The fighting’s over and the spells ended when Cook heads inside, working with the other necropolitan and otherwise living impaired. The thralls sit in handcuffs outside. Spawn sit bespelled inside away from the door.

Ulfrik Hordsson looks much better when his fur isn’t sodden. He’s also in a much better mood.

“No rain today,” the mongrelfolk crime scene investigator comments cheerfully to Cook. His fur is fluffy and neatly brushed today. They walk through the scene of the battle, scanning everywhere for potential clues.

“I hope this means we’ll have better luck with evidence collection?” Cook gives the technician a smile.

“For bonus points, everything we’re looking for ought to be indoors.” Hordsson stops and pops open a case filled with linen paper envelopes of different sizes on one of the tables. “With any luck the forensic evidence will be plentiful and relatively undisturbed.”

Cook hears a crunching noise underfoot. Lifting his shoe he can see a squashed rat trampled in the battle and further ground into the rug by his heel.

“What should I, uh,” the detective wipes the gore from his boot, “um, anyway, what should we be looking for?”

“Keep your eye out for anything with writing, or anything that looks out of place” the mongrelfolk is unfazed by the rat guts in the rug, “and I’ll be collecting samples of items that may hold residual magic auras. Old blood stains may be able to give us a look at what created them, but those spells aren’t admissible as evidence without something to verify their story.”

“So the usual;” Cook pats his coworker on the back, “blood, books, and bedsheets.”

“Around here we’re probably going to need to look for more corpses, codices, and coffins.” The mongrelfolk gives the detective a wink and gets to work sniffing at a glass on a low table with deep red contents. “Just wine,” he confirms, and Cook leaves him to his work.

One of the three side rooms to the crypt is an obvious office. Cook heads in this direction and finds an open trap door guarded by two Special Weapons and Tactics officers, armed to the teeth. He asks what’s down there.

“It’s their entrance to the undertunnels, detective,” the officer on the left, a muscular wood elf, answers, pointing into the fetid depths. “Detective Alton and the adventurers chased the master vampire down there.” His nose wrinkles at the foul smell.

“What’s down there?” Cook asks mildly, peering into the gloom and seeing a slimy ladder into a tunnel with clumps of mold growing on all exposed surfaces. Little ripples on the surface of water below reflect light enough to let him know that the high water table has seeped through the floor of the tunnel, but it is not a sewer. The lack of light and color makes the depth deceptive.

“It’s the undertunnels.” The other officer, a short human from the Circle Sea city states named Suripto answers. “We expected one of these holes somewhere, but in this area with the water issue, eh.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t have put a tunnel here either.” Cook shrugs. “I expect Alton will pop up elsewhere soon if they’re headed through there. But with all the unauthorized additions to the network there’s no telling where that will be.”

“We’ll keep watch here.” Suripto taps his quarterstaff on the floor. The other laughs and claps Suripto on the back with camaraderie. “No one will sneak up on their back trail for sure.”

“Good work.” Cook grins. This mission has been for the most part a success. Assuming Alton and her posse can catch the biggest fish, they’ll have done better than they could have hoped today.

Cook pokes around the office while the other officers start clearing out the Spawn. They toss blankets over bespelled cages before loading them on carts to transport back to the jail. He finds many blank copies of the paperwork for consent to turning into a vampire. Many blank copies. He asks a tech to point them out to Hordsson.

Moving through the room clockwise, he finds an assortment of real estate documents, loan forms, and more banking information. There’s dozens of accounts in different names. Cook suspects that these names will match the names of the Spawn on their way to the jail. This is good evidence. People who voluntarily become vampires from the same master probably don’t all keep their financial documents in the exact same place. And these vampires probably have the same source.

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Cook exits the room, having pointed out the most obvious evidence. He heads to the next room. It’s a bedroom. Or something like a bedroom. There’s more than one coffin propped against the wall and a mattress plopped on top of a sarcophagus. The coffins are older than the one the detectives found in Marion Durandal’s niche. Cook thinks they’re original to the crypt.

