Framed Part One

From the old, rotten beam it hung, gently swaying from side to side. The rope creaked and the wood groaned with the weight of it. It was oddly mesmerizing in a grotesque sort of way.

"Poor bastard," Frederick muttered.

"Aye," his partner agreed. "Poor bastard indeed."

The two of them watched the body sway in morbid fascination.

"Terrible place ta die," Borris said after a moment.

Frederick nodded as he tore his eyes from the corpse to look at their surroundings. "I'd have to agree with that one."

The old, debilitated barn was a husk of its former self. It was dank, dark, and musty. The wood was rotting and hollow, and he could hear the tiny scurrying footsteps of the termites as they devoured the walls from the inside out. The wooden slats were bowing, some even split up the middle, from the weight of the roof. A gentle breeze could send a wall toppling over at any moment. And the smell! Mold, manure, and wet dirt. It was nauseating.

But the worst part, the most awful thing in existence in his opinion, was the odor coming off of the corpse. Not only was it unsightly, all purple and bloated as it was, but it was emitting the rankest smell he'd ever had the misfortune to encounter. It was a terrible mixture of sulfur, rotting eggs, and decaying flesh. Dead man's blood. The foulest thing in existence. Poisonous to his kind.

Frederick shuddered. He hated these types of cases.

"T'ink it was ta same t'ing t'at killed ta others, killed 'im?" Borris asked.

"Well, let's see," Frederick said as he squared his shoulders, and reluctantly took a deep breath. His face contorted into an ugly grimace. Ugh… He could taste the sulfur on the back of his tongue as if he had licked the corpse itself. Shaking his head, he fought past the unpleasant taste to try and find any underlying scents. Huh, cherries and cream with the barest hint of chocolate. Sickly sweet and disgusting. "Smells like it. Need the techs to test his blood to be certain, but I'm eighty-five percent sure."

Borris snorted. "How can ye be eighty-five percent sure?"

Frederick turned to his partner, his expression unamused and tone flat. "Just like I'm eighty-five percent sure that's the missus rose infused body wash seeping out of your pores."

The old orcs face scrunched up, shoulders tense. "It's refreshin'," Borris muttered under his breath before clearing his throat and looking at anything but him.

Frederick hummed and turned away from his partner to face the corpse just in time to watch the techs cut him down. "Don't forget to get a blood sample," he instructed. "After I'm no longer in here, Kurt." The lanky tech shrunk in on himself at his acerbic tone, and tucked the syringe he'd just pulled out back into his bag. "Idiot," he grumbled as he turned to stalk out of the barn.

Borris barked a couple more orders at the techs before trailing after him. The mud squelched under their shoes as they walked, and Frederick had to bite back his chuckles each time Borris slipped.

"I can hear ye gigglin' up there, ye fanged bastard," Borris growled.

"I don't know what you're talking about." His partner gave a rather boarish grunting snort, and Frederick didn't have to turn around to know that Borris was giving him a rather ugly, tusk-filled snarl. "So, think it's a one off?" He asked as he pulled his badge from his inside coat pocket. "Or should we expect more?" Frederick paused at the luminescent blue scene tape surrounding the perimeter of the barn and passed his badge through it. After a moment, it flashed green and he was able to walk through the tape.

Borris flashed his own badge as he answered, "Can't rightly say." He passed through the tape and came to stand beside Frederick at the transporter. "But ta way it's been goin' we should expect another body ta turn up soon."

Frederick hummed in agreement as he pulled a candy from his pants pocket. "It'd be nice if we had just one thing besides the pink sludge in their veins to link them all together." He unwrapped the wax paper from the candy and popped the hard yellow sweet into his mouth. Lemon burst across his tongue causing saliva to flood his mouth and he grimaced.

"Why do ye eat t'ose if ye don't like 'em?" Before he could point out to his partner just how stupid that question was by a single raise of the brow, Borris said, "Ne'ermind. I forget yer allergic to ta sun."

At the mention of said raging ball of gas in the sky, Frederick's skin began to crawl and he got the overwhelming urge to scratch until his skin peeled off. "Thank you for that reminder, you pug-faced inbred."

The orc grinned, the expression making his yellowed tusks seem twice as big. "Aye. My pleasure ye half-breed incubus."

