minutes." I growled playfully and sat myself up completely, hopping out of the recliner and checking my gun.

"You're chipper this morning. If I didn't know any better I'd say you were sleeping with Helga last night. What would Bron say about that eh?" I chuckled a bit at my sarcasm. Marco was the epitome of manliness and was as straight an arrow as they came, but he was also very.. very comfortable in his sexuality. He'd probably win a game of gay chicken against a homosexual.

Marco was already pouring over a folder of pictures and newspaper clips he and I had been going over since the infamous "Diamond-Saw Killings" started a week ago. It was a term dubbed by the first newspaper to report the incidents, despite the fact each word in the title was off. First the killer wasn't using diamonds, he was using blade shaped shards of an unknown material. Criminal forensics had concluded the shards had more in common with a hardened ceramic. Thing is that they were otherwise entirely alien in nature. It didn't help that they decayed at a highly rapid rate, slowly dissolving into vapor that simply left the world after about an hour after being removed from the surfaces they had been found in. These were blades.. four to six inches long, two or three inches wide and up to half an inch thick and there had been more than a dozen pierced into each victim. So.. not diamonds, not a saw and "killing" was a light term for what was done to these people. I may be cool with folks dying bloody deaths.. but this was slow, these folks were brutalized before the blades carved them up.

"Deputy Commissioner says the bloke from last night was like the first one. The john was armed, wearing gang colors and it seems he was near the rotten husk of the Millennium Dome." Marco barely even glanced back to me from where he was sitting. He didn't have to, but for me at least I still preferred body language... brood telepathy be damned. I looked at the pictures taken of the first slain man.. a seventeen year old gang banger punk.

"When can we expect an autopsy report? I want to know if they were in the same gang."

Marco spat his displeasure at the word. See unlike myself Marco had a real job. He was what you might call a martial arts teacher, but what he taught wasn't a combat style from the orient. He taught the traditional Scandinavian forms of armed and unarmed combat that have existed since the days when vikings sailed the seas. When he immigrated from Iceland he set up a training institution in east town for a few reasons he never explained. Point is it's a rotten part of the city and the various street thugs there gave him trouble for over a year so he was pretty sore with gangs and gangsters and other similar violent dregs.

"I say that we just quit this task Conor. I ain't about to risk my neck for some fucking street rat blighters." I snickered at him mentally, almost poking his shoulder in the strange way psychic way that we could.

"I thought you wanted to take Bron out on a date. To hell with the gangs and other guys in these pictures. You know as well as I do what will come when we find this... thing." I thumbed my pistol anxiously at the thought of a fight with who or what was committing these murders. "So at the very least this leads to a worthy foe right?"

Marco and I went back and forth on the subject for some time. Everyone in the brood was getting tense over this whole ordeal. We wanted to catch whoever it was that was doing this shit and deal with it. Problem was the rest of the brood was occupied. Miller was busy with school and a part time job so we had to wait until the weekend to squeeze what little information we could out of his contacts. Joseph was recovering from our fight with a werewolf ten nights ago and Henry was back in America attending his father's funeral. Marco and I were not good at this kind of stuff.. progress was painfully slow.

"Conor.. Tyr.. what do you think could do this kind of stuff?"

I shuddered a bit when he spoke my dragon name. "I.. I'm not sure, Fafnir. I've got guesses as to what it is doing this and how, but not what it is. Even Miller is having a tough time trying to find out what this being is... which bodes badly for us." Marco stood up and strode to the window of our flat looking over the dark and empty streets that the night had embraced.

"Well," I continued "The autopsies showed that the victims had all suffered massive blunt trauma during the assaults. All of them had several broken and shattered bones, many had crushed organs and one even had his whole arm knocked off by the sheer power of what hit him. The creature is likely endowed with superhuman strength rivaling what you have. The blades are likely a feat of magic or, and god help us if it is, a manifestation of power on the level of a legacy. My bet is that it is magic because the blades seem to be delivered as a coup de grace instead of as an attack."

We went over ideas, options, information and pictures two or three more times before we both became aggravated. Another side effect of our shared mind, the group felt emotions as a whole.. I couldn't tell if I was mad or if he was mad.. in the end what mattered was that we were mad. "You know what Fafnir? Fuck this. I don't have the time to chase a paper trail. Lets do this the hard way."

Marco's grin was wide. "You mean the fun way. I'll bring Helga."

