#s:banshee

[dearophelia]

so, for reasons that i’m too sleepy to explain, i’ve started an original story and it’s basically a thirtysomething homicide detective discovering that she’s a banshee. through that discovery, she also learns that her boss is literally the morrigan, her partner is one of odin’s ravens and can shapeshift accordingly, and the cute paramedic she has a crush on is a mermaid.

hijinks, snark, and a romance subplot that is both lesbian and happy ensue. also some crime-solving on the side.

and here’s the wildly unedited beginning. my self-confidence is super fragile lately, please be nice and supportive; i nearly shoved this in the “no one’s gonna want to read it, don’t bother” pile despite it being literally one of the two things that bring me joy right now

The body’s still fresh. She can feel it.

Yesterday, she couldn’t feel bodies. Smell them if they’ve been dead long enough in the sun, yes, but anyone with a nose could do that. Feel them tingling in her fingertips, feel the vibration work it’s way up her veins and crawl into her bones until her spine buzzes with the proximity - no. That’s definitely new in the last twenty-four hours.

Katherine suppresses a yawn, flashes her badge to the unfamiliar deputy manning the tape, and ducks underneath to join her partner. Deck silently hands her a cup of coffee and respectfully lets her take two slow sips before she starts talking.

“You look awful,” Deck says, with such an abrupt tone that Katherine knows it wasn’t what her brain had lined up to say next.

“Thanks.” Katherine rubs the back of her neck. Sweat’s beginning together under her ponytail, and it’s not even 7:30am. She wrinkles her nose - she hates September. “Didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.”

An understatement. More like no sleep. She tried, once she finally got home from the precinct, but she’d closed her eyes and saw the boy’s body. That alone wasn’t enough to keep her awake - eight years as a homicide detective, she’s seen plenty of dead bodies when she closes her eyes. The screaming is what kept her awake. Her throat hurt enough to tell her that the screaming was her own, but it sounded wrong - it had an echo, almost a vibration.

She’d tried a few more times, and gave up when her roommate came home from his hospital shift at 3:30. Three hours of Pac-Man isn’t the most useful, but at least she wasn’t seeing a dead boy open his eyes and stare right at her, and at least she wasn’t screaming that horrid distorted shriek.

She shakes off the memory and takes another sip of coffee.

“I’m surprised you even showed up today,” Deck says, keeping her voice quiet. Crime scenes attract about a thousand people, civilian, police, and police-adjacent.

Katherine shrugs. “Thought about it, but then realized I’d have to tackle the Mount Everest of laundry and this seemed more interesting.”

Deck quirks an angular eyebrow even higher. “Glad I could help you avoid basic housekeeping by providing you with a convenient murder.” She smirks.

Katherine smiles as the sun finally crests over the tops of the skyscrapers. “I knew I could count on you.”

“Anytime.” Deck taps her sunglasses so they from her dark hair onto her face. “You awake enough yet to work?” She opens up her tablet.

After another sip of coffee, Katherine nods. “Yeah. What are we looking at?” The tingle in her spine grows to a loud vibration as they walk toward the body.

Very fresh. Two hours, tops.

“48 year old Mark Stanley. Owned the house,” she gestures to the house behind the yard they’re standing in. “Neighbor called it in when she went out to get her morning paper, thought he had passed out drunk or was having a heart attack. Paramedics found him dead, called us because his chest had been carved out, and the heart removed.”

“That makes six vics.” More disturbing than doing laundry, but still - not laundry.

“Yep. ME puts time of death around 5:00 this morning.”

Lucky guess, Brady, though the buzz along her bones tells her it wasn’t a guess at all. A problem for later, when she doesn’t have a job to do and procedures to follow. Katherine snaps on a pair of gloves and kneels beside the body.

She rests her hand on his shoulder, intending to push his shirt aside and check for the mark they’ve found on the other five. But as soon as she touches the body, the scene shakes and shifts and suddenly she’s two hours earlier, kneeling in the garden in the dark beside the same roses. Only the man isn’t there yet. He’s walking up from the driveway with his newspaper in hand, texting someone.

The street lamp blows out with a hiss. The man turns around to peer into his now-darkened front lawn, and then staggers backward as an unseen force slams into him. He drops his phone, an eerie pale glow in the dark until the screen times out and it’s lost in the grass, and gets dragged back to the very roses Katherine’s kneeling beside.

The thick, palpable darkness is crowded with shadows, and Katherine holds very, very still.

Something starts to click and chirrup in the back of its throat. The hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. Abruptly, the noise stops. Though she can see nothing in the dark, Katherine feels it staring at her. She yanks her hand away from the dead man’s shoulder.

The crime scene shifts back into place, and Deck’s kneeling opposite her with a very concerned expression.

Maybe this isn’t a problem for much later after all. Maybe it’s a problem for preferably sometime before lunch.

[dearophelia]

specific boards; i promise theses are links even if tumblr doesn’t want to show them

gather up the killers | aesthetic for novel in general

all the choirs in my head | katherine cavanaugh (homicide detective; banshee but takes about three months to realize this so spends those three months thinking she’s gone totes bonkers)

nevermore | ophelia deckard (homicide detective; the morrigan, kat’s BFF)

you can’t raise hell with a saint | lucien cartwright (rich fuckboy who rides that thin edge between “hold my beer” and “nah i don’t need a hospital”; wild hunt - dullahan)

mercy has no boundaries | brett mccall (er charge nurse; completely and delightfully human, Kat’s roommate)

holy water cannot help you now | miranda corrigan (martial arts instructor by day, MMA fighter by night; valkyrie)

and yours is in red underlined | chloe davenport (goth edgelord coroner; sluagh - keres)

a revelation in the light of day | caroline kennedy (paramedic; clotho)

a great revelation sigh | anna kenndy (librarian; atropos)

time and mercy is out of reach | gregoria waterstone and rodrigo vargas (sluagh - grim reapers; asexual and dating, spend 94% of their time playing Mario Kart)

this night ain’t for the holy man | other folks from our side, Team Dark

singers in a lower choir | other folks from the other side, Team Light