It was nine in the morning when Lightning emerged from the elevator looking like a ghost. The tired lines that had decided to be drawn on her face hadn't been covered up by her concealer, and the mascara that had smudged at the corner of her eyes simply gave the impression she had come back from a one-night stand and nothing else.

Awkwardly smiling at the few officers staring at her perplexed as she quietly walked towards her office, all Lightning wanted to do was to crawl into a hole and never come out of it. Entering her office, she instantly turned on the lights and closed all the blinds before she was able to go sit at her desk, ignoring the few files that had been added to a rather long pile. Never had she seen more than three piled-up before, and the thought soon began to haunt her.

But with the beginning of sleep deprivation, Lightning was unable to pick one up and enter the data on her computer. Instead, she pushed them all away and settled her forehead against the cold glass desk. Slowly breathing in and out, she forcefully tried to fight the state of tiredness that had taken control over her ever since had woken her up, a little more than an hour ago.

Though the ride back to the city had been awfully quiet, closing an eye had been a task impossible to achieve for a reason she hadn't been able to figure out. All she knew was that every time her head had started to fall to the side, she had instinctively woken up in a state of alert, dream, and thoughts impossible to differentiate. But whatever they had been had turned out to be less than pleasing, making it impossible for her to concentrate or even sleep.

Lifting her head up from the desk, she tiredly gazed at its surface with her lips shaped into a straight line of displease. She needed to be done with them before anyone would see the disaster lying on it. It was with great courage and strength that Lightning was able to turn on the computer and pick up the first file, firstly giving it a quick read to recall the events to had led to this person's arrest, and the memories all came back running.

Making sure she sat in the right position, her fingers automatically started to press on the keyboard, entering one by one all the data she needed to add. During the hour she spent doing so, a few people had come and gone, asking her to check out details regarding an on-going case, or only to bring her a warm coffee which she had never refused, and the fuel the caffeine had served as had been working perfectly for her brain to reset.

So, when she files had finally been added to the online servers, Lightning felt like a new woman coming out from her office. Though her makeup wasn't on point, she felt a powerful kick of energy streaming through her blood as she walked in direction of Yuj, ready to solve whatever he could give her.

"Good, you're out. We have something…"

"Sounds ominous," Lightning said with a frown, "what's going on?"

"I don't know. Emma just called me, said it was urgent. Your car?"

"Yeah let's go." Walking towards the elevator, she called out for Maqui to join them quickly and was walking towards her car shortly after.

Stomping towards the Mustang, Lightning, and Yuj both exchanged a worried look. It was odd to hear Emma call any situation urgent, usually being a laid-back and relaxed kind of woman. There was no saying what they would find when they'd arrive in a house in a quiet neighbourhood, where the murder of a young woman had occurred. Would there be lots of blood, not enough evidence, a scene unlike any other?

Questions began to form inside, and the more she asked herself, the more urgent it became to her to have an answer. Pressing on the pedal, she rushed her car towards the scene of the crime and parked next to Emma's car as she arrived at her destination ten long minutes later.

Showing her badge to the officers blocking the entrance, the first thing that stuck out as she entered the house was the strong scent of iron, and everyone knew that iron and blood possessed similar smells. It was a smell she had been able to smell many times, but never had it been so strong. It was only when she looked down to the ground that she spotted the many traces of blood, footprints, and handprints nearly covering the entire marbled ground.

With a quick glance over her shoulder, she frowned in Yuj's direction and carefully followed the steps with gloves now covering both of her hands.

Ending at a first door, Lightning glanced at the inside of a bedroom and carefully entered the room, her eyes painfully trying to adjust to the scenery presented before her eyes. And the time she took was significant enough for Yuj to understand that something was indeed very wrong.

Standing on the bed was a severed head. Female, Caucasian, merely old enough to have a drink at the bar. Both her eyes had been gouged out and the placed before it, as well as almost the majority of her teeth. Taking a step closer, she carefully observed the traces of hand that had been imprinted around her neck and her eyes, and the conclusion that her eyes had been taking out whilst still being alive suddenly rang alarms inside of her head.

