Voltron Legendary Defender (Nightbreed) - down on my head [Chapter 1] [Kallura | Shance]

[scriveyner]

Title: down on my head [1]
Fandom: Voltron Legendary Defender
AU: Nightbreed
Characters/Pairing: Keith/Allura, Shiro/Lance
Rating: M
Length: 3278
Summary: The sidewalk was completely cordoned off by the time Keith arrived.




The sidewalk was completely cordoned off by the time Keith arrived, and there was a small gathering of bystanders off to one side of the yellow police tape. A few were being interviewed by uniformed officers, but most were gawking at as much of the crime scene as they could easily see, which, judging by the scent of putrefaction in the air, must be gruesome.

Keith wrinkled his nose and lifted the police tape, ducking under the line of demarcation and waving cheekily to the LEO who turned and spotted him. The man started to move in his direction but hesitated when the officer by the scene spotted Keith and waved him over, a tired expression on his lined face. "Long day, detective?" Keith said when he got into range, and managed to keep the look of disgust off his face as a fresh wave of decomposition assaulted his delicate nose.

Detective Tringham scowled at Keith, but was too tired to keep the expression up for long. He sighed and pushed a hand back through his hair, his other hand on his hip. "You know I hate when you people show up on my crime scenes," he said, as Keith stopped beside him.

"Your disgust would seem genuine if I didn't already know you," Keith said, and touched a finger to the tip of his own nose, looking past the tow-headed detective and toward the actual crime scene. He hadn't beaten Krolia to the scene, she was standing with the medical examiner and the crime scene photographer and talking animatedly, so he didn't have much to cover. "What have we got?"

"One fresh corpse, one not-so-fresh," Tringham pulled out a pack of cigarettes and offered it in Keith's direction, he put up his hand to decline. "The fresh corpse is already in the care of our M.E., but the other one is kind of..." he gestured broadly. "Everywhere."

Keith looked back up at the building - there was activity all along the fourth floor, police presence there as well. "What do you think?"

"Guys upstairs think it's Satanists," Tringham said. "Any time they see something that looks even slightly like it came out out of a roleplaying manual they jump immediately to Satanists, I think it's a conspiracy." He shrugged loosely. "There were some circles and runes painted in the apartment upstairs, they're all bullshit. Probably done to divert the investigation, which they did a good job on because you better believe the folks downtown will have our department running down all the local cults."

"It's definitely not a cult." Krolia said, stepping around a wet puddle that might have been entrails. "I took a peek inside before some over-enthusiastic officers shooed me off." She was dressed nicely, for once; so much that Keith barely recognized her. "Got some quotes, though."

"Mistook you for a journalist again, huh," Keith said, and Krolia smiled at him.

"Blend in and you never know what you'll learn," she said sweetly.

"So," Keith said. "Not a cult. Are we going to play twenty questions, or...?"

"Possession," Krolia said confidently. "All the symbols were fake, except one." She folded her arms and looked up at the balcony, where a photographer now stood, taking pictures of the small markers set on the railing. "Don't know what a demon-possessed soul was doing with a corpse in a bathtub and frankly, I probably don't want to know."

"Well that's just peachy. Demons give me hives." Tringham shuddered. "Am I going to have to lock down over this? Without a body that demon will be looking for a new host."

She shook her head. "He was branded."

Keith let out a low whistle, and Tringham looked between them with a frown. "What?"

"It's the new thing in demonic loyalty," Keith said. "They brand their hosts with a sigil that traps them in the flesh. If the mortal body dies, then..." he shrugged. "Best guess is that the demon goes back to hell or wherever these things come from and won't be back to bother us for a few centuries."

"That's a good thing, though." Tringham said, taking the cigarette out of his mouth. When neither Krolia nor Keith responded he looked between them. "It is a good thing, right?"

"For us? Yeah. For the poor sap who has a demon in the driver's seat? Not even a little bit." Krolia sighed. "Anyway, our friend didn't meet his untimely end on impact. He was decapitated."

