Author's note: I said it was gonna get gory, and here it does. Those of you with weak stomachs are hereby excused from reading this chapter.

It was a tense dinner that night at the Alvarez mansion. The servants noticed tension as the shadows grew longer and the light grew dimmer. Miss Susana was not yet back. They asked each other privately if either had seen her, and if that was why the señora was so anxious. Rules remained rules, however, and they did not approach the top floor of the manse. It was probably for the best that they did not.

Clarice Starling was nervous and tense. She kept stealing glances at her daughter's empty chair. Dr. Lecter had attempted to calm her, but when call after call to Susana's portable phone went unanswered, he began to worry himself.

"I'm sure she just got together with friends, lost track of time," he said, trying to convince himself as well as her.

"I'm not so sure. She's never done this before. And with that killer out there—the Skinner—it makes me nervous." Clarice squirmed in her chair. She had always been one to go out and do something rather than sit.

All right. Treat it like a case. Better than sitting there while her husband tried to assuage her with ideas he only half-believed in himself.

"When you split up after lunch, where did she say she was going?" Clarice questioned.

"To the salon," confirmed Dr. Lecter. He shrugged, as if to say that such mysterious rituals were beyond his grasp.

"Do we know if she made it?"

Dr. Lecter shrugged again. "I didn't ask her to call me, Clarice. We had just had lunch."

Clarice overturned her bowl of soup and strode from the table. The china bowl shattered on the floor. Dr. Lecter stared at it and then back at the woman he had shared his life with for so many years.

"Was that necessary, Clarice?"

"Maybe you can sit there and slop up your soup while your daughter is missing, but I can't," Clarice snapped. "I am going to go and find our daughter. There are dangerous people out there, you know. With that, she turned on her heel and strode from the room.

She stormed downstairs, grabbing her purse. She couldn't say why she was so nervous all of a sudden. Susana was normally a good kid, maybe she had just had a moment, like most girls did. She shook her head. Somehow, she knew better. She had a feeling in her stomach she had not had for many, many years. The last time she felt this way was when she had been a young girl. When the town's police chief had pulled into their driveway and stood there wringing his hat.

Clarice jumped into her own car. Dr. Lecter had introduced her to Jaguars and the taste had stuck. The V-12 engine roared, and she was on her way. She pawed through her purse as she went. Keys, wallet, mints, .45, cell phone. All here. In short order the Jag's tires screeched into the parking lot of her daughter's preferred salon.

She got out of the car and saw the Mustang immediately. It was parked where Susana had left it. The top was down. That sent a bolt of fear through Clarice – Susana loved the Mustang and would never, never have left the top down. She drew the .45 and carefully walked towards the car. The keys were in the ignition. Strike two. Susana knew better than that.

She reached out towards the keys hanging from the ignition and then pulled her hand back. There might be fingerprints. She did need to check one thing, though. Clarice reached for the console release. The compartment between the seats flipped up. There, Clarice saw what she expected to see. Her daughter's purse. Except for one thing.

On the passenger seat was Susana's credit card. Damn fool thing, Clarice thought. I keep hoping that one of these days Hannibal will grasp the idea of saying 'no' to her just once. Then a sudden dread hit her. Didn't the Skinner leave some sign behind? And would a gold Visa with his victim's name emblazoned on it suffice?

She looked in her own purse. It was neat and orderly, everything having a place and in its place. That was something her daughter had actually imitated her in. She took a pen and carefully lifted Susana's purse from the console. Once it was up and out, the purse fell to pieces, emptying its contents on the floorboards. Clarice could already see where it had been raked with a knife. She bit her lip, her eyes widening.

Then a hand came down on her shoulder.

Clarice whirled and raised the pistol. She lowered it immediately when she saw it was a woman who worked at the salon.

"Can I help you?" the woman asked, looking nervously at the gun.

"Yes, you can," Clarice whispered, a lump rising in her throat. "You can call the police immediately."

…

Consciousness came back slowly. First, she was aware of her right hand. It was lying against cold, rough concrete. Her palm stung. Her fingers felt mushed. She tried to flex her fingers and found that she could do that. She tried to lift her arm to her face and found that she could not.

