Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
POE
I adjust the blade’s angle, savoring the mercenary’s sharp intake of breath. Blood trickles down his already mangled fingers where I’ve methodically removed each nail.
The abandoned basement below the kitchens is a perfect venue for torture. Blood-stained meat hooks hanging from the ceiling and an old carving station still full of knives provide a nice ambiance. Metal grates on the floor are perfect for easily washing away the blood.
I would live down here if I could.
“This uniform you’re wearing is an authentic palace issue. Which means you have to be involved with someone well-connected.” I trace the knife along his jawline. “Ready to tell me who hired you?”
He spits blood at my feet. “Go to hell.”
“You’re already there.” I slam his head back against the wall behind him, the sound creating a satisfying echo. “But it can still get so much worse.”
His resistance feeds something dark inside me, a beast I usually keep carefully caged. But here, in this soundproof concrete room with its drain in the center, I can let it loose. Each scream, each defiant glare, fuel the beast inside.
This man might not have been the mastermind, but he nearly got Maya kidnapped or killed.
The door opens almost silently behind me, but the heavy footsteps are impossible to miss as Ares’s massive frame stomps across the floor.
“Having fun?” Ares leans against the nearby carving station, arms crossed.
I twist the knife with the flick of my wrist, popping off the mercenary’s left pinkie nail like it’s the top of a soda can. The man shrieks and I can’t help a small smile in response. “Always.”
“You didn’t tell me you took one of them alive,” Ares grouses, sounding offended. “I could have helped with the warmup.”
“You’re here now. Want a piece, or not?”
Catching my eye over the mercenary’s head, we share a small smile. Ares pushes off the carving station and approaches slowly, hands stuck in his pockets. Despite his imposing size, he always falls easily into the good cop part of our routine.
“Hey, buddy,” he says, crouching down to our captive’s eye level. “You’re looking a little worse for the wear.”
The mercenary squeezes bloody hands into fists, pulling at the restraints. “I won’t tell you anything.”
I shift the knife so its tip presses just under the mercenary’s orbital bone. “I think we’ll take something that doesn’t grow back next, just so you know we’re serious. ”
Obviously Alpha in name only, the mercenary squeezes his eyes shut with a muffled whine.
“We can give him one more chance.” Ares keeps his tone light, like he’s talking to a child when he turns back to the weeping man tied to the chair. “Let’s start with something easy. What’s your name, man?”
It shouldn’t surprise me when the mercenary readily answers him. Ares has always had a way with idiots.
“Oscar,” he spits out with a desperate look between us.
“Oscar,” Ares repeats with a friendly smile. “I’m going to tell you the truth. I’ve got a very pretty and very willing Omega waiting for me upstairs. You have any idea what that’s like?”
He just shakes his head, eyes wide. It’s pathetic enough that I almost feel bad.
“But you can imagine it, right?” Ares gives a sympathetic nod in tandem with the mercenary. “So you can understand why I’d like to do this the easy way.”
I press with the knife until a drop of blood beads on his lower eyelid. Any harder and I’ll pierce the eyeball underneath. To his credit, Oscar holds himself almost impossibly still.
“Give us a name,” I demand.
The mercenary whimpers, “They’ll kill me.”
Ares pats him gently on the shoulder, but his eyes remain cold. “Not before we do, friend.”
Contrary to popular belief, eyes don’t pop when they’re stabbed. They collapse. Like a basketball with a slow leak, shrinking in on themselves as the fluid and blood inside run out like thick, red-tinged tears.
It’s a painful thing, at least judging from Oscar’s reactions. He screams and pulls at the ropes around his arms and legs, not that I left even a millimeter of give in the restraints.
I roll my eyes at Ares, who shrugs in response. All Alphas aren’t created equal, apparently. It’s an eye, not one of his balls. This reaction is just embarrassing.
“You don’t need your eyes to tell us what we need to know,” Ares reminds him gently. “We’ll have to cut out your other one, along with as many of your fingers and toes as it takes, if that’s the persuasion you need.”
I feel compelled to point out, “Doesn’t really need his dick, either.”
“It was all done through intermediaries. The man who hired me died in the palace,” Oscar babbles, frantically trying to lean away from the knife that I wave in front of his face. He squints up at us through his now one good eye. “I don’t know who hired him, just that it was someone powerful!”
Ares shifts to the man’s other side, looming in his narrowed field of vision. “Unfortunately, that’s just not good enough. Give us information we can use if you want this to end.”
