South Beach Diet...Epilogue

I stood, arms folded across my chest, as I watched the discussion taking place in the room behind the one way mirror.

Special Agent Jennifer Wilson paced behind me, flailing her arms as she spoke. “How can Corrales possibly think that he is the real killer? That man is stark raving mad!”

“Who is, Corrales?” I continued to focus my attention on the face of the man I knocked out.

His face was still stained with the blood from the victim’s kidney that he had nearly finished. His eyes were wide open, his pupils dilated. The dark circles beneath his eyes indicated that he had been running on little sleep for quite some time.

He was speaking in short, quick sentences that were nearly incoherent, especially if, like Corrales, you didn’t understand the babbled references he was throwing out like barbs to me.

“It’s been a great run man. I love the beach. It’s a perfect place for a midnight meal with the Beast. Blood never tasted so good.”

Corrales was overwhelmed, trying to take an intelligible statement form this guy, but he kept pressing anyway. “George, why did you kill these five victims?”

George shook his head. “I didn’t kill them, man. The Beast did. Oh, I suppose that I helped. Especially with that last one. She was a wild one, that one. I don’t know why the Beast wanted them dead, dude, but they sure were tasty.”

“Who is this Beast you keep referring to?”

George smiled; his bloody lips curling back as he did so. “It’s here watching you, so you better treat me right, Detective. It’s always here watching, learning, judging. The Beast is you, me, all of us.”

Corrales nodded, seemingly glad to have received an answer that he could use. “So you are the Beast, right George?”

George just smiled.

I had seen enough. I turned to face the still pacing Jennifer and touched her lightly at her elbow. When she turned to face me, I leaned in close and spoke softly nearly her left ear.

“Don’t worry Jennifer, your profile was impeccable. This man is not the killer of these people, but the creature that led me to him left him to take the fall for those killings. All of the forensic evidence will be made to fit this guy. There is nothing that you or I can do to stop that now. This whole series of killings was meant to solely to draw me here.”

She pulled back at that. “But why would…?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know enough yet to say for sure, other than that I was given a message. I message I haven’t had time to read yet.”

She looked shaken. “I have pictures of the symbols that were left next to each body. Do you want me to give you copies? Maybe they were part of the message too?”

“Yeah, you can send them to me via e-mail. I need to go, now.” I looked back through the one-way glass into the interrogation room to see that Corrales was putting the papers he had been filling out back into a folder. A group of burly officers from the Metro-Dade Police Department had entered the room to escort the soon-to-be-famous serial killer du jour to his cell. I leaned in close to Jennifer again. “Keep an eye out for strange profiles like this one. Let me know ASAP when you encounter another one.”

“There will be more?” Her eyes had grown wide with shock.

I nodded. “It’s just a matter of time. You can count on that. Tell Corrales that I’ve left. He won’t get, or need, any testimony from me for this nutcase.”

I left her to her own thoughts and Corrales’ likely wrath at my failure to stick around. I found a nice, darkened office just off the main hall and slipped into the Shadowland for the brief trip home.

I emerged in my meditation chamber, a particularly dark room that had no actual door into it in the mundane world. It was here that I came when I needed to be alone with my own thoughts.

I touched a small orb that lit up the small room with a bright, clear blue light. I pulled the rolled up scroll from the pocket I had kept it in and began examining it as I sat down at the small roll top desk that served as my only work surface for writing.

The leather of the scroll had a strange look to it and felt thinner and lighter than new leather should have. The scroll was held closed by a thick wax seal that was embossed with the symbol of a dragon with three heads…Dracaar’s sigil.

I cracked open the seal, letting the pieces of wax crumble onto the desk. I unrolled the scroll carefully.

The language of the letters and symbols of the scroll gave me pause for a moment as I searched the memories of Ma Grendel to come up with meanings. When it clicked into place, I drew an instinctive breath. This was no human language, but the original script of the An’girasii.

The message contained within those words was chilling…(to be revealed in the next post.)