Special thanks to everyone who's left a comment.

Chapter 8
Eighth Night – Creatures From A Lower World

Loki looked up, noticing the light in the courtyard of the shrine was no longer bright enough the read by. Far off the sun was just disappearing over the horizon.

"Is Loki-tama done with the book?"

"No, just done for the day. It's too dark to read outside." He pet Ecchan as he watched the sun go down. It was getting late….

"Ecchan, did you notice Mayura come home yet?"

Ecchan looked up at him with it's big, innocent eyes and slowly shook his head. "No, Loki-tama, Mayura-chan didn't come this way if she did."

Loki stood up and brushed himself off, and then headed into the house, Ecchan not far behind.

"Daaddy!!" Fenrir cried as soon as Loki opened the door. "I've been shut up all day since you went out daddy! I haven't eaten ANYTHING!!"

"So Mayura hasn't come home yet?'

"No, Mystery Girl hasn't come home. She needs to though, I need to eat!!"

"Is Mayura-Papa home?"

Fenrir looked away, then around, particularly in the direction of Misao's room. "Noooope. Nope, no Mystery Girl'S Father YET."

Loki raised an eyebrow at his son's reaction to the question. If his son was up to something however, he was sure he'd find out about it soon enough. Instead, it was time to be a good Father and feed his child! He pulled open the Daidouji fridge and stared. Fenrir eagerly popped up next to him, with Ecchan floating above.

"Ooooo, that that Daddy! Thaaaaaaat!"

"What?" He looked down at the beaming pup. "The chicken?"

"Yes! The CHICKEN!" Loki looked back at the chicken. A whole, raw chicken… in some cases perhaps it would be rude to take a whole chicken like this from someone's fridge, especially if it were perhaps a planned dinner, but he was a most loved guest in this house! And his son was starving! And their hostess was away, causing the starving of the said child.

Loki pulled out the chicken, cut off the plastic, threw the plastic in the trash –"musn't leave plastic around children" he chimed to himself-, then placed the chicken, -completely raw- into his son's designated bowl before setting it down before his son who's eyes were now welling up in tears of happiness.

"Oh. JOY!" Was all Fenrir could squeak.

"I'll be in my room…" Loki stated before walking off, completely confident that his son would finish off all evidence of the chicken before anyone would notice it missing.

Thirty Minutes Later…

Loki slammed open the sliding door to his guest room, and barged out with a not too happy expression on his face. Where WAS that girl! He was HUNGRY! How dare she leave such a handsome guest as he to STARVE! The girl had no common sense; otherwise she would be all over him to do whatever he said!

But of course he already knew that, and if he was right it was that lack of common sense that probably was what was making her so late, keeping him from dinner.

"Loki-tama…" Ecchan said as he followed Loki out of the house into the night, soon followed by a very round and slow Fenrir.

"D… Dah… Daaaddy…" Fenrir panted out.

Mayura woke up with a major pain in her head that made her wince as she lifted it. The first thing she noticed was the ground was extremely rough with little rocks and obviously a lot of dirt, and not to mention damp.

Something was wrong with her hands though, she couldn't really move them…

She opened her eyes and slowly tried to focus on what she was seeing. It was all blurry for her at first, but eventually she could make out a brick wall, and dim light shining on the dirt ground floor she was on.

With a groan she began to try to sit up, but at the difficulty of it she realized what was wrong with her hands. They seemed to be tied behind her back.

Repositioning herself so that her feet were soon in front she was able to sit up.

"You're…. you're awake?" A quavering voice asked. Mayura slowly turned to see a girl in a dirty school uniform next to her. Looked like she went to Tomoeda High which was nearby. She leaned against the wall on her side, knees up to her chest, hands also tied behind her, light brown hair falling over her face.

"Are you… Are you one of the missing girls?" Mayura asked, really wishing she could rest her head on something. It really hurt.

"I… I guess so. My name is Nezumi. Tategami Nezumi." The girl replied, looking at Mayura with big brown eyes. "Are you… are you here to get me out?"

"Yes!" Mayura sat up bright as ever, pain in her head forgotten. "I'm a detective! Well, actually more like a detective's assistant… but never fear, for I, Daidouji Mayura shall get us out of here!" Mayura would have stood up and posed if she could, but the hands tied behind her back seemed to be stopping her.

