The video showed two open hands. The words God and Blood were tattooed on the inside of the fingers of the right and left hand. Then, the hands clenched into fists. A scalpel in the right hand. Underneath, a man tied to a chair. The man's eyes were dilated with fear, his skin glistening with sweat, and remnants of vomit on his sweater.
"This person has invaded my house," said the distorted voice of a person calling himself God of Blood. "I will punish him for this, and you may watch."
Something puffed out the man's cheeks from the inside, and he spat it onto the floor as his body shook, and the tattooed hands with God and Blood rested on the man's shoulders like the hands of a statue.
Nikki, too, felt something sour and disgusting creeping up her gullet.
God of Blood continued to speak.
"When the battlefield is full of severed limbs and blood, demons will rise from it. And I seek the greatest of these demons! I want you to surprise me with what you can do and what you do. Do as I have told you, and you can do what you want without any earthly powers being able to stop you."
"The minors," murmured Katherine, "he is addressing the minors again."
"You, my disciples, shall do as I do. Please send me the pictures of your victims. Dead, dismembered, decomposed. Those who can even bring yourselves to eat parts of the meat raw shall be especially rewarded."
The person raised the scalpel.
"I will," said the God of Blood, "turn this man's face into a skull. But in such a way that he won't die for it. He will still ... still live! I will create a demon. A living skull. A living corpse."
A metal song played in the background. Shortly afterward, the subtitles could also be seen. It was a song by the thrash metal band Slayer. The lyrics matched what the God of Blood had just said about the souls and demons that rose from the battlefield.
Gods of the throne must be watching from hell,
Awaiting the mass genocide,
Soldiers defeated by death from a smell,
Bodies lie dormant, no life. Rising new souls on the lands where they fell,
Demons not ready to die.
Nothing to see where the sleeping souls lie ...
Nikki averted her eyes. But she heard the cuts. And she listened to the screams.
Elizabeth entered BRIC and stopped abruptly as she looked at the monitor wall. Her eyes widened at the exact moment.
xxx
He pulled the skin off his face, the lieutenant thought. Could that have some reference or hidden message? There was St. Bartholomew, who had been flayed and carried his skin around in various pictures and statues. But maybe it was just a cruel and sadistic video. Nothing more. Elizabeth decided. To leave the psychological evaluation of this act to her sister.
"We're trying to find out where the video came from," Milton said after a short pause.
"Are you consulting Agent Seren Mayer?" Nick wanted to know.
Elizabeth took a deep breath and gritted her teeth.
Seren Mayer had achieved a lot. She and her people had taken down the pedophilia platform Elysium, with more than ninety thousand customer accounts. A few years earlier, they had already targeted Geisterwald, another child pornography site, but on the clear web.
But with all these child porn sites, it was like a hydra; as soon as you cut off one head, two new heads grew back. But Mayer and her team rightly said that every child saved was worth the effort. That was all the more impressive when you considered how they had to work compared to those who set up and ran such sites.
Elizabeth nodded slowly. She knew the reality of cyber investigators. No foot-high computer towers like in the TV series, no blinking hard drives in bluish light. The officers weren't even allowed to use government computers on the dark web, so they had to use private laptops or do their research in the evenings or at weekends. How ironic, Elizabeth thought, that an authority that was supposed to control the dark web was not allowed on the dark web. It was as if cops who were supposed to write up parking offenders weren't allowed on the street. Elizabeth was no longer surprised; it was contradictory from top to bottom, like everything else in Boston.
"Why," the lieutenant asked, "do you think Mayer could help us with her expertise? Mayer and her team deal with child pornography, that's true, but the situation here is different."
"Mayer and her team are very good at deducing the author from videos. In the case of Elysium, it was a video from San Diego of a man abusing a ten-month-old child on a changing table. They busted ninety thousand pedophiles through this video. In these child pornography rings, a distinction is made between traders and traffickers. The traders only deal in the stuff, while the travelers do both."
"And how does the God of Blood do it?"
"We won't know until we've finished with the laptops of Herbert Mencer and the other kids," Milton replied, looking at Nick. "How about this --"
The door to BRIC burst open. It was Nikki, who had withdrawn from BRIC after the video. "I've gone through most of Herbert Mencer's laptop."
Elizabeth gave her daughter a long, hard look. "So, out with it. What information do you have?"