I finesse the blade to just barely slice his still-seeing eye, just enough to hurt and make his vision blur.
“I have an address!” Oscar says with a high-pitched shriek. “A dead drop for our payment after the job was done.”
Ares types intently on his tablet as the mercenary dutifully recites the address and repeats it for clarification when he asks.
“Thank you,” Ares tells him sincerely. “I appreciate how helpful you’ve been.”
I wait for the look of hope to light up in the mercenary’s eyes, the moment he convinces himself that we might actually spare him.
Then I slit his throat from one ear to the other.
Ares steps back with a curse to avoid the spray of blood. “Fuck, how about a warning? This is one of my favorite shirts.”
“Sorry,” I reply, absolutely unrepentant. I use a cloth to wipe off my knife before slipping it back in the holster on my thigh. “Feel free to head back to the apartment and change. You’ve got an Omega waiting for you, after all.”
His lip quirks at my tone.
“She’d be waiting for you too if you got your head out of your ass.” He waves his tablet in my face and pulls it away with a laugh when I lunge for it. “But it doesn’t matter because we’ve got somewhere to be.”
“I can handle this on my own.”
Ares gestures at the slumped over body, dripping blood onto the floor. “You could’ve handled this, but you called in your good cop, anyway. Let’s finish the job.”
I snatch the tablet away from him. “How do you know I’m not just planning to turn this information over to the proper authorities?”
“Because I’ve met you,” he replies drolly. “Going vigilante is pretty much your favorite thing.”
He’s right, but that isn’t the point. “You’re not coming.”
Ares gives me a smug smile. “More importantly, you don’t know who in the palace might have been in on the attack, which is why you’re here with this carcass and not in the palace dungeon with an official order to extract information.”
I briefly consider pushing back. Leaving our prince and our Omega with only a beta to protect them feels like a bad idea. But the palace is still on lockdown, probably as safe as it’s ever going to get. And the longer we spend going back and forth, the colder this lead will get.
“Fine,” I snap. “But if we find the mastermind, he’s mine to dismember.”
Ares tightens the straps on his gun harness with a dark smile. “Not if I get to him first.”
T he headlights of our SUV cut through the darkness as we wind down another unpaved road on the outskirts of the city. Abandoned farmhouses loom like rotting teeth against the night sky, their windows broken and walls crumbling from years of neglect.
“This can’t be right.” I tap the navigation screen, but the blue dot continues its steady progress toward our destination. “Who sets up a payment drop all the way out here? No one ever comes to the outlands. A bunch of mercenaries showing up with a suitcase full of credits would be conspicuous as hell.”
Ares shifts in the passenger seat, his bulk making the leather creak. “Someone who really doesn’t want to be found. These farms have been empty since the southern campaign. Perfect place to conduct business without witnesses. ”
I brake hard as a piece of farm equipment appears suddenly in our path, rusted and half-buried in weeds. “Or the perfect place for an ambush.”
“That’s why you brought me along.” Ares pats the rifle case between his feet. “Take the next left. Should be an old dairy complex about half a mile down.”
The SUV’s suspension groans as we bounce over what used to be a cattle guard. Fields stretch endlessly on either side, the tall grass rippling silver in the moonlight. It reminds me of the war — nights spent crawling through similar terrain, hunting rebels who thought they could hide in plain sight.
“You sure about these coordinates?” I ask again.
“For the third time, yes.” Ares pulls up a satellite view on his tablet. “See that cluster of buildings ahead? Matches exactly with what our friend gave us before you bled him out.”
I grunt in acknowledgment. The sooner we check this lead, the sooner I can get back to the palace and make sure no one has taken advantage of our absence to make another attempt on Maya.
Despite lacking any real evidence, I can’t shake the feeling that she is uniquely in danger. The man who tried to take her had disappeared practically without a trace. No fingerprints, no blood, nothing to prove he even existed aside from my clear memory of seeing his masked and cloaked form disappear into a hallway that should have been a dead-end.
I figured out quickly that he used one of the palace’s hidden bolt holes, secret passages meant to be used for the royal family and their retainers to escape the palace during a siege. The existence of which should have been a closely guarded secret.
Who the hell was he?
The stench hits me before we even reach the property, rotting hay and ancient manure, the sickly-sweet decay that marks abandoned livestock operations. I signal Ares to kill the headlights and we coast the last hundred yards in darkness.