"But you're… you're in here with me. He got you too, didn't he? The man?"

"Janitor-san?" Mayura asked, not quite sure. Now that she thought about it, the last thing she remembered was being in the janitor's closet, finding the book bags, and then… then it getting black, and there was a hand around her mouth…

"Janitor-san?" Nezumi repeated, not quite sure of what she heard of.

"Yes… it was the Janitor who was kidnapping all the girls. I found their bags.. your bag, in the Janitor's closet."

The girl's expression lit up. "So they know to come after the janitor now? That he's the one who has us?!"

"Ahh…" Mayura didn't know how to tell the girl she wasn't able to let anyone know before she was captured. No one knew, not even Loki-san. She didn't know how long it had been, but it was possible that by now they were just noticing that she never came home from the prep-school. "They'll find us!" Mayura finally said to reassure the girl. "I know they will!"

Of course they would, Loki was a great detective!

It took Loki a good twenty minutes to walk over to the prep school which was now closed for the night, which made it about nine O'clock. Mayura was now about three hours late from returning home. Her prep course finished at 7.

Loki ignored his stomach growls as he approached the prep school entrance. Not only was he starving, but having trouble sleeping the last couple of nights really took a toll on him too. Anyone seeing him at that moment would not think him the usual, beautiful Scandinavian boy he usually was perceived as, but a scary looking, bags under his eyes, hunched over blonde foreigner walking the streets at night, looking very much like a zombie.

Loki looked into the lobby. No one of course was here this late at night, the school didn't even have a security guard.

Loki then looked down at his son. "Fenrir… can you smell Mayura?'

Fenrir sniffed the ground with his superb nose for a while before responding "Mystery Girl went in a long time ago, but if she came out, it wasn't this way."

Loki looked around for any signs of a video camera, and saw none. "Ecchan… open the door."

"Right, Loki-tama!" Ecchan went in through the door, and popped out the other side. Seconds later the automatic doors flew open with a ding. Loki stepped in, and waited for his son to get Mayura's trail.

"This way Daddy…" Fenrir began to lead them into the building.

Mayura was struggling with the ropes that tied her hands together, trying not to think about the bucket to the side that was apparently supposed to be their bathroom. What inconsiderate kidnappers.

"Was anyone here when you were brought here, Nezumi-chan?" The girl who looked relatively calm up to that point and suddenly looked very frightened. She hid her face into her knees.

"There was a girl here… for a very short time. Soon after they put me in here, the man came and took her away… I…"

Mayura wished she could put a comforting hand on the girl's shoulder but she still hadn't managed to get free of the rope. "What is it Nezumi-chan?"

"I could hear her screaming." The girl responded, very low before breaking into tears. "She was screaming and screaming somewhere not too far off in this place, and then… and then she just… stopped!" She sobbed the last part out, tears now flowing freely across her dirty face.

She suddenly leaned towards Mayura. "Am I next now? Am I next now that they brought you? Is he going to kill me next?!"

"I…" So these weren't just kidnappings. The kidnapper was killing the girls too? Mayura focused away from the sobbing Nezumi. She could have been wrong. There were plenty of reasons for the girl to suddenly… stop screaming.

Mayura was beginning to get a horrible sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. It was so unfamiliar that she didn't know what to call it, but some would recognize it as the beginnings of despair.

Loki was following Fenrir down the hall, this time in the opposite direction from which they were originally going, away from the class. Well at least they knew now she had made it to her class, now the biggest question was where did she go next?

Fenrir suddenly stopped halfway down the hallway, the other half they hadn't been in yet near the lobby entrance.

"Find something Fenrir?"

"The… the scent's gone Daddy? It's… all clean. It's been washed away."

Loki looked down the hall at the many doorways left they had, back the way they had just came, then back to the lobby. Mayura came in through the lobby, but didn't go out, so she obviously went this way. Perhaps they had a back door along this way…

Loki walked down the hall and soon at the end to the side he found an emergency exit. It didn't look like it was wired, so he pushed it open and found himself at the back alley with a dumpster, and nothing else. Fenrir and Ecchan soon joined him, and Fenrir began sniffing around.

