Niklaus de Lucerne was surrounded by imbeciles.

When he accepted the Guild’s promotion to lead investigator of the greater Oaks mound region, he did so under the impression that he would finally be granted a competent team, sufficient budget, and meaningful cases. It had been quite a few years since he had stopped waiting for those things to arrive. These days, his talents were wasted on petty crime and fae mischief. As such, he was quite surprised to see an urgent case on his desk first thing at dusk. Mostly by virtue of the fact that he was nearby and available, the harried runner had said. The assholes over in allocations never missed a chance to screw him over, and he had noted a distinct lack of snickering near his office when he entered, so this couldn’t have come from the pencil pushers. No, this came from the top, he was certain of it.

Presently, his imbeciles were complaining about being sent on a job so early in the night, as though this wasn’t one of their greatest opportunities to finally curry some favor. A chance like this hadn’t shown itself to Niklaus in over a century, and he wasn’t about to let this one go.

“…and we don’t even really have jurisdiction out that far from the Oaks. Ain’t that reason enough to leave this mess to someone else?”

A scattered chorus of agreements echoed around him. Niklaus sighed. Jackson was a whiny bitch and a good man. In fact, Niklaus almost respected him. For all his idiocy, he could still be rather bright when it suited him, which seemed to be almost never. If he could hold his tongue and think with his head for a decade or so, he might even climb a few rungs by the end of the century. As it stood, he wouldn’t be going anywhere any time soon.

“For the last time, J, this one’s probably from the hat-wearers. If we just do our jobs, someone bigwig might remember us,” Niklaus sighed exasperatedly.

Jackson continued to whine. “But come on, boss, it’s barely past first bell, th—”

“You are free to leave,” Niklaus snapped back.

That seemed to shut him up.

Upon entering the departure bay—lovingly nicknamed “the asscrack”—Niklaus immediately raised the importance of this case by two more notches in his mind. Laid out on the gear racks were standard black suits for each of them, probably for fooling any mundanes that spotted them, and parked not far away was a heavily armored SUV. The Guild adopted mundane technologies too readily, in Niklaus' private opinion, even if they were enchanting all of it. This was, however, a notable step up from being told to walk. Too notable, in fact. He was beginning to suspect that a councilman or noble had ordered this investigation. His briefing had been brief indeed, and the files spoke cryptically of meeting a contact at the site. He decided to elevate this case by another notch for that detail alone, and then one more just to be safe.

As the team prepared, Niklaus cleared his throat for their attention amidst all the grumbling about changing clothes. They could complain after the briefing.

“As you may have picked up, we’ll be investigating an attack that occurred tonight on the mundane side, some time around last bell. Some bloke and his girl were jumped by a bunch of our kin. A few facts stand out: First, the guy killed all of them and dipped with the lass after calling it in. He’s probably kin too. Someone on high with real clout says they’re fine and ordered us not to engage or pursue. Second, the girl’s a mundane human. Whoever these fuckers were, they may as well have done this in broad daylight, attacking a mundane like that. If we have some real renegades intent on lifting the veil, then the Guild will come down hard, and we don’t want to be in the way of that. That means no messing around out there, am I understood?”

The mumbled agreements lacked enthusiasm, but they would suffice. He continued on.