"Holy…"

It was Yuj that whispered that word next to her ear, and all she had been wanting to add was fuck. Giving him a look, she turned back around and continued to follow the steps towards another room, trying as hard as possible to prepare herself for what she'd see on the other side of the closed door.

"Hope you didn't have breakfast," a voice called out from the distance.

Looking up from the handle, Lightning shook her head at the sight of Emma exiting the last room of the hallway. "I haven't. I'm glad I didn't."

With her courage being powered in her hand as she grabbed the handle door, she turned it to the right and pushed the door completely open, her hand instinctively going in front of her nose to cover up the horrendous smell escaping the room. Rotten, pee and even vomit had mixed together to release something even she couldn't handle.

Turning around, she exited the room without giving it a glance and pressed her hand against her stomach. This close to throwing up, she closed her eyes and leaned against the wall, hoping to recover quickly.

"Here, take this," Emma offered, a mask in her hand. "It won't cover it all up, but it should be loads better."

Grabbing it and throwing Emma an appreciative look, Lightning placed the mask over her mouth and nose, breathed in and slowly walked back towards the room. And what she saw was left printed inside of her skull.

She didn't know what colour the walls or even the floor could've been due to the extent of blood and other liquids covering them all. The bedroom she stood in had been destroyed piece by piece, and the body parts that had been left in the middle in a satanic pentagram looked like nothing but the work of a twisted, demented person. Five legs and six arms, fingers in the middle, this was the pure definition of a nightmare.

"What's in the bathroom," she asked without turning her eyes away from this disaster.

"The rest," Emma answered.

"Do we have a…" Swallowing her saliva, Lightning averted her eyes from the body parts and turned around, already walking towards the door. "A reason?"

"Yeah. Sort off. It's in the bathroom. Follow me."

Clenching her jaw, Lightning nodded and followed Emma towards the last room. Hesitant as she stood next to the door, she took in a deep breath and peaked her nose under the frame before completely walking inside the room, her eyes instantly stumbling with three torsos, one leg and one head. The position the parts had been placed were vile, shivers running down her spine at the sight of them representing intercourse in the most vicious way.

Darting away from the floor, she followed Emma's finger's line of sight and gazed at the facing wall. The voices, they scream, she read. The nights, they never end. The days, they continue. The pain, it flows. Looking at the right-side wall, it continued. The lust, it grows. The hunger, it succeeds. The sin, it appears.

"Jesus fucking Christ," she whispered under her breath, "This is…"

"Yeah. It is."

Coming closer to the wall, Lightning gingerly looked at the traces the fingers had left and was quickly disappointed the moment she noticed the pattern similar of the one of a glove.

Rushing out of the bathroom, she walked back towards the living-room followed by her detectives and other officers, carefully avoiding every bloody print that had been left on the ground.

"Okay. We're going to swipe out this place like crazy. I don't care how long it takes, I don't care how much your backs will hurt. We need something from the people that did this, and now."

Looking at them all as they nodded in her direction, Lightning was quick to join them in a thorough investigation of the house. Finding out that the bodies found were the ones of three unrelated people, she knew that her work wouldn't be cut out for her. If anything, this case was likely to bring more additional troubles she didn't need. With Fang's case and now this one, there was no saying when she'd finally be able to get a proper good night of sleep. You asked for it though, she thought to herself in a quick moment of panic, scraping off the few prints she had been able to find.

She had seen her fair share of horrors throughout her life, but something like this was new to her. Perhaps was it because of the over-excessive use of violence, but something about this triple murder sounded a lot worse than anything she had ever lived, Fang's case included. She wasn't diminishing it, not in the least, but this amount of cruelty was way worse than a simple throat sliced.

But then… An idea came to her mind and quickly retrieving her gloves, Lightning was back on the street with her phone at her ear.

"What?"