"Anything?" He asked the dog.

He looked up and gave his father a sad look before shaking his head.

Loki went back into the building, his hunger and tiredness now long forgotten.

"Ha!" Mayura gave a short little cry and swung her now free hands out in front of her with the rope now hanging down from one of them. She did it!

Nezumi looked at her in shock, and it was several moment while looking at the grinning Mayura who continued to display her hands out like an idiot before she asked "How'd you do that?"

"I told you. I'm a great detective! Well… I'm going to be! For now I'm the beautiful assistant to a great detective, so I'm a great detective in training." Nezumi gave her a blank look. "What kind of great detective in training would I be if I didn't know how to get loose of some common rope bonds?! It's a common skill all great detectives have!"

Nezumi continued to look at Mayura with an expression of disbelief at what she was hearing, while Mayura secretly thanked all the Houdini books and detective t.v. shows she watched as a kid that drilled it into her head that escaping from rope bindings was a must for any detective. Besides, it made her more Mysterious for when the bad guys tied her up and they couldn't figure out how she got loose.

"Heheh…" Mayura laughed, much pleased with herself as she heading over to free Nezumi.

Loki punched the concrete wall in frustration, and instantly regretted it.

"Loki-tama?! Are you ok?"

He sighed as he slunk down, and sat on the floor, babying his now bruised fist. "Yes Ecchan, I'm fine." Fenrir suddenly appeared next to him, and set his head in Loki's lap. Lowly slowly stoked his head, wondering what to do now. They had no clue to go by, no suspects, to trail. Nothing at all. He just hoped that wherever she was, Mayura was alright.

He sat there for unsure of how long, thinking over everything they knew about the case so far, and then about Mayura. She must have found something. It wasn't likely the kidnapper would kidnap two girls so close together with the last three were weeks apart from each other.

He refused to let his mind wonder on the likely hood of a kidnapped victim surviving past a couple weeks. He didn't let Mayura know, but he doubted very much they were just kidnappings. There were no ransom notes, and the girls were never seen again. That made the odds of their still being alive extreme slim. The latest girl was more than likely still alive… but the others… and now Mayura being an unexpected addition to the mix made the kidnapper's actions even more unpredictable.

Slowly his attention was brought to his son licking something off the floor. "What are you eating, Fenrir?"

His son turned his head and gave him a guilty look, perhaps knowing he would disapprove. "Coffee… Daddy. It's…. been here for a while…"

Loki recalled passing the spill early and was about to let his disapproval of his son ingesting such food of the floor known to, when it hit him.

A smile came to Loki as he got up. How could he have not noticed it earlier? He must have been more sleep deprived than he thought to have missed it, but then again it probably wasn't anything. He really shouldn't get his hopes up…

"What is it Daddy? I… I won't eat it anymore if you don't want me too…"

"Don't eat anymore of that Fenrir, it could possibly make you sick. Never eat things off the floor like that…"

"Loki-tama?" Ecchan had noticed the smile.

"Wouldn't you say, Ecchan, that usually he Janitor is the last one to go home in a building such as this? They can't properly do their jobs when people are walking nonstop in the building, which is why they try to usually clean during the hours close to closing time. Less people to make a mess after they clean."

Fenrir watched his father now, assuming this was connected to the missing Mystery Girl.

"And if the Janitor's are the last ones to leave, they usually would make sure everything IS clean, including something as obvious as a coffee spill near the main lobby, that is unless they're a rather lazy janitor or…" He found the Janitor's closet they had passed earlier. "Or unless he was interrupted with something unexpected and couldn't properly finish his job tonight.

He tried to knob, and it was locked. "Ecchan?"

Seconds later it was unlocked, and Loki looked for the light switch. He was met with a small room, four feet by four, full of shelves and various cleaning materials.

"Daddy!" Fenrir wagged his tail as he sniffed at the ground. "Mystery Girl was in here!"

Loki looked around for anything else he could use. So Mayura had made It into the janitor's closet, what did she find…

He examined the shelves and had made it to the bottom self with the bucket's when the sight of leather caught his eye. Leaning over her found a stack of school bags, the top being Mayura's along with three other's, two of which were the names of the missing girls.

