As they waited for the elevator, Frank said quietly, “Five of these, and I still can’t wrap my brain around it. Carving off their faces while they’re alive…”
“What the fuck does he do with them?” Rick murmured, more to himself than to Frank.
“Who the hell knows?” Frank paused, thinking. “Trophy? Souvenirs? Maybe he gets off on his handiwork. Ever heard of a death mask?”
Rick grunted. “I was married to one.”
Frank shot him a look—half sympathy, half exasperation—then let it go. “Takes a special kind of sick, whatever it is.”
“Yeah.” Rick’s tone was flat, grim. “And it’s not enough to kill them. That symbol, the way he leaves the bodies… He wants the attention. Wants us to see his work.”
Frank straightened his hat. “Then let’s make sure the next audience he gets is from a jury.”
The elevator doors slid open with a mechanical sigh. Rick stepped inside, but his thoughts had already drifted elsewhere: along corridors of concrete and steel, beyond locked doors and iron bars, to the boy waiting in a cell two floors above. Beautiful and damaged. Guilty or innocent. An enigma cloaked in leather and glitter, with eyes that saw too much and lips that made lies taste like salvation.
A suspect. That’s all he was. Just another piece of the puzzle.
{ II }
Sunday, October 22
Chapter Seven
(3:35 a.m.)
Sleep, when it came, was thin and splintered, not rest but surrender. The cot was cold and hard beneath him, and the walls breathed like the inside of a tomb. Somewhere in the entrails of the Central Station, a man coughed, a phone rang, distant chains rattled.
Ash drifted. And in drifting, he fell.
He was back in the alley, lighter than air, heavier than dread. The blood hadn’t dried yet. It gleamed wet under an antique streetlamp, black and thick as spilled ink, Jimmy’s body crumpled like broken scaffolding beside it. The air reeked of copper and dirt and something older than time. The symbol on the wall pulsed.
Painted in arterial red, it curved and coiled with cruel geometry, no symmetry, no center. The tongue of ash and bone, of flame trapped in stone. He knew it. Not from any books he’d ever read. Frombefore. The glyph stared back at him, an eye open now, seeing him. Recognizing him. Not alive. Not dead. Something thatwaited.
The dream cracked.
Ash jerked awake in the cell, pulse drumming in his throat. The symbol was still etched in his mind, an afterimage burned too deep. What was it trying to show him? A memory? A warning? The word curled at the edge of his awareness even now, half-formed—too ancient to pronounce, too familiar to forget. He didn’t understand it. But something inside him did.
And that frightened him.
A soft thud of boots came closer from the hallway. When the door clanged open, Ash didn’t even need to turn his head. The familiar stink of need, more ripe now, filled the cell. Officer Hayes stepped inside without a word, his shadow pooling ahead of him like spilled oil. He closed the door behind him. No tray this time, no pretense. Just a flicker of something cruder behind his stare: hunger unmasked.
“Camera’s off,” he said, voice calm. “I got my buddy to cut the feed. The station is almost empty, anyway. So you can scream all you want, sweetheart. No one’s coming.”
Ash blinked slowly from the cot, pushing himself up. He let his lips part, his body stiffen, just enough to readfearin the language of flesh. But inside, he smiled. “Please don’t,” he whispered, all panic and wide-eyed innocence.
Hayes’s mouth twitched into something crooked. “Oh, come on, now. Don’t be shy.” He crossed the cell in two strides, grabbed Ash by the neck, and pushed him into the thin mattress.
Ash let himself be overpowered, let the man yank his jumpsuit down his hips, peeling it lower as rough hands took what hesitation couldn’t slow. He struggled—not too hard—his bare ass catching the chill of the air, his breath coming out in small, quiet gasps that could easily pass for terror.
The man climbed on top of him, his weight pinning Ash down, a palm flattening between his shoulder blades. He fumbled with his zipper, pulling his erection out without taking his pants off, then bent to whisper in his ear. “The more you fight it, the worse I’ll make it.”
Ash trembled, but not with dread. Within him, a creeping exhalation stirred.
Hayes’s hands were all over him now, pawing, prying, parting. Cruel fingers bruised soft skin, spreading Ash’s cheeks. When the officer spat and used his own filth for lubrication, Ash almost laughed aloud. He still didn’t realize who was calling theshots. “Jesus, your hole’s as slick as a pussy,” Hayes grunted, aiming his cock at Ash’s entrance. “What a dirty slut you are.”
Then came the breach. Ash’s back arched—not from pain, but from the rush. The moment the copper pushed inside him, a spark lit behind his lids. Power crackled below his skin, quiet but sharp, a vein of fire waking in stone. His limbs grew warm. His strength returned. His senses bloomed.
Hedrankhim. Not with mouth or hands or eyes, but with every cell of his being.
