Clockwork

          The mystical figure, who moved with an exeptionally jagged and uncomfortable roughness in his joints, jumped over the rooftops with odd mechanical grace, large black brass-rimmed goggles blazing in the sun and a red silk scarf twisting in the wind behind him. The man increased his speed and some of the red tiles on the roofs of London cracked under his brass-buckled boots and shattered into pieces. People on the streets stopped to stare at the weird agile figure rapidly moving through the sunriddled sky. The running man in long leather jacket had reached the Thames faster than any steampowered locomotive could, but he didn't make any efforts to stop or slow down. All throughout the mechanical man started echoing sounds of small gears grinding and springs winding themselves up. At the very edge of the last roof he propelled himself high above the murky water. Time seemed to stop for a while as an old fisherman glanced heavenwards at the gentleman soaring over his boat. The mechanical man didn't worry about not reaching the other side, he knew exactly how far he was going to jump. A loud crash sounded over the whole city-block before the young-looking man swiftly escaped the cascade of shattering bricks from a riverside wall he had broken with his less than perfect landing. He stopped in the middle of an alleyway behind "The Devil's Tavern" and listened... he could hear nearly everything going around in the city and yet not the sound he was looking for. It had stopped. Why had it stopped?
         That voice, that ticking couldn't belong to any other timepiece- it had to be Griffin's. Although the timepiece sounded normal to everyone else the robotic human could hear a distinct difference in every clock. Griffin was a scientist, a genius and yet a psychopath. He was a thief, an arsonist and a murderer, who was easily trackable, but no matter how hard one would look, Griffin would remain unseen... The clockwork-man knew that the criminal was perfectly invisible, but not completely imperceptible. A few years ago the mechanical man had sensed Griffin's ghastly presense in a South England pub- he could hear a fainth breathing and heartbeat coming from an empty seat and on the table was a barely visible crystal pocketwatch that ticked in the most abnormal way... and later all became clear with the help of an anonymous law enforcer, who traded confidential information for gold.
        The man with brass-rimmed goggles had no other clues, thus giving up became his only option. He decided to take the streets this time around- humans had always amazed him as they made him wonder... What makes them tick? The evening had arrived almost inconspicuously and a slight dribble of rain made it seem even darker. The gear-gutted man slowly made his way through the town and that's when he heard it- The glass timepiece. In a split-second the ticking gentleman had disappeared from the streets. He made his way staright through the city over the roofs and under bridges and soon he stopped... There he was- The invisible man in a trenchcoat, face wrapped in gauze and eyes covered with dark glasses. Every streetlight he passed by seemed to flicker as if they were trying to hide the monstrous criminal in shadows. In a blink of an eye the mechanical man had silently pinned psycopath to the ground. He was trying to struggle out of his coat, but it was already too late. "Your time has run out, Griffin..." The man said with a metallic voice as Griffin shoved his hand in his coat. "Think again..." Chuckled the man covered in bandages and fired a shot. Hundreds of small gears and bolts spewed out of the humanoid machine and the ticking stopped... Griffin stood up and laughed. "You can't catch the wind, dear friend..." The hollow rattle of tiny metal pieces filled the empty street. Although one ticking had stopped, the other still remained. The figure in bandages faced away and took several long steps on the cobblestone road before realising, that he was walking of tiny shards of glass. His eyes widened as he grabbed for the pocketwatch- It was gone. The man turned to look back at the robotic corpse, but all he felt were two cold hands grasping his neck... A garish crackling split the night and the invisible man appeared once again: First the bones, then the nerves, muscles and bloodvessels and finally his pale-dead skin. 

And it all worked out like clockwork.

The Grand Grimoire

A grinning black owl clinged to the dead hawthorn, spreading it's branches over the black graveyard fence. It almost seemed like the twisted tree was trying to escape through the tall bars of cold metal. It must've known that there was no way out and yet it tried to reach the freedom beyond the horrible cemetery.
In the shadows, between the numerous massive crypts walked a dark figure. He slid his hand along the cracked wall of an ancient mausoleum. The faint breath of the centuries slowly leaked out of the marble and sent traces of long forgotten memories flashing through his head. The man stopped and took a deep breath.
It wasn't the tomb he was looking for... but he could feel it getting closer and closer by the step. The ghastly gentleman gallantly stepped in front of a heavily tilted marble cross bearing celtic engravings under a thick layer of moss. Thin streams of rain were dripping down his face and soaking into his black tailcoat embroidered with bloodred silk. The sky was almost completely black as if it was reflecting the man's state of mind. A threatening thunderclap woke him from the shallow daydream, that had silently crept to his mind and he could feel that he wasn't alone anymore.

