He surveyed his bleak surroundings. He stood in what had once been a house and was now a burnt out shell, bits of charred wood falling from the steel support beams like flesh rotting off the bones of a decaying corpse.

He had spent the last couple hours here trying to find some clue, trying to pick up some hint of what could have happened here. He hadn't had much luck so far. Deciding that since his eyesight was not proving to be any help, the young man turned to another form of vision.

Closing his eyes he focused on his second sight, his ability to see into the underlying spiritual energy of this world. He could see the memories of the people who had lived here: friends, family, past owners. He could see the happiness, the sorrow, and the anger. However, he could not pick up a single trace of the girl who had lived her just up until few a days ago, the girl who had been murdered here.

The horrible crime committed against this person, that should be screaming in every pore of this house, was no where to be found. Not a single cry of pain, not one plea for life could be discovered. It was almost as though someone had come through and erased every shred of the incident from the house's memory.

The young man sighed. He was at that age where stood he on the verge between being called a child and an adult. He was tall with the light, muscular build of someone who had grown up keeping active. He was handsome with pale skin and white hair, though his ears were slightly pointed and his teeth almost wolfish in appearance. His eyes were a shocking ice blue. He wore a pair of jeans that looked like they hadn't been washed in a while with a crumbled shirt and jacket.

This is pointless, he thought, there's nothing here. He took one last look around the house before deciding that he may as well leave. Closing his eyes he focused on some distant destination. There was a gust of wind and suddenly he was gone, swept away to the image he had held in his mind. When his body reappeared, he was half a world away.

He stood in the middle of a run down apartment, the walls bare of any memorabilia and a few pieces of rickety furniture stuck here and there. There were weapons everywhere. Swords, knives, bows and arrows, some of them encrusted with priceless jewels, others bearing dents in them a century old. It was a literal armory.

He walked over to a table where a series of photos laid spread out. They were photos of women in their late teens and early twenties, all of them beautiful, and all of them dead.

He pulled another photo from his pocket, the girl whose house he had just been at, and threw it on the table, the blond beauty smiling back at him. Another one, he thought. All of the women before him had died in the same manner: beaten, tortured, drained of their blood, and then left to burn with their homes. There was no clue as to who the murderers were or why they were doing it. The only common thread he and his cohorts had found so far was that all the victims were young, beautiful women. And they all died just like she did.

He quickly pushed that thought away from his mind as he went over the refrigerator and pulled out a beer. By the Lady this is all seems pointless, he thought. There was a knock on his door. "Who is it?" he asked shortly. None of his warning spells had gone off, so he wasn't too worried about it being an enemy.

"It's me, Jennabe!" a voice with a British accent said from the other side, sounding only too cheerful.

He looked nonplussed. "Great," he muttered to himself, and then with a wave of his hand the lock came undone. "It's open!"

A woman walked in, smiling mischievously. She looked to be about in her mid twenties, was short, but what she lacked in height she made up for in attitude. She wore a red tea length skirt with a pair of black Converse high-tops (she wouldn't wear any other type of shoe) and a black shirt that said 'Punk Rocker' on it in red. Her jet black hair was streaked crimson and pulled up in a bunch of mini buns, and the wings that sprung from her back were tattooed with the names of all her favorite bands she had seen. And that was a lot of bands.

"Hey there, cutie," she said.

"I didn't find anything," he grumbled shortly.

She frowned. "By the Lady, Dameon, it wouldn't hurt you to show some manners. Maybe something like 'Hello Jennabe, how are you doing this fine evening?', to which I would probably reply 'Fine, how about you?'. You might even ask me if I wanted a drink if you were feeling particularly generous."

Dameon took a swig from his bottle, choosing to ignore her tirade. "The site was the same as the others. Definitely the same killers. Not that it does us much good since we have no idea who our killers are."

Jennabe sighed. "Fine then, we'll do it your way. You still haven't found out anything from anyone in the Underworld?" she asked, the Underworld being the title most people used when referring to the gangs, drug lords, and other unsavory characters who had managed to create their own subculture in the cities.

He shook his head. "Nothing from the street. Most could care less if a couple of Sightless humans are killed."

"More then a couple."

Dameon shrugged. "Same to them."

She walked over to the table where the photos lay and looked through them. "So, we're up to number ten and we still don't a clue what's going on," She sighed. "Some Champions we've turned out to be."

Dameon took another drink from his beer, leaving her to stand there in silence. "You do realize that was the point where you were supposed to tell me that it's not all my fault, that the Champions are doing the best they can, etc, etc, etc." Jennabe said.

He just glared at her.

She shrugged. "Oh, by the way we're, that is the other Champions and I, are meeting at the Guardian's Castle tomorrow evening to discuss what we're gonna do about this mess. The Demon World is in a right panic ... Anyways we were hoping you would show up. We could use your help."

"I'll think about it," he said. He wondered if he would be there...

"Do," she said, "your input would help us a lot. Also, training tomorrow with Sam's been moved to twelve, apparently the lazy ass can't bother to get himself out of bed before ten."

"Okay."

"Well anyways," she said with a sigh, "I best be off and go patrol a bit. What with all the Breaks that have been occurring these days we've had an infestation of all sorts of creatures from the Demon World."

"Have fun," Dameon said as she headed out of the apartment.

"Oh yeah, it'll be a right good time," she said as she closed the door.

Dameon walked over to the photos, remembering her face, her smile, the way it felt the day she died and was taken away from him. An illogical part of him knew, just knew that if he could solve these murders he could solve hers, could finally put her ghost to rest. The more reasonable side of him said that was a bunch of crap. But then again, his hunches had never proved him wrong before.

He sighed, finished off his beer, then decided to go to bed. He had slept little in the past couple weeks and it was starting to affect him; as he lay in bed that night though he got little rest, his dreams haunted by the smiles of dead girls in photographs.