That rang some bells with Keith. "You think it's our same guy who cleaned out that vampire nest in outside Middlesboro?"

"It's looking good on that front." Krolia said, and watched Keith's expression twitch. "Just two sites headed south does not a pattern make, Keith." She tilted her head toward the bystanders, and Keith glanced in that direction, as he saw someone in a large-brimmed hat duck out of sight at the same time. "Deal with that, would you?"

Keith let out a long sigh through his nose, then nodded at Tringham. "Good to see you, Detective," he said, as he headed back for the police line.

"Don't make a habit of it," the detective called after him.

#

Dressed in a long coat, a large-brimmed hat and sunglasses that were almost comically too-large for her face, Allura was doing the exact opposite of blending in with the bystanders dressed for early fall. Keith circled around the crowd and caught up with her at its edge, and she spun on her heel the moment before he would have put his hand on her shoulder to quietly draw her away from the civilians. "Keith!"

Her gasped declaration of his name would have gone better if he didn't already know she could smell him coming. "Allura, what ," he put his hand firmly on her shoulder and started to steer her away, "are you doinghere?"

"I was bored," she protested, her sunglasses sliding down her nose and revealing ethereal, two-toned irises. "Daytime television is such trash , so I decided to take a walk and I caught the loveliest scent." She licked her lips once and Keith rolled his eyes, having pulled her far enough away that no one would easily overhear. "Imagine my delight when you arrived! Two delicious scents in one day..."

"Okay, that lovely scent was probably my mother, so that's creepy and you need to stop." Keith folded his arms and stared at her, as she frowned.

"No, I know well Krolia's scent. This was much softer, not as potent - a different shifter than her." She latched onto his arm with her hands, looping her arm through his. "You must know! Introduce me, I would very much like to sample them."

"No, Allura," Keith said. "You're not sampling anyone else, remember our agreement?" She made a sour face at him and sulked, arm still linked with his. "Where's Coran? He's supposed to be with you."

"He can't abide the sun like I can." Allura touched the brim of her hat. "Did you think my disguise clever? I was quite proud."

Keith tugged on her hat, ensuring it came down enough to cover her distinctly pointed ears. "I think you shouldn't be out in the daylight at all," he said sharply. "There are too many distractions for you. I can't be around to babysit you all the time, I do have a job."

"Then take me with you on it," Allura said brightly. She leaned in close to his side. "I yearn to understand these mortals more, and television is a poor substitute. I can be useful, you know."

"I'll talk to Krolia about it," he said, and stopped walking. They'd cleared the block and then some, and although there was a police cruiser nearby the handful of pedestrians here were going about their day. "Can I trust you to take yourself home safely, or do I need to call Coran?"

Allura let out a long sigh and a pout. "I shall be fine on my own," she said, and stepped away from him.

"No distractions," Keith called after her, as Allura waved, pushing up her sunglasses with her other hand as she bounced determinedly off. Realistically, he should have taken her all the way home but he had work to get done, and once she was down the block and away Keith fished out his cell phone and dialed, putting it to his ear as he watched Allura until she vanished out of sight.

#

"Do you have any idea what time it is?" Lance answered Shiro's phone, annoyed and sleepy, and Keith glanced at the sun in the sky.

"Eleven-ish?"

"Oh, I don't know, you just woke us up." Lance yawned into the phone, and Keith rolled his eyes.

"Lance, put Shiro on."

"No." The selkie said in a self-satisfied voice, as he heard Shiro mutter something just out of range. There was a moment or so of rustling movement, and then Shiro's voice, faint but distinguishable now. "Is that Keith? Lance, give me the phone."

Lance whined but relinquished the phone and Shiro said in a sleepy, warm tone that tingled down Keith's back, "Keith?"

"Hey," Keith said, realized he was grinning and tried to keep that out of his voice. "Hey, sorry I woke you. I figured you guys would be up by now."

"Mm. I'm up now, what's going on?"