Biting her inner-lip, Lightning wondered if she should simply hang up. A butt-call could happen, right? "Hi, am I bothering you?"

"Just papers and stuff. What is it? What do you need?"

Frowning, Lightning wondered if she truly was this predictable. "I do," she said through gritted teeth. "I have a case and it's important."

"How important?"

"Important."

A silence spread between them. Looking at the street, Lightning noticed the few journalists already gathering towards them and being pushed back by other officers that had now joined the scene. With four deaths in more than a week and a triple murder, the neighbourhood was on the verge of explosion.

"What do you need?"

"Info on a certain Jessica Lore, Stephen Jenix and Alyson Roverburg."

"Is that all?"

"Yes," Lightning said, ignoring the obvious sarcasm, "That's all."

Clearly hearing a deep sigh, Lightning was biting her inside lip and prepared herself for a refusal. Fang didn't need to give her any help anyway, did she? "Alright. Let me get back to you."

She wasn't given the chance to reply, or even thank her. The connection was abruptly cut off, and Lightning was left in the middle of the street, looking at the few journalists that still hadn't decided to leave. Why does blood always interest people? What's it with the need for violence?

Shaking her head, she went back inside the house, picked up a new pair of gloves and continued her investigation of the premises alongside Yuj, Maqui, and Emma. After more than thirty minutes and a stomach starting to hurt, it was the ruckus coming from the street that brought her back on her feet, a brow arched in direction of the door.

She went in its direction and pulled it open, observing a couple fighting to go under the security banner and trying to push away the officers blocking their way.

"Let us in, this is our house," one of them said.

"What happened? Officer! Officer!"

Walking down the few steps leading to the street, Lightning made her way towards the couple and led them further away towards a place no journalist was at.

"What's going on," the taller woman between the two them said, her brows eyes worriedly looking at their house.

"Are you the owners of this house?"

"Yes, yes. We've lived here for six years."

"Alright." Looking over her shoulder, Lightning gave Yuj a small sign of the hand and watched him go back inside with a frown. "There's been a murder inside of your house during the night," Lightning then told them, "I'm sorry but we can't let you back inside."

"You're kidding, right?"

"No. I will need you to come down the precinct to ask you some questions."

"But where are we supposed to go?"

"Ask a friend, or your family to take you in for a few days," Lightning said, already going back to the house, "I'm sorry for the inconvenience."

She ignored the two women arguing and strode back towards the house. With the extent of the wreckage, there was no point in asking these women if they needed anything from the house. It would probably be covered in blood anyway, or something else.

It was around three in the afternoon when Lightning's e-mail address chimed. Intensively focused on the on-going case and after a long interrogation of the house's owners, Lightning still hadn't been able to find a connection between either of them. But little did she know that the beginning of the answer could be found in the exact e-mail she had received.

However, Lightning had already forgotten about the favour she has asked and continued to look at the whiteboard, Yuj by her side.

So far all they knew was this: these three people lived in different neighbourhoods, had different ages, different races and had never been seen together. The families that had come to the precinct hadn't been able to give them much more information either, and their clues had run dry. Not to mention not a single fingerprint had been found on the premises able to lead them to the killer, or killers.

Running her hand through her hair, Lightning sat at the edge of the desk and helplessly looked at the board. No murder weapon, even though Emma suggested a machete based on the wounds and cuts that had been inflicted, no witnesses in the entire area had been able to see anything or even hear a single sound. Something was amiss.

"Lieutenant?"

Looking away from the board, Lightning went closer to Maqui. "Yes?"

"I found this video footage, I thought it was worth watching."

Frowning, Lightning grabbed a nearby chair and sat down in front of the computer, waiting for Maqui to press play.

The footage showed a red-coloured van carefully driving around the neighbourhood from two in the morning until five. It never stopped, only going in a circle as to stand guard for any police vehicles or even the owners' car.

"Do you have a plate?"

"Yes, but it belongs to one of our victims, Jessica."

