The Experimental Murders (Elysium #2)

Chapter One

 Trinket stared in horror at the woman lying in the alley. She was dead. Quite dead. Her skin was pale, her body stiff. But as horrifying as it was to see a person in such a state, it was not her deathly demeanour that struck Trinket as shocking. It was her fingers. They were not like normal fingers.

They looked like bird talons.

Booker stepped forward to take a closer look, and Trinket followed at his side. Before they could get near the dead woman, however, a shrill whistle pierced the air. Booker muttered a curse and turned to the crowd behind them. A group of police officers wove a path through the sea of onlookers. He quickly flashed them a smile, likely preparing to charm his way into the investigation.

"Get out of here, Larkin," an officer barked before Booker even had a chance to say a word.

The officer shoved past him and headed straight towards the corpse, his fellow constables right on his heels. Trinket craned her neck to catch a glimpse of the woman's face, searching for any tell-tale signs of how she may have died. But the jostling crowd gradually pushed her further away until, finally, Booker pulled her back onto the street.

"Did you see her fingers?" he asked.

"Of course."

"Not normal."

"Not at all. Is there a chance they could be a birth defect?"

"Possibly. But I'm more inclined to believe they're the handiwork of the same man who created the Wolf."

She suppressed a grimace, her mind wandering back to the severed wolf's head on their doorstep at home, its metal teeth shining in the sunlight. It was a monstrosity she would never have thought possible. At least not until she met Booker Larkin.

"When we were children, he dreamed of attaching animal parts to humans," Booker continued.

"Why?"

"To see if he could. And it seems he has succeeded."

What kind of person would experiment on people simply because he could? Trinket glanced up at Booker. Who was this mysterious man for his past? His friend. And his rival. A genius who could replace a wolf's teeth with metal blades. A man who longed to experiment on humans.

Could the madman be a murderer as well?

"You truly think that he did this?" she asked.

There was a glimmer in Booker's eye. "I do."

Taking a deep breath, she dared to speak the thought lingering in her mind. "And do you think that he killed her?"

The glimmer vanished, and a darkness fell over his face. His eyes wandered back and forth. "Let's see if anyone has heard anything about the dead woman."

He led them towards the city center, but she couldn't get the question out of her head. "Booker, would your friend kill someone?"

Still refusing to meet her eyes, he looked up at the sky. "To my knowledge, he's never killed anything other than a frog. At least not purposely."

"Purposely?"

"He left to study under a doctor. Doctors have bad days. I'm sure there was a death or two while he was training. Heaven knows I've experienced my own botched surgeries."

"So you don't think he killed that woman in the alley?"

Another hesitation. "I'm certain he's the one who replaced her fingers."

"But he didn't kill her?"

"We have no idea how she died, thanks to those blasted bobbies. There's no way we can come to any conclusions until we do further research."

He set his jaw and tightened his grip on her hand, making her think twice about asking any more questions. Still, she couldn't shake the awful feeling that this man they were searching for—this madman whom Booker called a friend—was, in fact, a killer.