This story, and the ones that will probably follow it, are based on a character from a Pen and Paper World of Darkness RP - Mage: The Awakening. I just wrote it to get a better idea of who Zadkiel was before he Awoke. Figured this was as good a place to put it as any.

Warning: Plenty of language to go around. Not for the kiddies.

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You never get used to the blood.

Detective Enicks had worked every ‘boogeyman’ cult and Satanophile I-can-only-get-it-up-for-the-Devil case that had hit Charlotte and the other urban clusters in California in the last three years and it still got to him. To boot, he also couldn’t seem to wrap his mind around why these jack-off college drop outs continued to set up candles and pentagrams and buckets of ‘anointed’ piss in hopes of having a powwow with Belial or Beelsibub or whatever hellion figure gets them all buttery between the thighs. Enicks prayed to the ether, nightly, that the hooded dumbass information superhighway (HDIS for shits and giggles) would pass on the word that it never worked.

Word to the wise? If some asshole asks you to drink the holy fruit punch so you can see the Almighty Horned Thing or Three Dicked Dragon, he’s probably just aiming to get you to kick the bucket with him because he’s a fat, pock-faced loser.

What really got under the detectives skin, however, were the ones that poisoned or sedated their ‘loyals’ and proceeded to hack them up with claw weapons they had spent agonizing hours away from World of Warcraft to make just to lure the remaining HDIS members into believing their delusions held any weight. It was in pondering this, tapping a blood-pooled body with the toe of his boot, that one of the other officers was able to surprise him.

“Oh, Jesus, fucking whack jobs…” The voice, one Detective Enicks recognized with great reluctance as Officer Dilole, turned into a muffled sneer as hand was lofted to his nose to stifle the smell. “Friends of yours, Enicks?”

The detective’s eyes lofted to the almost talented drawing of an obese hag on the concrete wall of the underground parking structure with the word ‘Caoineag’ scribbled below it and shook his head. “Nah, looks like they had star-eyes for your wife though, Offy Dillhole.”

It took the officer a second to piece the insult together and, by the time he had, a second detective had slipped under the caution tape and prevented him from unleashing the physical retaliation that had sprung to mind. The new company, a Hispanic woman that sadly lacked the sexy accent, looked at the flustered Dilole and laughed.

“Sebastian, do you really have to push his buttons all the damn time?”

“Well, Rachel, if it’s not too schoolyard for you, he did start it.”

Laughing again, she opened her mouth to respond, closed it, and turned to face the man that seemed to be trying to figure out what he was supposed to do with himself. “Shouldn’t you be keeping the press back?”

The officer did his best not to roll his eyes, failed, and mumbled out his response. “Like they need me out there…so many already…”

Detective Savlan kept her warm, charming smile but delivered a tone that was dripping with irritaed sarcasm. “Aww…that’s cute. You actually thought I meant that as a question.”

Still talking to himself, the officer finally left, exiting the same way Savlan had come in.

“You think he’d be over it by now.” A stray comment as she crouched near the scene, careful not to disturb a thing. Enicks only grunted.

She was referencing, of course, the fact that Enicks had been made detective after only two years on the force at the age of twenty and Dilole was still waiting to get his head out of his ass long enough to get the opportunity. Sure, the detective, now twenty three, wasn’t very good at the job on the whole and had actually been close to being fired before he got the Special Murders gig, but Dilole continued to get his panties in a knot about it. For a reason Enicks contributed only to dumb luck and odd intuition, he had found himself able to soak up the cult report that had ‘accidentally’ made its way into his hands and solve it with virtually no effort. Something about the world of the creepy crawlies, of the so-called ‘occult’ whispered sense to him when others were baffled. Some people were good at baseball or crosswords, but God had apparently decided to switch things up for a change when it came to molding Enicks’s clay.

Again, his thoughts were interupted with words. “Is it just me, or are they all missing something?”

So she had noticed that too. “Yeah, their hearts if the location of the sucking chest wound is any sign.”

“No need to be a smartass, Enicks.”

Having been completely serious, the dectetive ignored Savlan’s comment and continued to move about the dozen and change bodies with a drifting eye.

She voiced another observation then, one Enicks had actually looked over. “But wait…isn’t that their head honcho?” A vague gesture was made to the only red-cloaked body, the others draped in a thick black.

“Seems so…” He was starting to get it.

“And aren’t these mass murders usually their fault?”

Enicks noddeed, but it was slow, the rest of his mind occupied with a sudden flurry of thoughts. “Usually…”

“I understand, having heard it from you a thousand times, that them being dead isn’t abnormal, that they usually kill themselves afterwards as well.” A pause. “But I’m wondering how he managed to both tear out and misplace his own heart.” Another break. “And if itwasn’t him, then who did this?”

Dectective Enicks stood, youthful arms crossing his lean-muscled chest. “Now that, Savlan, is an answer I wouldn’t mind having myself…”