Page 48 of Girl, Unmasked
Drago’s lungs seized.How the hell was this possible?Yes, he’d writtenHalo of Bloodin record time and barely even stopped to read the thing back once he’d finished it.Yes, he’d written it while he was lost in the paralysis of intoxication, but the whole thing started and ended with the written word.The book was merely an exorcism for what happened, and he knew deep in his bones that he didn’t have the want or need to bring those scenes to life.
They could call him what they liked.Deadbeat, failure, a wannabe that didn’t have the talent or work ethic to make anything of his craft.But a killer?Never a killer.It didn’t make any sense.
In his research for the book, he’d looked into psychotic breaks and all of its peripheral mental problems.Mental breakdowns, episodes of mania, schizophrenia.He’d been looking for a way to cope with the trauma, and in the end, channelling all of his rage into a gory piece of fiction seemed the best option.
But he couldn’t deny that there’d been moments.Occurrences where he felt the urge tobecomeCain in the real world.Nothing that consumed his being, but little thought experiments; could he turn a real woman into an angel and get away with it?If he did, what victims would he choose?How easy would it be to gouge a woman’s eyes out or hang her from a balcony?
Drago glanced down at the phone in his shaky hand and opened a new browser tab.He searched ‘Norwalk murder angel,’ hitGoand held his breath.
Then the results pinged up.Forty-thousand of them.
CNN.Fox.NBC.Associated Press.CBS.Every three-letter media company in the United States had jumped on it.News of the hanging angel had made its way across the country, even reached the shores of Europe judging by the Guardian’sConnecticut Woman Hanged From Balcony – Disturbing Photosheadline.
Drago closed the browser as his throat worked against the rising tide of puked.But then his thumb began swiping of its own volition, fighting the full-body mortis of realization.Drago navigated to his photo gallery, even as every better angel of his nature screamed at him to turn back.
But he had to know.
The first picture said it all.
There she was.The woman from the news.But these weren't some paparazzi shots.These were up close and personal.An apartment.Not a crime scene, not an evidence locker.But the scene of the slaughter itself.
Intimate.A killer's eye view.The whole sick transformation in vivid HD.Woman to corpse to angel.
But it was her face that froze the air in his lungs.Even in death, Drago recognized her.
Martina Payne.His high school English teacher.The one who'd first nurtured his love of the written word, only to crush his fledgling dreams with a single red-penned ‘See me after class’ on his first creative writing assignment.
He clapped a hand over his mouth, breathing hard through his nose as he fought to keep the bile down.But his traitorous finger kept scrolling like an automaton pulled along by some invisible string.
More pictures.Close-ups.But this time it was of a different woman.A woman he’d never seen before but doubt he’d recognize anyway.The pictures were detailed shots of shredded skin, colorless eyes, barbed wire wrapped tight around her skull.
He had no memory of taking these photos.
Drago stared down at his hands.He expected to see them caked in blood, but they were clean.Shaking, sure.Nicotine-stained and hangnail-ravaged.But bearing no evidence of the butchery they'd supposedly wrought.
But the first two deaths from Halo of Blood were right here on his phone, and evidence didn’t lie.
He was responsible for this.
Him and his poisoned mind, the cancerous imaginings he'd foolishly thought confined to the realm of fiction.But like a malevolent djinn unleashed from its bottle, his monstrous muse had slipped its chains and stalked out into the world, hungry for blood.
A second later, Drago found himself bent over the toilet in the bathroom.He hugged the bowl and dry heaved until only dust came up.He stumbled over to the sink and stared at himself in the mirror.
‘Who are you?What have you done?’
But the reflection offered no answers.Just the dead-eyed stare of a man teetering on the edge, unsure if he was about to fall or if he'd already hit bottom and just hadn't felt the impact yet.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
Ella's hotel room was a war zone, and insomnia was the invading army.She sat on her bed as she pored over the mountain of files in front of her.She'd been at this for hours now, and they'd called it a day on the precinct at the new director's request, who'd called Ella and told her they needed to start fresh tomorrow.Edis would never have done that, and Ella didn't know how to feel about it.
So here she was, trading her desk for a bed.It was the same crap, just a different ceiling.
But Ella couldn't switch her brain off.Every time she shut her eyes, Sophie Draper and Martina Payne were there waiting for her.Their ghosts were asking her why she hadn't been quicker, smarter, and better.Their faces swam before Ella's gritty eyes in a flipbook of post-mortem shots that had seared themselves onto her eyeballs.
Two dead women, two lives ended by a psychopath with an angel fetish.Two women linked by death, and now Ella had to find out if they were connected in life, too.Ella reached for her coffee thermos but found it empty, then briefly contemplated the merits of an IV drip.
The CCTV angle was a bust so far.Either her unsub was slicker than grease or the business owners of Norwalk had collectively decided that security cameras were passé.
