Set My Soul On Fire

Chapter 1: Year 2125

The picture is what Amaya Vixen looks like.

...

Do you know what sewers smell like?

Rotten eggs and shit.

That is what Amaya Vixen, private investigator and consultant to the LAPD, smelled at eight o'clock in the morning and that was not how she wanted to start her day. Especially since, right now, it also smelled like dead, rotting flesh.

Three people were dead. Drowning, of course.

"Bunyips again?" Police Detective Diego Artiga asked.

Artiga was an acquaintance in the LAPD's Magical Crimes Squad. They worked together frequently enough and could stand being in each other's presence, so there was that. The only problem was that he asked her out once and she had turned him down. Needless to say, it made things a bit awkward, but at least he wasn't a dick about it every time they saw each other.

"Yeah," she stated grimly.

"Can you..." he trailed off. "You know, do your thing?"

She sighed. "Fine. But if this one throws sewage up on me, you're paying me extra."

She bent down and set her hand over the face of one of the bodies. "I invoke and command thou spirit, rise and speak," she said softly and lifted her hand. With it, a silvery-blue smoke came flowing out and amassed as a smoky replica of the body of the dead man.

"Alright, what's your name?" Amaya asked.

"Reggie Bennett."

"How old are you?"

"Twenty-five."

"How did you get in the sewers?"

"John dared us," he told them, his voice empty of any embarrassment. After all, he couldn't feel it like this. "We thought they were all gone. They took John first. We heard him thrash as they drowned him. We tried to run, but they were too fast. They caught us too."

"Alright," she said softly. "Thank you. Rest." And the image faded away. Amaya and Artiga got to their feet. "Please tell me you caught the dumbass that let those things loose in a city sewer line." She growled.

"Yeah. Some rich idiot thinking of having some exotic pets. Then, upon realizing that, shocker, they could kill him, he disposed of them–into the public," he stated, amazement at the stupidity that required in his voice.

Amaya stared down into the sewer. "We're going to have to go down there, aren't we?"

"Yeah."

"Fuck a duck."

...

A bell chimed as the door opened to a small office. "Good afternoon, boss lady–" A cheerful voice popped.

Then the smell hit.

The receptionist, a lovely lady by the name of Helen, cringed. "The sewers again?"

Amaya looked at her with a deadpan expression on her face. "Call Robert and tell him he better get his people down there pronto. This is the fifth time this year and I am not a happy woman." Her friend in the MCCR, Magical Creature Containment and Relocation, had really dropped the ball on this one. She'd called him five times to get rid of the bunyips some moron put in the sewers and he's left some behind all five times. They'd lost nineteen people to those damn things.

Helen nodded, picking up the phone. "Yes, ma'am."

Before she started dialing though, she pointed back to Amaya's private office. "By the way, you have customers." Amaya grimaced. She smelled like literal shit. "Can they wait?" She asked. She desperately needed a shower.