Cassarah #2
“I don’t like this, Cassarah,” Zan murmured as he stood beside me. “This place feels… evil.” Ezzu launched off his shoulder and started to scout out the place.
I shifted toward Vasin. “Can you smell or hear anything we might have missed?”
“It’s not good, Cass. What I smell is death. What kind or who I can’t say, but blood has been spilled in this place.”
Jade joined us, placing his hand on my lower back. “Tahir and I circled the property to ensure there wasn’t a trap waiting for you, and the closest living person is miles away.”
I nodded, acknowledging I heard him as I stepped forward.
I got to the base of the steps and steeled myself for what I might find, already assuming my parents were dead.
It was easier to expect the worst and find I was wrong instead of having hope only for it to be crushed.
With dread growing at each step I took closer to the front door and my stomach in knots, I turned the handle.
It wasn’t locked—the first sign something was wrong.
Mother never allowed the front door to be left open.
Moving to the side, I shoved as hard as I could when I met resistance trying to get it open.
Zan joined my efforts, adding his strength and getting the door to budge.
A swath of blood arched, telling me a dead body blocked the entrance.
Carefully, I stepped past the blood to enter my childhood home.
The sight before me was graphic, making my already upset stomach heave, but I clamped a hand over my mouth and closed my eyes.
Now was not the time to lose myself to this atrocity.
I had to see past the blood sprayed all over the floor and walls to understand what really happened.
Hands settled on my shoulder, making me gasp, eyes snapping open until my brain caught up to realize it was Zan.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. It just looked like you needed a reminder you’re not in this alone,” Zan whispered.
Placing a hand over one of Zan’s, I prepared to face the scene before me.
Bodies littered the floor and blood pooled around them as flies buzzed around the area, giving me the sense this hadn’t been recent.
Faces of people who served my family since I was little were there, along with some that were new to me.
What I couldn’t find was the body of either of my parents.
“They’re not here. We should search the rest of the house to see if they might be elsewhere,” I said, my voice hollow even to my ears. “I’ll take the second floor with Jade if you want to check this level and the barn, Zan.”
“Of course,” Zan murmured, letting his hands slip off my shoulders as he headed toward the dining room.
Jade was on my heels as I climbed the staircase like I had so many times before.
Only now, the heels of my boots echoed in this lifeless space as if the heart of the home was no longer alive.
When we reached the top, I looked left toward my room then to the right where my parents’ rooms were.
They each preferred to have their own since Mother retired early and woke before anyone else.
Father and I had always been more of the mind to stay up late.
“This way,” I directed, heading down the hall to the right. “This is the wing my parents resided in. Mine is on the other side.”
Jade didn’t say anything, but his presence was comforting, knowing I didn’t have to be alone like I had been so often in this place.
The first door led to Mother’s sitting room, and it was slightly ajar, making it easier for me to stay in the hall and push it the rest of the way open.
The space looked like it always had, everything in perfect order, just the way my mother liked it.
Moving on down the hall on the opposite side was my father’s study.
This door was shut tight, and when I reached out to open it, Jade stopped me.
“Let me… just because we don’t think there’s anyone here doesn’t mean you should be going first. They could have set a trap, hoping you would come back here,” he reasoned.
Nodding, I stepped back and let him enter first. His body blocked my vision, but I could tell by the way he froze that something was in there I didn’t want to see.
“It’s okay,” I whispered. “Something in me already knows they’re dead.”
“You don’t need to see this, little bird. They tortured him. By the looks of it, whatever they wanted to know, he didn’t give up easily. He went through hell,” Jade said, respect for my father clear in his tone. “He wouldn’t want you to think of him like this but to remember him alive.”
Placing my hands on Jade’s back, I rested my forehead between his shoulder blades.
“We can’t leave him here. He needs to be buried.
I may not have always agreed with how my parents acted or treated me, but he is still my father.
Knowing he’s dead, I’m sure my mother is as well, and they deserve to be laid to rest.”
Jade turned and wrapped an arm around me, holding me close as we faced the room.
There sat the man who taught me to read, write, instilled in me the love for strategy, and created my ravenous curiosity of the world.
His face was so beaten you could hardly tell it was him.
Some of his fingers were missing, and his right leg looked to be broken at an odd angle.
They had brutalized him for what purpose, I have no clue.
Father and I didn’t keep in contact other than I had members of the clan check in on them from a distance.
Silent tears rolled down my cheeks as I came to the reality that I no longer had a father in this world.
My body began to shake as sobs wracked my body.
The feeling of my heart breaking was one I never wanted to wish on another person.
Jade turned me into his chest as I wept, my cries echoing down the hall so it sounded as if the house itself was crying over the death of its owners.
“Father?” Zan’s voice asked.
I could feel Jade nod in answer. “Can you check the last two rooms? My feeling is you’ll find her mother too.”
Zan didn’t respond, but I heard his footsteps fade down the hall. “What do I do now?” I croaked out. “I wasn’t even in contact with them, and he took them from me,” I said between hiccups. “Why? Why would he do this to them? They didn’t want anything to do with me.”
“Cassarah, if I could answer that for you, I would,” Jade murmured, kissing my head.
“No matter how cruel your family has been to you, to know you are left alone in the world is a heavy thing. While we might not be your blood family, we are the family you chose. Don’t let the lie that you’re alone ring true in your heart.
That is a darkness that will eat you up inside.
I should know. If I hadn’t met you when I did, I can only imagine what kind of evil I would have turned into. ”
“Jade,” Zan called.
I peeked out from where I’d been hiding in Jade’s chest and saw the look on Zan’s face telling me everything—Mother was dead too.