"Well, it looks like we should be giving the cleaning man a house call, don't you think?" Loki grinned.

Ecchan brought his attention to an object on the floor which he gently picked up. The spiral design of Mayura's mystery glasses stared back at him. He slipped them into his pocket. "A house call is most appropriate I would think. This man really needs to be told that he does a horrible job of cleaning." Loki smirked. "I'm still hungry too…"

Mayura was trying to ignore Nezumi's sobbing as she studied the pit. She had tried earlier to stop the girl's crying, but the girl continued on even after Mayura had untied her hands. Now the girl just seemed satisfied to curl up and hug herself in fetal position, crying non-stop, claiming they were going to die.

Well Mayura wasn't about to just sit around crying, especially if what Nezumi had told about the girl before her was true.

Mayura rubbed her wrists that were still a bit sore as she looked around her. They would be sore for a while it seemed, the rope had been tied nice and tight, and had bit into her skin. She couldn't tell in this light if she had markings, but didn't really care. She needed to use her mind to find a way out of here, especially since she couldn't depend on anyone finding them.

She had just disappeared. No one knew where she was, especially not Loki-san. It had been a number of hours now, so by now he and Papa would probably be wondering where she disappeared to, but to go from the prep school to the Janitor's home? There had been very little clues up till now, and she wasn't going to just allow her fate to rest on the possibility of they MIGHT get a possibly non-existent clue that was left.

The pit on further examination looked to be about fifteen feet high and looked to be an old well. Thankfully the water either dried out a long time ago, or it had been filled up a ways to the point where the water didn't reach. The floor was dirt, while everything else around them was stone. And way above them was the concrete look of a ceiling with a light bulb.

On the stone walls however that went up a good six feet was a sight that made Mayura's blood stop cold however. Dark brown thin streaks layered over each other, and when Mayura got closer to looking at them, she could see a fragment of a fingernail stuck in the stone covered with the dried, dark brown blood.

It was at that moment Mayura knew she was in serious trouble. There had been a number of people in there before them, people who were so desperate to get out that they tried clawing their way out. And no one had ever found them, or their bodies later on.

The kidnapper kidnapped girls, kept them in this pit, and then did something to them after he was done keeping them in the pit that involved a lot of screaming, and Mayura for once didn't want to think of the possibilities with her imaginative thoughts.

Mayura backed away from the walls, unable to pull her eyes off them as the panic started to take over. She was probably going to die here. Her lip started to tremble but she stopped as the sound of Nezumi reached her again. She couldn't resort to the state Nezumi was in. If she did, she might as well be giving up completely, and what kind of detective would that make her? She had to at least ATTEMPT to get out of there.

The walls were high enough that a single person had no chance, but on occasion there weren't really more than two people in the pit at one time. Perhaps if they worked together…

Mayura Looked over to Nezumi, crying, the girl looked to be somewhat of a good height. Definitely taller than her. Perhaps….

Loki entered the dark shadows of the house and wondered what to expect. It hadn't taken him long to pull up the employee file of one Watanabe Sano, the only janitor in their hire, and get his address. Lucky for Loki he lived no more than a handful of blocks from the building, and even more convenient, he left his door unlocked, not that it would of stopped him if it wasn't.

There weren't any light on in the building from what he could see outside, and inside it was all darkness. Every once in a while there was a window with thick curtains drawn, leaving some light from the moon, but other than that there was no light, leaving one to think no one was home.

Loki already had Latetiven out, with Fenrir not too far behind and Ecchan hovering over his shoulder.

"Daddy…" Fenrir whispered, nose to the ground. "I can smell Mystery Girl."

"Lead us to her then Fenrir."

They were passing a kitchen when Loki was met with the familiar scent of blood. In the darkness he could make out dark stains in the counter, with an amount in the sink. But blood in a kitchen… it could just be animal…

The hackles on fenrir's neck were raised as he gave a low growl. "It's human bloody, Daddy."

Loki's heart skipped a beat at a thought before his son answered the question on his mind.

"No, not Mystery Girl. Her scent trail leads past this."

