Nathan walks to his house’s back door and opens it at the moment Henkel is about to knock, making him jump in surprise. The detective is dressed in outside clothes, warm and comfortable to Nathan’s lazy day sweats. Nathan gives him a knowing smile as if it wasn’t pure luck. It is always better to look more competent than you are. It is also bad to set expectations and then fail to meet them so Nathan tunes down his smile and invites Henkel inside.

The detective takes one step inside and Nathan realizes that Gwahin had not been exaggerating that much.

“Uh, can you take your shoes off? “

Henkel looks like he is reluctant to do so. He was maybe hoping on the possibility of a quick gateway. Walking in socks through north western New Jersey backwoods is no fun, especially in this season.

“Look, you want to do this outside?”

“No, it’s alright.”

Henkel fumbling betrays his nervousness. Nathan decides to leave him at it and pours some tea. There is something vaguely obscene about watching someone take off their shoes, especially if they are nervous. Curious.

Henkel sits on the couch across from Nathan. He has kept his coat and must be very hot but hey, it’s his problem.

“Ok you must have questions so ask.”

Henkel licks his lips once or twice and Nathan realizes he was wrong. The good detective is not nervous. He is scared shitless.

“Alright then. First I must say, I must say that we are onto you, and by we I mean, the cops, but not my unit. Some suit pulled rank and got us to transfer all the files related to my partner’s murder to them.”

“The guy in the car? That was your partner?”

“Yeah, and mentor. He was a good man, genuinely cared about people. It’s not easy when you spend your life dealing with the worst mankind has to offer.”

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry”.

“Yeah, yeah. Alright. So they got this and the stuff related to the kidnappings. We don’t do kidnappings that’s another unit. They are watching you now if you try to run you’re toast. “

“I haven’t been charged with anything.”

“I wouldn’t count on them following all the rules, they look like they have a lot of pull. And they are assholes.”

“How do you know?”

“The way their boss looks at you when he speaks. That Indian looking guy. You met him at the hospital. When he stares at you, it feels like you’re just an item on his to do list, not a person. He doesn’t give a shit. You know what I mean?”

“I do.”

“Yeah so. Anyway, I don’t think you’re with…Those things.”

There is something almost pathetic in Henkel’s harried face. Nathan realizes that he had been raised by a dreamer and that his childhood had been filled with tales of chivalry, of dragons and demons and mysterious lands clouded in mist. Reality had been a disappointment but now things were looking up, after a fashion. Henkel may have a different perspective. How would one feel if one thought one had seen the worst and find out the stuff of your nightmares has dismembered girls in your precinct? That would be horrifying.

“I am really not.”

“Alright then, so what are they anyway.”

“First I want to tell you that four days ago I had no idea those things were even real. The first time I faced the Stalker I thought I was going crazy. “

“The stalker?”

“Yeah the guy Sarah and I reported on Friday, the one you shot in the back.”

“Jesus fuck, really?!”

“Yes.”

“I did not recognize him at all. I thought he was, you know, inside.”

“Wait. You knew him?”

“Yeah, but let’s get back to that later. You haven’t answered my question. What are those.”

“They are flesh eating monsters, apparently they are called…”

Nathan hesitates, the less Henkel knows about Gwahin, the better for both of them.

“Eaters.”

Technically true.

“I know from them because I got access to a source of information through sheer luck.”

Nathan turns around to grab tea, it’s going to be a long discussion. When he turns back, he stares down the black muzzle of a barrel.

Henkel is backed into the couch and is holding a handgun in a death grip. His breaths are shallows and sweet is dripping down his brow. He looks like he is just about ready to run away.

Nathan should be scared, and in normal times he would be. Nathan thinks people forget that guns are the apex creation of millennia of research and efforts into killing people. He doesn’t. He isn’t even numb enough not to care. There is something though, that prevents him from feeling fear, and that thing is white hot anger.

“Henkel I swear on everything I hold dear if you fire that thing at me it will be the last fucking thing you do, ever.”

As if reacting to his anger, Nathan feels a new aura. It is the comforting smell of wood burning in a campsite, and the smooth touch of obsidian. The aura is both warm and cold and so very familiar. With a start, Nathan realizes it is his own. He has an aura.

Answering his anger, the feral presence of Gwahin overwhelms his senses and the urgency of the situation dawns on him.

“Detective you are my guest here, your behavior is unacceptable.”

“Ok, ok, it’s just…”

“Look I told you I am not on their side and I won’t do anything to hurt you so stop this. What are you going to do, shoot me in my house with a weapon that’s registered to you? While I was threatening you with a teapot?”

“Alright sorry buddy. It’s just. I thought I had seen some shit but the past few days…”

Henkel is starting to calm down even though is eyes are still moving left and right, scanning the room for threats.

“Ok. So about the gun?”

“Oh yeah, my backup weapon, a Smith and Wesson SD40. I like it.”

“No I mean please put it away.”

Gwahin is standing right behind Henkel. Nathan can see no visible weapon but there is no mistaking the menace that rolls off her in waves. Henkel relents though, and Gwahin walks away on silent feet after a last look at Nathan.

It is both comforting to know she is here to defend him and worrisome that she might just have killed the good detective. Nathan thinks he can still manage the situation but if the suits Henkel spoke of find out a cop died on his property, he is well and thoroughly fucked.

