Anyway, just a note. While I do appreciate the heads up about my little typos and grammatical errors, understand I read these things several times and still don't always catch everything. I put a lot of work in because I know how much it bothers me when people have stories riddled with bad grammar and little errors. It takes half the fun out of reading the story. If it really, really, really bothers you to see it there, go ahead and say so but if not, I usually reread these, find the errors myself and fix them eventually. You have to admit, I'm better about my grammar and stuff than a lot of other people, ;) Anyway, back to the good stuff.

The darkness seemed almost palpable on that starless night at two o'clock in the morning. Of course, starless nights were no uncommon thing in Gotham, nor was seething darkness, the smog accounting for both seeming anomalies, but this night, there was not a trace of that familiar heavy presence. The air was clear, cold and crisp, heralding the coming of winter as the autumn slowly receded, to some it seemed, almost begrudgingly.

Dead leaves rolled across the street, were crunched under the feet of boisterous children romping in the park and floated on flurries of wind like ghosts through the darkness. They caused a small amount of panic to one Juan Santicruz as he cut his way swiftly across manicured lawns. In his tortured mind, each leaf seemed to mark the presence of some restless spirit lusting for his blood. This was hardly a pleasant thought and he did his best to avoid entertaining it.

The package in Juan carried was beginning to weigh quite a bit in his arms but he could neither drop it nor even put it down for a mere instant. Juan had to hurry.

He started at the raucous barking of a large dog that filled the night with the news of his presence. Picking up the pace, Juan broke into a loose jog and slid between two of the moderately sized houses, catching his breath. Silent as a specter, he wiggled through a few broken fence boards, ripping his coat on a nail protruding from the wood, and darted up the field behind the houses, the long thorn grasses clawing at his legs.

Finally, he reached the old farmhouse, blight on the view from the little neighborhood below. Many a contractor had tried to get his hands on this land and take a crack at tearing the farmhouse down, but always something had gotten in the way and the land remained, wild and recalcitrant as a stopping point for every sprawling housing development.

Juan climbed the grassy knoll and paused for a moment before the farmhouse, which seemed to swallow the light from the suburbs behind him. It was a convoluted building, old and decrepit like an animal that needed to be put out of its misery. Juan shivered and shoved the old door aside. It creaked and groaned, shuddering pathetically on it's hinges, and slowly swung inwards.

Juan minded his feet as he picked his way across loose floorboards and scattered wooden furniture towards a room at the very back of the building where a tiny candle burned. The man hunched over the papers heard Juan as soon as he entered, but didn't heed his presence. He had more important things to attend to.

"I…I got it sir", Juan stammered, trembling in the doorway.

"Good boy", the purring voice answered, "Put it here on the table next to me."

"Yes sir", Juan agreed. Moving foreward, he placed the box on the table and stepped back, shaking with cold and fear. The mysterious man at the table smiled and added something to his notes. The sound of the pen scrawling across the paper seemed deafening to Juan and he shifted uncomfortably for almost ten minutes in the flickering candlelight before speaking softly.

"My I…may I go sir?" The man looming over the papers chuckled, though it was in no way a pleasant sound.

"You are permitted to leave. For now, you are done. I may seek to have you in my employ later. See to it that you are available." The silky voice made it seem to Juan that this was more a threat than a request and, anxious to be off and away from this strange man, he slunk back out through the door and was swallowed up by the night.

The man in the room chuckled softly to himself, lips upturned in a sinister smile. The pieces were falling into place. Everything would be well soon.