The young woman took a deep breath and looked briefly at her mother and the monitor wall. "Well, this God of Blood guy, or whatever his name is, seems to be paying his followers for the murders."
Elizabeth furrowed her eyebrows. "With cash?"
Nikki licked her lips. "With coins and other cryptocurrencies. Herbert Mencer had a crypto account on the dark web, which he denies, of course."
Elizabeth shifted her weight from one foot to the other. "But you found the money?"
Nikki nodded slowly. "Yes, I could trace it to a credit card he got from his mother."
"That's not what the bank or whoever issues teen cards like that thought," Katherine said with an intense frown.
Nikki pulled the corners of her mouth down. "Well, in this case, no money was wasted; it was earned."
"With murder," Elizabeth replied, stunned.
"That's what it looks like. Anyway, he needed a hundred dollars to open a crypto account on the dark web. Then there's money for the murder. This is done via so-called dark pools, which can then be converted into official currency, shares, or even gold or raw materials," Nikki replied, raising her eyebrows. "The more brutal the crime, the more money there is. Besides, he got some promotion from this God of Blood for this murder."
The lieutenant took a deep breath and crossed her arms before her chest. "A promotion to what?"
Nikki pressed her lips together before answering the question. "To a so-called blood demon."
"Sounds like something out of a damn fantasy novel," Milton said with his eyebrows furrowed.
Katherine pulled the corners of her mouth down. "But that's not unusual for ritual killers."
Elizabeth lowered her arms again. "And there was money, too?"
The officer nodded again. "Yes. The equivalent of ten thousand dollars."
"Like a Red Room with crowdsourcing," Milton explained, and Nikki nodded in agreement.
Elizabeth knew Red Rooms. They were webcam rooms on the dark web where people supposedly tortured other people, and the viewers could pay money to have the torturers do the most horrible things to them. The more money, the worse. The God of Blood didn't do this to just one killer, but dozens, maybe hundreds.
"Did Mencer share the money?" Elizabeth wanted to know.
Nikki shook her head and sat down at a desk. "No. That's the treacherous thing. Mencer had a choice: he could distribute the money to his ... fellow killers. Or he could keep it for himself."
"Just like that?"
"No. The God of Blood told Mencer he could only keep the money for himself if he killed everyone else who was involved."
Katherine shook her head and ran a hand through her hair. "Which he's allowed to do. Because he's still a minor. Whether he's killing passers-by or his people."
Nikki looked at her aunt long and hard. "It didn't come to that because we intervened quickly enough."
Elizabeth cleared her throat and licked her lips. "Still, where did this God of Blood get all the money?" She looked at Nikki. "Did the others get anything out of it, too? Mia and Jeremy's killers?"
The young officer shrugged her shoulders. "I didn't find anything there."
Katherine licked her lips and took a deep breath. "It could be that the God of Blood always wants more brutal killers. And to get people excited about it, he has to pay them and --"
"An e-mail just came in from Mayer," Milton interrupted her. "She's found something. Something has just appeared here, but not on the dark web; it's completely public."
Elizabeth took a step towards the monitor screen. "Where?"
Milton cleared his throat. "On the Boston Globe website. I'll send you the link."
Nikki turned to the computer and opened the link on the monitor screen. Slaughterman - Where does the killer strike next? It was written above the video, which showed a very familiar face. Next to it was a link. She looked at her mother and frowned deeply. "Do you want me to play the video?"
The lieutenant took a deep breath and gritted his teeth. "What do you think?"
They heard the voice that filled the BRIC.
"I am Slaughterman, I am the arch demon of the God of Blood. And I ask you: In which city shall I commit the subsequent murder? It can be big cities like Boston, New York, Los Angeles, or Houston and smaller towns."
Elizabeth skimmed the article below the video.
... it looks like users can vote in a perverse cat-and-mouse game of death as to which city said Slaughterman will strike next ... The so-called God of Blood, who is most likely behind the brutal murder of Mia Newman and the murder of Jeremy Acosta, and, above all, the Quincy Market massacre, is probably pursuing a perfidious strategy: he incites minors who are not yet of legal age to commit capital crimes, knowing full well that they can hardly be prosecuted under our law. Slaughterman seems to be one of the God of Blood disciples who intends to draw attention to himself by committing atrocious acts. So we can and most probably must prepare ourselves for even worse deeds and therefore ...
Elizabeth buried her face in her hands and groaned loudly. In this way, the media helped to ensure plenty of copycats.