Next came sound. She heard another girl's voice, crying, speaking rapid Spanish. A man's voice, deep and rich, answered. Neither voice was addressed to her. They seemed far away and muffled.

After that was very faint light. Susana Alvarez opened her eyes slowly and groaned. There was only a single guttering lightbulb hanging off the wall opposite her. No. Wait. The lightbulb was hanging off the ceiling. Susana was on the floor. She turned her head and examined her surroundings.

She was in a small, narrow room. The walls were concrete and perhaps seven feet apart. They were a dingy, unpainted gray. The room was longer than it was wide – twelve feet, perhaps – and blocked off on one end by a stout wooden door.

She tried to sit up and discovered that her hands were trussed behind her back. That didn't make sense. The first misgivings that something was terribly wrong began to trickle into Susana's confusion. She rolled over and managed to sit up, braced against the wall. Her head ached slightly. She tried to remember what had happened to her. All that would come was the memory of a shadow in the rearview mirror of the Mustang. Then, blackness.

Susana did not yell out immediately. Better to seek out what information she could now. She gained her feet shakily and approached the door. It did not move when she prodded it with her foot. She turned around in the narrow cell and grasped the knob. It turned not an inch in her hand.

Locked.

She took a deep breath and was about to yell when the other girl beat her to it. It was mostly tears and pleading. No, no, no, over and over. It sounded somehow thick, as if the other girl was speaking through swollen lips. After a minute or two, she stopped.

Susana was nervous now, and kicked the door with her heel. In response, she heard footsteps approaching the door from the other side. She retreated a few steps in and waited. Two clicks of locks unlocking came from the door. There had to be a deadbolt on the other side. That meant someone had deliberately locked her in here. The door swung open.

In the doorway was an inhuman figure. Susana recoiled, then tilted her head and looked. It was a man, all right. A man in black pants and no shirt. His chest was quite hairy. He wore a wide leather belt. And on his head was an odd helmet. It looked rather like a Viking helmet, except it came down low over his face, shielding everything but his eyes. Devil-like horns branched off the sides.

"Who are you?" she asked.

The man let out a deep chuckle. "Not Who I am. What I am is the question."

"All right," she said dubiously. "What are you?"

"I am the Skinner," the man said. "I am More and Greater than a man, little one. You shall learn."

Susana would have given him a quizzical look, but she did not have time. The Skinner reached out and grabbed a handful of her hair. She yelped. He dragged her forward, out of the cell, and propelled her through the hallway. He was strong, and she didn't put up a fight. He drove her through the basement hall to a larger room. His hand squeezed her upper arm like a python.

In the room was another girl lying on a cot. She was strapped down to it at wrists and ankles. Three larger straps further secured her. She was dressed in the rags of what appeared to be a Catholic school uniform. It looked like San Miguel High School, Susana thought. The other girl looked at Susana in fear and desperation.

The idea that she was in serious, serious trouble began to sink into Susana's brain.

The Skinner sat her down in a heavy wooden chair. He forced her back against it and fastened her in with canvas straps. One across her chest, one across her waist, and one on each ankle. Her arms were wedged uncomfortably behind her. She thought unpleasantly of pictures of the electric chair.

The Skinner crossed the room and took something from a set of drawers. Susana could hear him clunking around in the drawer. When he turned around, one hand held a bright pink swimmer's cap. The other held a scalpel.

Susana paled but did not make a sound. At the sight of the bright pink cap, the other girl began to scream. Her mouth lolled open as if she could not close it, and she did not move her head, but she screamed nonetheless. Her eyes bulged with fear. Her tongue lolled listlessly. Tears filled her eyes and she sobbed.

The Skinner gently put the cap on her head. He was breathing quite loudly in his helmet, and Susana could see his eyes widen with excitement as he slid the cap into place. He sat on the other side of the girl's cot, so that her view was undisturbed. He looked up at her before he began.

"Pay close heed, little one," he said. "This is where her lessons end – and yours begin."

Susana's tongue was completely dry. Her mouth felt glued shut. She wanted to try to turn her head from the horrible scene, but she could not move it. Was he really going to do this?