But still… the kitchen full with the scent of human blood…

Loki pulled at the fridge, and coldy looked at the sight before him, loosing what little appetite he may have had. In all his centuries, he has seen such sights before, but still, seeing the Tupperware containers of red meat, and in the bright lights of a modern day fridge just seemed to add to it the disgust. He guessed it was a bit too much to expect all humans to relinquish the act over so many centuries, but they could of at least felt some shame in putting the eyeballs in a jar that would creep mostly anybody out as they seemed to gaze at you.

Cannibalism seemed to exist in the modern age.

Loki shut the door without a sound, and faced his son. "Lead on, Fenrir."

Mayura clung to the walls as she pulled herself up on Nezumi's shoulders.

"Just a bit higher, Nezumi-chan…" Mayura urged as Nezumi tried to stand up taller. The ledge was still far above Mayura's reach.

"I can't.. get any higher…" The girl grunted.

Mayura looked up and measured the distance. The ledge was still a good foot above her reach, but maybe…

"Nezumi…. I'm going to try jumping, okay? Move out of the way as fast as you can once I jump so you don't get hurt if I fall."

"-kay."

Mayura forced herself forward, off the girls shoulders, and by some miracle just barely grabbed the ledge with one hand, banging against the wall. Quickly before she lost her hold, she grabbed onto the ledge with her other hand, but found she was having problems pulling herself up.

Suddenly from below someone began pushing her feet upward.

"Nezumi…"

"Can you do it Mayura?"

With the extra boost Mayura was able to pull herself out of the pit, and found herself in what looked to be a basement. There were a pair of wooden stairs that led up to a door, and little else on what looked to be a dirt floor. Maybe they weren't in a basement, but instead some sort of cellar.

"Mayura?!" Cried Nezumi. "Mayura… please don't leave me!"

"It's ok Nezumi, I'm still here." She looked down the ledge to reassure the girl and smiled. Far off in a dark corner she thought she saw a ladder. "There's a la-"

Makyura froze at a sound that made her blood stand cold. The crack of the door swinging open grew louder and she looked up to see the silhouette of a man in the doorway.

Loki was walking through the house that turned out to be a rather good sized house for a single story, more so than it looked from the outside. He had already passed two bedrooms, both which were empty. One looked to be a childrens' room, with toys and furniture covered in dust, the other a simple room with a futon that did look to be used recently.

"Dorei?" A voice called from down the darkened hallway. Loki followed it to the entrance to the next room with Fenrir not too far behind. "Oh doooooooooreeeeei, where are you?" There was something very feminine about the voice…

Loki took a step in the room, and found himself in a lavishly decorated chamber. Silks and dark satins hung everywhere with heavy curtains surrounding the open window. The moonlight filtered into the center of a room where a pavilion of sorts was set up full of various cushions, and more silk was hung up around it as a sort of net around it. In the center of it all, sprawled out comfortably and dressed in a simple hanging dress was a woman who watched him with almost glowing eyes.

"…. You're not my dorei." She stated.

Loki stepped forward, pulling back the curtains…

"Daddy…. She's a-

"A dark elf." Loki stated, looking down at the woman with skin almost as dark as ebony, and long flowing hair as light as silver.

The woman smiled up at him, clearly not alarmed. "My, you're the first of Midgard to correctly guess what I am. Who are you?"

Loki coolly watched the woman. She shouldn't be there. "How are you here. The gates to Midgard have been sealed off, only the Aes-"

"Are you one of the Aesir then?" She stood up and studied Loki, stepping out of the netted bedding area. "You're a really pretty one if you are." She tilted her head as she studied him from the moonlight. "Hmm… tall, golden hair… defiantly the most handsome one I've ever seen. Perhaps we can play some, Aesir on Midgard. You could be spared by my kind from the coming massacre if you served me.."

"How are you here?" He repeated, concerned now with only two things now.

"I suppose you'd want to know that, but am surprised your kind hasn't figured it out yet. With the Allfather dead, the barriers have weakened. My kind is already working its way into Midgard, and eventually, on to Asgard we'll go."

She was circling him like a hawk now. "So which one are you?"