"Alright." Blowing out a breath, Lightning went back to the beginning of the video and pressed play again, trying to perceive whoever was driving the van.

But this hadn't been done just for fun, or to try. The people who had committed these atrocious murders had been aware of every security camera, and had therefore managed to hide their faces every single time.

"Ask anyone in the state to look out for the van."

"Already did," Maqui said, a smile on his lips. "I learned from the best."

Shaking her head ever so slightly, Lightning gave her detective a small tap on the shoulder and immediately went back towards her office.

Sitting back at the edge of her desk, she carefully observed as Yuj added information and guidelines between the pictures of dismembered bodies and the victims, adding question marks next to the number of pieces that had been cut.

Eighteen pieces. Six legs, six arms, three torsos and three heads. Despite it being the numeric value of life, in Hebrew, Lightning couldn't possibly say what it could've meant. Maybe nothing. But it's too specific. Why cut off the heads? Why cut anything at all?

"What are you thinking about," Yuj asked.

"I'm trying to remember the biblical meaning of eighteen. Remember what was written on the walls?"

"Yeah? I wish I could un-see it though."

"The murder uses the words sin, lust, hunger. The deadly sins if you want. We need to figure out more about these people. Their hobbies, their jobs. The families weren't of much help."

"Well," Yuj said, "they were grieving."

"I know, I know… But it's like there's something they're not telling us."

"Aren't you just saying that because of the FBI, and that other case?"

Arching a brow, Lightning vividly shook her head. The two situations were completely different, and more importantly, she has been right about it being more complicated than they believed. But God prevented her from saying anything about it.

"It's not the same. I'm sure there's something more here. Something we can't see."

"The devil?"

Rolling her eyes to the ceiling, Lightning stood up from the desk and cane closer to the board, her arms crossed on her chest. Focusing her undivided attention on the pictures of the bodies, and how they had been placed throughout the room, Lightning painfully tried to find a link she could've missed.

"Oh, you received an e-mail by the way," Yuj said after a few minutes, "well, a second one."

"Alright."

Going back to her desk, Lightning wiggled the mouse and waited for the screen to be clear again. Clicking on her emails, she did her best to hide her pleasant surprise at the sight of the word Confidential used as a title.

Double clicking on the link, she waited for the e-mail to load and began to read.

Hey, Farron.

I did some digging about these people to find a link and I found one. What would you do without me, right?

Frowning, Lightning clenched her fists and continued to read.

Apparently, they were all in the same jury, three weeks ago. Some story about the murder of a young girl. They were the only ones saying Paul Harmon was guilty. Them and a fourth chick. Tara Lockwood. Her address is 234 Garden Street. I'm going there to make sure she's alive. See you.

As if the devil had been chasing after her, Lightning was extremely quick to leave her office and rush down the stairs of the precinct, not bothering to give anyone a particular reason why she was now leaving.

Making sure her gun was still at her waist, she got inside of her car and drove away, out from West-Hollywood and towards Pasadena, a little further up north.

Why Fang had decided to go investigate was a mystery, and incredibly dangerous. Without any backup, there was no saying what could be waiting for her behind that door. With that in mind, she slammed her foot harder against the accelerator and stormed down the streets, her sirens on full-blast.

It's only when she was close to the address that Lightning slowed down the car and turned the blares off, carefully looking on both her sides to try and find number 234. Luckily, the car that was parked a little further down the road was helpful enough, the fact Fang would only drive a Mustang seeming perfectly logical. Better than mine.

Parking her car behind Fang's, Lightning gave the house a quick glance and exited her Mustang, her left hand glued to her gun. Coming to the door, she knocked three consecutive times and listened to the voices coming from the inside of the house, her brows furrowing as seconds started to pass. Ready to knock once more, the door was abruptly opened by a young woman, Fang standing directly by her side.

"Took you long enough."

"Ma'am," Lightning said as she ignored Fang's comment, "I'm Lieutenant Farron with the LAPD, do you mind if I come inside and ask you a few questions?"

