Chapter 1 of Shadows and Loss

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Discovery

It started mid evening. Franco was closing up the gym after the last of the attendees had finished for the day, helped out by Terry, off-duty and looking for something to do. They had just started to lock up when Franco noticed it. The high pitched whine of an alarm insistently telling a driver who wasn’t there that they’d left their keys in the ignition. There was a pickup sitting down the road, just short of the junction, too clean and new to be local. Franco decided to take a look, catching the scent of something sharp under the lingering diesel fumes coming from a crumpled garbage bag in the truck’s bed. The bag was too small to be a body so he split it open to get a better look and was greeted with crumpled remains, emaciated skin and bone still wearing a nice cocktail dress, blonde hair framing an eyeless face, all fuming with that acrid acid stink.

While Terry finished losing his lunch, Franco turned to the rest of the truck. It was as empty as a rental, except for a woman’s purse stuffed under the driver’s seat. Inside was an ID for a Megan Blaine, with a face that shared the same bone structure and hair as the remains in the bag, as well as a single playing card with a name ‘Gregor R.’ and a phone number. Terry called a friend in BPD dispatch to run the plates on the truck while Franco tried the number on the card. The pickup’s plates came back clean and listed as owned by a Jack Weatherall of 823 Rosewater Street, while Franco got a jittery man on the other end who denied knowing anything and hung up quickly.

Attention

Without any more leads, the two went to get Jayden to get an expert’s opinion. This was the sort of thing he was supposed to know about. Franco rebagged the remains of Ms Blaine and placed her in the footwell of the truck, locked it and took the keys to secure the evidence. Wisely done, for as he, Terry and Jayden returned to the gym they saw people lurking by the pickup. A trio of big guys in dark suits and shades stood around the abandoned vehicle, paying no heed to passers by as they watched the surrounding buildings. After a several minutes they turned as one and headed for the gym, where one of their number demanded the keys to the truck with thick, slurring speech. Franco played innocent but the men were insistent and soon became violent.

A brawl erupted as the men pushed into the gym to reclaim the keys. The pack limited themselves to fists and improvised weapons, giving as good as they got until a lucky blow from Franco shattered one of the suits’ glasses to reveal eyeless sockets beneath, a hundred pinpricks of crimson glittering deep in the recesses of the skull. With his disguise shattered, the leader growled a gutteral order to kill and the suits shifted tactics, grappling and biting with long arthropoid fangs from mouths split open too wide for mere human, each bite pumping burning venom into their foes.

Rage stirred in Jayden at this monstrous inhumanity and the wolf came out, sending the suits skittering back in knowing fear. Franco followed suit and the two tore the three things that pretended to be men apart, one claw shearing a skull open to reveal a bloated spider-thing squatting in the partially hollowed cranium. A second blow eviscerated the thing before it could escape.

Even as their foes lay in ruin at his feet, Jayden could not pull himself from kuruth and descended into the hard rage. Franco tried to fight back or to escape and found himself falling into the rage as well.

The two awoke in the mangled ruin of the gym. Wood splintered, metal shattered and the hot wet taste of fresh meat in their mouths. Jayden retched and felt two human fingers fall into his hand, one still bearing Franco’s wedding ring.

Panel 1: A large man opens a bag and is unsettled by the contents. Panel 2: The man from panel 1 and another man hide in a gym from a third man who is looking for keys. Panel 3: The second man from Panel 2 spits out human fingers.
In Summary…

People Appearing

  • Franco Larsen (First Appearance) – Trying not to get involved until someone dumped a body on his turf.
  • Terry Burton (First Appearance) – Unready for the horror and destruction that comes with facing prey.
  • Jayden Clearwater (First Appearance) – Lost himself in the rage.
  • Megan Blaine (First Appearance) – Her remains found bagged in an abandoned pickup.
  • “Gregor R.”(First Appearance) – A voice on the other end of a phone. Nervous, anxious, afraid.
  • Three large men in dark suits with spiders inside their skulls.

Locations