"Hello, Viki." The man stood still and listened to the girl's feet swinging through the air in the most childish and carefree way while she was sitting on top of a comically large and out of shape tombstone. One of her black and white striped stockings was pulled up over her knee and the other one had fallen loosely around her ankle. The girl casted a glance from beneath her tophat, which was tightly stitched together from grayish-brown pieces of human skin. Her face was framed with perfect locks of bright white hair and her fern-green eyes rimmed with odd golden rings around her irises.
"My name is Victoria." She said with a slight irritation in her soft voice.
"I heard you were in town... I thought that even you wouldn't be so stupid to lift your foot in my town, but I was obviously wrong, Mr. H."
The man adjusted his perfectly round glasses and looked at the girl.
"It's doctor actually... And I can assure you that I am not looking for trouble."
She jumped off the tombstone and placed her index finger on the man's red cravat.
"Then what are you looking for, darling?"
"I'm guessing that you won't leave me alone until you find out..."
"That's right, honey. So you better start talking or I am forced to use... force." Her cute grin took a mad and rather sinister tone.

Dr. H  closed his eyes and tried to pick up the dark trace again.
"I bet you have heard of the Grand Grimoire." The girls eyes widened and although the man had shut his, he could still see everything. "I thought so." He continued. "The Grimoire of Honorius- The mother of every grimoire. I have traced it for decades now... I missed it in 1332 when captain John Crabbe cursed his ship and crew for eternity with the help of that book. I tell you he was a horrible man, but a genius at that... no one else had a ship-mounted catapult. John Dee had it for a while and Erik Weisz, a man of many names, people thought he was a fake, but in actuality a very influential magician... hiding behind cheap tricks, smoke and mirrors."
The man had led the girl to the other end of the graveyard without opening his eyes and talking all along.
The girl seemed worried. "You think it's here?"
"I know it." The man replied "I can feel it... whispering..."
The man opened his eyes and beheld the grotesque building towering in front of him. Large stone-slabs forming dark walls, that hold the most horrible curse. Two grinning devil statues on each side of the massive door added yet another dimension of evil to the atrocious crypt. He placed one hand on the weird decorative plate right in the middle of the door, his eyes lit up in a miasma of dark-red lights, while the giant stone-plate imbued with flaming-red cracks and finally cascaded into millions of little pieces. His eyes turned back to normal as he starightened his coat. The white haired girl stared into his eyes and asked:
"What are you going to do with it?"
He looked down at her and smirked as he backed into the stairway leading under the cemetery.
"Destroy the world, cupcake...destroy the world."

The Gravedigger's Son

      "A long time ago, in a small village near London, there was a gravedigger of skill. Some say he could dig a hundres graves in just one night. He was a humble man, who didn't ask for much and lived in a hut near the graveyard... there were rumors that his real home was in the thick forest surrounding the old cemetery, but who really believes these stories.

     One cold night in the middle of winter, when the man was shoveling snow out of the fresh graves, he saw one of them open in a haze of fire and out of it ascended a tall man with black wings- Lucifer. He offered the gravedigger a job and in return, he'd get anything he wanted. The man accepted Lucifer's offer, was taken to the underworld and given an unbreakable shovel, that would never get dull. He spent 20 years in Hell and after he finished digging deepest pit of Hell- Tartarus, he was given one request to make before sending him back to the surface. The gravedigger bowed before Lucifer and asked for the shovel, that had stayed sharp after all these years and Lucifer was amazed by the simplicity of his needs, but still respected the promise he had made.

    This story has been passed down from father to son for countless generations, and every word of it is true." Said the old man in a long leather coat while limping between the graves and occasionally casting glances at the young man following him. They stopped at an unmarked grave. "According to the legend Lucifer had told the gravedigger, that his skills will never die as they will be passed on with Lucifer's shovel, because Hell will always need a gravedigger. 

