Chapter 13 #2
“Hell no! Have you seen that sun outside? Why do you think I asked for a spell?”
“It’s just some sun, you drama queen. It won’t kill you.”
“Nah, just slowly boil me alive,” Alix replies, dramatically flinging his arms, fully embracing the title I’ve given him.
“Be glad you’re not a nightwalker,” I retort dryly. A single glance reveals at least two of the younglings are exactly that.
“Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m definitely glad about that. But on sunny days like this”—he gestures toward the front door—“I might as well be.”
“If we ever get that sun-repelling jewelry worked out, I’ll send something your way,” I promise.
“If you do, it better be a piercing,” Alix says with a grin. “I’ve always wanted a frenum ladder. I might even ask Ella to give it to me.”
Forget about undermining his authority. My annoyance flares up, and my magic lashes out in response, crashing down on Alix like a jackhammer.
It sends him crashing through the wooden stairs and into the basement below.
He yelps as he’s thrown down, followed by a thud and a string of curses directed at me.
The three vampires in the living room jump up, nearly tumbling into the hallway. I shoot them a dangerous look, warning them to stay out of this. They gulp and reluctantly retreat. They might be Alix’s subjects, but at least they recognize a greater threat when faced with one.
“D?” Alix’s voice comes from the basement, sounding hollow and slightly panicked. “I think you should see this.”
I peer down, seeing only a destroyed wooden staircase, a concrete floor, and a trickle of light filtering in through a distant window. Finding the basement door, I descend the stairs, carefully jumping over the damaged section. My shoes thud on the concrete floor, dust swirling around my feet.
The basement is cold and dark, the only light coming from a small window in one of the walls. Peering around, I notice it’s mostly empty except for some discarded furniture and a large freezer.
Alix steps aside, revealing a dirty old mattress covered in stains that smell like feces, all kinds of bodily fluids—mostly blood—and traces of decay. Mounted on the wall behind it are multiple rusty chains, caked in old, dried blood.
“It looks like the twins have been busy,” he mutters, stepping away from the mattress.
My magic reaches out to the blood and confirms what I suspected. “Human, female. No surprise there.” I turn to the freezer in the corner and curse loudly upon opening it. It’s filled with severed limbs, all neatly packed in cling film, labeled with dates, and sorted by body part.
Alix steps up next to me and whistles. “That’s quite the stock.”
“I foolishly assumed that the woman in the living room from earlier was there because one of them got a bit too carried away in the throes of passion, which happens to the best of us,” I say, closing the freezer again with a sigh of both disappointment and annoyance.
“But combined with what we found upstairs, it’s clear they broke the ‘no killing on the property’ rule on more than one occasion. ” Among other things.
I return to the filthy mattress. “This just keeps getting better.” I sigh deeper, already dreading what I’ll need to do to sort all of this out.
I take a deep breath, slowly exhaling, and rest my hand on the top of the freezer for a moment, lowering my head.
My gaze flickers upward as I try to ignore the pounding headache caused by my continued annoyance, making it hard to think.
Perhaps I should follow my wife’s example and start taking relaxing baths since they always seem to help her work through whatever’s bothering her. Not sure if it’s a healthy coping mechanism, but I’ll get her to open up to me sooner or later.
After a second or two, I straighten and open the freezer again. My eyes scan the body parts, noting that the twins clearly knew what they were doing when it came to their food. There isn’t a drop of blood left in the frozen pieces, rendering my blood magic utterly useless.
It’s a good thing there’s more to my magic than that.
Though I rarely call upon this second aspect because it drains me more than I care to admit.
My magic unfurls, seeps out of me, and greedily reaches for the frozen body parts.
It touches every piece, cataloging them just as my blood magic did earlier, giving me an overview of what I’m dealing with.
Letting the magic do its thing, I can’t help but grimace, my muscles tightening as it takes its price in the form of little nips of my flesh to compensate for the lack of blood in the body parts.
My healing replenishes it in seconds, but the pain is searing nevertheless—like being flayed with a burning knife.
A few more minutes, and I know all that I need to know.
There are parts of fifteen different human females.
Most of them weren’t dead when their limbs were taken.
All of them were raped by one or both of the twins while they were robbed of those body parts, painting a disturbing picture—even for me.
It also confirms that the scene from the living room was far from an accident.
I give my magic a little push, and the two magics combine, revealing the pain and fear, the utter terror these women endured.
Yet, from the looks of it, it’s just a pair of psoglav doing what they always do, no matter how much I disapprove and didn’t want it happening on my property.
This means it’s unclear whether both I and the company are in the clear regarding the situation upstairs.
My magic rolls back to me and then catches onto something.
I frown while reaching deep inside the freezer, searching.
Alix steps up next to me and peers down at the limbs I carelessly scatter.
After a few seconds, I pull out a hand—a left one, missing the ring finger.
Alix makes a throaty sound of disgust, but I’m too focused on the missing finger to pay attention to him.
I examine the hand further while biting through the nearly stabbing agony this causes my magic to inflict upon me.
It reveals that the hand belonged to Elly’s sister’s descendant, the same one whose blood I found in the bedroom upstairs.
She was raped when the hand was taken, just like the other women.
Yet something is different, making me dig deeper, making the payment for straining my magic even higher.
It sends jolts of pain through the scars on my arms as it continues to demand payment.
I refuse to let it go, gritting my teeth and pushing on, only vaguely aware of the black mist pooling around my feet and legs.
It wasn’t Nikolay or Andrei who raped this woman.
It was someone else entirely, but she never saw their face.
That’s when I notice her finger, still attached, with a ring around it: a simple gold band engraved with flowers and a small translucent stone set in the center.
