Disclaimer: Still don't own anything... No infringement intended... Please don't sue :-)
His victims agonized screams echoed in the enormous expanse of the secluded warehouse he'd chosen. He smiled. The smile was one that in another place and time would've been described as charming, but now was just a terrifying twist of lips and teeth.
The young girl in front of him stared at back at him in horror, her mouth frozen in a scream of agony. She twisted on the hook he'd painstakingly inserted into her body just as he had with the others.
He checked his watch with clinical detachment and flashed the girl another smile. He had successfully achieved a maximum of two hours of consciousness with each girl. He felt a giddy sense of triumph at the fact. Everything was working out just as he'd planned. And he knew that soon he'd be able to put his new talent into practice on the pair of detectives that had ended his father's life.
The blade in his hand was slick with blood, the liquid coursing down his hand and arm in a crimson cascade of wet warmth. He drew the blade across her skin slowly, a thin rivulet of blood chasing the glinting steel. The blade moved over her skin one final time, silencing her screams.
He smiled proudly, stepping back to admire his achievement before turning to face the last girl.
She stared at him, her eyes wide with fear, tears streaking down her unstained skin.
He stood perfectly still, the bloody blade still clutched tightly in his hand.
"Please," she whimpered, her body rigid with fear and pain.
He stared at her in silence for long minutes before moving towards her with the swiftness and grace of a panther, and all the lethal danger of an animal on the hunt. He circled around her, his free hand seizing her hair roughly.
"Scream for me," he commanded bringing his knife hand up in front of her, his body pressed tightly against her.
"Scream," he demanded as he brought the knife arcing down.
Elliot very narrowly escaped slipping in the lake sized pool of blood that had gathered under the victims bodies. Bodies, plural. Elliot shuddered, trying to remain cool and detached, trying not to focus on the young women's faces.
Blood rained down around them, drops of scarlet pelting their already velvety rain slickers.
When they'd shown up to the scene they had been met by a young officer, his face solemn and sickly pale, handing out slickers. Olivia had taken one look at his face and she had known that what waited for them in the warehouse was going to be bad, the kind of stuff that would haunt your nights and days equally. She braced herself, taking the slicker from the kid's badly shaking hands.
She'd thought she'd been prepared. But she hadn't. Not nearly.
The first thing that hit her as she walked into the cavernous warehouse was the smell. The nauseating stench of blood and death hit her like a freight train as soon as she stepped over the threshold.
The second thing that she saw stopped her in her tracks and caused her to choke back a scream of outrage and empathetic pain. Dangling from long chains attached to the roof of the warehouse five young girls hung like bloodied marionette dolls.
The girls had been stripped and hung from butcher hooks that speared up through just enough of their skin and tissue that their weight was supported, barely. Olivia could see the tears in the skin as she approached and felt her stomach churn. Their skin was slick with blood, skin sliced open at various depths and angles. Their faces were twisted in an expression of agony and terror.
Olivia felt her lunch congeal in her stomach as another bright red drop splashed to an abrupt halt on her forearm.
When Olivia turned to move away she heard a small sound coming from behind her. She turned quickly and immediately scanned the bodies floating eerily overhead. She stood for several seconds before turning and shouting for quiet. She caught Elliot's eyes for a brief moment, sharing a moment of absolute horror that one of the girls might still be alive, hanging there in agony. She turned back to the grotesque puppets dangling overhead, her eyes carefully scanning the bodies for any sign of life, her ears straining in the sudden quiet to hear the slightest vibration of sound.
Olivia saw one of the bodies twitch in her peripheral vision, a small shudder of pain accompanied by the softest whisper of an agonized moan. Olivia turned and shouted over her shoulder, "She's alive! Someone call EMS and get a ladder."
"We were able to stop the bleeding," the doctor said facing the detectives with a haunted look in his eyes that spoke heavily of inexperienced youth. Olivia felt sympathy well up inside her as she watched the twenty-something year old doctor being dragged down into the kind of hellish nightmare most people never even dreamed existed. His young face drained of color and his eyes gleamed like pools of liquid emotion. When he spoke his throat was clogged with concealed horror.
"Most of the cuts she sustained were relatively shallow." The doctor handed Elliot a stack of Polaroids he pulled from the pocket of his lab coat.