    The old man kept the strange shovel with him at all times and when he died his son was asked to finish the gravedigger's last job- Three graves had to be dug in the graveyard. The gravedigger's son grabbed Lucifer's shovel and by the morning a hundred new graves had appeared. Next day, the son buried his father with the shovel and kept in mind the story of the old gravedigger and his pact with Lucifer. Now the shovel is your's and after a while, you'll tell this story to your son." The bearded elder finished and sat on a large stone next to the grave. The young man looked at the empty tombstone and asked: "What if Lucifer comes for his new gravedigger." The elder smiled: "Then you dig..."

A shovel is an axe, a sword, a spear and a hammer combined... and you can also dig a grave with it.

The Gentleman's Way

      "The crowded streets of London are particularly breathtaking on fine summer-evenings like these." thought Lancelot while making his way through the countless teenagers, businessmen and couples,clinging to eachother. The light wind was roughing up his black suit, that looked almost too noble, because of the victorian waistcoat underneath the jacket and of course the unusual neckwear- a royal cravat made from red silk, stolen three weeks ago. The young man- not more than 17 - seemed almost like he had stepped out of a painting to take a nice stroll on the streets, but then again he was firmly holding a fairly modern-looking black umbrella.

During peaceful moments like these Lancelot usually kept an inner monologue: catalogueing his thoughts, people on the streets, cars passing by and every possible threat. "Male, 20-25 years of age, a modern baseball-cap- probably one of them hippity-hoppity fellows, slight limp in the left leg..." Ventrue was distracted by another individual, obviously a drug-dealer... and judging by his thin moustache and the length of his jacket probably also a sexual predator of some kind. "People roaming the streets of this city... Some of them earn their money honestly, some dishonorably and some of them are like me."
Lancelot Ventrue noticed a chubby man in an overly-expensive suit (even for the streets of London) and "locked on" to the target. "Male, 50-58 years of age, wealthy, in a bitter mood, distracted- Perfect victim." Ventrue lifted his chin up, thus looking even more posh and bumped into the old man, with a moderate amount of force. "Hey! Watch your step, punk!" shouted the rich elder in an arrogant manner. In a split second the young man's hand had snatched the wallet from the fatcat's jacket. Just one charming smile and humble apology later he had already disappeared into the heavy crowd. "Wallets, watches, phones and jewelry are so easy to misplace, especially in a big city where there's people, who practise my profession." A short man wearing aviator sunglasses stepped in front of the young pickpocket and crouched to tie his shoelaces. Ventrue's eyes widened, time seemed to stop and thoughts started echoeing through his mind.

"Professionals tend to work in trios: The Blocker, who distracts the victim,..."

The black-suited young man dodged the crouching man after which an African-American girl in a purple hoodie tripped into him and grabbed the freshly-stolen wallet.

"...the Cannon, who obtains the item of value..."

Ventrue casted a glance behind him just in time to notice that the wallet was dropped inside the backpack of a bald man with a red goatee and rather unstylish flip-flops.

"...and finally the Shade, who takes the item and disappears... Let's have some fun, shall we?"

 Ventrue reached under his longer than usual blonde hair and tapped on his nearly invisible earpiece: "Thor calling Wolfman, male in his late twenties, brown backpack, red goatee- moving towards the cave."

    200 feet away, in front of an italian café behind one of the restaurant-tables was a man observing his surroundings through two holes cut into a newspaper. "Wolfman to Thor, I see the target. Wolfman's leaving the cave." Behind the newspaper was a tall young man
with a painfully obvious fake moustache and a brown bowlerhat. He paid for his tea, tipped the waiter and started following the thief listening to music from his earplugs. After a few zig-zags between different small empty alleyways, it was clear that the Shade with
the stolen wallet had noticed "Wolfman" tailing him... but then again the slightly overweight man with a bowlerhat wasn't trying to be silent and made sure to smack every metal object on the way with the end of his walking stick. "Back off, chump, this is none of your business! I'll break your legs if you won't stop following me!" The bald bearded man was getting anxious at "Wolfman's" calm and positive look and pulled a switchblade out of the pocket of his yellow jumper. *click* The stainless-steel blade propelled out of the handle.

The well-dressed man ripped off his moustache and put it under his bowlerhat while spinning the wooden stick in his hand. He smiled and cast a wild glance at the opponent: "Tell me, mr. Thief, have you heard of Bartitsu, the gentleman's way of fighting?"