The Figure on The Throne

As Maria headed towards the odd throne she passed by more clusters of tables, chairs and beds. All of them sit empty right now and the area in front of the throne seems to be some kind of dance floor.

In the half light of this place Maria struggled to make out the figure that was lounging on the throne. It seemed to be a woman who was wearing some kind of long flowing gown. She looked like she was asleep on the throne, her arms hanging limply over the rests and her legs stretched out in front of her.

Something about this woman made Maria wan to get closer to her. The senses that had allowed her to not only close cases for the past five years but, and this is crucial, survive the closing of those cases. Told her that this woman was the key to whatever was going on here.

When she was halfway across the dance floor the woman's eyes or rather her eye, flicked open and focused on Maria. She froze in her tracks, like a deer she stared into that single eye and the cold feeling in her gut twisted into something even worse.

The eye that looked out at her from the shadows that hid the woman's face was not human. It took Maria a second to place what the eye was. It was the eye of a wolf, a crooked black circle surrounded by yellowish white.

The woman leaned forward out of the shadows and Maria learnt two important lesson. The first was that the woman only had one eye, the ugly scar that twisted across the left side of her face provided a reason for the loss. The second was that what she had taken for a dress was in fact the woman's hair and she was in fact completely nude.

The woman stood up and Maria sized her up. She was inhumanly pale, the porcelain like colour of her skin contrasting against the red of her hair that hung in wavy length over her breasts. She was shorter than Maria, although Maria had no doubt that what she was seeing right now would be no relation to what was really there.

Something about the woman commanded attention, her hourglass like figure and soft curves made even Maria take a moment to enjoy her. Adding on top of that the question of just what she actually was and it was all too easy for Maria to lose track of her surroundings. For her to only notice the movement behind her in time to turn her head into the blow.

Pain bloomed in her temple as the floor rushed up to meet her. Her last thought before darkness enveloped her was.

30 fucking minutes!