It wasn't the wooden table fitted with restraints, the wall of photographs of the dead meant to resemble a clock face, nor the walk-in cooler standing half open that drew their attention. Nor was it the floor-to-ceiling glass and wood shelves filled with little trinkets or trophies of his kills displayed and lighted up as if they were part of a macabre museum exhibit, either.

No, the art piece in the center of it all left them without words. Suspended from a reinforced beam in the ceiling by two meat hooks through his hands hung the man himself.

Eyes open and staring with an empty, lifeless gaze at nothing in particular. Andrew's jaw hung open, and his lips had turned blue. His feet were caught in chains anchored to the ground, spread-eagled and suspended like a specimen in a lab. Naked and slit open from below the ribs to the groin.

His entrails spilled out and hung around him like the meaty webs of some grotesque spider, with him at the center of the web, caught, helpless, lifeless—the killer had become the victim.

"That must have hurt," Sally was in her fifties but didn't look it. She had red hair and, for all the world, looked like one of those women from a nineteen-eighties movie. She was brilliant in her chosen field and didn't resemble a medical examiner.

"Meaning he was alive when his killer gutted him?" Boss concluded, and Sally nodded.

"He was pretty much alive for most of the decorating, too. He died when his heart was ripped from him, and that's what lies at his feet." Most of them only noticed it when she pointed it out.

It was very obviously ripped out and violently at that. Blood still pumped from it and also from the arteries in his chest. Oddly, there was not as much of it on the ground as there should have been.

"It takes a lot more strength than one would think to do that to a man or to lift him way up there," Sally murmured, going closer and putting her gloves on as she did.

She pushed aside some intestines to peer at the gut, and most of the cops that didn't need to be there migrated upstairs in a hurry.

"There's a note inside here wrapped in plastic," she announced, and her assistant kept taking photographs. Sally teased it out carefully and opened it.

"It's written in blood and says: ~I, Andrew, hereby declare that I am a butcher. I killed many, and if I had been granted the chance, I would have sacrificed more. This is my murder space and trophy room.~" She squinted, and her assistant brought her glasses and put them on her nose.

"~I was abused as a child. My first kill was in vengeance of the abuse suffered by an innocent, but that one death opened a floodgate, and I realized I possessed no remorse. I used the child as an excuse to justify my need to slaughter my abusers and killed my abusers over and over again while freeing the children from the pain of this world.~" She hesitated, her brows knitted and her eyes fiery with anger.

"I am weak, and I wanted them to see my pain and what they did to me. In the end, I realized they were too blind to know, and I showed them. I brought them here, and finally, their eyes opened. They thought me a monster and painted themselves as innocent, and in my rage, I exterminated them. I thought I would keep them here and let their souls watch as I visit my revenge." She turned the page around.

"~I will not see another sunrise—Death has found me. My vengeance is at an end, and it is true what my parents said—I am a monster, and such, do not belong in this world. I chose my victims by the hands of the clock and thought of as them as fated to be mine, but the clock has now struck for me.~" The coroner stopped reading, staring at the paper for a moment.

"~I am the first to fall at the hands of Death, but I will not be the last.~" Sally's voice trailed into silence, and the quiet following those words chilled Gillian's soul.

A confession from beyond the grave and a killer who forced a monster like Robert to write it in his own blood—what kind of a man could manage something like that? She shuddered.

"We have a vigilante at hand or a serial killer trying to hide his tracks," Sally concluded, but even her voice carried no conviction as she uttered the second possibility.

"How did he find Andrew, and why now? How did he find him before us?" Gillian asked, and their eyes briefly strayed to her.

"Or maybe he's one of us?" someone else asked.

The possibility hadn't even occurred to Gillian.

"No, there wasn't enough time. This was done too long ago, and most people only found out this morning. The three that knew were definitely too busy for this—" Colt answered coldly, and the other woman shut her mouth with a snap.

The smell of drying blood grew overpowering, the stench of death a living thing, and Gillian had to concentrate on keeping herself still. Her forehead wrinkled as she picked up on another smell, something subtle and alien that didn't belong. What was it?

It took a moment before she realized it was the scent of another vampire. Male or female, she couldn't tell, but it was masked by something "other" she could not place. Trepidation and anger stirred in her gut as she strove to keep her expression neutral.

A vampire did this and threatened the secret they had kept for so many millennia. Why would one of their kind do something so bold and stupid or bother to disguise it as misguided justice? She glanced at those around her, and her insides hollowed out. What would happen if they ever realized the world was not as they had been taught to see it? How would humans retaliate when the myth turns out to be real? Badly. She was sure of that.

All it would take was one incident, and everything would go up in flames. Then again, their kind would never allow their secret to come out. They had worked themselves into every level of society with only one purpose: to keep the status quo, and they would do absolutely anything to attain their goal.

Humans outnumbered supernaturals ten thousand to one, and they could not afford even one slip-up. That's why rogues like her were on such thin ice. Once you've left your group, pack, or clan, you no longer have the security blanket of a fair trial or leniency. You are at the mercy of whoever catches up to you and whatever justice they choose to dispense.