"How did this happen?" Matteo asked. The words came out strangled, and the toothpick he'd been clutching between his teeth trembled. Dios mio, what he wouldn't do for a smoke.

"Not sure, boss," Santiago told him. "The abuelita," he gestured towards the elderly woman who stood surrounded by a string of uniformed officers on the pavement, "she says she was walking home and she saw el diablo, and he was...eating the victim."

Matteo crossed himself reflexively. He wasn't a particularly devout man, and he was fairly certain that the carnage in front of him was not the work of the devil, but whoever the killer was he certainly had taken bites out of his victim and that was not the sort of thought Matteo could stomach on his own; he would accept help from any quarter.

"Did she see his face?" he asked. Matteo was half kneeling, one knee on the dirt, one knee bent, his weight resting atop it. He slowly pivoted, looked up at Santiago to banish the vision of the mangled corpse in front of him.

"Not really. The abuelita screamed, and she said el diablo looked at her, and there was blood dripping down his chin. She said his eyes were red, like rubies. She said he smiled at her, and he had teeth like a dog. And then he walked away, and she let him go."

"Can't say I blame her." A man with red eyes and teeth like a dog, consuming his victim, blood all down his chin; Matteo wouldn't have chased him, either. And the abuelita, she didn't know the most troubling thing of all - the victim's tongue had been removed.

It was six weeks since the murder of the Jefe, more than three months since the murder of the Archbishop, and now Matteo was staring down into the face of the Comisario General, the head of the Federal Police in Agentina. And the man's tongue had been removed, same as the Jefe and the Archbishop. Each man had been killed differently; the Archbishop's throat had been cut, the Jefe had been strangled, and the Comisario had been struck in the head with something heavy. Something heavy that was no longer on the scene.

"A pipe," Matteo mused to himself. The killer had been interrupted, unable to finish his work, and the body was still fresh. The forensic techs hadn't had a chance to examine him yet, but Matteo had seen this sort of thing before. He'd be willing to bet his pension that the Comisario had been struck in the head with a length of iron pipe, and that the killer had taken it with him. One blow, well placed, had been sufficient to fell him. Then the killer got to work.

"There's nothing-"

"He'll have taken it with him," Matteo said. "He's smart." And strong, and completely, utterly mad, Matteo was sure of it.

"You think it's the same killer." It wasn't a question.

"He took the tongue. We haven't released that detail about the Jefe. And he...he ate him. Or was trying to. The Archbishop, his tongue and his liver and his heart. The Jefe, his tongue was taken. The Comisario, his tongue, bites taken out of his flesh. Yes. I think it is the same man. And I think this time, he decided he didn't want to wait to take his meal home and cook it first. This time he wanted it raw."

Santiago whistled. "If this is true, Matteo, if some madman is preying on all the powerful men in the city, we are...we are so fucked, my friend."

Truer words had never been spoken, Matteo thought ruefully. Each of these men was powerful, protected, wealthy, connected, and yet each of them had been slaughtered, as if they were vulnerable as lambs. For weeks the police had been working through the guest list from the ball at the Jefe's mansion, stonewalled at every turn; they hadn't even finished interviewing their witnesses, and now there was a third murder to contend with. This killer was unlike any Matteo had ever seen, and they were no closer to catching him now than they had been the day the Archbishop was killed.

"He was interrupted, but he did not attack the abuelita," Matteo mused, mostly to himself. "He isn't killing for the fun of it. Or he is, he is taking pleasure in it, but he is only killing certain men. He is discrete, not indiscriminate. He doesn't want to just kill, he wants to kill these men in particular."

"So we have a psychotic cannibal with a conscience on our hands?" Santiago asked dryly.

Matteo could have kissed him. In a flash he was on his feet, and pacing. It was that word cannibal, that word that put it all in perspective. Why had it not occurred to him before? Perhaps he had not made the connection between the taking of trophies and the consuming of them. Perhaps he had simply hoped that it was not possible. In his heart he prayed it was not so.

"Boss?" Santiago asked him, eyeing his progress uneasily.

"A cannibal with a conscience, Santiago," Matteo told him grimly. "Tell me, have you heard of Hannibal Lecter?"


The blood was pounding in Hannibal's ears as he made his way home, and blood was drying on his hands. No one was following him, alone on the pavement far from the scene where the Comisario had been murdered; in this quiet corner of the city, no one knew yet that he was dead. The woman had seen his face, but it was dark, and she was old, and Hannibal knew he had nothing to fear from her. El diablo, she had called him, and likely that would be her story until her dying day. Abuelita had seen the face of the devil, and she would not recall the features of a man.

Killing on the street was tactless, but the Comisario was careful. Hannibal would never have been able to catch the man in his own home, and certainly not at his place of work. On the street people parted before the Comisario like water, and his pride made him lax. No one would be fool enough to attack such a man as he walked home from visiting his mistress. That was the sort of thoughtless vanity that ended lives, as the Comisario had learned to his great disappointment.

Anger had made Hannibal reckless, and he knew it. Since that day he'd mentioned Mischa to Clarice her affections had cooled towards him, and he was cross, irritated with himself for having revealed his plans so indelicately, irritated with her for her stubborn refusal to see things from his perspective. If she would only listen, perhaps he could make her understand. He was not trying to take their child away from her; he was trying to give her the child she deserved, the perfect child. Mischa. Clarice would love her, he was certain of it. They just needed time. But Clarice was guarded with him now in a way she had not been since they came to Argentina, and he knew better than to press her when she was so distraught. These last few weeks, he had been more alone, more isolated, than he had been since Baltimore. It grated, her silence, her hands clasped together and not reaching for him. It was Clarice who had insisted that he keep her apprised of his plans, but she had not wanted to hear from him, and he had orchestrated this most recent attack on his own. It had come off beautifully, despite the interruption, but when she learned about the abuelita, she would be cross.

