Cerulean Sins

"This is my murder, Anita, and I say who stays and who goes."

I was finally begi

"Are you refusing my direct order?" his voice was very quiet now. Not heated-empty-and that should have scared me more, but I wasn't scared of Dolph. I never had been.

"If I think your direct orders are jeopardizing this investigation, then, yes I am."

He took one step towards me. He loomed over me, but I was used to that, a lot of people loomed over me. "Never question my professionalism again, Anita, never."

"When you act like a professional, I won't."

His hands were clenching and unclenching at his sides. "You want to see why I don't want him at this scene? You want to see it?"

"Yeah," I said, "I want to see it."

He grabbed me by the upper arm. I don't know if Dolph had ever touched me before. It caught me off guard, and it wasn't until he'd half-marched, half-dragged me across the kitchen to the dining room door that I unfroze. I looked behind me and shook my head at Jason. He probably didn't like it, but he settled back against the cabinets. I caught a glimpse of Merlioni's shocked face before we were into the dining room.

He dragged me to the stairs, and when I stumbled, he didn't give me time to get to my feet, but literally dragged me up the stairs.

The door opened behind us, and I heard a man say, "Lieutenant!" I thought I recognized the voice, but I wasn't sure, and there wasn't time to look, I was too busy trying not to get rug burns from the stairs.

I couldn't get my feet under me long enough to stand in the heels. The headache burst full-blown behind my eye, and the world was a trembling thing.

I found my voice, "Dolph, Dolph, damn it!"

He opened a door and jerked me to my feet. I staggered while the world ran in streamers of dark color. He held me with one of his big hands on each of my arms, only his grip kept me on my feet.

My vision cleared in pieces, as if the scene were some sort of video puzzle. There was a bed against the far wall. I glimpsed white pillows against a lavender wall, then a woman's head, and some of her shoulders. It didn't look real, as if someone had propped a fake head against the pillows. From about collar bones down, there was only a red ruin. I don't mean a body. I mean it was as if the bed had been dipped in dark fluid. The blood wasn't red, it was black. A trick of the light, or the fact that it wasn't just blood.

The smell hit me then-meat. Everything smelled like hamburger. I saw the pile of bedclothes, black, and red, and sodden, soaked in gore. Gore, not just blood, gore. I looked back at the woman's head, I didn't want to, but I couldn't help it. I looked, and I finally could see. It was all that was left of her, all that was left of an adult woman. It was as if she'd exploded with her head on the pillows, and her body... everywhere.

I felt the scream building in my throat, and knew I couldn't do it. I had to be stronger than this, better than this. I swallowed the scream, and my stomach tried to come up my throat. I swallowed that, too, and tried to think.

"What do you think?" Dolph said, and he pushed me, trapped between his big hands, towards the bed. "Pretty enough for you? Because one of your friends did this." He pressed me too close to the bed, and my legs squeezed against the gore-soaked bed clothes. The blood was cool to the touch, and it helped keep my beast from curling up my body. What good was blood if it wasn't hot and fresh?

"Dolph, stop this," I said, and my voice didn't sound like me.

"Lieutenant," a voice came from the open door.

Dolph turned with me still gripped between his hands. Detective Clive Perry stood in the doorway. He was a slender African American man, dressed conservatively, neatly, but well dressed. He was one of the most soft-spoken men I'd ever met, and the most soft-spoken policeman.

"What is it, Perry?"

Perry took a deep breath, that moved his shoulders and chest up and down. "Lieutenant, I think Ms. Blake has seen enough of the crime scene for now."

Dolph gave me a little shake that sent my head rattling and my stomach churning. "Not yet, she hasn't." He jerked me around to face back into the room. He dragged me towards the headboard, which was painted a lavender so close to the wall's color I hadn't seen it. He pushed me forward until my face was inches from it. There was a fresh claw mark like a pale scar in the wood and paint.

"What do you think did that, Anita?" He jerked me around until he was holding me facing him, his big hands still wrapped around my upper arms.

"Let go, Dolph." My voice still didn't sound like me. No one else could have done this to me. I'd have fought back by now, or been scared, or pissed. I still wasn't any of those things.

"What do you think did that?" And he gave me a little shake. It made my head rattle, my vision stream.

"Lieutenant Storr, I must insist that you let Ms. Blake go." Detective Perry was behind him, to one side, so I could see his face.

Dolph turned on him, and I think only the fact that his hands were already full kept him from grabbing Perry. "She knows. She knows what did this, because she knows every fucking monster in town."

"Let her go, Lieutenant, please."

I closed my eyes, which helped the dizziness. His hands on my arms let me know where his body was. I rammed the pointed heel of my shoe into his instep. He flinched, his hands loosened. I opened my eyes and did what I'd been trained to do. I brought my arms up between his and swept outward, downward. It broke his hold on me, and I drew my right arm back, and hit him a short uppercut into his gut. If he'd been shorter I'd have tried for the solar plexus, but the angle was bad, so I hit what I could get.

The air went out of him in a grunt, and he bent double, hands over his stomach. I still haven't quite come to terms with being more than human strong. I had a second where I hoped I hadn't hurt him more than I meant to, then I stepped back, away from him. The world was trembling, like I was looking at everything through wavy glass.

I kept backing up, and my heels hit something slick and thicker than just blood, and down I went. I landed hard on my ass, and blood spattered upwards. It soaked through my skirt and I struggled to my knees to keep it from soaking into my panties. The blood was cool to the touch, and then my knee smeared in something that wasn't blood.

I screamed and scrambled to my feet. If Perry hadn't caught me I'd have fallen again. But he was moving too slow for the door. I didn't want to throw up in here. I pushed away from him and half-staggered, half-ran through the doorway. When I hit the hallway I fell to all fours and threw up on the pale carpet. My head roared with pain, and my vision exploded with starbursts of white, white light.

I crawled towards the head of the stairs, not sure what I pla