Vampire and orc stared one another down for a long moment before bursting into a fit of full bellied laughter. Borris clapped a meaty hand on his shoulder and gave it a shake.

"I hate you," they said in unison, which sent them into another bout of laughter.

"Coin toss for paperwork duty?" Frederick asked when he'd finally caught his breath.

"I'm tossin' it. I don't trust ye, not after last time." Borris held out a hand for the coin.

With a roll of his eyes, Frederick rummaged around in his pocket for the change. "Distrustful bastard," he muttered as he pulled out a gold coin and slapped it down onto Borris' palm.

"Heads," Borris called and made to toss the coin into the air when a yell caught their attention.

"Detectives! Detectives!" The partners looked towards the barn to find a rather tiny imp sliding her way through the mud straight for them as she waved a blue rimmed evidence baggy about in the air. "Wait!" The tech slipped, nearly falling on her face, but righted herself just in time before she got a mouthful of mud.

"Yes, Cherri?" Borris asked when the tech reached them.

She put up a hand, indicating for them to wait a moment while she caught her breath. "S-Sorry," she panted. "We found something that I thought you might want to see." Cherri straightened up and held the evidence baggy out to Borris.

The old orc took the bag and held it out in front of him, squinting as he attempted to distinguish what exactly it was inside the plastic. Frederick scoffed. "Blind old bat. Give me that."

"OI!" Borris growled as Frederick snatched the bag from his hands.

Frederick ignored him, holding the bag up out of his reach, and assessed what was inside.

A candy wrapper.

The wrapper was an off-white with bold chocolate colored lettering that read: Drowsy Cherry Truffles: Sleep is only a sweet away. Frederick looked at Cherri, his expression skeptical. "And the significance of this candy wrapper is…?"

Cherri blinked up at him, eyes wide and uncertain. "O-oh. W-well it has traces of the s-same stuff in the victim's b-blood," she stammered out as she twisted her fingers around in front of her.

"And the stuff in his blood?" Frederick asked

"S-same as the other victims," she confirmed.

"And ye couldn't 'ave led with t'at, Cherri?" Borris asked, his tone hard.

Blood flooded the little imp's cheeks, whether out of embarrassment or anger he wasn't sure, but the rush of blood assaulted Frederick's senses with the scent of moss and pine. His gums itched as his fangs elongated and a familiar pang in his stomach had him taking a small step back.

"We had just finished the test before I came running out here!" She said, her voice slightly shrill.

Borris snorted and turned away from her as he waved her off. Cherri huffed at the abrupt dismissal, and spun on her heel to head back up to the barn.

"Thank you, Cherri!" Frederick yelled after her as she scurried away, grumbling nasty curses under her breath as she went. "Could've been a little bit nicer to her," he said to Borris. "She did just hand us the first shred of evidence that mattered in months." Borris just grunted at him. "Ill tempered old man," he mumbled as he returned his attention to the bag in his hand.

Finally. An actual fucking clue. Now, where will you lead me…

Frederick straightened the wrapper inside the bag the best he could, so he could search for a company name. Ah, there it is. Just where he expected it to be; in the top right corner. The logo was of a black cauldron with a little witch poking her head up over the rim. She even had on an adorable little witches hat, the point crooked and twisted into a jagged swirl.

Why does this look so familiar…? Curled around the underside of the cauldron was the company name. Oh… Well shit. That's why.

"Moonlit Sweets by Blackwood Apothecary," Frederick read aloud.

"Blackwood Apot'ecary?" Borris questioned. "Ain't t'at ta place ye get yer SunDrops from?"

Frederick nodded. "Yes, it is." With his tongue he rolled the lemon SunDrop from one cheek to the other.

Borris barked out a gruff, sardonic laugh. "Well, here's ta hopin' ye never get a laced batch like t'is poor sucker."

There was the knee jerk reaction to snarl something nasty and sarcastic, but Frederick instead said, "Flip the coin. Loser takes the paperwork, winner takes the apothecary."

Grinning, Borris flashed the gold coin at him, showing first heads then tails. He flicked it into the sky, the metal clinking once on his thumbnail, and Frederick watched the sunlight bounce off the edges in golden sparks of light.

Tails, tails, tails… Come on! Give me tails!