Apprentice (The Gentlemens' Society for Alchemy, #1)

Chapter 2 - Sacrilege

"Finchy! Drop the shoe or die!"

My bulldog has my best brown leather wedge in his mouth. We're engaged in an all out showdown (shoedown?), me standing battle prone on one side of the room, Finch's fat, furry body squashed flat against my living room rug. Drool is dripping down the side of his lips, all over the heel and onto my carpet. He stares up at me, his reddish brown eyes round, watery and determined to win this battle or die trying.

"Finchy!" I shriek. "DROP. IT. NOW."

The shoe falls out of his mouth. Along with another pint of drool.

"Oh, you are so dead!" I scream, stomping my foot in his direction.

Finch sneezes, spraying more drool all over the carpet, then slowly walks away, landing at the foot of the couch. Gingerly, I pick up my shoe and let some of the drool drip off, running it to the kitchen sink to rinse.

"Stupid, stupid dog," I say, drying my shoe with a paper towel. "How do you always pick out the shoes I want to wear?" He turns his head away and yawns. I resist the urge to throw the heel at his head.

"One more shoe breakfast and you're going straight to the pound!" I growl. He looks back at me mournfully.

Then I feel bad, so I sigh and toss him one of the granola bars I just unwrapped, which he inhales in one bite.

Groaning, I slip the gross, still wet wedge on my foot and grab my coffee and my laptop before walking out of my studio. I'm almost late for work, but what else is new? I'm always running late.

I walk into the office, only five minutes after nine, and plop myself down at my desk. A stack of files about a foot high is piled up there, all of the latest information on a story I've been working on for weeks now. A new, red folder I haven't looked at yet is sitting at the top - it must be the autopsy reports that I asked Cam to snag for me. Having friends in the P.D. is essential when you're a reporter in New York City -- or anywhere, really. Cam has been mine since we were kids. 

The file spills open on my desk and inside is a detailed Coroner's report on the body that was found in a pile of muck under a bridge in Central Park last week - and photos. Oh, God.

I shiver, swallowing my coffee back down.

The body looks exactly like the last eight bodies that have been found in various dumping spots around the city. And whoever is mutilating the bodies is a real psychopath.

All nine victims present in the same exact way. Male, stripped naked, dead for more than 48 hours by the time the police discover them. But that alone isn't the weird thing - plenty of dead bodies are found in New York City every day. The crazy shit linking these bodies together is what caught my attention, and why this story has been sucking up my entire life for the past few weeks.

The first strange thing is that the skin on each of the bodies is completely shriveled down to the bones, crisp and dry, like it's nothing more than a paper bag loosely holding all of the desiccated organs and parts inside. This is because all of them have one major, mind blowing thing in common.

The victim's blood has been completely, entirely drained from their body.

And I mean COMPLETELY drained.

I know. It's completely insane.

No doctor, police officer, medical examiner, nursing student, circus freak, or Roman Catholic priest can point me to anything on Earth that can totally drain a body of blood to the point that not even ONE drop is left. That kind of extraction is physically impossible, from what I've been told. Even the people who believe in vampires say they'd leave at least a trace of blood. And all of it freaks me the hell out.