Page 36 of Girl, Unmasked (Ella Dark #28)

Ella blew through intersections with reckless abandon, red lights be damned.

She covered the ten-minute journey to Main Street in half that time and violated every traffic law in the book in the process.

She silently mouthed something, maybe Hail Marys or just plain old profanity.

But she was deaf to all but the blood rushing in her ears.

She didn’t bother looking for a parking spot.

She jerked the wheel and mounted the sidewalk with the crunch of metal on concrete.

On the other side of the road sat Bookshop Obscura – William Kane’s musty little kingdom of the printed word.

Today, it wasn’t just a forgettable little cube. It was a crime scene waiting to happen.

If it hasn't happened already, a voice hissed in her head.

Ella told it to shut the hell up as she bolted out into the midday sun and made for the entrance.

Pedestrians looked at her like she'd just crash-landed from another planet, but she'd already been gawped at by an army of school kids today, and after someone had endured that, they could endure anything.

At the door, she skidded to a stop like a freight train hitting a wall. Somewhere in the back of her head, alarm bells clanged loud enough to wake the dead. The sign in the window said it all.

CLOSED.

Middle of the day on a weekday, and the store was shut up tight.

Her eyes cut to the lock, to the door handle. Dull brass, tarnished with age and the oily residue of a thousand hands. It mocked her, daring her to reach out and test her luck.

Ella flexed her fingers. She knew, even before she touched it, what she would find. Some small, bitter part of her almost wanted to turn tail, jump back in her car, and pretend she'd never darkened this doorway. Spare herself the confirmation of what her gut already knew.

But Ella Dark had never listened to that part of herself, and she wasn't about to start now. So she grabbed the handle, wrapped her fingers around it like she was throttling some perp’s neck.

The mechanism gave with a small click.

Unlocked.

The smell hit her like a sledgehammer to the sinuses as soon as she cracked the door.

Ella had been elbow deep in viscera too many times to count; the copper stench of ruptured arteries was as familiar to her as her own sweat.

But this wasn’t that. It was thick and meaty with a gag-inducing sweetness underneath, like a steak left to rot in the sun.

She gagged as her mind caught up with her nose. Bile scorched the back of her throat, but she swallowed it down. No time for squeamishness. No time for anything but the job.

‘No,’ Ella said. The word had slipped out unbidden. ‘Goddammit, no.’

She shoved her way into the store, the same store she’d been at yesterday. Only now it looked much different, felt much different. Cops had a sixth sense for tragedy, and every nerve ending in her body was telling her that something had gone down here – and very recently.

‘Kane!’ Ella shouted. ‘Please say you’re in here.’

Dead silence.

Ella's boots squelched on the hardwood with every step, and when she looked down, her fears were confirmed.

Blood. Black and tarry, coating the floor and pooling around books like some hellish moat. Ella was walking on a liquid red carpet right into the belly of the beast.

The smell grew stronger as Ella moved deeper into the shop. She wanted to wretch, maybe wake up from this nightmare, but she couldn’t.

And then she reached the counter.

There he was, just to left, sitting upright against a bookshelf.

Or what was left of him, anyway.

A jagged gash from sternum to groin, tearing through his shabby clothes and turning Kane inside out.

The wound was so deep that Ella could see pale coils of intestine glistening in the gloom.

Blood had found its way onto every inch of his being, from his hair to his torso to his shoes.

This scumbag killer–whatever he was–had eviscerated this harmless bookstore owner.

It was something so beyond the pale that Ella's mind reeled as she tried to reject the reality of what was splattered in front of her.

And then she saw the kicker.

Not only had William Kane been gutted and left for dead, but his killer had left behind his now-infamous signature, too.

Wings, sprouting from either side of Kane's limp torso, were painted on the bookshelf behind him in blood.

Too late. William Kane was dead, and it was on her. She'd had the pieces, had them right there in her damn hands. But she'd been too slow to put them together. Too buried in her own head to see the full picture until it was splashed across the walls in screaming color.

The Angel Maker had beaten her again.