Nocturne | ONC 2024

Five: Timer

The sun was at its peak when Aaron received the call.

He'd had a hard time getting himself to sleep, plagued by aftershocks of adrenaline and the look on the werewolf's face when he'd seen Nikolai. He hadn't had a chance to mention it to Bill; between getting the suspect logged into the station and heading out to sort a minor scuffle about a shattered bathtub between a landlocked Syren and the human occupants of the flats below, there'd been no time. When his phone rang four hours earlier than he'd set his alarm, he was expecting an equally incongruous problem had cropped up in his short absence.

"Bill," he grumbled, sitting up in bed and scowling at the grey light filtering through the blinds. He could hear his father's day-nurse clattering about getting lunch in the kitchen, and an irritable glare at the clock confirmed his suspicions about the poor timing. "Something happened?"

His supervisor sounded like he'd also been dragged from bed. "A bloody catastrophe, Evans," the man grunted. "That's what's happened. Can you get here in the next hour? I wouldn't ask, but..."

Aaron blinked hard, trying to clear the sleep from his eyes and make sense of the man's tone. "How bad?"

"Another Nocturne death," Bill said. Aaron had never heard him sound so weary. "Right inside one of their strongholds this time. I reckon we've got until dusk before they're kicking our door down."

It took Aaron's mind a moment to wrap his head around the enormity of it; catastrophe was a sore understatement. Bill seemed to sense the struggle, waiting on the other end and somehow making his own disbelief felt in the silence.

"I could do with your help here, Evans," he finally sighed. "I'll pay double for your extra hours. Something like this'll get it cleared pretty sharp." A weak chuckle. "Hell, I think I could get us all triple."

Aaron stared at the sheets for a moment, processing, before kicking them off into a sad pile on the floor. "Any point trying to get hold of Meier?"

Bill cleared his throat. "He's already here."

"What?"

"I don't know how he's managed it either, Aaron," Bill said. "But I'm not going to complain when it's something like this."

"Right." Aaron tucked away the mystery of his investigation partner somehow being up and about in daylight and rolled himself out of bed like every muscle weighed a tonne. "Okay. I'm on my way."

An hour later, he felt no more alert for the nightmare tube trip over. He was used to getting late night transport; a midday journey swiftly reminded him to be grateful for at least some aspects of working nights. He staggered into the station with one empty takeaway coffee already in hand, making a beeline straight for the coffee machine in the staff room to make another one.

"The meeting isn't in the break room."

He'd half-expected it, but he still jumped. "I'm well aware, Meier." He turned on his heel and found the vampire lounging against the doorframe, sunglasses in place and almost every inch of skin covered save for a small part of his face. Even so, it was a shock that the vamp was out in daylight at all. "How the hell are you even here?"

"I would have thought it fairly apparent." A small shrug. "With the help of some rather expensive SPF, too."

"I heard that stuff was barely affordable." He hadn't even been sure such a thing had existed.

"It is," Nikolai drawled. "Hence the impression that I've covered myself in glue and thrown myself into a clothes basket. Needs must."

Aaron looked the man up and down. He'd never seen the vampire looking less than immaculate; the addition of a few extra scarves had hardly ruined the impression. But he had a very strong hunch that Nikolai's standards were higher than his, considering Aaron as a whole seemed to fall short of them.