“I’ll work with you and tell you what I found out but I’m not telling you how I got it and if you ever pull that shit again we’re done. Got it?”

“You know I have been threatened by more intimidating people, but A for effort. Alright. Eaters. “

This was not going very well. Nathan’s first prospective human ally had pulled a gun on him and the next one was a lithe blond girl who had just suffered a horrific trauma. Now that the action is over, he can already feel a headache building behind his eyes and exhaustion coming back with a vengeance. Grasping at straws, he tells Henkel all he knows without telling him how he knows it.

“So if normal weapon don’t work well against them what was that thing you were using. We never found it. “

“That was an infused weapon. I don’t know exactly how it works but I’ll try to get some more.”

“From that anonymous source?”

“Yes.”

“Can you get an infused flamethrower?”

A snort comes from the kitchen. Henkel does not look like he noticed.

“I don't think it works that way. I think you need the weapon to be really personal, perhaps it’s even better if you do it yourself.”

“You’re not as dumb as you look!” Can be heard over his pantry being methodically devoured.

Henkel blinks and touches his ear thoughtfully. So he cannot hear her if she doesn’t want to be heard.

“Alright, but it can slow them down.”

“Yeah. There is one last thing, they are, huh, hard to notice.”

“But you can notice them?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I’m not sure.”

Technically true.

“Alright. I’ll let it go. Now, onto the real problem. How do we find them and kill them.”

So there is a we now huh.

“I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me what you know and I’ll use that to ask my anonymous source?”

Again, they stared at each other.

“I cannot give you details as this is an ongoing investigation.”

“Curious. I was under the impression that you were off the case and that we were having a friendly conversation at my place, you having a gun at hand just being one of your many quirks. Or am I wrong?”

There is a pause as Henkel weighs his options.

In the end, the need to stop the Varogs, or as Nathan suspects, to take back control of his world leads him to a decision.

Henkel sits back down on the couch and reasserts himself. It’s funny how the same scared man who had crossed his threshold can now look so composed and professional. Henkel starts explaining the situation with a military precision and the assertiveness of a seasoned professional.

“The situation is the following. The suits I mentioned questioned me for two hours straight. The boss was furious. The suits only wanted to cover everything and the explanations? As much bullshit as a presidential rally. They don’t care that people died or that Charlie bit it protecting a vic but I do, so I made a few calls I wasn’t supposed to make and talked to a few people I wasn’t supposed to contact, that sort of things. Here is what I found out:

The first abduction attempt I know off happened in the state of New York last Thursday, that was Patience and a fellow nurse. The other nurse, a Veronica Truman, escaped with a few lacerations and she was talking about an ugly man. No monster for her. The second abduction was on Friday evening right next to Atlantic City. Seren Nechayeva, the student, and her boyfriend Milo Lambrou. Milo was killed and they got the girl but left her handbag with her ID on the ground. The dude I spoke to said Milo was fucking butchered. “

Henkel sighs and looks dejected, but only for a moment.

“I haven’t seen her since you freed her because of the suits. Then there is you and Sarah. The last important thing is that they always seem to move in rental vans that they rent under their own names. Now this tells me a few things. First, they attack pairs, second they don’t care if we find out who they are and that means that if they do this again we can find them out easy, and last, they are sloppy.”

“Sloppy?”

“Yeah. I mean I don’t think either you or Veronica were meant to escape and after you did they stopped coming after you guys. It’s weird, but there is a pattern and if we can find the logic behind it…”

Nathan wants to think for a while but the headache and tiredness make his mind muddy. It’s probably better to just talk about it with Gwahin at some point.

“There is something else. Take a look at that.”

Henkel takes out a folded piece of paper from one of his large pockets. Despite the fact that the photo is slightly crumpled and the quality isn’t great there is no mistaking the tattoo.

“Wait. What? That’s the stalker?!”

The man on the photo is handsome in a rakish way, with curly dark hair and a slightly angular face. He is smiling and posing elegantly in a well tailored suit. The only thing they have in common besides the tattoo are a certain similarity in the face and their eyes. Trying to make the images of the stalker and this guy match in his head is difficult for Nathan, it reminds him of before/after pictures, except this time it’s warning you about the effect of the heavy consumption of ultracrack and ubermeth with a generous sprinkling of asbestos.

What the actual fuck.

“I knew the guy.”

“You did?”

“Andrew Wilcott. Thirty-three. Small time crook but mostly non-violent except for one case of domestic abuse.”

“That’s violent enough for me.”

“That’s because you haven’t seen what a man can do to another with a baseball bat. In my line of occupation you get to see the world in several shades of grey, so one case of abuse is mostly non violent.”

“Alright, well, it confirms what I was told before. It doesn’t help us much though, I don’t think we can find them before they, well, manifest. Last thing, do you have the… The victim’s contact information?”

Henkel gives him a blank stare.

“I mean the people I rescued, Seren and Patience.”

“Oh ok buddy. I guess. Yeah I should be able to find that pretty easily. I’ll get back to you on that.”

“Good I need to check on a few things then we can start to find a way to get the two last ones.”

“Do you really believe they will be the last ones?”

Nathan and Henkel silently look at each other in the eye. There is really no need for answers. They both know that this has just started.