Page 67 of Pure Killers

"Dirk! Answer the phone, for Christ’s sake! I've worked it out.” I’m babbling, probably nonsensical, but he’ll have to put it together. “The pattern, the crime scenes, they're fucking constellations! Caleb was obsessed with them, he knew all of them. I'm going to the next one now, meet me there, it’s…" I thump the horn at a car going too slow in front of me until they swerve into the slower lane. "Meet me at that old factory, the wooden one they busted a fireworks party in at New Year's. I think Olivia might be the next victim. I can’t explain… but she’s missing, and the last one was a man she was involved with. I hope I'm wrong, but it might be tonight. It might not be too late." I cut off abruptly. If he's not answering, or if he’s ignoring me, I need to call someone who isn't.

Dean's saved number is the next one I dial, but it rings out too, no voicemail. I'm driving like a madwoman, swerving into one-way streets, cutting people off. I'm at the edge of Crennick now, and I dial the station instead, to which the line goes dead, just a long droning buzz in answer. "What the hell!"

The number has never failed before, and now it has decided to have issues? Jabbing at the console only serves to turn it off, and by the time it slowly reboots again, I’m almost there. Dirk's number, apparently the only one working, dials through again. And again, voicemail.

"I'm almost there. No one else is getting through. God, please get this. I need you!"

The address is ahead of me, down a dead-end street bordered by crumbling pale brick walls. The same pale brick that makes up the old factory around the wooden beams and framing. Itstands out against the night sky, not a window left intact, many of the wooden accents that once made it distinctive rotted and splintered. Cranking into park, I jump out and head for the iron gate.

Soon I'm passing the high-arched entryway into the building proper and the turmoil inside me is starkly at odds with how peaceful, how quiet it all is. Could I be wrong?

But no, I see a light ahead through the missing walls. And I know this has got to be it. The only question is, am I too late to save her?

I force myself to slow down once I’m inside the fence, my gun low by my side, footsteps quiet.

All I know about this Cocooner is that they took inspiration from my husband. If they're a man, they're stronger than me, probably armed as well to get their victim to co-operate. There's definitely light glinting around missing bricks. I slink towards it, sticking close to the shadows that hug the bottom of each wall. When it comes time to take the stairs up—better to be above, to have the advantage of view and height, I take the stairs fast, and thankfully the wood doesn’t creak under my weight.

The factory is tall, and up on the floating path, the floor is too far down to safely jump. I crouch low, creeping along the railing, in places, stepping around holes worn in by weather and rot. I’m yet to see movement, another brick wall falling away to my right. To my left, close to the corner of the factory, there’s just darkness, no light reaching in through the missing roof, and the light I’m creeping closer to, too faint to reach or see by.

Then the room with the yellow light is ahead, just around another wall. I can see the floor and a collection of things there. Things that make my hands clammy in my too-tight grip on my gun a paint tray like one used to paint houses, with a small, white-coated brush resting on the edge. But as I pause and squint, I see it’s not paint. The grey strips of cloth are bundledbeside it. It’s plaster. Black feathers are dusted around the room as though a crow met its end in the rafters, and one has fallen into the white plaster.

My heart hammers, adrenaline making my feet feel too light. I want to run out of here and wait for backup almost as much as I need to know right now what I'm about to see. I try to prepare for the worst, to see Olivia already dead, drowned in plaster. But preparing for something so horrible proves impossible. It’s all fight or flight from here.

There is movement now. My gaze cuts away from the waiting plaster, the gun coming up. There’s a large x made of thick square wooden beams between me and the room, some kind of central support feature. I’m looking at it from the shadowed side. Chains glint in the light, sifting through the wedges, looped near the top. But it’s movement, small and maybe imagined, that draws my eye. Then it happens again, but this time I see it; a hand, near the top of one beam of thex. The fingers close into a fist, then go lax again, the muscles of the wrist bunching against chains.

I’m no longer breathing as I crouch even lower. Someone, someone alive. It’s not too late. The Cocooner. I need to be watching for them. Every nerve in my body feels hyper-ready, imagining him everywhere, in every shadow, of which there are infinite. If I'd been able to focus longer, to see through the fear, I'd have seen that hand, the bare arm, wasn't Olivia, wasn't a woman’s.

As it is, my attention is split in so many ways that I can only see and react. A large pylon temporarily blocks my view as I come around the front of the x, where the bright lantern light falls on its face and the face of whoever is chained to it.

I see the wings first, black and feathered and heavy enough to have their own chains holding them open against the x, ritualistic and antiquated at once. As I look on from the side, theglossy black feathers block my view of the one they’re framing. Stepping further around, my eyes dart everywhere. The plaster again, another shadow, hiding monsters that make my nerves thrum.

The pylon is out of the way. I'm facing the front of the cross, the person tied there. And it’s so much worse than I expected.

It’s Dirk.

Chapter eight

Igrip the banister, hanging onto it as though it’s the only thing anchoring me here, a wash of nausea sweeping over me.No.

No, no no no.

That one word is all I can think, running through my head in time with each short, sharp and shallow inhale I suck in.

It can’t be him here. But it is him. It doesn’t make sense, and yet it makes perfect sense.

Dirk is naked from the waist up, arms lifted and chained separately to the top beams of the x. There's blood down his temple, smeared all the way to his jaw. His mouth is taped closed; head hanging forward. More blood has dried in rivulets down his arms, some of it still glistening wet, so much of it that I can’t see where it’s coming from, that for a moment I believe he must be dead. His legs, inside black pants, have been plastered up to his knees, like he’s standing in one great white boot, except his bare feet are sticking out the bottom, toes only just reaching the ground.

The only thing that helps me chase away the blotches on my vision is that he's alive. He must be. I saw his hand move.

That’s what the Cocooner does. Kills last. But there’s so much blood. My grip on the gun tightens so much that it hurts my palm.

I can't let the panic control me, can’t lose any chance to save him. The Cocooner is here somewhere and probably knows I'm here too. I'm crouched, looking at Dirk’s face from a handful of meters away when he stirs. My heart soars.

He's okay.

When his head lifts, slow and bleary, I have to witness the fear as the horror of realisation comes to his eyes. He’s here, a victim in the way he’d feared the most. Strung up, unable to move, drowning, turned into something that should only exist in the sick mind of your own killer.

My heartbeat trips over itself. I want to get him down, out of here. I want to skip to the part where he’s safe, and this moment is behind us. His usually pale skin is drained-looking, lips colourless.

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