Page 4 of Slaughtered Firefly
Istood in the entryway of the safe house we had marked as one of Midas’ operations. The intel wasn’t the best; we still did not know who tipped me off, but the text three hours ago was all I needed.
Unknown: 2524 lakeman circle
Me: Who is this?
Unknown: A friend
Me: What’s at 2524 lakeman circle?
Unknown: The end of Midas’ reign
No matterhow quickly we had been to secure the warrant, it didn’t matter; we were never fast enough, and time ticked away.
The entryway smelled of decay as SWAT entered to clear the grounds. As much as I wanted to believe we would catch someone, anyone in the act, we wouldn’t. Whoever they were, they were far too clever to be caught so unprepared. I didn’t even bother to un-holster the pistol on my side as I stepped into the house. It was so similar to the other houses. It had been five years since I had joined the task force, and in that time there had been four houses hidden in plain sight. We likely wouldn’t have found this one for another week if not for that tip.
The smell of bodily fluids mixed with the decay was enough to flip the stomach. There was blood splattered, painted, squeezed and thrown onto the walls. There was also fluid identified as vaginal secretions that was everywhere, just like in every other house on June twenty-sixth.
I wondered where they got the sicko to fuck themselves in the blood, how tedious it would've been to perfectly alignthe come splotches with the bloodied outlines of the creator’s newest designs. We knew from DNA that it was a female, with common alleles with Midas, but not a direct match, a blood relative maybe, but Midas didn’t have brothers or sisters to our knowledge and we had a whole team of cyber security working on uncovering years of activity, but we were still in the dark.
Command, Operations, and Response Executive, or C.O.R.E. was still establishing itself with the branches stretched thin between the states. We were still operating as whispers in the United States’ former intelligence and military agencies. Most citizens didn’t register the shift, the creation of new administration systems that stripped away autonomy. The people were too willing to offer their sovereignty. I was on loan to the Riven State police, a detective charged with investigating the string of murders that had popped up all over the state in the last few years. The killer was methodical, and zero records of her anywhere.
This woman was a ghost, only showing up once a year in June. Crime scenes designed like an animal, a caught and distraught soul who got off on the most gruesome parts of life. Normal crime scene cleanup couldn’t touch what came out of these houses. The smell of decay and sex mingled with chemicals and fires. The senses would be so overwhelmed from the time you stepped into the house to the time you exited. If I hadn’t grown up in the crime rings and slave syndicates around the cities, I don’t think I would have tolerated it myself. It was Chicago back then, Illinois split in half when the new regimes were instituted and Riven was born. Who cares for another state in the not so united? This world was fucked anyway I looked at it.
The designs always had something in common, and it took us so long to figure it out we missed the opportunity to catch the artist in action—Criminal, the criminal in action.
However, this design was different; not as clean as it should have been. I slowly walked around the entryway and into the lounge that offset the stairs. Significant detail was put into this landscape of deer, antlers whittled to points stuck through the eyes of grown men. But my eyes landed on the pristine couches. Usually, none of the gruesome evidence was on the furniture, but here was a large swipe of blood on the beige sofa top, like someone was in a hurry to clean blood off something. That was unusual, and messy. The person who constructed this web of gore had OCD tendencies, and this would have set them ablaze.
Whoever they were, I hadn’t the slightest idea, but the surefire in these graphic displays of art was something to be admired. Dammit, these crimes. It couldn’t be an artistic expression since it’s a criminal act, I kept reminding myself. The animal pinned to the wall opposite a gruesome painting of a landscape; the image reflecting a deer shot. Is this aBambireference? Fuck. I took a step towards the back rooms as the team moved upstairs as they surgically cleared the house. I wasn’t worried; why would I be with all the times we had missed the perpetrators in action? Clear that more than one this time; the messy boot prints leading out back indicated several large men. I would bet my salary that every single one of these tracks would be a generic ass shoe sold at a big box store, dime a dozen.
I heard a thud from above, and the commotion of shouts that followed sent a sliver of unease through me.
“Get on the ground now!” Matt’s voice rang out.
“Drop the fucking knife and get on the ground!” Someone else shouted; if I had to guess, Dwight.
I turned the corner just in time to see the most beautiful woman in my life. My stomach twisted in knots before my brain could process, and I lurched back, my ungloved hands caught on the doorframe.Fuck more paperwork.This woman was the same woman I had slept with just a week ago. I swallowed hard,determined to be professional in this situation but failing as my eyes tracked her every move I could see. She hadn’t opened her eyes to the commotion in front of her; her head hung back, pointed up at the ceiling, like she couldn’t give a fuck about what was going on. Maybe she was counting the ugly popcorn ceiling studs as she waited for her end. The men in front of me blocked the rest of her body from view, but her angelic face was just as stunning as before. I glanced up to see what she had been staring at—a small camera phone mounted to the ceiling, its own personal audience angled to watch in perfection. Why would she need an audience? My steps were slow as I continued into the area.
“I won’t repeat, get on the fucking ground or I will shoot you!” Matt, called out.
As bodies moved aside for me to enter, I noted the surroundings. As I was crossing into what must be the kitchen, I got my first clear look at the woman. Propped up on the counter, her head lulled to the side as her crimson-stained hair fell with it. Fuck, she trapped me with her movement.
Her lips curved to form a delicious ‘o’ as she continued to ignore the SWAT members in front of her. The lush lips formed a moan as she finally opened her eyes and landed on mine. Those eyes heady with lust and defiance as she locked her gaze on me. My dick rose to attention remembering the sweet touch of her devilish tongue.
Only then did I realize what the rest of her body had done, and my eyes scraped down the rest of her. Her breasts covered with bloodied hand prints, her nipples budding into perfect round peaks as sweat clung to her abdomen. I forced my eyes downward, caught in the crude display of self-pleasure to see what the men had been yelling at all this time.
There, slicked with her juices, well lubricated by the mixture of blood and cum, was a large K-bar knife. I couldn’t pull my eyesaway from the sight of it as she slid the hilt in and out of her tightening cunt as she worked herself into an orgasm.
“Yes Daddy, fuck your whore with your best knife,” she moaned as she climaxed, seemingly unfazed by the audience.
I snapped my jaw closed and gritted my teeth. This was the sicko who liked to fuck in blood, the sicko that would come a horrendous amount of times in every fucking room. What even for? Glory? What twisted game was this woman up to? And why the fuck was I so turned on by it?
I watched as her body came down from the quakes of release, her eyes dull as she stared at me, unimpressed or just unamused. She should have known what was about to happen.
Matt shot off a warning bullet; clear and over with this bullshit.
I chuckled, and every SWAT mate turned towards me as if I had lost my mind. Maybe I had, because I laughed at the command that was barked just moments earlier.
“It’s a fucking knife.” I laughed hearty as questionable looks focused on me.