Keith chewed the inside of his cheek a moment before answering. Krolia was right, two stops didn't make a pattern, but all the same. "Look, there's some wacko hunter out there who seems like he's making his way south. Gets off on decapitating his kills - so far he cleared out a vampire nest and a branded demon, but who knows who will be his next target."

Shiro was silent for a moment, considering. "Keith, are you okay?"

Why wouldn't he be okay? Keith's lip curled a little at that but his voice remained the same. "I'm fine, Shiro. I just ... I want you to be aware. This guy's not like anything we've seen before and we can't get a bead on him."

He could hear Lance in the background, couldn't make out quite what he was saying but he got suddenly fainter and Keith heard the click of a door jamb. "Keith," Shiro said, his voice soft and firm. "What's this really about?"

For some reason, Allura's strange, two-toned eyes came to mind and Keith dismissed them as well he could. "Stay in town," he said. "I'll swing by your place in the next couple days to pick up Red. I think I'm gonna track down this hunter and remove them from the equation before they do more harm than good."

"You're welcome any time, Keith. If you need any help, let me know." A pause. "It's always good to hear from you."

Keith smiled again, faint and distant, as he disconnected the phone.

#

"Did you talk to Shiro?" Krolia asked when Keith slid into the passenger seat of her car. "You have that look on your face again, you talked to Shiro."

Keith, alarmed, glanced at himself in the side-view mirror and Krolia chuckled in amusement. "That's not funny."

"Dear, I missed out on so much , let me have this at least." She reached over and ruffled his hair and Keith, begrudgingly, let her. "This isn't our mysterious headhunter's first rodeo, either. Apparently he left a trail of destruction up and down the east coast last year until his trail went cold in Wisconsin." She settled back in the driver's seat and looked out the windshield, silent for a moment. "He always singles out the Blade's targets and gets to them before we do."

"You think he's a Blade?"

"Maybe a former one. Kolivan's got Antok going through rosters but that's going to take a while. We don't exactly pay dues or take roll at every meeting." She tapped on the steering wheel with one manicured finger. "The full moon's in a week, and I think he's going to ramp up whatever it is he's planning before then."

"Aren't you on pack duty this cycle?" Keith asked, and Krolia nodded.

"Seventeen werewolves this moon." She smiled slightly, wistfully - Keith knew his father had been a werewolf, not a shifter like Krolia. "Most of them are repeat visitors, but I still have my work cut out for me. Think you can handle this one solo?"

"Do you think I can't?"

Krolia's smile turned sharp. "I think you should be leading the Blades, not working for them, Keith."

Keith looked away for a moment, took a breath, and then nodded his head. "I've got some leads, I think. I'll take Allura with me, she needs the field training."

"Absolutely not ."

"I'm going to drop her off with Shiro. She gets out and gets a tiny bit of field experience, we don't have to waste resources babysitting her." He propped his elbow against the window and put his head in his hand, looking out the windshield. "That's not the first crime scene she's shown up at. She's up to something."

Krolia let out a low groan. "She is up to something, the blood-sucking wretch. I don't like that she's taken a shine to you. Kolivan should have left her in that sarcophagus."

"He didn't, she's here and we gotta deal with it." Keith chewed his lower lip for a moment, then raised his eyebrow. "So, lunch is on you, right, mom?"

#

Tringham watched the car containing the two Blade members drive off, as one of his uniformed officers approached, holding an evidence bag. "What?" Tringham said, irritated, as the forensic examiner held up the bag. "What is it?"

"I'm not sure," the man said. There was an envelope in the bag, bloody fingerprints on the outside corners as it had been handled before the victim met his untimely demise. "But I thought you should see this."

Tringham took the evidence bag from the man and looked at the envelope through the clear plastic. It was a plain mailer, but it was the name on the outside that drew his attention. No address, no postage - just, R. Tringham, and an infuriatingly familiar circular sigil.

"Oh, god dammit ," Russell said.