Image by Sarah Richter from Pixabay
The man who had stalked him must be insane, this was his game. The stalk, the slow build of behavior patterns and the final devouring. What was this... amateur hour?
The shadows slanted across the alley from the moon's pallid face. The smell of garbage barely masking his scent which reached my twitching nostrils in the heavy heat of summer. At least the fool had got that right, staying down wind. He shouldn't have put on aftershave though. The dank stink of dollar scent mingled with the tang of rotten veg wafting from the garbage behind the Korean place.
I licked my lips in anticipation of the kill. These earthlings were not cut out for the hunt. They seemed to see it as an intellectual exercise. The hunt was an equal measure of both instinct and intelligence and this one would learn.
She grew pale: her voice had a harsh note in it. "It was some money I lost under the bridge..."
"Let me stop you there honey! I don't give a damn about your money."
"But.. I though" she stuttered as she glanced away from his snake eyes.
"I'm not here to collect, you can have all the money you need if you can convince him to meet you under that same bridge."
"I don't understand.."
Her voice faltered as the lizard slashed the air with razor claws centimeters from her throat.
"It's simple. I want that detective dead... and you're going to help make it happen."
She clutched her ribs against a sudden wind that ripped down the LA river.
"Gotta be better than selling five dollar blow jobs all night. I will pay you well. You can lose yourself on Spiltz or some other damn synth narcotic for days."
She leaned forward as the lizard held out a fist full of cash.
"Don't even think about taking this and running. You wouldn't provide more than a few minutes challenge to hunt down."
He didn't have the address, but he did have a plan. That slick off-worlder would get what was coming to him for eating his partner.
These cursed lizards thought they could come here and set themselves up as hit-men for the cartel, triads or whichever organised group of scumbags could stomach their methods. Not on my watch.
He pulled the micro-drone from his pocket and dashed some of the ten dollar aftershave onto it's dull metal surface. Then he dropped it to hang in empty air and pressed the button on the units control panel.
A second detective burst into existence from kaleidoscope of shimmering silver motes. His doppelganger echoed his smile as it walked toward the young woman on the corner.
"Your message said you have information for me about the off-worlders cabal?"
She nodded, indicating he should follow her. They walked through the wasteland next to the river, the tumbled broken girders from the demolished factory lay strewn around like the bones of an industrial behemoth. The hologram stopped under the bridge as she glanced around nervously and he adjusted to line up a shot.
Photo by Will Langenberg on Unsplash
His nostrils twitched as the scent of that dollar aftershave mingled with the stench of sewage from the LA river. Eyes focused on the prey. He lost himself in the pump of blood and the ancient instinctual call of the hunt. The kill time was here and instinct took over.
He darted forward, lightening quick. Vaulted thirty feet over the river as the detective loomed large in his pin-point focus.
Pain lanced through him. The taste of blood in his own mouth, but not the blood of his prey. A burning pain spreading through his legs as he looked down at the jagged splinter of cryo-shard pulsing in his flesh. He fell forward and landed in the muck at the edge of river's gully.
The detective strode casually up to the lizard shaking his head.
"You under estimated me Crale."
The lizard gurgled as it tried to will its vocal cords to work as the paralysis spread throughout its body.
"I'm guessing you're wondering what I'm going to do with you Crale. I thought I'd deliver you to your cabal like this, helpless. Let them deal with you the way your kind deal with failure."
Clever earthling Crale thought as the detective's boot descended to smash his face over and over, breaking bones and splitting skin.
"They will devour you Crale". The detectives voice faded away as he lost consciousness.
"This is for Kelly. This is for my partner you scum."
The end.
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