The city's lights zipped by us as we sped down the streets on our motor bikes. I loved this place at night as much as I did in the day. The sights, the sounds, the mix of old and new. We spent a few moments just riding around doing nothing but taking it in. The clubs that we sped by were crowded tonight, the neon signs illuminating the faces of the anarchic youth that lived in and that hailed the night while an electronic symphony resounded in each of their hearts just as much as it did in the clubs they frequented. Further away from the city the night was beautiful, I could see stars as far as the horizon. The smell of damp summer grass was magnificent... these simple things.. these subtle sensations were awesome when I took the time to enjoy them.

Eventually we remembered ourselves and passed over the Thames, heading north and into the Whitechapel district. This place.. this was an ugly place. Magic had definitely returned here. The area had a rich history spanning back to the early 1900s and even before then.. always a run down area with ethnic minorities and immigrants. Violence was common here through it's history as well, hell this is even where Jack the Ripper did most of his work. These days though.. the two defining features were that the ethnic groups were mostly from Pakistan and India and that the place was thick with dark tainted magic. "Fucking tower can be seen tonight too." I looked up where Marco was pointing. Surely enough.. the Tower of London was visible tonight, it's vision like a black and shadowy fang.. the eye of a horrible storm.

Marco looked back at me. "So Conor.. this is where the first murder was. What is our goal here."

"I.. I don't know. This is where we start though. This is where everything has always started for us." I sighed, bowing my head so I could look down into my jacket, the pistol inside was already loaded.

We moved around the beaten, old, half dead district like a pair of night punters. Only a few pubs were still open at this hour so I had a good feeling that whoever we found here tonight was gonna be bad news. "Hell Tyr.. we all met here, you remember that?" Of course I did.. I can't even begin to explain what that moment was like.. and as beautiful as that memory was it was not something I wanted to dwell on at the moment.

"Yeah.. I do Fafnir. Seems like we had all waited an eternity for that moment.. but I guess that's because we really had been waiting that long. You guys.. your awakening started in this district, we first fought the werewolves down by the tunnel near the Thames that leads to the Dog Isle, now this." Gah.. fucking hate reminiscing on the job.. bad for these journal entries too when potential readers have no context.

Marco gave me a mental poke after we had mindlessly wandered for a few minutes. We were in an abandoned part of the area. Old burned out warehouses were all around us.. there was a sinister feeling in the air and ground. He lugged Helga onto his shoulders and looked around. "One of these days Marco.. that warhammer is gonna be useless." He took a swing at me and laughed when I ducked down to avoid his blow.

"Hey! Don't talk about Helga like that. You'll hurt her feelings. Helga will never be useless as long as she and I have nutty gangs, dodgy geezers and other warped things to pummel." There was a sound behind us.. so very quiet, it was nothing more than a single pebble rubbing against another. In a split second I had already whirled around and drawn my pistol, leveling it at the person who had sneaked up on us.

"Do not fear me young lords.. I know what you seek."

A crone.. a homeless or impoverished old woman stood there looking at us. Her shoulders were slumped, her clothes were barely rags clinging to her body like a thin patchwork robe. She even had a misshapen cane in her hands that she leaned against ever so slightly. I kept my pistol leveled at her but she didn't move at all. Instead she looked up at us.. her eyes.. she had no eyes. "Norn.." Marco's whisper was filled with a tone of reverence, and he reached into my mind forcefully. "Bow Tyraneth.. she is a force to be respected." I nodded and we both bowed.

"Hehehehehe.. ye young chieftains recognize. Head my words Godi, Lopt walks amongst ye Vanir and sows his treacheries. Lest ye buy mortal coil ye must suffer the path of Tiwaz." I couldn't make heads or tails of what she was talking about, only the word Godi meant anything to me. Marco though bobbed his head in understanding. When she was done speaking Marco bowed deeply and spoke in the same awed tone he had whispered in.

"We offer thanks to you sorceress." With that she turned and walked away, stumbling like a blind homeless lady might.

"What the fuck Fafnir?"

Those were my only thoughts while I watched her walk away. "She came with a warning Tyr. The old woman tells us that we will be betrayed.. double-crossed. She also tells us that we must sacrifice ourselves to bind a foe unless we value it's life."

I shook my head in further confusion at this revelation. "No, seriously.. what.. the.. fuck? You understood all of that?"

He slapped my shoulder and grinned. "I am a Godi, you know this. Why wouldn't I understand a Nordic witch?" Okay.. last question then. "What are the Vanir?"

Marco's smile couldn't be wider. "She called us primordials or gods. Take your pick."

I stepped back in shock at this. She knew we were dragons.