The Hungry Child

This is a flash fiction failure; it runs just over a thousand words. The prompt is #80 from 101 Paranormal Romance Story Starters, and it very much spoils my ending :-(. If you choose to write to this prompt, please put a link in my comments so I can see what you've done.

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Your hero sees a little girl drain the blood of a homeless person and leave the body in an alley. What happens next?

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The Hungry Child

She looked six or eight, but was probably older. Blond, emaciated, clad in filthy rags, she came out of the alley between a strip club and a smoke shop which was adorned with a life-sized neon rabbit that was puffing on a pipe. Granted, it was the middle of the day and the club hadn't opened yet, but the girl still had no business in that area. Hoyt took a few quick steps and caught up to her.

"Hi," he said.

"I don't blow no kisses," she growled.

"That's good," Hoyt said.

It was, although it was disturbing enough that a child of this age knew the street term for oral sex.

"Leave me alone," she told him, and started to walk away.

"I can't," said Hoyt.

"You'll wish you had," she said over her shoulder.

That was surprising. Hoyt sometimes got responses like that from older children, but never before from the one of the little ones. He followed her down the sidewalk.

"Do you know what day it is?" Hoyt asked.

She stopped and turned back toward him.

"Tuesday the twelfth of November. It's ten AM, and I ain't got time for this."

"Do you know where kids are supposed to be on a Tuesday morning?"

"What's it to you?"

"I'm a truant officer," he said, "and you ought to be in school. What's your name? Who takes care of you?"

"Like I said, what's it to you?"

She just did not give up.

"Stay there," Hoyt said.

The girl shrugged, put her hands in her pockets and watched as Hoyt stepped away and fished out his cell phone.

"Hoyt Beaudry," he said to the Children's Services officer. "I work attendance violation. I have a child, sevenish, probably female, appears to be living rough in the red light district. No caregiver in evidence, and she's not answering questions. Right, I'll wait for you."

"Bad plan," said the child.

"That's enough of that," said Hoyt. "Trust me, you'll be way better off where they take you."

"I'm still hungry," she said.

Hoyt looked around for any place that might sell food, but there weren't even any street vendors.

"We'll get you something when Children's Services gets here," he said.

The girl started to reply, but a police car rolled around the corner and stopped beside them, and the window rolled down a couple of inches, revealing blue eyes and blond hair sleeked back into a tight bun.

"Beaudry?" asked the officer.

"Yeah, what can I do for you?"

"We're supposed to investigate the possible abuse of the minor child."

"You got here quick."

"Had a complaint about screams around the corner. Is that the kid?"

"Yeah, but she's not talking."

Both officers got out of the car. The partner was a hulking black man with a scar ripped down one cheek, so muscular that he looked like he might burst out of his immaculately pressed police uniform at any time. He grinned at Hoyt, exhibiting a gold upper left incisor.

"I don't fit the stereotype, do I?" he asked in a cultured accent.

"Just worried how the little one will react," Hoyt said.

"Why don't we let Trace talk to her, then? Did you see where the kid came from?"

Hoyt pointed and said, "That alley."

The man nodded and trotted toward the alley's mouth. His partner was hunkered down next to the girl.

"Where do you live?" the woman asked.

"Around."

"And who takes care of you?"

The girl never got the chance to refuse to answer. The male officer exploded from the alley's mouth.

"Tracey!" he called. "We've got a dead guy in here!"

His partner ran toward him. Hoyt really wasn't surprised. Homeless people did freeze to death from time to time, or simply die from any of a number of causes.

Then he was surprised. The child rushed past him, racing toward the police. Hoyt chased her, but it was the male officer who caught her up in his arms.

"No, no, no," he said. "You don't want to see what's down there."

Hoyt caught up and looked down the alley, then wished he hadn't. The dead man hadn't frozen to death. He had been shredded from his chin halfway down his chest, and his long beard was matted in the clotting blood. Hoyt closed his eyes, then opened them and turned to the officer.

"Give me the kid," he said. "She doesn't need to be around that."

"She's a material witness," said the man. "We're going to have to take her to the station for a while."

Hoyt's day was becoming desperately complicated.

"Why don't you take her in, Joe?" said the woman. "I'll wait for CSU and the detectives."

"Trying to look good for promotion? Don't get ahead of yourself. You don't even know that you passed the sergeant's exam yet."

"You want to stand on the hard sidewalk in the cold wind and wait...?"

"I'm gone, I'm gone. I'll see you at the precinct. You'll probably have made detective by then."

As the male officer carried the child toward the police car, his partner looked at Hoyt and blinked.

"I'll hang around for a few minutes," he told her. "It looks like you have enough to do without explaining to Children's Services what became of the little girl they were supposed to pick up."

"Okay, great," she said. "Can you just, like, keep people out of the alley while I walk down and make sure there's no way in or out the other...."

She was interrupted by the blare of a horn. It went on, and on, and on. She shook her head and walked toward it, following in her partner's footsteps, but after a yard or so she started to run.

The horn belonged to the police car. Her partner was slumped over the steering wheel. Hoyt ran after her, worried for the child. When he got to the car, there was no sign of the kid. The male officer didn't move as his partner opened the door. When she grasped his shoulder and leaned him back, his head lolled to one side, exposing the bloody tatters that had been his throat.

Hoyt stepped back, and noticed that child-sized footprints led away up the sidewalk--bloody footprints.

The blond woman stood up and looked at him.

"She told me she was hungry," he said.