“Third, the file I got said that someone will be meeting us there for a ‘joint investigation’ that they hope will be ‘mutually informative,’ whatever the hell that means. Keep your eyes open for anyone who looks important. Finally, there are neighbors, so keep it on the down low and make it quick. Save your questions for the drive, let’s move.”

~~~~~~~~~

The first thing Niklaus noticed was the stench. No amount of armor plating or ballistic wards could keep out the miasma of death. Before the car had even made it all the way down the winding trail, he was already tempted to fade, and likely would have if not for the mysterious associate he needed to personally greet. When the vehicle finally rolled to a stop, he reluctantly stepped off after herding out his flock of idiots. A handful of Guild mages in matching suits were maintaining the perimeter around the house and paid them no mind as they approached the front. What drew his attention was the small group of people chattering away and gesturing towards the house, mostly clad in armor. So much for keeping a low profile. They were humans, by their scent. As he peeled ahead from his team and walked over, the smell changed alarmingly. There was a sharp tang of fresh blood coming from… the woman in a crimson sundress, it seemed. Niklaus approached cautiously.

Hearing his crunching footsteps on the gravel driveway, she turned around to receive them with a smile.

The second thing Niklaus noticed was that, in spite of his cautious calculations, in spite of his keen-eyed discernment, he had underestimated this case. Fate had tested him, and he had been found wanting. In retrospect, the signs were frustratingly obvious. With a flourish of his coat and a bow of his head, he kneeled in genuflection three paces before her. Unprepared as he was, he now walked on a razor’s edge. The faded memory of beaded sweat rolling down his temple briefly resurfaced before he banished it.

With a clear and bright voice—and no small amount of hope that the meatheads behind him would take the hint—he spoke. “You honor us with your presence, Lady Adjutrix. To know that we have been graced with your august personage, we may die content. We most humbly place ourselves in your service.”

Niklaus heard the sounds of belated realization and hasty kneeling behind him. As long as a handful of them remembered to keep their heads down, mouths shut, and eyes on the floor, he could salvage this situation. Losing too many would be far from ideal, but he’d consider himself lucky to make it to sunrise with his own head still attached.

Above him, the Lady’s amused laugh fluttered lightly through the air. “At ease, inquisitor. Tonight, we meet as collaborators. You may refer to me as Maria, or perhaps Mary, as is more common nowadays. Please, rise.”

Niklaus silently evaluated the likelihood that this was a trap, and then decided it did not matter in the slightest. If she wanted them dead, they would be, breach of etiquette or not. No sense in leaving a poor first impression. With a smooth bow, he rose and properly beheld her for the first time.

The third thing Niklaus noticed was that she looked nothing like the singular painting he had seen of her. The cruel sneer was nowhere to be found, and the glimmer in her eyes was one of easygoing amusement, not sadistic malice. Perhaps the one thing the portrait had come close to replicating was her beauty, but he decided not to linger too long on that. He made a mental note to suggest having the painting burned.

As his morons were cautiously getting up behind him, she turned and gestured towards the men behind her.

“I would like to introduce—”

But he was no longer listening, as his eyes fell upon that hated symbol.

The fourth thing Niklaus noticed was the golden rising half-sun, emblazoned onto the breastplates of each man opposite him. He was busy considering how many of them he would be able to slay before being killed by the Lady when she turned to him expectantly.

He bowed his head in deference as he searched his memory. After a brief pause, he spoke. “May I inquire as to the… presence of Master du Montford? I was not aware that the Knights of the Sun would be participating in this investigation.”

Before the Lady could speak, the raucous voice of some hotheaded squire piped up in response. “You think we WOULDN’T be here after you bloodsuckers attacked a—”

A muffled clang promptly silenced the impulsive brat, and Niklaus allowed himself a small smile as du Montford coughed awkwardly. The Lady hid an amused titter behind her hand.

“We are here as… independent investigators. Lady Mary brought this incident to our attention and invited us for our… expertise in such matters. I’m sure you have no objections,” he ground out stiffly. His weathered face contorted into some grotesque facsimile of a polite smile. Niklaus enjoyed watching the man of action being forced to speak. He responded with a strained smile of his own, taking care not to show too much fang.

“Indeed. I look forward to a fruitful collaboration,” he responded blandly.

“Wonderful,” said the Lady cheerily. “Before we begin, I have one last detail to share, which I do hope will not reach the wrong ears. The former occupant of this home, the man who was attacked, is the godson of the Lord Magister. The council is already aware of what that entails, and I’m quite certain the implications do not escape you either.”

For the first time in the many centuries of his existence, Niklaus de Lucerne felt a twinge of real fear. Perhaps Jackson was right in suggesting that they leave the mess to someone else. To have the full attention of the Lord Magister himself? With his Lady right here, supervising the investigation in the flesh? Suddenly, the prospect of dying and taking a few knights with him sounded quite attractive. He swallowed thickly and stammered out his understanding. His only solace was that du Montford looked equally troubled by the revelation.

With the Lady’s dismissal, detectives and knights fanned out about the property and began photographing, inspecting, cataloguing, and sampling everything. Niklaus stood before the front door as the team busied themselves. His mind absently picked out and dissected stray details as he idly waited for his counterpart. The damaged lock and doorjamb from a forced entry. The recently driven van parked not far away, now abandoned in favor of a quick evacuation. The intact tires and engine of the vehicle that the attackers hadn’t thought or bothered to sabotage. The singular set of footprints in the dirt, stomped deep with the repeated steps of a synchronized formation. The perfectly intact roof, with not a shingle out of place, indicating an amateurish terrestrial assault. These attackers were highly coordinated and yet largely unskilled in the art of assassination. A curious combination.

Soon enough, Sir du Montford strode up. As a professional courtesy, Niklaus opened the door for the knight and stepped in after him. Privately, he was rather disappointed that no surviving assassin had descended upon the man when he entered. The two slowly walked through the house in silence, du Montford illuminating the way with a faint halo of light.

