Chapter 27 #3
While they restrained a roaring Max, I went to Damien to inspect his wounds.
He had a deep laceration across the back of his skull, as well as the deep bite wounds that would require a team to suture swiftly.
He’d likely need transfusions of blood to survive the night—if he even made it out of the ring.
“We need that healer, Elli!”
“Let him die,” a man from the crowd said in an even tone. I glanced up to see the stocky man from the Governor’s mansion. Had he been there this entire time? He dipped his hat to me, standing to leave. “Our business with him is done.”
He disappeared into the crowd. I turned to find someone, anyone who would stop him. “Wait!” I called out. “He’s going to Dupont! Stop him!”
But no one heard me. All were too busy with their own affairs, leaving the fight, or holding back Max while he slipped further into his fury. I gripped Damien hard around his shoulders. “Damien, look at me!”
His eyes rolled lazily in their sockets, bloodshot and glazed. “It’s too late, Nina.”
“It’s not too late. You can fix this. Dupont has abandoned you, but your family won’t. Not if you make things right.”
“I have no family,” he murmured.
“You have the Antonins, the other children of the Trials,” I said. “Tell us, Damien. Tell us what Dupont is doing with the bodies. Tell us where they’ve taken my mother. Whatever Dupont has on you, we can fight back. Together.”
He snickered, coughing up thick blood. “You think Max will let me leave this ring? Look at him. Even if he comes out of that rage, he’ll kill me.”
“I’ll take care of him,” I said, my voice softening as others approached us. “But you have to give me something in return. He has my mother, Damien, and I know what he’s capable of. Nothing is more important than finding her.”
The healer finally appeared at my side, but I held up a hand to keep her back. “He only gets healed if he confesses.”
Damien snarled, beginning to feel the wounds in his body now that the adrenaline was subsiding.
“He has a lab in the shipyard.” He slid the words through his teeth. “An old ship receiving maintenance in the dry docks.”
“That’s impossible. The North Docks are the busiest place in the city—”
“Exactly. It’s been right there in plain sight this whole time. The bodies never have to pass inspections because they never go through the gate.” He cleared his throat of the blood filling his airway. “That’s where he’s hiding everything, including the woman you’re looking for.”
A breath of relief loosened my chest. “Thank you, Damien.”
“I didn’t know about Maxence,” he whispered then.
“Dupont wanted me to get Max on the other side of town. I didn’t know why, but I wanted him gone just as badly, so I agreed.
I hired a few guys from my lower ranks, and they ran him out of town so we could work without distractions.
” He winced. “Max was supposed to take the fall for Therell when he sent him to the Fissures, where the old Governor was last seen. But whoever Dupont hired for the setup didn’t do his job well enough. ”
I motioned for the healer to start treating him, if only to give him more strength to speak. “Who did kill Therell, then? Dupont? His announcements said the Governor was in the Fissures with a group of enforcers.”
He sighed as the magic began to work. “Dupont set up the lab when he was still deputy, but Therell got word of the body trade somehow and started to investigate. Meanwhile, Dupont had all the bodies he needed and was about to dry up the lines when Therell decided to look into some strange rumors coming out of the Fissures.”
“Rumors about… me?”
He nodded once. “Cassien’s men were looking into you, thanks to the advice of the Governor, and Dupont was afraid of Therell connecting all the dots.
So he set him up. The men sent to protect him were actually Dupont’s goons, ex-enforcers.
They jumped him and slaughtered him. He didn’t want Therell’s body to be found, so he sent him to our donor. ”
“Donor…” Was that my place in this story?
He continued, “I was ordered to pay off the smugglers and shut down the network. If he needed more bodies in the future, he would let me know. That’s all I know about his affairs, I swear.”
I nodded. “That’s enough. We can at least search for the lab now—”
“You’ll have to hurry.” He groaned, gnashing his teeth. “The project is set to finish tomorrow. Whatever they were using the profits from the opium for, it’ll come to completion soon.”
“Nina!” Andre called my name. My gaze shifted to the other side of the ring, where Max still fought his restraints.
One of the Cursed men fighting Max cried out. He was bleeding from the throat, presumably after getting too close to Max’s teeth. Max’s blind fury shocked onlookers in the crowd, and there was a murmur of disbelief that he could turn on his own man.
I had to get him out of here before he did anything more incriminating.
I stood, leaving Damien writhing on the floor at my feet beneath the touch of the healer.
“Thank you… Nina,” Damien gasped.
I spared him one brief backward glance. “I didn’t do it for you.”