He did. The scalpel blade pressed into the edge of the girl's hairline. A line of blood welled immediately from it. A stifled shriek of agony came from the girl's mouth. The Skinner carefully worked the scalpel up the girl's face, continuing to stay close to the hairline. His work was neat and even. When he was done, he carefully lifted up on the skin and began to slowly cut tendons and supporting muscle. All the while, screams of mortal agony came from under him. It was lengthy work, and the Skinner took his time. He wanted quality trophies to take.

Susana could not turn her eyes away, paralyzed by the spectacle of horror taking place in front of her. Finally, the Skinner looked up. He held a piece of flesh in his hands for her to see. The girl's face, perfectly skinned. Underneath him was a red skull with eyes.

"See?" he asked.

But under his hands, the girl was still alive. Her face was shorn off, but she lived still. Blood leaked onto her skull and pooled in her nasal cavity. Her jaw yawed open obscenely now without the cover of lips. Her cheekbones rose like high, bloody promontories. Susana was revulsed, but her stomach seemed very very far away and never even suggested throwing up to her. She was unable to resist the urge to watch. But the girl lived, she screamed, and she saw Susana. Her eyes, the only recognizably human part of her face, implored Susana to help. Susana could not have answered that call even if she wasn't tied to the chair. All she could do was observe the horror.

The Skinner took a set of tweezers now. He reached into the girl's eye socket with one of them. The girl tried to twist away and save herself, but it was hopeless now. As the bright metal reached into the pitiful victim's eye socket, Susana did twist away and close her eyes. There was a sickening liquid pop, and then another one.

And still from the ruined skull came the high, keening, gargling screams. Oh, please let her die, please please, I can't take any more of this, Susana thought crazily. She's had enough and so have I. She opened her mouth experimentally. She dared not look back. She did not want to see the ruined, shredded red mass that had been a pretty girl's face half an hour before.

A single gunshot echoed in the concrete room. Susana screamed at the impossibly loud sound. She opened her eyes reluctantly to see the Skinner, standing now, with a large silver revolver in his right hand. It was aimed at the girl on the cot. Corpse on the cot, Susana amended. While the face and eye removal had not killed the girl, a single bullet to the chest had. Mercifully so, Susana thought.

The Skinner's eyes rolled towards her behind the guards of the helmet. He raised his left hand to shoulder height.

"Look at Me, little one," he said, his deep voice thick. He opened his left hand. In it was one of the girl's eyes.

Susana recoiled.

"Do you understand now?" he asked.

Susana nodded. "You killed her," she said. "And you want to do the same thing to me."

The Skinner waited a moment before nodding back. "Yes, little one. But not yet. There is much for you to learn."

Susana's mind whirled. The horror of what she had just seen seared her. There was only one thing she could do, and one place she could go. She ran backwards into her mind, into her memory palace.

Dr. Hannibal Lecter possessed a very large memory palace full of whatever he might want. He had taught his daughter this mnemonic system, and she had tried to develop it. Her memory palace was nowhere near the size of her father's. She occasionally thought hers was a memory cottage.

But here, now, it was the only sanctuary that might offer her something other than temporary refuge. She ran inside it now, through the halls to the Library. There, she sought out the discussions that she had once had with her father, after the day he sat her down and told her that he had not been born Alonso Alvarez, nor was he an Argentine physician.

In her palace, she opened up two thick books, bound in heavy black leather. Across one of them, in Olde English lettering, were the words RED DRAGON. Across the other were the words BUFFALO BILL. She scanned them as quickly as she could.

"I can help you, if you spare me," she said, once she had finished reading them. She licked her lips with a tongue dry enough to light matches on.

"I do not need your help, little one," the Skinner said mockingly. "You are here to learn."

"I can serve, too," she pointed out. "Does the great Skinner not want servants? To assist him in…," she struggled for words. "His work?"

The Skinner tipped his head forward. None of the others had ever suggested anything like this before. It might be interesting. And after all, it wasn't like he was obligated to keep his word to such a lesser being.

"What did you have in mind, little one?" he asked.