Both were taken when she was assaulted—the finger brutally torn from her hand, leaving a bloody, gaping wound behind.
There is something else there, something that pushes my magic even harder.
Something snaps when it remembers, putting all the pieces together and crashing down on me.
The scent of apples. A secondary scent of nutmeg, hence the apple pie analogy.
It’s almost sickeningly sweet, making me slightly nauseous.
I toss the hand back into the freezer and slam it shut.
My magic returns to me, leaving me with one last thing: a face.
A face so similar to Elly’s that I would almost mistake it for hers.
Golden-brown hair instead of Elly’s original dirty blonde, slightly thinner lips, but the same bright blue eyes and overall features.
It doesn’t feel like a coincidence. Nikolay and Andrei raped every other woman, but they didn’t touch this one. Not the one who looked like her. She was kept down here for him and only him—the same person likely tied to the problems I’m facing with the company.
No, not the same person. Nikolay described a woman; the rapist was a man. A sibling, perhaps? Brother and sister?
“The look on your face tells me this wasn’t all for nothing,” Alix says from where he stands near the stairs.
I turn to face him, my expression grim. “This might be about more than just undermining my company.”
“Explain?” Alix prompts, his frown deepening.
“There was someone else here, raping her sister’s descendant. A man who only touched her, as she was only touched by him.” My eyes meet his, and I try to keep my building anger in check. “A man who smelled like apples.”
Alix’s frown deepens. “You’re thinking a sibling? Reckon they’re after Ella as well?”
“Possibly,” I say, hating what this could entail. “I need to talk to Andrei.”
Tomyla takes one look at my expression and wisely bolts from the room, leaving me alone with Andrei. The psoglav is conscious, though it’s clear he isn’t all here. His eyes are glassy, staring at something only he can see.
My magic is still netted around him, drops of blood running along the thin lines it creates in his skin.
Each time a drop wells up and slides down, it sizzles, leaving a faint burn mark in its wake.
The pain he’s in must be unbearable, with my magic slowly boiling his blood—yet not fast enough to outdo his own inherent healing.
I leave the netting as it is and send another surge of magic his way.
This one works like adrenaline, jolting him awake.
His eyes are clear as they focus on me. Andrei whimpers and tries to move away, which only causes the net to cut deeper into his skin.
He sobs, his body going limp as his fight leaves him, knowing he isn’t going anywhere.
“I found out about that other little side business you had going on in the house.”
Andrei’s eyes snap to mine, fear washing over his face. Oh, he knows he messed up for real this time. “Please,” he pleads, his voice as broken as his body. “Please, Lord Deimos, sir, make it stop.”
“Tell me what I want to know, and I might consider it.”
Andrei shakes his head, the movement clearly taking great effort. I sigh and release some of the pressure the net exerts. Relief fills his eyes, and his healing smooths over the cuts, even as my magic continues to linger against his skin.
“There was a woman—golden-brown hair and bright blue eyes. You and Nikolay didn’t touch her, but someone else did.”
Andrei shakes his head again, and I can’t tell if he’s being defiant or genuinely doesn’t know what I’m talking about. “Please,” he says, his voice breaking.
“Tell me who it was, and I’ll let you walk free.”
He sobs, tears streaming down his face. “I can’t,” he whispers, casting his gaze downward. “He’ll kill me.”
I’m right in front of him then, my dagger in hand. Tipping his head up with the blade, the point digging into his skin, I bare my teeth at him. “And you think I won’t?” I snarl, pressing the blade deeper. “The real question you have to ask yourself is, who do you think will draw it out more?”
“Please,” he pleads again, already testing my patience. “I don’t know who he is. He came to us and brought her along with him.”
Looks like we might finally get somewhere. “Why would he bring her to you if he had no intention of selling her or letting anyone else touch her?”
“I, I don’t know.” Andrei screams as I make a long, deep cut in his cheek.
“Please, sir, I don’t know. He—he said he needed a place to keep her.
Paid us royally to do that and only that.
” I continue cutting him, over his jaw and down his neck, the blade barely avoiding the artery. “That’s all I know, I swear.”
I believe him, but it’s not enough. Not if I want to keep Elly safe.
“The human trafficking…” I redirect my questioning. “Why?”
In all honesty, it makes no sense. Inhumans like the hunt. Why would they have someone else take care of that part for them?
“Someone paid us royally, and we”—Andrei sobs loudly, barely able to contain it—“would have been fools to turn it down.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Someone? Just one person?” He nods. “Who?”
“I don’t know,” he wails. “We had to collect them, keep them, and then drop them off at different, random locations. It was just a side gig. We didn’t ask any questions.”
“The two of you had a lot of those side gigs, it seems,” I grumble. “What else?”
Andrei whines something inaudible while he slowly starts to slip into unconsciousness, the strain of my magic becoming too much for him to handle.
With a tsk of annoyance, I pull away, wiping the dagger on Andrei’s clothes before sheathing it and re-buttoning my jacket. Without sparing him another look, I tighten my magic around him, making him wail in both terror and pain.
I step out and find Tomyla waiting in the hallway. She nods at me without me having to say anything, stepping back inside, ready to continue where she left off.
I turn around and slam my fist against the wall with a curse.
Someone is following Elly around—practically stalking her.
She doesn’t tell me, but I notice every time she feels watched, every time that particular kind of unease overtakes her.
Then a descendant who looks like her is kidnapped, raped, and murdered.
Part of me wants to believe this is all just a coincidence, but both my gut and my magic tell me it’s not that simple.
Both are connected to what’s happening with the company.
Calling this a complication is an understatement.