"Death be not proud, though some have called thee,
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so,
For those, whom thou thinkest thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

John Donne

"So, Grace, how long are you going to be in New Orleans this time?" Detective Lieutenant Franklin Mosely asked his dinner companion. She was looking well, he noted, relaxed and happy. Though his initial infatuation had long since faded, especially since he had discovered how things stood between her and his old friend Gabriel, the lieutenant was glad to count Grace Nakimura as one of his friends.

"Probably a couple of weeks," she told him, smiling easily. "I'm just here to check on things at the bookstore and talk to my publisher. Gabriel doesn't have any cases right now, so he's sitting pretty at Schloss Ritter, working on his next book."

"Yeah, so you're both famous writers now. Maybe I should ask for an autograph", Mosely quipped.

Grace laughed openly. "I'm not quite in Gabriel's league, Frank. One book on the occult doesn't qualify me as a famous author!"

"It's doing well, though, right?"

"Reasonably. It's not best seller material, more of a scholar's view of the paranormal. My publisher tells me they get lots of orders from university libraries."

A persistent beeping interrupted them. Mosely exclaimed in annoyance and glanced at his pager. "Sorry, gotta call the station," he excused himself, standing up and walking out to the lobby. He was back in a few minutes, looking worried and apologetic at the same time.

"I've got to get back, Grace. I'm sorry about dinner."

"Something wrong?"

"Yeah, new case. They've found a couple of bodies in an alley in the French Quarter."

Grace raised an eyebrow. "And they have to interrupt your dinner to call you in, when you're off duty? Is that normal."

"This doesn't sound like 'normal', Grace. These two bodies they had their heads chopped off."

A hot cup of coffee and a newspaper: the perfect way to start a new day. Grace remembered, with some amusement, how she used to be the one to brew the coffee at St.George's Rare Books, when Gabriel used to live in the cramped back room. Now, of course, the shop had been extensively renovated, and the first floor had been converted into a spacious two bedroom apartment. A store manager and two assistants kept the thriving bookstore business going, and the only coffee Grace had to make was for herself. She could already hear people moving around downstairs, which meant the store was open for business.

Her mood abruptly sobered when she turned to the second page in the newspaper. A stark photograph was accompanied by a blaring headline: 'Headless bodies found in alley.' Grace took in the details in the picture, startled at the bizarre signs of violence all around the alley. There was garbage everywhere, as several trash cans seemed to have been kicked over and their contents strewn all over the scene. The chalk outlines where the bodies had lain were barely distinguishable. She read quickly through the article, which speculated that local gangs may have been behind the killings. Lieutenant Mosely, who was superintending the investigation, had refused to comment. The reporter noted that the crime scene looked like 'a tornado had hit it.' The lone lamp post had shorted out, and the patrons of an all night deli across the road had said they had seen lightning flickering in the alley the previous evening.

Grace put down the paper with an uneasy feeling that this was not a run of the mill murder. And it had taken place a bare two blocks away from the store. Gripped by an irresistible urge to find out more, she headed out to the police station to meet Mosely.

"I was going to call you anayway, Grace," a weary looking Mosely told her on her arrival. "There something very strange going on here." He gestured at two plastic bagged objects on the table.

Grace stared at the two long, gleaming, lethal looking, swords. The nearer one took her attention straight away, because she knew what it was: unless appearances lied, it was a genuine antique katana, a Japanese warrior blade. By the blue highlights in the steel, and the exquisitely worked hilt, she knew it must be very valuable. While her training in the martial arts had not included knowledge of edged weapons, she knew her sensei owned such a blade, worn only on the most ceremonial occasions. Despite the fact that her teacher's blade was a family heirloom, passed down from generation to generation, it was not nearly as fine as the one that rested on the table now.

The second blade was heavier, a two edged broadsword with a plain black hilt. Grace shuddered, feeling slightly sick at the thought of the two decapitated bodies that had been found. The very thought of using weapons like these in combat, to kill another human being in such a barbaric fashion...!

"Forensics says that this one", he pointed at the katana, "was used on one of the murder victims. Funny thing is, the second guy: he wasn't killed by either of these. The weapon used had a serrated edge," he continued, grimacing. "They found prints on the hilts match up with the victims."

"What do you make of it?" Grace asked.

"Looks to me like the these two guys had a showdown, one of them killed the other, and then somebody else killed the second guy. Sh.t, what a mess,' he sighed.

"Any idea who these guys were?"

"Yeah, they were both carrying ids. William Grant, 33, car mechanic. And Ian MacGregor, 35, antique dealer. He's the one with the Japanese sword. They were both locals, lived here in New Orleans." He stopped and rubbed his eyes tiredly. "I don't believe this. I've got two dead guys, who'd been fighting with great swords, and a third perp running around somewhere with another f...king pigsticker, with a *serrated edge*, no less!"

"That's not all that's bothering you, is it?" she asked, shrewdly.

"As if I didn't have enough to worry about. Yeah, the reason I was going to call you. I mean, you know about this 'paranormal' stuff, right? You wrote a book about it. And you've worked with Gabe on those weird cases in Europe."

Grace looked narrowly at him. "What makes you think there's something paranormal involved here?"

He hesitated. "Look, this is strictly off the record, OK? The Chief wants to keep really quiet about this. So nobody knows I'm talking to you."

"Fine," Grace agreed readily, now extremely intrigued.

He passed across some photographs. She frowned at them. There were two dark, shiny, man-shaped outlines on the dirty ground, as if the shapes of two headless bodies had been burned into the earth.

"See those? You know what that is? That's glass, Grace. The sand where those bodies were lying, it melted into glass! But there wasn't even a mark on the bodies, except where, you know," he made a slicing motion across his own throat. "And look at those garbage cans: they exploded. We even found a couple of melted Coke cans. Jeez."

"What about those people in the Deli? They did say they saw lightning over there," she reminded him.

"Yeah, right. Lightning that strikes out of a clear sky, explodes a couple of garbage cans, shorts out a lamp post, and doesn't even singe a couple of human bodies; but it does melt the ground beneath the bodies, somehow. What's wrong with this picture?" he asked sarcastically.

Before she could answer, there was a knock on the door. A young uniformed officer peeked into the office. "Uh, Lieutenant? There's someone here to claim Ian Macgregor's body. Says he's his next of kin. Sarge said you might want to talk to him?'

"Yeah, I'll be right out."

Grace followed Mosely out into the waiting area. A tall blond man in a dark trenchcoat was waiting there. He turned to face the Lieutenant, and Grace caught her breath at the sight of the saddest eyes she had ever seen in a human face.

"I'm Lieutenant Mosely. You're here for Ian MacGregor?"

"Yes. My name is McLeod. Connor McLeod."