A Face in the Crowd

Sometimes, someone uses the cover of the crowd to kill another person.
Sometimes, a simple shove can lead to a squabble and a brawl.
Sometimes, places that are often crowded, such as stadiums, become arenas for the fights.
And sometimes, a place that is crowded by the day, becomes a crime scene by night.
In all of those cases, strong negative concepts imprint themself in the areas usually filled with hundreds of people. The Crowd, Spirits representing those masses of humans, living there, start to feed on those concepts. And a small part of them changes. One of the results of those changes is a Face in the Crowd.

Appearance

It is very hard to spot one of the Faces in the Crowd. Being surrounded by hundreds of faceless figures doesn't help to accomplish this task. A presence of one of them is usually signaled by seeing a red blur moving in the corner of the eye. Faces look almost completely identical to the Crowd they are living in. The only difference between them and what they once were is that the figures in the Crowd are faceless, while the heads of the Stabbers look like they had a red face painted on them.

A knife in the back

Once one enters the Crowd inhabited by the Face, it begins to hunt them. As they are beings born from violence, they tend to revel in it and prolong it. Faces in the Crowd start to circle their prey, barely showing in their peripheral vision. If the quarry decides to leave the Crowd they will try to catch them and pull them back. Usually, they do this once or twice to enhance the fear of their prey. The next time, however, they stab them in the back.
If there is more than one possible quarry, Faces kill them one by one, leaving the most scared one for last.

The first part of the (short) story can be found here: Spirit: The Crowd.
The bandits passed Professor Kostek in the Crowd without noticing him. That put him in a hard spot. He couldn't go forward, because it would increase the chance of them finding him. And he couldn't go back, because of a predatory Spirit that was still being there, waiting for another prey. While he was thinking what to do, one of the bandits gasped and disappeared in the sea of Crowd.
Then another one did.
And another one.
"Crap," he thought to himself. "Another one?"
And then he saw it in the corner of his eye. A red smiling blur. A face in the Crowd. It could be worse. He pulled out his detector of spirit waves. As soon as he activated it, the device lighted up with hundreds of dots surrounding him. But only one of them was constantly moving. Then, it started closing in. Professor prepared himself. The knife went for his back, but he moved sideways, caught the "hand" of the Spirit and using its own momentum, he threw it out of the Crowd. The Spirit screamed and disappeared once it left the faceless mass.
Kostek smoothed out his clothes and went forward through the Crowd.

Genetic Ancestor(s)

• Spirit: The Crowd

Origin/Ancestry

Humans, crime

Other names:
Face, Red Face, Knife, Stabber
Taboo:
No matter what happens, Stabbers cannot leave the Crowds they hide themselves in. Pushing one of them outside of the "body" of the Crowd breaks their manifestation, making the place safe until it manages to gather enough strength. Doing so to already weakened individuals can kill them altogether.
Reproduction:
Spirits cannot reproduce.
Social structure:
Under the right conditions, only one of them shows up in the pack. If a place is exceptionally tied to negative emotions (frequent fights, a mass murder), up to 5 of them can show up in a single crowd, each with their own territory.