Loki narrowed his eyes as she got closer. A dark elf would explain the missing girls in the area. The female elves in particular believed the more they fed off human girl flesh, the younger and more attractive they became. But that aside, a dark elf in Midgard was a grave problem. If there was one, there could be others like this one suggested, which meant they found a way to escape from Svartalfheim.

"Come now, don't be shy." She smiled a rather wicked smile. "I know you're not Baulder… he's dead."

A sad smile came to Loki's lips at that. He thought he was done with all this, but it seemed he was mistaken. Loki glanced out at the moon, it was far from dawn. He guessed he'd have to do this the hard way, without sunlight to aid him.

"Fenrir." He called his son forward, and closed his eyes as he lifted Levathine, and silently went through the spell he needed to break the seal, lips moving but saying nothing. He then brought down the staff with a hard slam on the floor that made the woman jump.

"Fenrir…?" the woman repeated a note of realization in her voice as she backed away from the puppy that was slowly getting larger and more vicious looking. "Then you're…"

"Loki." He confirmed for. "Father of the Wolf who was destined to eat the Allfather… Hold her down Fenrir."

With a snarl the wolf jumped forward in a black streak.

"Let me go!" Mayura yelled, kicking at the man as he continued to tie her hands in front of her.

"Quiet. You're in enough trouble as it is, escaping from there. If you were smart and wanting to live longer you would of stayed in there and kept meek."

The man was pulling hard on the rope around her wrists, so tight that with another tug Mayura cried out.

"Don't worry little one, it won't hurt much longer. We WERE going to keep you down there for a number of days till we were done with the other girl, but now you're proving more trouble than you're worth. Luckily however, you're pretty enough for the mistress, and she can do without fresh meat for a couple of weeks. We'll just keep you in a fresh Tupperware container, eh?"

Mayura's eyes grew wide. "W… what?!" She was confused by what the man just said, but she got the meat part of it, and then putting her in a Tupperware. Were they going to eat her?

"Mayura! Mayura!" Nezumi called from down in the pit, unable to see what was going on, but hearing bits and pieces. He already knew she was no longer tied up, but seemed unconcerned with it. From the scratches on the walls, some of the other girls had broken their bonds to no avail.

"You hush down there before you make me come down there and gag you! SHE is already fed up enough with your crying."

"Don't give up Nezumi! No matter what, don't give up!" Mayura called down to her as the man began to drag Mayura to the stairs.

Mayura's head suddenly was smacked to the side with a painful force that left her seeing black, then slowly little shots of light.

"You didn't have to do that." She saw the man as he shook the hand he just backhanded her with through eyes now welling up. It had hurt, badly. She had never been hit like that in all her life.

Above them somewhere there was a suddenly scream, followed by a loud growling that sounded to of come from some sort of dog. The man leading her up the stairs paused for a second, looked back at her, then back above him. Suddenly Mayura was falling back to the floor at the man ran up the stairs, slammed the door behind him, which was followed by a loud, defining click of the lock.

Mayura didn't know what was going on upstairs, but she did know she was getting very scared of the situation, and ran up the stairs to try the door anyway. Locked.

She didn't know what she could do now. There was nothing to break the door down with.

From the pit she could hear the all too familiar sobs of Nezumi, and she didn't know what to do.

Loki lifted a tired hand to stoke Fenrir, now next to him in the form of a large wolf, and watched as the dark elf burned. Luckily the fire seemed to work instantly on her, and he didn't have to sit through the screams anymore.

He slunk down to the ground, and rested against Fenrir. He was exhausted now. Breaking Fenrir's seal, and calling upon enough fire to kill the elf had taken much out of him. He wasn't as strong in magic as he once was, and that brought a small, amused smile to his lips. This would have been nothing if he had been at his previous strength.

"Mistress!" The janitor cried, running into the room, who stopped in his tracks at seeing Fenrir. Fenrir growled, but Loki gave him a pat keeping him back.

"Your mistress is dead."

"… YOU…"

"Yes, I did it." Loki slowly got up and faced the man. "Humans should know better than to give themselves over to dark creatures. Serving them takes what makes you human right out of you."

"You didn't have to kill her!"

"I did. Where's the girl you took tonight?" Fenrir growled next to him.

