Part 1

Part 1 of Jimmy Nore

No one really understands how dangerous the dark can be until you face its demons. Yeah, you can stress over it, imagine what it can do, hear the stories, but you never really understand til you face it yourself. If you live, that is. The dead can't think enough to understand anything.

I had no idea of the dangers of darkness until I had a run in with one of its fiercest beasts. Don't get me wrong I was careful. I took self-defense classes, had a rape whistle handy, and always carried pepper spray and a very, very sharp switch blade or two that I did know how to use. I wasn't stupid, but I am human, and there are some things a mere human just can't beat. Like fate, natural disasters, and vampires. Don't sneer. They're as real as I am and, man, are they not like the vampires in those stupid Twilight books.

For starters, they are not venomous. If they were I wouldn't still be human. They are also less like crackheads and more like f*****g serial killers. Meyers did get the eyes right though. They are red, sometimes, and they do shine in the light, like cat eyes. She also missed the feel of vampires. When you are near one, you know, even if you don't call it the same thing. You can feel them like a weight in the air; feel their boredom, their apathy, and, a lot of the time, their vicious intent. All in all these guys are not something you want to stumble upon on your way home when you are coming down with the flu.

Oh, yeah, all this ranting got me off track. Hi, my name is Jeemyma Elanore Delany. Most people call me Jimmy Nore. Yeah, weird name for a girl, but I work with what I got. Besides, being a private investigator can be dangerous, and Jimmy Nore is an amazing cover identity. When there are only three people who know you're real name it's great for hiding. Wigs and makeup also help. I got a huge soft spot for my collection of disguises and aliases.

Anyway, I am a private eye in London and do not drop a Sherlock Holmes joke. I am serious. If you remember, Holmes loved his puzzles and his drugs. I love having a job that pays for my apartment and my cat, so take that dumb a*s comment and swallow it. It is not funny.

I did not grow up in London anyway. I grew up in the United States, in the mid-west, I think they called it. I called it a cold, gray hell hole. The happiest day of my life was when I got my acceptance letter to Cornwall. The worst day of my life was realizing it was the same as what I had left behind, only much more historic. I hate history.

I did finish school and I decided to get a little job to save up money to leave somewhere with some color and signed on to use my administrative and accounting skills at a private investigation agency. I got an itty bitty, cheap apartment and pinched pennies to speed the process, but it, um, didn't go so well. First my boss came in one day with the cutest little orange fur ball I had ever seen. He quickly turned in to a fiery panther cat and my itty bitty apartment just wasn't big enough. So a larger, and more expensive, apartment was found and settled in and a year had gone by and I was still in London. Then my boss got shot in the face, and his partner asked me to fill his spot. How can you say no to a guy who has helped you out when you needed it? Also bigger paychecks were involved and some sweet benefits. So I agreed to that until he could find someone else to fill my spot. That was two years ago. Yeah, I am real good at escaping. Just wait, it gets better. Not.

Three months ago, I had a case to find some nice old man's granddaughter, who had seemed to vanish. While rooting around the old back allies in February I caught the absolute worst cold EVER. It was AWFUL! I was sick for almost two bloody weeks! I would have been okay if I had just gone home when I started feeling bad, but I had the worst feeling about the guy's granddaughter. My boss would have called it a private eye's intuition, which is something you learn, not just have, or was it the other way around? Anyway, every time I thought about leaving I had this feeling that something awful would happen to her if I didn't keep looking. And when I found her I knew exactly why I had felt that way.

It was my third day hunting for her. I had my neighbor check on my cat and just stayed in my car, for the few hours I spent sleeping. I was sweeping the abandoned buildings, night life, and back roads of the oldest parts of town, wanting to look in the worst places first. It was quarter til two in the morning and I was heading back to my car, sore and worn and feeling just plain s****y. I hadn't seen or heard anything useful about the girl. My combat boots had been comfortable the first two days of looking, the leather and green plaid outfit I saved for one of my favorite aliases, Jane Badnone, had looked great and felt right for the area I was scanning, but it all felt heavy and painful when I was heading to my car at two a.m. The black and green makeup felt like cake on my face and my long strawberry blond hair was a tangled mess. I was huddling in my black trench coat, trudging through the light snow, miserable, when I heard a female scream cut short. I drew my favorite knife quick as a flash, hid it from plain view in my over-large sleeve, and headed for the sound.

I stopped beside a dumpster, crouched low so the two people standing out in the snow wouldn't see me. One was crouched in the snow, too, holding a very still old guy's granddaughter in their arms. The large coat the crouched one wore made it hard to guess their gender, but the other standing next to her was a very tall, rather handsome man. Figures. The hot ones would be murderous a******s.

“Claira, come on it is cold out here. Couldn't you have eaten inside?” the man whined, using a knife to clean his nails. So he was armed, but the woman named Claria leaning over the girl I had been looking for not only looked more dangerous but more vulnerable. Times like that I wished I was good at throwing knives.

The woman snapped her head up, showing me her painfully perfect profile. Good lord, she looked like a makeup company's dream girl. But then again, the bright red blood all over the bottom half of her face totally ruined that image. Her voice was as sharp as her look was. “Maybe if you hadn't spent so damn long fixing your hair we would have been here on time. We barely got here before Pure and I didn't have time to eat inside. Next time don't take so damn long.”

“Oh yeah blame it all on me. What are you going to do with her?”