"At first glance," the doctor continued, his words flat and toneless, carefully detached. "The slashes across her body appear random. But when we cleaned them a pattern began to emerge," he gestured to the photos, the small motion seeming to tax his already waning strength. "They form a string of letters and a sequence of numbers," he finished, his expression darkening, his eyes forming a hard crystalline structure in their depths.
Olivia knew that expression well, she had seen it enough in her own reflection in her rookie days. She knew the unbearable outrage and uncontrollable revulsion she had felt. And now she saw it reflected back at her through the eyes of the young doctor.
"So she's stable?" Olivia asked shaking the vestiges of the past from her mind.
"For now," came the doctor's sober reply. "She's lost a lot of blood and suffered severe trauma to a significant portion of her body. We'll know more in a few hours."
Olivia stood beside Elliot in the M.E.'s office, the sudden coolness of air after the warmth of the day outside, making goose bumps rise on Olivia's skin.
"All the girls died from the same injury," Melinda Warner was saying. "After the son of a bitch tortured them for several hours at least," she said angrily, walking over to stand beside the board she'd set up before she'd called the detectives. She pointed to one of the many pictures that had been tacked there, exhibiting the gruesome illustrations of the killers' execution. "He sliced through their throats, severing the carotid artery," she finished pointing at the injuries. "Death would've taken several minutes."
Elliot looked at the pictures, trying not to linger on their faces, knowing they would haunt his nights. After a few seconds he turned away from the pictures, looking at the M.E. "The cuts on the girls?" He asked brusquely, cocking his head at the photos. "Did they form any sort of pattern?"
"I was just getting to that," she answered calmly, her eyes flitting to Olivia's briefly before returning to the pictures of the cuts she'd taken and tacked to the board. "The cuts themselves weren't particularly deep. The blade was inserted and drawn down smoothly across the skin, cutting through only the first few layers of epidermis," she explained. "Each girl has a different set of letters and numbers cut into their skin."
Elliot laid the pictures out along the table in one of the interview rooms. The pictures of all five victims splayed across the table. He narrowed his eyes, trying to focus on the pictures and block out the other images that had plagued him since hearing Melinda's report on how the girls had suffered.
He turned the case over and over in his mind, as he rearranged the pictures on the table. There were too many things that didn't add up. Why leave one girl alive? Why etch the girls with seemingly random nonsense? Why five girls? Elliot squinted at the pictures as the questions swirled rapidly behind his eyes. "What am I missing?" He whispered, slamming his hand against the table in frustration.
Olivia opened the door of the interview room, silently watching Elliot as he rearranged the pictures on the table. The squad room was all but deserted; even the most dedicated cops having gone home hours ago for much needed rest.
But Elliot had stayed. Elliot had stayed, so Olivia had stayed, staring at the pictures for hours.
"Elliot," Olivia said quietly, her voice echoing in the tomblike silence of the station house.
Elliot glanced over his shoulder at her, his eyes filled with exhaustion. "I keep running through the case in my head Liv. Something doesn't feel right. I feel like we're missing something here. Something that should be obvious," he growled in frustration.
Olivia walked into the room, closing the door behind her. She crossed the small room and stood beside him, resting her hand gently on his back. "El," she said, her hand moving in small circles on his back. "You need to rest."
Elliot shuffled the pictures around on the table, his eyes blurring with the motion. "I need to work out what this means," he said, his voice trailing off, his eyes snapping into focus on the pictures.
"God," he breathed, his back tensing under Olivia's hand. The pictures stared up at him, the pattern finally locked in place. The words the killer had carved piercing through him like a rusty knife.
Olivia leaned over his shoulder, her eyes on the pictures. "What is it Elliot?"
"MEA EST VINDICTA," he spoke softly, moving away from the table.
Olivia took his place in front of the pictures. "What does that mean?" She asked, looking between him and the pictures.
"Vengeance is mine."
Olivia's eyes rose to meet Elliot's. "Our perp knew these girls."
Elliot shook his head. "I don't think this guy knew these girls at all."
"Why?" She asked.
Elliot gestured to the pictures. "The numbers that run under the words," he said, pausing as she looked back at the pictures.
"They're our badge numbers."
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