Michael Morley - Viper

Rosa wriggled free, laughing as she climbed into the back. Filippo tugged off his shoes and pants. The heat from their bodies was already steaming up the car. 'I'll open the window a little,' he said. He rolled down the passenger side and felt her hand gently rubbing his balls. Her fingers slipped inside his Calvin's and he gasped as she held him.

'Jesus, let me get back there!' Filippo caught a foot on the handbrake as he climbed over but he was beyond feeling pain. Right now there was nothing in the world that could keep him from his woman's body. Or so he thought.

Campeggio Castellani, Pompeii A shrill scream scythed through the woods. It flew, unseen, like a bat in the blackness of the winter night. Then it thudded to its death against the misted windows of Filippo's father's car.

'Ma che cazzo e? What the fuck was that?' Rosa pushed Filippo away.

They froze. Stared silently at each other. Afraid to move. Then another chilling cry ripped the night apart.

'It's a woman screa-'

Filippo never finished. The next noise was even more distinct and terrifying.

It was a bullet.

Gunfire.

Filippo slid naked into the driver's seat and turned on the engine and the lights. Whatever was going down was happening close, real close. Too close.

The car's wheels spun on the soft wet grass. There was no traction. Mud sprayed as the old Fiat lurched forward. The wheels wallowed in the earth as he tried to make a full U-turn. Tried desperately to head back the way they'd come. The car carried on drifting. He straightened her up and turned the beams on full.

Right ahead he could see something. A light of some sort. Safety!

Another gunshot rang out.

A God-awful loud bark. So loud it seemed to bite a lump out of the sky.

It had come from near the light, now less than twenty metres ahead of them.

Filippo slammed on the brakes. The car went into an uncontrollable slide.

'Fuuck! ' shouted Rosa as she was thrown against the back of the driver's seat.

He wanted to reach out and help, but he couldn't. The car was skidding towards a deep dip in the field. Sliding into a pit filled with fire.

Filippo jerked the handbrake up as hard as he could. Rosa crashed into a rear window. He twisted the steering wheel as far as it would go. The skid seemed to last an eternity.

Finally, the old car rocked to a stop. They were less than a metre from the edge of the pit.

'You okay?' He put his hand on his girlfriend's naked shoulder.

Rosa rubbed her head. She'd have an ugly lump there in the morning. 'Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. Let's get out of here. I'm scared.'

Filippo nodded. The car had stalled. He jammed it into neutral and quickly turned the key. The engine chugged but didn't catch. 'Flooded. I'll try again.' Clutch in, foot flat on the accelerator. He did everything he'd seen his father do. Turned the key again and prayed.

The roar was loud. Rosa thought the engine had exploded. Must have been a backfire.

Then she saw the blood. Filippo's blood. All over the passenger seat and the window.

And then she saw him.

His face in the broken window.

The gun in his hand.

That look in his eyes.

And he saw her too. Saw her beauty and her vulnerability.

Rosa was terrified.

She felt transparent, like a puddle that someone was about to stamp in.

'Buon sonno,' he said politely.

'Don't hurt me. Please, don't hurt me.' She covered her naked breasts with her arms and pressed her knees together.

His eyes vacuumed her skin. Hurt. A wonderful word. So short, yet covering a multitude of possibilities.

Rosa saw his teeth flash. He was smiling.

She could see the gun even more clearly now. See it and even smell it. It had the acrid stink of death. Filippo's. She glanced at his slumped body, blood pouring down his side, half of his beautiful face torn away by the bullet.

Fear choked her as she tried to speak again.

She started to cry. 'Please, don't. Oh, God no, please, don't.' She pulled her knees up in a foetal position.

He watched her for a second, thrilled by her growing fear, excited by her suffering. Then he levelled his gun at her forehead.

'Oh, God. No, no, no!'

'BANG!' he shouted.

Rosa screamed.

He laughed. 'BANG! BANG!'

This time she didn't move. The warped trick no longer worked.

She stared straight into his eyes.

Cold.

Cold as ice.

He pulled the trigger.

He knew what the shot would do. Knew it would spread her face and brains all over the inside of the car. He didn't want to be covered in the mess. He stepped back just before the hammer fell.

Live and learn, he told himself. Less mess means less trouble.

He looked back into the car.

The windows were streaked in a fatty grey and cherry red.

The top of the girl's skull was gone.

There was no need for a second bullet.

Grand Hotel Parker's, Napoli Jack was tired but didn't go to bed after Sylvia had dropped him at the hotel. It was still too early, and anyway his jet-lagged mind was still buzzing like a wasp in a jam jar. Instead, he persuaded a receptionist to give him some privacy and unlimited access to their latest dual-processor computer. As he fired it up, he remembered an old Quantico lesson: 'How plus why equals who.'

He opened a search engine and a blank Word document. Then he opened his own stream of consciousness. A complete download of his thoughts. * How? – burning, chopping, moving, burying. * Why? – sex, sadism, control, power, inadequacy. * Who? – stranger, lover, family, friend. Slowly but surely he covered all the key factors – the type of weapon used, the killing scene, disposal site, offender's risks, likely methods of controlling the victims. He thought long and hard about the personality of the killer, the geography of the area, whether the crime indicated any kind of compulsive or impulsive behaviour – the fire was certainly indicative of the former. He considered the ritualistic aspects. Wondered whether the killer would have taken trophies, and what kind. But he dwelled the longest on the burning. The burning was linked to gratification and that made it the killer's behavioural signature.

The pages soon filled up. So did his mind. To the point of overload.

Jack stopped and sipped at some coffee that he'd ordered ages ago and had ignored when it eventually arrived. Now it was cold, but he drank it anyway.

He Googled Vesuvius. Much of it he knew. Some of it he didn't. * Known – major eruption in 79@C, still live and continuous eruptions this century. Last blew in 1944. Officially rated as one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world. * Unknown – three million people live within close proximity of it. Thought by the Greeks and Romans to be sacred to Hercules, the son of Zeus, and named in his honour. He finished the last of the coffee and Googled Hercules. The guy came out as pure alpha male. Warrior, sex god, inspiration to warlords like Mark Antony. That he knew too. He read on. Death and sex ran throughout the storyline. Ran through the whole region. He spent some moments looking at a painting – Hercules and the Lernaean Hydra. He vaguely remembered the story. A snake with dozens of heads, and every time one was chopped off another one grew. From what he'd heard, it sounded like the Camorra. From what he knew, it also reminded him of the worst of the serial killers he'd hunted – always a fresh body, always a new horror.

Jack did another search.

Hercules triumphed over his enemy by the use of fire.

He burned the hydra to death. Then he buried it beneath rocks.

Burning and burial so close to a site held sacred to Hercules. Coincidence or connection? Rational or rubbish? He was almost too tired to tell.