Claria stood, taking out a handkerchief to whip her mouth off. She let the girl's lifeless body slide into the snow and I decided it was time to go. I was so not being paid enough to hunt freaky serial killers. I was going home, sending an anonymous call to the police, and taking some Night Quil.

“Maybe you two should pay more attention. What do they teach children now-a-days, anyway?”

A hand grabbed me by the back of the neck and dragged me up. The man behind me grabbed my knife hand, squeezing until I dropped it. He dragged me out from behind the dumpster as the two turned to him, dropping to one knee. I couldn't move my head to look at him, hell, breathing was hard when he was holding my head high enough that I had to walk on the tips of my toes or be dragged. Thank god for the years of ballet lessons in high school.

“Master Pure, we're so-”

“Silence, wretch! Do you not know to speak no names? Honestly how have you stayed alive these past decades?” The hand tightened and a little cry of pain escaped me. Great, the big baddy knew I was squishy. I was rather surprised when he lowered me enough to stand on my own and lightened the hold on my neck. Sure, my right arm was twisted behind my back, but I could breath and that was good. “You, Claria, since the girl-child already knows you're name and face why not search her pockets for me. Let us learn this little one's name.”

Claria did as she was told, digging through my coat pockets. She scored my Jane Badnone wallet, a leather number with skulls on it, my extra knife, and my pepper spray. I still had my rape whistle, which was tucked away in my cleavage. She tossed the weapons to the other guy, who laughed.

“Well, this kitten has some tricks up her sleeve, doesn't she?” he laughed, playing with my second favorite knife. I really needed to not carry both together, but I was not getting them back from these people so it was a useless lesson.

“Jane Badnone? What kind of name is Badnone?” Claria laughed as she looked through the fake ID and cards. “And she works at the zoo. Says here she's a primate keeper.”

The man holding me laughed. “Tell me, girl, do you know Jane Goodall?”

Damn, this guy was smarter than the average bear. Not a lot of people caught that joke. “Goodall? Oh yeah she's a distant cousin. We don't talk about her much.”

The two psychos I could see were confused as the one holding me laughed. Whether it was at me or with me, I didn't care. His grip was loosening, and maybe if I kept him amused I'd escape. I was pretty sure I could outrun them. At Cornwall I had won the 500 meter dash every year at every meet for four years. Too bad the rest of the team sucked and we didn't make any of the larger tournaments.

Anyway, crazy blood drinking killers, right, focus. Today I was Jane Badnone, a zookeeper by day, metal music loving goth clubber by night and, low and behold, it was night. Maybe if I played it drunk, they would let me go thinking I had thought it all a crazy drunken hallucination. Was coming down with the flu close enough to being wasted? What the hell I giggled and wobbled a bit, like a very drunk young lady. “I am sooo sorry for crashin' you're s**t but for a second there I thought I was gonna be so sick! I just need to get a cab home I prolly drank a wee bit too much.”

Throw in some more giggles and a hick up and I thought I portrayed a drunk lady pretty well. The Numb Nut Twins seemed to fall for it because they both smirked, the man eying me with a little too much interest. Maybe drunk was a bad choice.

That hand on my neck tightened until my knees crumbled a little more and a painful squeak slipped out. The hold on my arm tightened, too. Great, I was losing ground instead of gaining it.

“Do not be coy, girl, I am not amused by such games.” Those words were accompanied by a rough shaking of me. “Now what is your real name?”

I coughed, one leading into another as my free hand went to my mouth. This, thankfully, gave me reason to raise said hand to sneakily retrieve previously mentioned whistle from my cleavage, until the coughs refused to stop.

The baddy holding me shifted his grip, trading the nap of my neck for my chin. He tipped my head back and to the side, clearing my airway and effectively removing the duo from my sight. The pair of stormy gray eyes that caught mine was deep and mesmerizing. It took all of my ample concentration to not relax into those eyes and into the body connected to them.

“Don't fight me, girl. You're name. Now.”

I really, really didn't want this guy, whoever the hell he was, knowing my name. However, the names of all my aliases were slipping out of my head like water through mesh and I just couldn't give him any of them. I seemed to be taking too long for him, because he tipped my head to the side and moved my hair away, baring my neck. Before I could react he struck, and his teeth sank into my artery and I could feel him lapping the blood up like my cat did water. The hand holding my face remained firm, but the one holding my arm loosened and that hand skimmed my figure in a very slow movement that drew me back closer to him.

That was when I struck. I kicked back, hoping to hit his knee, slammed an elbow into his ribs, and popped that whistle in my mouth and blew like there was no tomorrow. The kick hit, but the elbow missed as he jumped back, covering his ears to protect them from the high pitch scream of the whistle. Without further thought I was off like a shot, racing down the alley toward the busier streets of old town. I didn't look back, didn't drop my whistle, and didn't stop until I hit the busy bar street. I stayed in the busiest areas, looking around for the freaks I had just slipped away form. I stayed for an hour, until the night life was growing a little too thin for my tastes, before heading back to my car.

I made it into my apartment without waking anyone on my floor, except my cat, who greeted me at the door. I was shook up bad, and went to the bathroom to take a hot shower before bed. Once I was out I felt better and wiped off the mirror to spray detangler into my hair. It wasn't until I flipped my hair over to the left side that I noticed the two pinpricks low on my neck. I touched the still bleeding holes and fainted.

Author's Note

Same as always enjoy.

Reviews

[BeccaLeeNyx]

I like your Twilight puns, the over all dark feel of the story, and the sarcasm. Nice.