Gerry stepped back and considered his stock from the customer side of the bar. The Merchant was a small bar by Hudson City standards; old school décor, lots of dark wood and brass, scents of mahogany and pipe smoke. It was nothing at all like J/T, where Gerry last worked. No, the Merchant wasn’t trendy in any sense of the word and that went doubly for its stock of liquor.

The younger of the two detectives looked more like a model than a cop; tall, attractive and dapper as hell. The older man on the other hand was unmistakably a cop. It was something about how he wore the suit. He somehow didn’t look dressed up. The older man smiled and extended a hand to Ophilia.

“Good morning, Ms. DiSantiago. Det. Carl Ferris, HCPD. This is my partner, Detective Zachary Chippe.”

"Good morning detectives." Ophilia returned with an easy smile as she shook his hand. Only the large mahogany desk separated them and she was quite curious as to why they were there.

She took a moment to sit down and gestured for them to do the same.  "How can I help you today?"

Danny raised his hand to knock on the door, then hesitated. She was his cousin. She liked him. They got along. But would she listen? His arguments were good ones, but he was up against a legend here. And despite having been on the team for nearly half a year, he was still considered to be the new kid.

Ah well, he thought, nothing for it.

He knocked once upon the oak-paneled office door, then opened it and stepped inside. He knew she was in there; he could smell her.  "Cheers," he said brightly as he stepped into Ophilia DiSantiago's office. "Do ya have a moment or two?" 

It is approaching the third year anniversary of the disappearance of Ophilia DiSantiago's absent fiance, Dean Masterson. She finally uses her ties with the Conquistadors to look into the mystery, with high hopes of solving it. Stone, in exchange for the date that Phi had won during the bachelor auction, agrees to look into it, promising to keep it as quiet as he can. When he runs into a roadblock, he recruits Edison Palmer and they both dive head first into a most startling discovery. So startling, that it's almost impossible to believe.

Staring: Ophilia DiSantiago, Stone, Edison Palmer, Sebastian DiSantiago and Mason Willoughby

Violet eyes set in a petite porcelain face glared down at two of her minions.  She'd allowed them to survive to answer her questions, the other three had been terminated with an instantaneous thought.  That was all it took.  One snarl of disdain from her perfect nose and the mental flip of a switch, and any one of her underlings would short circuit and fall dead at her feet.  Those were the lucky ones. 

The unlucky ones returned.  Scrambled remnants of a toy graveyard, life fluids fed to them through wires and tubes, sparked to life without mercy for Lady Cybra to control.  Only their brains were intact, feeding them memories of their past lives and allowing them some capacity to pray for death.

"How."  She commanded.  Her lips were pursed in a grimace of irritation, but the tone of her voice was as smooth as silk.  It emanated from within her and slid from her tongues, one in her mouth where it should have been, and the other tucked unseen behind her chin.  The quality of it resonated richly and was unreal, almost hypnotizing.

For Ophilia it was just another day.  She was a bit frustrated with the events that had unfolded last night at the auction, and was still upset with her best friend, Christie Danner.  Irritation aside, she was also troubled with her own conundrum that she'd stepped into when she'd won Stone at the bachelor event.  The general emotions of the night had been a turmoil from others, and she still didn't know how deep that stunt had put her.  Little did she know that the crux of her world was but a minor blemish compared to what her teammates at the auction had suffered.

The sweat soaked and stressed trio that had disarmed the bomb at the Justice Building, were beyond grateful to see Chip Wolfe leaning up against the limo outside.  It was illegally parked, but security assumed that the right palms had been greased and that he was entitled to be there.  Hudson City justice was highly influenced by who paid who what, so often times if you looked like you belonged, not a brow would be raised.  Drop the right name and just about anything could be forgiven.

"Xavier Relaford..."  Phi repeated the name back to the person on the other end of the phone, squinting hard as she tried to place the name.  "No. No, I don't have any recollection of that name."

Several moments passed as the small DiSantiago paced around the deluxe suite at her cousin's wedding, the ever present cell phone perched against her ear.  With each lap she got more and more agitated, glaring at her brother as if it was somehow his fault.

The giant garage underneath the Cathedral was as quiet as the building's namesake.  The clean, polished surfaces were muted in the dim light of the adjustable work lamp set up by the roped-off work zone near the hypercycles.  The scents of oil, grease and metal, mingled like a reunion crowd among the shadows of the concrete-floored space.

The only invader to the quiet peace of the garage was the steady, rhythmic crank of a socket wrench.  It interrupted the silence with a regular precision as Stone refastened the body frame to his Frankenstein monster.  The hypercycle/Harley-Davidson hybrid was nearly done.  The engine ran, at least. 

What did I do? Phi couldn’t move, she wasn’t fast enough. Time seemed to stop as he dove at her, she saw it coming a second before it did and that was the only way she was able to step just far enough to the right, to dodge his outstretched hand. His evil intent washed over her and she knew that it was only a matter of time before she would be his, and she knew with startling clarity what he was going to do to her.

Phi’s heart raced and her stomach plummeted with the kind of sheer fear that she had never experienced before. She tried to battle the flash from him, tried not to know what his plans were, they were so vivid and lustful. Hunger. Need.