The Message in the Blood

I should’ve known it wasn’t over when I left that alley. I should’ve known silence was the calm before the next scream.

They moved Juno to a safehouse the night before. Her voice had been steady when I called, but the crunching of her favorite banana chips gave her away. She was scared. We both were. That’s how you know you’re still alive in this line of work—when your fear is real enough to taste.

I barely got sleep. My dreams were tight loops of the latest crime scene. The woman’s skull opened like a flower, her eyes set on the ceiling, flesh shaped into twisted petals around the edges. “Beauty is sacrifice,” the killer had written in blood beneath her. I was beginning to understand his language.

By dawn, I was already dressed, drinking coffee that tasted like burnt regret. Marcus hadn’t called back. Not that I expected him to. He was good at disappearing when the job got too personal. Or maybe he was just good at hiding. From me. From his guilt. From the past.

I drove straight to the morgue.

The halls were colder than usual—both literally and emotionally. Dr. Maddox Ellery was already waiting in the autopsy room, his gloves snapping into place like a man prepping for surgery instead of truth.

“She was alive when he began,” he said without greeting. His voice was calm, smooth, a little too satisfied.

“Of course she was,” I muttered. “They always are.”

He pointed to the base of the woman’s skull. “You see this? Precision cut. Almost surgical. And here—look at the clean separation between the flesh and bone. This wasn’t some deranged junkie hacking away with a kitchen knife. This was deliberate. Trained hands. Steady.”

I stared at the body. Thirty-two years old. Second grade teacher. Mother of two. Skinned, staged, and turned into a symbol of something I still couldn’t fully grasp.

“Anything else?” I asked.

Ellery peeled back a piece of tissue like he was unwrapping a gift. Inside the cavity, where a brain should’ve been, was a rolled-up piece of canvas.

He handed it to me without flinching. “You’re not going to like it.”

I unrolled it with latex-gloved fingers.

It was a painting—crude, dark, but unmistakably Vincent Greaves’ style. I’d studied enough of his “artwork” to recognize the twisted brushstrokes, the way he painted sorrow like it was a living thing. It was a self-portrait of me. Me, painted in red tones, surrounded by a crown of skulls.

At the bottom, scrawled in his thin, calculated hand:

“You are the brush now, Detective. The final piece is you.”

I left the morgue with my stomach in knots and my jaw set like concrete. My phone buzzed as I got into the car. Unknown number. I almost didn’t answer.

“Lana.” A voice, male, distorted through some kind of modulator. “Check your email. Now.”

Click.

I pulled over, connected my phone to my car's hotspot, and logged in. There it was—one new message, no subject. Just a zip file.

The contents? A video. Ten seconds long. Grainy, black and white surveillance footage of a prison hallway.

Vincent Greaves, in his cell. Sleeping. At the same time the latest victim was being skinned alive.

I replayed it twice. Triple-checked the timestamp. It was legit.

Either this sick bastard had a twin, or someone else had taken up the chisel.

Back at HQ, the walls were closing in. Captain Hayward wasn’t happy I’d gone to the morgue without clearance. He wasn’t happy about a lot of things.

“We’ve got the mayor breathing down our necks, Cross. You promised results, not more headlines!”

“He left a message for me,” I snapped. “Inside her skull. He’s not done. And if you keep slowing this down with your red tape, the next body’s gonna be someone we know.”

That shut him up long enough for me to storm out.

I met Juno at the safehouse. She was in sweats, hoodie pulled over her head, laptop on her knees. She barely looked up.

“You’re not gonna like this,” she said.

“Join the club.”

“I traced the email. Deep layers of masking, routed through Russian servers, then bounced to a darknet drop box. But guess what I found buried in the metadata?”

She spun the screen around.

A number. One I recognized.

Marcus Vane’s badge ID.

I left without a word. She tried to stop me, but I was already halfway to my car. The city bled by as I drove—lights smearing across the windshield like ghosts trying to whisper.

Marcus lived in a brick two-story just outside downtown. Too quiet. Too clean. I rang the bell.

No answer.

I checked the door.

Unlocked.

My gun was drawn before I stepped inside.

The air smelled like incense and something metallic. Blood, maybe. I followed the scent through the hallway, into the living room. And there it was.

Another canvas.

A painting of Lana of me naked, drenched in blood, lying in the same position as the last victim. But this one wasn’t painted. It was photographed.

I turned around just as Marcus stepped into the doorway.

His face was pale. Tired. Haunted.

“You were never supposed to see that,” he said.

I didn’t lower the gun.

“Start talking.”