I just won't tell her, Hannibal thought as he slipped through the front door of their home, using his scarf to turn the handle to keep from leaving any blood stains on it. His hands were mostly dry now, tacky from the walk, but blood was a living thing, even once it left the body. It would smear and stain and sink into every crevice, the consistency always changing, its traces always identifiable, even after a thorough wash. Time would not erase it; bleach would, but Hannibal carried none upon his person.

In the foyer he paused; it had not mattered, in the darkness outside his home, that his lips and chin were stained with blood. Between his coat and the weight of the night, no one could have seen it. In the light of the hall, in front of the old gilt-framed mirror that hung just inside the door, the blood was undeniable. A tattoo of sin splashed across his face, and he grinned, and saw the white flash of his teeth, and exulted in it. His own blood sang through his veins, a reminder that he was alive, vital and healthy, as if he had sucked the life from his victim like a vampire from the stories, and drawn strength from it, his own life force sustained and energized by the consummation of another. Perhaps that was true; perhaps his own spirit was growing, for as he looked at himself he felt a hunger, deep and powerful, the beast that was his heart craving still more.

"Hannibal."

He had not heard her approach. Perhaps he simply had not been listening. Still riding the waves of satisfaction and desire that the night's events had left in him he spun on his heel, and faced her. His Clarice, beautiful in her black silk robe, stretched taut across the swell of her breasts, the curve of her belly where their child lay. Her pale skin, the tumble of her dark curls down her back, the fire in her eyes; she was magnificent, and the beast of hunger that lived within his chest whispered to him that she would feed him better than any other. To consume Clarice would be, he thought, to swallow the sun.

Her eyes roved over him, watched as he slipped his jacket from his shoulders, took in the sight of the blood on his face, on his hands. Understanding dawned slowly across her face; she knew him, and she loved him, and she knew what he had done.

"Who?" she asked. It was not an accusation, and there was neither fear nor disgust in her expression. She only wanted to know.

"The Comisario General," he told her. He would not lie to her. Omit some details here and there, perhaps, but he would tell no outright lies.

"You promised you would tell me."

Slowly Hannibal reached for his tie, unpicked the knot while she crossed her arms over her chest.

"You did not wish to speak to me," he answered. The tie hit the floor, followed quickly by his waistcoat. Even from a distance he could see the way Clarice's heart began to pound, how her breathing grew shallow, how her eyes grew dark with want. Perhaps he was not the only one who hungered. His hands reached for his cufflinks.

"I'm speaking to you now," she said. "I want no secrets between us."

"Shall I tell you, my Starling?" he asked. Some of the servants lived in the house, but those that did sought their beds when the sun sank, and did not show their faces again until morning. They knew better, and Hannibal did not fear interruption, not now. "Shall I tell you how I killed him?"

There was a bowl on a low table beneath the mirror, the little bowl he had bought for her at the market, and it was there he placed his cufflinks before rolling back his sleeves.

"Shall I tell you how he tasted?"

"Tell me why."

Ever the investigator, his Starling. He smiled at her, and began to approach, moving slowly, stealthily. No doubt she could see it in his eyes, see how he wanted her, what he meant to do when he reached her, but she did not retreat, did not try to put distance between them. Instead, she caught his eye, and then reached for the tie of her robe. Hannibal held himself back, did not rush at her, just prowled slowly across the hall, watching her with bated breath as the knot around her waist came undone, as the fabric parted and revealed miles of bare, smooth skin beneath it.

"You know why," he said. For Mischa.

"Did it feel good?" she asked him curiously. By now he had almost reached her; two more steps, and he would be upon her.

"It felt," he said, taking a step, and then another. "Like heaven."

The moment the words left his lips he crashed into her, and she surged up towards him, violent as the sea in a storm. His tongue plunged into her mouth and met the scrape of her teeth, her nails scoring the back of his neck while he wrenched the robe from her shoulders. Panting, grasping, they fell together, the taste of her exploding through his mouth, the heat of her setting him on fire. Despite the fervor of their passion one thought remained to him; would the blood that stained his body transfer itself to her, and how would she look, soft and pregnant and lovely, with that blood smeared across her perfect skin?

He hauled her hard against him, dragged her to the entry table by the door, to the mirror that hung on the wall behind it. Deftly he turned her, and she flung her hands out, braced herself on the table and looked into that mirror, panting as she caught his gaze there. He could see, she could see, they could see, all of it, her perfect body, his bloody hands, and he reached for her while they watched, clutched at her breasts until the blood on his hands was warmed by the touch of her skin and smeared itself across her. Faint trails of rusty brown running across her breasts, and down, down to the swell of her belly, and he held her there, held her, held them, this woman he loved, this child they had made, and he dipped his head and sank his teeth into her neck until she moaned.

"Christ, just do it, Hannibal," she gasped at him, and so he did. With one hand he clutched at her breast, and with the other he reached for her trousers, and then he sank himself inside her, and they watched, both of them, watched the way he took her, and the way she took from him, and the way the blood on his hands was transferred to her, the pair of them electrified and damned and joined. What he had done, she had done; they were the same, and they were one.