Bruce Shaw was having a terrible day.

As if it weren’t bad enough that he was sent on a surveillance duty, another task that was given to him directly by his boss - Bay Area real estate mogul Carol Summers, to investigate the “influencers” that stumbled upon the secret buried literally in the Prime Royals Hotel went nowhere even after a few days of focused digging.

Branston, Brian, Adam, these three were the members of a relatively well known video channel on the internet, who rose to internet fame doing all kinds of “challenges”, “pranks” and “adventures”. There was not much about these three and no signs of any supernatural involvement, not to mention powers to detect a hidden corpse.

And according to the records from the hotel and the police documents, there were two other young people at the scene of the Prime Royals Hotel. But strangely, all sorts of evidence seemed to be somehow obscured, damaged or even completely missing in the first place. It was like someone had systematically tampered with all of the private and important information about them. He tried to find the recordings from the livestream the influencers did at the Prime Royals Hotel, but even those “certified” videos were nowhere to be found. He even utilized his divination spells and limited usage fortune telling cards, but none of which actually showed him anything useful.

As Bruce Shaw frustratedly wandered on the street around the SFPD precinct where the corpse from the Prime Royals Hotel was stored, he brushed against a young man and a young woman who seemed to be coming back from a sushi place nearby. And still with a little bit of residual effects of his divination spells still lingering, he had a rush of gut feelings, upon which he decided to turn around and follow them.

The young man and the young woman walked right into the SFPD precinct, to Bruce Shaw’s total surprise. But when he hesitated whether he should just go in there to ask for the two young people pretending to be someone who knew them, he saw a familiar figure going into a dark alley on the opposite of the street.

“Fucking Crows.” Bruce Shaw cursed, turned to the side and discreetly crossed the street to follow the figure.

The Alley was dark and narrow, there was a dim and almost broken light overhead, providing barely enough lighting to prevent the average pedestrian from tripping over the cracks on the ground. There was a metal dumpster down the alley with some empty beer bottles by its side, and it was giving off a musty garbage smell.

Bruce Shaw walked down the alley with a heavy frown, both his hands were in his coat pockets but with magical energy concentrated in his palms and ready to cast an attack spell anytime.

A small cracking sound came from a head, and a shadowy figure emerged from behind a metal dumpster. Bruce Shaw immediately pointed his right hand at the figure, a light blue energy bolt shot from his fingers and landed on the figure. The figure was hit on the shoulder and exploded into hundreds of pieces of flesh and bones.

It was not something Bruce Shaw was expecting to see - the figure was clearly just a civilian and not someone with powers. And before he could figure out what was happening, he felt a chill on his left shoulder - after which he felt that he could no longer feel his left arm.

A sharp pain came from Bruce Shaw’s chest and he felt something cold pierced through his chest from his back. When he looked down, he saw a long silvery red katana blade protruding out the left side of his chest, and down on the ground, was his left arm.

Blood started pouring out of his wound, and Bruce Shaw started feeling his strength and magical powers slipping away. Then, the one holding the katana pulled it out of his back and tossed him to the side.

“Well well Mr. Shaw. Looks like you could use a hand.” a woman in a police officer’s uniform walked right in front of Bruce Shaw and looked down on him: “How’s work today? And how’s your bitch of a boss?”

“You don’t know … who you’re messing with.” Bruce Shaw felt that the blood was seeping into his lungs and making his breath short.

“Oh, I know.” the woman in a police officer’s uniform knelt down before Bruce Shaw and said with narrowed eyes: “And now, you just need to chill, when we do to you what you did to my students and sisters.”

Bruce Shaw struggled and came out with some final curse words: “You filthy witches...” and before he could finish, the woman already rammed her hand into his chest through the katana wound and got a hold of his heart. And with a violent pull, his heart was removed from his chest.

The man with the katana swung twice, Bruce Shaw’s left ear and head were cleanly cut off. Another man in all black took out a cardboard box and put the head in it, while the man with the katana took the left ear, gave it a quick smell and put it into a small pouch.

“Let’s go.” the woman in a police officer’s uniform ran her right hand down her face, she instantly gained the facial appearance of someone else.

-------------------------------------

Just about half an hour later, the body of Bruce Shaw was found, by a young man in a similar colored trench coat.

“Ms. Summers.” the young man got on the phone: “Bruce’s dead … yeah… someone cut off his head and ripped out his heart … I think they might be coming for that corpse from the hotel … understood. I will wait for you.”

Just as the young man in a trench coat hung up the phone, a wave of incredibly dark energy exploded from the inside of the SFPD precinct across the street. Shortly, a low muffled and dual-toned voice came from the precinct: “Beverly… WINTERS!”

Countless black shadows started flying out from the windows of the precinct, screaming, crying, moaning and immediately started attacking people on the streets and in the buildings nearby. Naturally, chaos ensued. Cars and buses ran into each other, people abandoned their vehicles and even homes to escape the attack.

In a couple of brief moments, there were already dozens of people dead or even ended up as broken pieces on the streets, there were even more being dragged into the air or thrown into abandoned cars and buildings.

“Shit!” sensing the impending danger, the young man quickly disappeared into the night, away from the surroundings of the precinct.