No other vehicles visible. No fresh tire tracks in the mud. No lights in any windows.
“Clear the building first, then we search for the dead drop,” I whisper as we gear up. The weight of my tactical vest is familiar, comforting. “I’ll cover the perimeter while you take point inside.”
Ares nods, checking his rifle’s action with practiced efficiency. We move in tandem through the knee-high grass, staying low and using the deeper shadows as cover. The dairy complex looms ahead, a sprawling collection of corrugated metal buildings connected by covered walkways, all of it slowly being reclaimed by nature.
I break left while Ares continues toward the rear loading dock. My boots make no sound as I circle the building’s exterior, checking for signs of recent activity or surveillance equipment. Nothing but rusted equipment and broken windows.
My barrel swings toward movement in the trees. An owl takes flight from somewhere above, wings silent against the star-filled sky. The night air carries the musty scent of decay and abandonment. This place has been dead for a long time .
I’m halfway through my sweep when Ares’s voice crackles through my earpiece.
“Poe, get in here. You’re never going to believe this.”
His tone sets my nerves on edge — not urgent or alarmed, but filled with a kind of wondering disbelief that makes my skin crawl. I double-time it back to the loading dock, weapon ready.
“What did you find?”
“Just get in here. Second door on the left.”
I slip through the partially open metal door, my boots crunching on broken glass and debris. The beam of my tactical light cuts through years of dust hanging in the air as I make my way down the corridor toward Ares’s position.
The stench of antiseptic and death hits me as I enter the room. My light beam reveals gleaming stainless-steel surfaces that have no place in this decrepit building. The contrast between the rotting exterior and this pristine laboratory is jarring.
“What the hell?” I sweep my rifle across the room, taking in the rows of medical equipment, centrifuges, and microscopes. Everything looks brand new, probably worth millions of credits.
Ares stands by a metal examination table in the center, his face grim. “Check this out.”
I approach slowly, my boots squeaking on the polished floor. The body of a woman lies spread-eagled on the table, chest cavity splayed open like a grotesque butterfly. Her organs have been systematically removed and arranged in labeled trays beside her. The precision of the cuts speaks of medical training.
“She’s fresh,” I note, examining the lack of decomposition. “ Can’t have been dead for more than forty-eight hours or so.”
Movement catches my eye, a gentle swaying motion near the far wall. I train my light on what appears to be an IV bag still slowly dripping clear fluid into an empty chair with restraints.
Ares gestures to scattered papers and an overturned stool. “Someone must have left in a hurry.”
The various equipment scattered around the lab indicate the types of cruel biological and chemical experiments that were performed here, but I notice something that doesn’t quite belong.
A pharmaceutical pill press is mounted on the nearby workbench, surrounded by tablets in an unnatural shade of florescent and artificial yellow. I pick one up carefully with gloved fingers.
I hold up the pill for Ares to see. “What the hell is this for, do you think?”
He moves closer, nostrils flaring. “Nothing good.”
“We need to get Guardians out here,” I sigh, as I pocket a few of the pills as samples. “I’m guessing our perp is long gone. Hopefully, a forensic team can find something useful.”
Impotent anger spikes in me. This might not be entirely a dead-end, but I still didn’t find the information we wanted. And the need to have an actual crime scene processed means I won’t be the one following the next thread of this investigation.
I hate that I wasted the time to come out here.
The dead woman on the table seems to stare at us accusingly through clouded eyes. I imagine her eyes following me as I circle the examination table. Something about her features, the delicate bone structure and slight build, triggers a horrifying flash of recognition. In my mind’s eye, it’s Maya’s purple hair fanning across the steel surface. Her chest cavity split open like a piece of rotten fruit. All of her inner parts spread and catalogued around her.
My stomach lurches. Maybe this is what would have happened if I hadn’t stopped that hooded bastard from taking her. Maya would have ended up as another specimen on this butcher’s table, just another set of labeled samples in some sick experiment.
Premonition tightens the muscles of my shoulders and has me casting about for a threat as we emerge into the empty night. All I can think about is Maya, potentially alone in the palace because Logan is too selfish, and Cillian too apathetic, to prioritize protecting her.
Something is very wrong here.
“We need to get back.” My voice comes out rougher than intended. “Now.”
I have no reason to think she isn’t safe, but that doesn’t stop me from red lining the throttle on our way back to the palace.