The room has stains of alcohol, sex, and blood. Cook imagines there must be a smell to accompany them. Everglowing candles sit on pedestals throughout the room. Tiny magical tea lights litter the room with an almost romantic glow. Linen banners hang from iron hooks on the ceiling, draping the room with rich color. It’s not a clean room.

Cook’s nose wrinkles at the unpleasant sight. The room is a wreck. Cook’s seen cleaner dorm rooms at Sacred Dark and Two Rivers City College illegal drug use investigations. A peek inside the sarcophagus lets him know the suspicion holds ground. There are indeed drugs stashed inside. He points them out to a crime scene technician to be helpful.

A different technician pops a head in to catch Cook’s attention. He follows the tech into the third and final room.

It’s a bloodletting chamber. The two older sarcophagi have been shoved to the wall, with deep gouges in the stone floor showing where they were in the past. Cook notes a chair that has taken their place in the middle of the room. Thick leather restraints attached to the arms and legs of the chair show that not all who have sat in it were dominated at the time. Someone clearly has enjoyed watching a victim struggle while being bled.

Ceramic jars sit on a folding tray table near the chair. Wicked little blades that could only have been used to one purpose sit next to them. The tray has stains, but has been wiped nearly clean more than once. Now this, this is evidence of wrongdoing most definitely.

Hordsson comes in the room behind him and whistles slowly. It’s impressive.

“I guess this could be some kind of kink thing?” The mongrelfolk suggests an almost plausible excuse for someplace so obscene. “Bloodletting, domination, submission, and murder?”

“Could be just people with weird tastes,” Cook agrees, “or this is it. This is our proof. Those are your stains, ranger, let’s see that spell.”

“Thought you’d never ask.” Hordsson flashes a sharp toothed grin. He cracks his knuckles and leans down to place two fingers over one of the stains.

Green light flashes between the technician’s fingers and the dark stain on the tray. Further green light slowly filters into the air around the chair, coalescing into distinct shapes. An aquatic elf sits in the chair, straining at the bonds on his wrists and ankles. Adrien Bellemare himself twists a thin blade into the elf’s neck, with a different vampire collecting the blood in one of the jars.

The crime scene technician’s spell displays the exact moment that the blood it targets was spilled from its owner. The longer the spell holds up, the longer the blood must have continued to pour from the poor elf’s vein. Cook notes that neither vampire was directly drinking, meaning that this victim, if they did indeed die as a result of this injury, would not have been turned.

“Well that’s a waste,” Hordsson comments.

“How so?” Cook looks surprised.

“We have here a victim,” Hordsson continues, “but we don’t have their body or any complaining witness.”

“That’s true,” Cook agrees, “but we do have Marion Durandal. And she means we have an excuse to build a case on the pattern Bellemare left us.”

“Not much of a pattern if this was consensual.” Hordsson shrugs.

“That didn’t look very consensual.” The spell continues longer than either witness feels comfortable viewing. It’s hard to watch.

Cook shakes his head and walks out, with the spell continuing behind him. He heads back to the main room to take care of something he’s been avoiding.

“Detective Trageser.”

“I’m sorry Detective Cook, I uh, didn’t think it would be a problem.” The young detective looks sheepish.

“You didn’t think?” The eyebrow trick strikes again.

“I guess that was the problem,” Trageser admits. “He said he’d be able to help.”

“But you shouldn’t be here yourself.” The trick collapses, both brows joining each other in a very effective glare.

“Yeah, that’s my fault,” Isaacs pops in, appearing from behind a sofa. It’s easy to lose a halfling, and she’s taken full advantage of that fact. “I suggested we tag along to watch the fireworks.”

“But he was helpful,” Trageser tries to recover. “Sure he’s an outsider, but so are they.” He points down toward the tunnels where the posse have vanished.

“You’re lucky he had restraint enough to damage the Spawn he fought rather than executing them.” Cook’s icy stare gives the younger detective pause. “Arrest him, like you’re supposed to and get back to work.”

“Yes sir,” both younger detectives hurry out of the crypt. Cook watches them handcuff Durandal again and vanish into the city. He rubs his forehead in frustration, and glances back toward the bloodletting room. The green light still reflecting on the walls tells him all he needs to know.