The man was breaking into tears before the now dying flames, broken. The dark elf's form was decomposed to just a pile of ashes now.

He wasn't going anywhere, but it also seemed like he wasn't going to be talking anymore either. Loki told Fenrir to stay and watch him just to be sure, before heading out the room to finish his search. Eccchan followed Loki out.

Mayura had managed to get free of the rope again, and had gotten the ladder down to Nezumi who was now climbing out when the door opened again. Both her and Nezumi looked fearfully back at the door.

"Mayura?"

"… Loki-san?" Mayura asked, not quite believing what she was hearing.

He came down the stairs and looked around at the situation, a very unpleasant look on his face when he looked down into the pit. He face softened however when he looked at her, and slowly he lifted a hand to the bruise she had no doubt was now forming on her face.

"Loki-" She cried, no longer able to hold back the tears that had been building up. She ran forward, and clung to him, not caring she was getting his shirt wet, or even that he might not like it. Soon she felt his arms wrap around her, comforting her. All fear and stress she had was gone now. It was going to be okay. Everything was always okay when Loki was with her. It was always ok ay when she was with him.

"You're an idiot." Loki commented as he squeezed her tighter. "You know that, right?"

Niiyama looked over the scene in front of him. Daidouji's daughter, a girl he hadn't even known was missing, was safely sitting next to the foreign young man he was told was the person who had found the girls. Mayura was animatedly telling one of the officers what happened, while the young man was focused on the small black dog in his lap.

Niiyama assumed this was the foreigner Misao had told him so much about, hiring out his daughter as an assistant. Was she investigating the case when she was kidnapped, or was she just going to classes at the prep school? Either way, he was a bit disappointed the blonde foreigner before him had solved the case and not him. Not that he should feel jealousy, he was actually relieved the perpetrator was found. After seeing the house, they realized the case was worse than they just imagined not just some odd kidnapping case which was originally thought to be a runaway case. He wasn't looking forward to getting the remains in the kitchen identified, but it looked like only one, Nezumi, of the three missing girls was alive, not counting Mayura Daidouji. With a heavy sigh, he went back to work. Two girls were alive out of four.

"Yasu!"

His young assistant ran up to him, notebook in hand.

"Find anything else?"

"So far only that he kept the girls a deep hole in the basement…. It's not a pretty sight down there… and there's the ashes of something in a bed room. Not sure what happened in the room yet, none of the girls know about it, but it seemed someone was staying in there."

"Go ahead and dust the place."

The foreigner was watching him, and when he noticed Niiyama looking at him, he gave him a smile back. There was something familiar about him…. But what he couldn't tell. Maybe it'd come back to him later. For now, he wondered if Misao would be changing his opinion of his unwelcomed guest.

Mayura vigourusly scrubbed her hair more, all to eager to get the filth of the pit out of her hair. It was almost hard for her to believe what she just went through. A real case, and not just any case, but a serial killer case, one where she almost became a victim.

She slowly sank into the bubbles, deep in thought. If it weren't for Loki-san, she might have been dead by now. All because she didn't listen to him about suspicious people. But then again, all she was doing was looking at the janitor's closet when she was passing by and caught sight of the bag. She wasn't going to drag Loki there without knowing for sure what it was. Surely that couldn't be held against her?

Loki….

Her thoughts went back to the memory of his arms around her, comforting her. His arms had felt so good, so safe.

She grinned as she rinsed her hair out again. He had found her, on what she wasn't sure of yet, but she was sure it was due to his great detective skills. Serial killers and mystery monsters beware, Loki-san would come sleuth them out with the help of his beautiful assistant!

Sorry this was a couple days late. Family stuff. Anyway, there we have another major part of the plot revealed. Sorry it took like… 8 chapters to get to it. heh, I take a while to get going. I'll also admit I've taken some liberties with the dark elves. The only descriptions I could find of them were nasty ogre things, and well… I think I'm liable to take some artistic license with this fanfiction since Kinoshita-sama wasn't exactly accurate to the T with Matantei Loki. Think of the Dark Elves in this like the Drow of D+D (and there Mischa shows some of her geeky roots) Pretty things with dark skin and silvery hair, and… EVIL.