Fragments

[Sören]

His face hardened at the threat, every muscle tense in anticipation of a bullet through his flesh. He'd held his hands aloft peacefully when asked and made no move towards aggression, and yet suspicion cast him an enemy, the vitriol blatant in every line of this man's expression. The frustration rolled sour in Sören's gut. Five minutes. He should have had five minutes before any cops showed up. The fingers on his left hand twitched, but he blanketed the urge to fold them tight. Then menace clouded his senses, set fire to them, and he regretted the absence of power. Little good it may have done him anyway, given the circumstances.

Others like him were not new, but the complication now was unwelcome. A gaze suddenly sharp reassessed the man in front of him, displeased. He lowered his hands slowly, tugged his cuffs back into place, and bent back down as the man dived to aid the dying woman. For a moment his fingers rested on the sleeve of his forearm, but he abandoned the notion of protection. This man, he could feel it, Sören was sure; his gaze was returned too readily to where the woman cupped the necklace to be coincidence. Possession heated his blood, but he rallied his self-control, and instead placed his already bloodied hand over the woman's like the offer of comfort. Her skin was glacial, the pulse where his thumb touched her wrist feeble.

"Pray?"
Her life was inconsequential; Sören wanted to snap the chain around her neck more than he wanted to help staunch the flow of blood. But though callousness warped his need, he had not wanted to see her die. After a second he flipped the buttons at his throat, and shrugged the coat from his shoulders. Her thighs were tinged blue beneath the tight skirt, as was the flesh of her bare arms. Clothes made for car backseats and cheap motels rather than a Russian winter. Whatever colour her shirt had once been, now it was crimson, flooding over the cop's hands. Beneath her, the snow was seeping dark.

He had the foreboding sense of too late as he tried to coax the coat about her shoulders. She was shivering, in shock, gasping pain, frigid fingers still clasping the ring like a prayer. His finger touched the chain at the back of her neck, stroked the cheap metal. Police. An ambulance. He would lose his quarry, and the defeat of it rankled, but he could accept it. So long as he did not lose the ring to another.

"Whatever you're doing. Whatever you're thinking of doing. Don't."
The power raged a black threat in the other man, and Sören was at least aware he drew on it. He was not apt to reveal himself to strangers, particularly those tied deeply to the CCD, but made a primordial exception now. His hand squeezed shut, and the gift vortexed free of its prison.