"Well, I've told your colleague everything I knew…"

Glaring at Fang, Lightning said, "Yes, but it's better to have the version two times. Maybe you'll remember something in the process."

"Alright, sure, come in."

Taking a step inside the house, the proud smile that had now invaded Fang's face surprisingly unfazed her. Perhaps was she now used to her annoying habits, smirk and whatnot, or maybe she simply didn't care about them anymore, accepting them as a trait of Fang's personality.

"What's going on, exactly," the woman asked.

"There's been a triple murder during the night," Lightning answered, whilst taking a seat on the couch.

"Yes, Agent Yun told me but…why?"

"Did you have contact with the three victims," Lightning asked, uninterested about the questions being asked to her.

"No, not really. We got along very well during the jury, but we're all too different to get along." A snort escaped Tara as she spoke, darting back and forth between Fang and Lightning.

"What kind of differences?"

"Well, from what I remember, Jessica seemed…kind of like a nymphomaniac. Every time she saw a hot guy all she talked about was sex." A shiver ran down Lightning's spine. Why was everything always related to sex? "Stephen was pedantic. Very high-self-esteem. Drove me crazy. And Alyson…I think she was a drug addict. I'm not sure though."

"Oh, she was," Fang interjected, "Heroine, cocaine, methamphetamine."

"Ha, it's what I thought. But yeah, we all had our differences."

"What makes you different," Lightning asked, the tip of her pen against her paper.

"What do you mean?"

Standing up, Lightning went towards a couple of pictures placed above a fireplace and looked at the people standing in them. "If you had to be one of the seven sins, which one would you be?"

"One of the seven sins?"

Suppressing a frustrated sigh and wondering if Tara would eventually understand anything, Lightning turned around and planted her gaze at the woman. For now, she believed they had found lust, pride, and gluttony, meaning that greed, wrath and sloth. Somehow, Lightning began to think that the latter could be the one representing this woman, based on mess piled up in several corners of the rooms.

"What's the deal Farron?"

"There was a satanic sign made with body parts, and a message was left on the wall. It talked about sins, and I wondered if the targets represented those sins."

"Well, seems like it." Surprised, Lightning gave Fang a look and was met with a frown. "You have a long couple of days ahead of you."

"We're going to place this house under surveillance for a few days. Do you have somewhere you can stay?"

"Ye—yes, I'll ask my sister."

"Good." Giving the house one last glance, she brought her phone to her ear and waned Yuj of the situation before she turned to look at Fang. "You should go before they come."

"Worried about me, Sunshine?"

"Don't call me that, and no. I'm worried about our careers, nothing else."

"Such a charmer, it's hard not to fall for you."

Huffing, Lightning gave Tara a tight smile and went in direction of the door. Standing outside, she brought her pants further up towards her hips and stuffed her white shirt back underneath the fabric. Still continuously falling, she brought her belt to a new hole and sauntered in direction of her car without giving the house another glance.

"Farron, wait a second."

Stopping in her tracks, she looked over her shoulder and waited for Fang to join with her. "What is it?"

"First, you're welcome, and second can you slow down for a bit? I need to talk to you."

"Alright," Lightning said with a sigh.

"Let's go in my car."

Nodding, Lightning followed Fang to her Mustang and sat down on the passenger seat. The smell coming from her ca perfectly matched her persona: vanilla, coffee, monoi… It was exotic. So, who cares? You're not here to smell her, you're here to work.

"Can anyone else take care of it, the case?"

"Why?"

"Because you need to make a choice, Lightning. You either continue with this one or with me."

"I can't do both?"

"I don't know, can you?"

"You just fucking watch me, Fang."

Pushing the passenger door open, Lightning slammed it back with force and gave Fang the finger before she stormed in direction of her car. Sitting behind her wheel, she glared at navy-coloured Mustang and stopped herself from repeatedly slamming the wheel. Instead, she brought her keys inside and turned the ignition on.

Tomorrow was New Year's Eve. Thankfully, 2018 was soon over and done.