"It's going viral immediately," Nikki said with furrowed brows, "all social media is full of it. After just a few minutes, the video already has five hundred thousand clicks."
Elizabeth glanced at the posts from random faceless users who had come out of the dark and wanted to join in.
Kill them all - Demon888
I'm in - Hate-Dragon
Shit, I'm already 18 - Steal Warrior
Not me yet, thirteen and a half. I'll kill my stepfather - Bloodstorm13
"And the posts?" asked Elizabeth, pointing at the monitor wall with a furrowed brow. "We must be able to do something about that."
"The posts are difficult to trace. Apart from that, they're all aliases. And just announcing a murder doesn't make these guys murderers. There's nothing we can do legally for the time being." Elizabeth sank resignedly onto one of the desk chairs while her daughter continued to speak. "Only on 4chan and the dark web are there original posts, but they can't be attributed to an IP address."
Nikki clicked on other press portals. They had picked up the story immediately. Big city newspapers and smaller regional papers. It was particularly prominent in the biggest tabloid, and the link was eagerly forwarded around the Internet. The first editors and even hackers were probably already trying to pull the video from the links onto their hard drives so that they could post it themselves.
Will the God of Blood's killer disciples strike us next?
Police clueless.
Which city is threatened with the next massacre?
Do we have to lock up our children now?
As soon as things had a name, they took on a life of their own, multiplied, and spread like viruses. And it was impossible to imagine the collective consciousness without these names and headlines: the killer disciples of the God of Blood.
The door to BRIC flew open. Nick stood in the doorway. "I've just come from Jane's office," he said with a furrowed brow.
"So, is she campaigning for Boston to be the next murder city?" asked Nikki. "Is the Quincy market thing enough?"
Nick lowered his brows and gave the young woman a long look. "Very funny, Officer O'Laighin. Jane wants to know if we can get a statement out from BPD. The God of Blood thing is slowly boiling up to the highest levels. And ten journalists have already contacted us and bombarded the press department with questions. They're already thinking about bringing public relations staff back from vacation." He tossed Elizabeth a few drafts of press statements on the desk where she was sitting. "What do you think, Liz?"
That was the typical government, the lieutenant thought. First, they buried their heads in the sand for ages, and then suddenly, everything was supposed to happen within seconds, even though no one was responsible and no one was there. Nick placed a multi-page document on Elizabeth's desk.
It said Counterstatement.
Elizabeth skimmed through the text and could already hear the statements and counterstatements in her head, most of which were so weak that they hardly refuted the rumors and sensational reports but only fanned the flames.
First of all, it needs to be clarified whether this is a planned crime or a series of extremely cruel individual cases. We will only comment on this once we have definitive findings or there is a risk of jeopardizing the investigation.
Elizabeth had attended media training several times, and also through her late wife Sarah, and knew, at least in theory, how to deal with the press. It was essential to avoid mentioning the name of the God of Blood, for example, as this only served to reinforce the name and the horror behind it. It was wiser to depersonalize the whole thing and talk about a conspiracy context.
And if everyone insisted that these were not individual cases but that the God of Blood was controlling his murder puppets from the Internet, who were allowed to continue murdering with impunity, then it should be said:
The rumor that a faceless power on the Internet is controlling underage murderers is baseless speculation and lacks any foundation. Our best people are on the case and will come forward with results soon.
Elizabeth looked at her partner. "Unfortunately, this speculation is not without foundation. We're currently working with Officer O'Laighin and Agent Milton to move from speculation to a solid foundation, and we'll be a big step closer to finding that goddamn God of Blood on the Internet."
Nick puffed out his cheeks. "I realize that too, Liz. But tell that to our communications department. They think the people out there are as stupid as they are." He glanced at the monitor screen where the Internet article was displayed. "Who is this journalist who wrote this? What's his name?"
Nikki pulled down the corners of her mouth and shrugged. Just like the killer trolls who had reacted to Slaughterman's video on 4chan, he hadn't given his real name. "He calls himself BlackRat."
"He's still calling himself that," Elizabeth growled, gritting her teeth. "But we'll drag this black rat out of his hole. Nick, you prepare our visit to the Boston Globe. We'll light a fire under that editor-in-chief's ass. Otherwise, he can flush his black rat down the toilet, where he came from and will soon be going back to. " She drew her eyebrows together as she looked at her daughter. "Nikki, you come with me to the Chief!"
"Yay!"