Niklaus was the first to speak. “Under any other circumstances, I would consider arranging for an ‘accident’ to occur in here,” he admitted cheerfully.

“Likewise,” grunted the old knight.

“But I believe we both understand the gravity of the circumstances. This is hardly the time for old grudges,” Niklaus continued as they ascended the stairs.

“Agreed,” du Montford replied.

“So let us postpone our conflict unt—Good Lord!” he exclaimed.

Before them was a stomach-turning sight. The plain, spartan bedroom had been vigorously redecorated with fresh gore, and nearly every surface was stained in some way with drying blood and chunks of… something. Piled high in heaps on the floor around the bed were mounds of bodies, all wearing identical dark fabric. Niklaus had personally witnessed more pleasant battlefields in ages past. The sight so shocked him that he couldn’t even bring himself to inwardly mock du Montford for his muttered prayers.

He took a deep, unnecessary breath to steady his nerves. He was Niklaus de Lucerne, and it would take more than some corpses and politicking to scare him. The cold clarity of razor-sharp focus began to return.

“Have your men fetch the camera boys. Let us not disturb this scene until they have done their job. I shall enter first,” he said to the knight master. With that, he tapped into the power of his exalted bloodline, and let his form dissolve into a misty cloud of spectral fog. Du Montford nodded approvingly as he turned to bark orders at the men further down the stairs.

To be so detached, so unmoored from the troubles of reality, it gave Niklaus clarity. Nothing could hurt him. He could observe for eternity, if it suited him. And observe he did. His misty form crept low through the room, taking in every detail. He felt the plastic sex toys strewn about a duffel bag filled with ropes and other unmentionables. He smelled the putrefying pools of blood seeping into the carpet. He saw the distinct fangs of kin smashed into the floor. He noticed the shattered mundane firearm sprouting from the neck of a headless body. He noted the filed wooden block under the shorter leg of the bed. He observed the shattered cuffs and frayed ropes on the headboard.

The fifth thing Niklaus noticed was that the body of every single assassin was headless. Identification would be somewhat challenging, but the flawless consistency was an informative find in its own right. The Magister’s godson was clearly a force to be reckoned with and was almost certainly trained in slaying other kin. While Niklaus couldn’t be sure of how tough these assassins were without breaking a few of their limbs, the many marks of battle suggested fierce blows and swift movement. The kid had likely been fighting to kill, and yet struck with eerie precision in every single attack. This wasn’t the handiwork of a simple brute. Interestingly, the bodies were all remarkably intact aside from one bisected torso and a missing hand, enough that Niklaus expected forensics could conjure up something useful from them. It seemed, then, that this wasn’t the artistry of a seasoned killer either. He had seen enough severed limbs and staked hearts to know. Very curious.

Upon further examination, he saw not a single speck of shrapnel embedded in the wall behind the headboard of the bed, whereas nearly every other surface of the room was studded with bone chips and twisted metal fragments. The boy’s strikes were deliberate, it appeared, with clear intent to mitigate collateral damage to whatever was in bed. The mundane girl in the report, probably. Niklaus could see the scene coming together.

Before he left the room, he did another sweep, in case he missed anything. When he passed by the corpse with the gun lodged in it, some curiosity compelled him to stop. Floating low near the ground, he looked down the barrel of the shotgun on a whim. Clean. He took a sniff, yet scented no chemical agents or gun oils. In fact, he didn’t smell much powder in the barrel at all. Closing his eyes, he inhaled deeply and focused. He smelled a corpse, and another, and many more, and the scent of sex, and a slightly leaky pipe behind the toilet, and… there. Gunpowder. The area where the scent was strongest had no shortage of bodies piled up and metal fragments dotting the walls, so he decided to leave digging up the shells to the grunts; what mattered was that it was several feet away from the gun and uncombusted. He had utterly debased himself by sniffing around like a hound in front of the knight du Montford, yet this knowledge was worth every last bit of humiliation. The image sharpened dramatically in his mind: the shotgun had not been fired. This meant that the Magister’s godson struck faster than a firearm. This meant that the assassins were ready to kill. They had chosen nightfall to attack, so this was likely a show of strength, yet clearly they had fatally underestimated their mark. Why?

A stray thread of madness entered his thoughts as he pondered the myriad irregularities of the case. The timing could be just a matter of intimidation or idiocy, but if it had been deliberately chosen? If their best chance was indeed at night? Their target did live on the mundane side, after all. And to be the Magister’s godson? To fight with such prowess? If, just for a moment, he accepted every unlikely assumption, then it was no wonder that the Lord Magister was keen to see the incident resolved. An insane hypothesis had formed in his mind, swirling around a name that he dared not even think of, whose mere whims had draped a veil between worlds. He had seen that power with his own two eyes. Niklaus laughed uneasily to himself and dismissed the thought. There was no sense in entertaining such far-fetched speculation during an investigation. Privately, though, he filed the idea away. He had underestimated this case too many times already, and he would make no such mistake again.

He was about to rise from his position when something else caught his eye. Tucked away in the dark folds of an assassin’s garb, deep in some inner pocket he couldn’t have seen from any other angle, was the slightest glint of a marker. Whether it represented real allegiances or was merely a decoy, Niklaus had a feeling it would be a revealing find. This embarrassment had now justified itself several times over. Satisfied, he rose and floated out the door to where du Montford stood sternly with arms crossed.

“That was informative,” he remarked as his form coalesced. “See that body there, the one missing a hand? Have it searched first. I saw a crest of some sort in the robes. Also, have someone see to it that they dig up the shotgun parts in that corner there. The lads in the lab might want to check it.” He sighed deeply. “I doubt I’ll be sleeping today. Expect to see a preliminary report before seventh bell. I shall leave this site to you for now; the Lady must be informed.”

Du Montford grunted with begrudging respect and began to bark orders at the various investigators that had gathered during his inspection. Niklaus turned and, with a mind bursting with questions, descended to report his findings.