"Welcome, Investigator. Come to peruse my wares?"

The wood floors creaked under the heavy soles of the intruder. He glanced around carefully while he adjusted his grip on his piece. The old house held many clues and secrets. Some were as obvious as the moth ball musk. Others were of the variety only veteran bloodhounds could detect.

He brushed open a paneled door and trained his iron sights on the figure sitting on a workbench in the moonlight. Eyes lit as if by candles glowered from a pale face. Despite lips sown shut with coarse stitches, the straw man cackled.

"Welcome, Investigator. Come to peruse my wares?"

The man in the shadows thumbed his revolver, "Where is your master?"

"Not my best work, I admit," the creature confessed. "You see right through me. Ever the wary prosecutor of the law."

The Investigator slipped a finger into the trigger well and a hand into his pocket. "You've confused me with someone else. I'm with the Defense."

The figure raised both hands, bleached hay sticking out in all angles in the moonlight. "Call it what you will. You caught me. I'm guilty of murder."

"I'll take that as a confession," the detective clicked something in his pocket.

The eyes in the devilish scarecrow brightened as its hands kindled into torches, which sent sheets of flames up translucent wires. The roof beams burst into flame and cracked.

"--murder of the Defense Investigator."

Art Source: "Puppeteer Villain" by Hideyoshi

Story and Characters: (c)/by Corey Blankenship

"You're too late, Investigator."

"You're too late, Investigator."

Soot and embers whirled in a lazy vortex around the cave opening. The voice bounced off the walls in a gravelly tone akin to basalt grinding against itself. The accused slipped off his grey woolen cowl, peering deeper into the gloom in hopes of spying the speaker without having to step into the smoky tunnel.

"How have you activated the volcano?" Tenet wondered aloud.

The smoke puffed and carried the creature's mocking laughter. "I wasn't speaking to you, Betrayer."

Tenet became aware of another shadow against a towering boulder. A roughly man-shaped form leaned against the stone with a wide-brim cover blocking its face. The shadow shifted to glance at the cave mouth and gave an emotionless response, "You have broken the conditions of your parole, leaving Seram."

"Do you think you can stop me? I have become King of Krakatau, House of Fire and Peril. You cannot hold back the death due your pets."

A rumble vibrated from the mountain below them. Tenet gawked as the shadow answered in his deadpan manner, "I am not charged with stopping the mess you've made, Orang-bati, whatever trumped up titles you give yourself."

"You can't leave these people to perish!" Tenet protested.

"It is not for me to question the charges from the Courts," the Investigator replied.

Laughter like the first tremors of an eruption spewed from the tunnel. "Don't you see, Betrayer? They have abandoned man into our hands."

"Now," the voice menaced as something leathery flapped and stirred the smoke into a gyre. "Join them in their fates."

Twin coals lit by an infernal flame glared from the back of the tunnel. The ground split beneath Tenet's and the Investigator's feet. Tenet instinctively snatched hold of the crumbling lip as he tumbled and swung himself back onto a standing column of stone. He looked to where the Investigator had been and saw a great chasm of darkness and leaping tongues of lava. Tenet drew his sword Sicol and looked for a path into the cavern that didn't lead into a lava bath.

Drawing on the Power within, Tenet cried out, "You widen a place beneath me for my steps, and my ankles do not give way."

Then he ran as fast as he could, trusting each stride to bring him into the mountain of terror alive. A glance above showed vents brimming with fire, lava, and black smog. He had moments before the whole volcano blew. How he was going to face an engorged Fallen, the Investigator, and a volcano, he didn't know.

Tenet almost prayed that a miracle would find its way into this earthly mouth of hell. If not, he knew that he would demand answers from the Judge Himself this day.

Art Source: "Bat out of Hell" by JustMick

Story and Characters: (c)/by Corey Blankenship, Tenet (c) Brannon Hollingsworth

"You're cornered, Jimmy!"

"You're cornered, Jimmy!"

He stood in the shadows twitching. I could smell the Bulleit on his breath even at this distance. I could also smell the thick perfume of fear underneath that stench, mingled with several doses of meth. The rail-thin perp clawed at his face, trying to block the high-beams from my cruiser. Blind fingers nearly dared to gouge out his eyes to relieve the pain.

"Ji-Ji-Jimmy's not here," he rasped.

"I know you're in there, Jim," I countered. "I know you've been trying to drown your demons. They feed on that. Fear, too. I'm here to help."

The clawing paused as a rheumy laugh cackled in his voice box. The deliver boy-turned-junkie garbled out, "Funny you speak of fear, Investigator. You're the one behind that circle."

I didn't glance at the black line I had scrawled before chasing Jim down this alleyway. "That's not for me. It'd be best you come with me and leave Jim alone."

The shadows around Jim deepened as a voice like a baffled coal furnace sputtered, "On what authority do you dare collar me?"

I shot back in my deadpan manner, "The Highest."

Another burst of laughter bubbled up from this deeper source. "You're a fool if you think you can take a Prince of Poverty on your own."

I struck my lighter and lit a cigar. I took a puff as I dropped the igniter onto the dark line in front of me. The flame kindled a golden light which converted the black sigils into living emblems. They came to life both in the air and on the ground. The golden coil slithered across the alley and traced itself around Jim and the shadows.

The delivery boy's eyes bulged. He went into a frenzy as though trying to pat invisible flames off his clothes. The shadows danced and the diabolical voice boomed in rage, "What sorcery is this, Investigator?!"

I flicked the burning coal off the end of my cigar, collected my lighter, and answered, "No sorcery at all, Tenebrae. You should remember that. Then again, you did just get back from your last visit to the Courts. Your parole's been suspended."

Three things happened all at once. A shriek. A flash. A vanishing act.

Jimmy stood in the alley, staring all around him at the decaying urban landscape. He wondered how he hadn't OD'd and where the stranger and the terrible voices went. He didn't wonder why his pants were soaked. He'd seen to that.

It didn't take him long to run home to tell his estranged mother he had been wrong and that he loved her. Guess you can chalk that up to a win-win case. Too bad they aren't all as rosy.

Art Source: "Noir Detective- Video Process" by Hideyoshi
Story and Characters: (c)/by Corey Blankenship