The officer groaned above him, voice slurring into something animal. His rhythm faltered, picked up, stumbled again. Each thrust emptied him further, pulled something essential from the pit of him. Ash didn’t need to see his face to know it was slack with pleasure, painted in confusion.
“What the fuck?” Hayes panted. “It’s—it’s like—a velvet hand—massaging my cock—oh God—oh God—it’s swallowing me in—!”
Ash shifted beneath him, lifting his hips in invitation, in command. The false fear melted. His voice came low and gleaming, every syllable dipped in dark honey. “Go faster. Harder. Don’t hold back.”
He clenched around him, deliberate and measured, and the cop gasped like he was drowning, a fly trapped in molasses. Ash arched again, feeding, devouring, savoring. Life surged into his marrow, sweet and thick. His beauty brightened, unholy and terrifying in the harsh yellow light.
The officer jerked and shuddered, pumping his seed inside Ash, his climax stolen from him like a secret ripped free. He collapsed forward with a hoarse cry, all weight and no strength.
Ash lay still underneath him for a moment, triumphant, glowing. Then he pushed the man away, letting him fall onto the floor. He rose and pulled his jumpsuit up, watching the officer catch his breath, eyes glazed, mouth parted, face drained ofcolor. There was a strand of gray at his temple that wasn’t there before. “Get up,” he ordered.
Officer Hayes staggered to his feet, nearly falling, tucking his limp dick away with trembling hands. “I…” he stuttered, disoriented.
“I know,” Ash said, smiling. “You never felt this way. You want to do it again. You’ll do anything to have me.”
“Yes,” Hayes muttered. “Anything.”
“Well, Officer,” Ash drawled, “you can start by fetching me some real food. I don’t care for your prison rations very much. I’m in the mood for… pizza. Maybe a beer, too.” When the man didn’t move, rubbing his face in confusion, Ash stepped closer. “Now.”
The officer fled without another word, the door slamming shut behind him.
Alone again, Ash reclined onto the cot, arms folded behind his head. His radiance returned, subtle but unmistakable, a kind of diabolical grace. His body sang. Every nerve was tuned, every instinct reborn.
He was back—charged and waiting.
Chapter Eight
(9:24 p.m.)
The rain hadn’t let up since the afternoon. It came in steady sheets, then staccato bursts, tapping against the windows of Rick’s office like skeletal fingers. The city was always wet, always bruised by clouds and shadows, but tonight it felt drowned, as if the sky was trying to baptize it.
The Spire Division’s headquarters buzzed with movement and chatter like static on an old radio, a constant white noise that made everything feel suspended in amber—time slowed, nerves frayed. The overhead bulbs poured out their flat, unforgiving glare, giving the bullpen a jaundiced pallor. Two empty pizza boxes curled open on a table by the water cooler, crusts congealing in grease. Somewhere, a vending machine groaned and coughed up a soda no one had asked for.
Rick had spent the whole damn day shaking the truth out of Eclipse staffers, he and Frank tag-teaming interviews in a back room that stank of sweat and old nerves. One worker after another filed through, each more jittery than the last, their stories vague, overlapping, half-soaked in glitter and cheap vodka. They tried to stitch it all together into something coherent, something that pointed somewhere.
It was a waste of time. Everyone clammed up the second the cameras went off. Some were spooked, some just bored, but nobody saw a thing—at least nothing they were willing to talk about. And the latest victim still had no name, no ID, no matches in the system; just a faceless John Doe adding to the body count.
Now he stood before the crime board with arms crossed and his shirt sleeves rolled, smoke curling from the cigarette tuckedbetween his lips. His eyes were tracing the same loops they’d been dragging for weeks. Five victims. Five photos, each clipped under harsh yellow pins. Their bodies were dumped miles apart, but the method, the damage, the silence surrounding them were identical. Threaded red twine spidered between tacks and notecards and blurry surveillance stills. It was a map of debris; a puzzle that refused to speak.
Frustrated, Rick crushed the butt into a chipped tray and strode out into the bullpen, hands on hips. At her desk near the rear windows, Kitty Bennett, the department’s resident whiz at anything with a power button, leaned into the glow of her monitor. Soft platinum curls framed her mid-twenties face in sculpted waves, the style equal parts glamorous and saucy. A fitted sweater hugged her petite frame in beige cashmere. She wore lipstick too red for the hour and oversized cat-eye glasses that reflected the screen.
“Anything on that damn symbol?” Rick asked, scratching his chin as he approached. He realized he hadn’t shaved in over a week.
Kitty didn’t look up. “You try decoding hand-written eldritch graffiti for sixteen hours and see if your brain doesn’t turn into goo.” Her voice was velvet embroidered with sarcasm. “I’ve got some Enochian theorists in a flame war with a Theban Alphabet subreddit, and two occult historians locked in a debate over whether the mark is part of a lost 19th-century lodge cipher. It’s a circus.”
Rick leaned on the edge of her desk, watching the swirl of data and cryptic images flit across her screen. “So, nothing concrete.”
“Not unless you count ‘esoteric jibber-jabber’ as concrete.” She finally glanced up, pushing her glasses up her nose with a finger tipped in plum polish. “Honestly, Rick, if this stuff’s legit, it’s old. Obscure. Pre-internet, or so warped it doesn’t register.”
Frank appeared beside him, coffee in hand, tie loosened. “Give her a break, Rick. She’s doing what she can.”
“She always does.” Rick gave Kitty a nod of respect. “Even when she looks like she stepped out of a Lucky Strike ad.”
Kitty preened slightly. “Flattery will get you everywhere, Detective.”
Frank smirked. “All right, I’m off. The wife’s waiting, and the girls are in one of their moods. Teenage hormone hurricanes. They practically hiss at each other now.”
“Ah,” Kitty said, mock-solemn. “The joys of fatherhood.”
