message. No witnesses. No IDs on the vics. Gruesome, senseless, and unfortunately these days, a dime a dozen.
I scanned past it, looking for whatever it was Lilith wanted me to find. But when I made to flip the page, she shook her head. âNo, thatâs the one,â she said.
I skimmed. Missed the point. Four columns on the front page â complete with lurid shots of tarp-draped bodies and pavement stained red-brown â and another eight or so pic-free buried in the middle of the âAâ section. I combed through a second time, Lilith watching lips pursed. Then I folded it over in frustration and said, âThis thingâs five thousand words long, Lily, how about you just give me the bullets? Starting with why the hell I should give a shit about a bunch of rival dirt-bag drug-runners slaughtering each other?â
âWell, for one,â she said, clearly annoyed I hadnât deduced what she wanted me to, âthose victims werenât gun-thugs or drug-runners. Their clothes were tattered, filthy. They werenât armed. And what littleâs left of them suggests malnourishment and poor health-care, likely stretching back to birth. They were illegal immigrants, whoâd probably paid a pretty penny for the privilege of being smuggled safely across the border, likely utilizing the same pipeline as the cartels, sure, but that alone is not enough to make them a target to a rival cartel. For two, youâll note the bodies were discovered on the US side of the border. Any cartel smart enough to stay in business is too smart to drag the US military into their fight with so brazen and foolhardy a move as that; to a one, their high-profile body dumps have all taken place south of the Rio Grande. And for three, those heads and hands? They werenât sawed off to prevent identification, though Iâm sure thatâs what the perpetrator wanted anyone who happened by them to think. They were gnawed off. Eaten, perhaps. As, my friends among the Fallen tell me, were their hearts, though that fact didnât make the paper. Purposefully withheld, Iâm sure, by authorities too foolish to realize the perpetrator or perpetrators of this horrific act are beyond the reach of their justice system, not to mention beyond their ken.â
I fell silent a moment, listening to the waves roll in, while I digested what she told me. When I finally spoke, it was to say, âWhatever did this ate their fucking heads ?â
âMaybe,â she said. âBut I doubt it. The flesh and bone would provide little by way of sustenance for a creature subsisting on the life-force of living beings, though I will admit that cheek meat, well-braised, is quite delicious. Brain, heart, and blood are all far better. Eyes, too. Spinal column will do in a pinch. So my guess is, the hearts were consumed fresh, and the heads removed so that the brains might be eaten at the perpetratorâs leisure. Though skulls are difficult to break open, they are quite well-suited as storage vessels for the gray matter inside, and cellared properly, they will keep.â
âJesus,â I said, more to myself than to her. Her utter lack of revulsion at the topic of eating human heads and hearts chilled me as thoroughly as the gruesome acts themselves. Yet another reminder that, despite her appearances, Lilith was pretty fucking far from human.
âMind your tongue, Collector.â As if Iâm the one whose utterances offended.
âIâm just saying. Thereâs gotta be someone else who can do this.â
Lilith sighed. âThereâs a war on, Collector. Each of us is being asked to do our part. I would have thought ridding humankind of these creatures whoâve been feeding off the living for centuries would appeal to that pesky conscience of yours. Youâll be eliminating untold evil, preventing no shortage of human suffering. I wonât deny the assignment is high-risk, but even if I could