Chapter 24
Chapter
Twenty-Four
This has to be it. I hike the bag up on my shoulder and pause, closing my eyes and holding my right hand out slightly in front of me.
“What are you doing?” Delphi whispers. We’re stopped on the street, standing in front of a blue house with boarded up windows.
It looks like a house addicts and squatters would seek shelter in.
The windows have been long boarded up by the city, I’m sure, and you almost wouldn’t think twice about the plywood serving another purpose.
With the exception of a crack in the window next to the front door, this house is light-tight during the day.
Perfect for vampires.
“Feeling for demonic energy.” I open my eyes. “Do you sense anything?”
“Other than fear? No.”
“You don’t have to come in,” I tell her.
“I need to do this. For my pack.” Her eyes glow and she nods, setting her face. “For Charlie and Ben. Do you sense anything?”
“No.”
“And you can?”
“Usually. Demons can be good at hiding, but I am not sensing anything demonic at this moment.”
I lower my hand and pull out my phone. I take a picture of the house and send it to Xavier. Someone should know exactly where I am in case things go south. I don’t have to wear a GPS tracker like a dog anymore, and relying on Find My Friends isn’t the most accurate.
“We are looking for a guy who goes by the name Razor Mike,” I say into my phone, recording a voice message. “Two people have suggested he’s here. I don’t sense any demonic energy. We’re going in.” I send the voice note and then put my phone on Do Not Disturb and have Delphi do the same.
“You do this all the time?” Delphi asks as we make our way up the overgrown path leading to the house. It’s been awhile since I snuck up into monster territory, and a rush goes through me. Xavier had asked me before if I enjoyed killing things.
I didn’t want to admit it, but I couldn’t deny it.
“Stay back,” I whisper when we get to the front door. “Do you hear anything?”
As a werewolf, her hearing is better than mine. “No, but something smells very dead.”
I push open the front door and get hit in the face with the smell of decay.
“Hello?” I call, reaching for the knife I have hanging from my hip.
If anyone is in here, my plan is to hit them with the sleeping spell, tie them up, and bring them back to the house to question them.
Though after smelling what I am right now, I might hose them off first.
Nothing replies or even moves inside the house. We wait a beat and then step inside.
“Oh god,” Delphi says, bringing her hand up to her face.
“I thought doctors were used to gross things.”
“I’ve drained a few abscesses and have been puked on more times than I can count, but thankfully I don’t deal with rotting bodies.”
“I guess that’s a good thing as a pediatrician.
” I prop the front door open, letting light fill the room.
The carpet was beige at one point, but is now muddy and brown.
An old couch is against the opposite wall, with dirty pillows and blankets strewn about.
There’s an impressive collection of empty Pepsi and beer cans, as well as a few cans of tomato soup.
The place is covered in animal feces and water seeps down the exterior wall.
Papers and more garbage cover the coffee table, and an old twin-sized mattress half covered with a wet-looking sleeping bag blocks the hall leading into the kitchen.
We both step over it and move deeper into the house. The smell gets worse.
“Breathe through your mouth,” I tell Delphi, getting a flashlight from my bag. “I don’t want to taste it! How can anyone live this way?”
“I have no idea.” I shine the light around the kitchen.
There’s a cluster of candles on the table, all melted down to almost nothing.
The cabinets are missing the doors, and are full of mouse-eaten boxes of cereal.
There are several takeout containers and McDonalds wrappers in the sink that can’t be more than a week or two old.
There’s a bathroom in the hall off the kitchen and the tub has some sort of thick crust around it.
“That was definitely used to make drugs,” I say, grimacing.
“This is really sad,” Delphi presses. “I knew the drug problem was bad in Charlotte, but I didn’t know it was this sad. I have patients who come from really poor families. What if they live like this?”
“You’re a good person,” I tell her.
“Both my parents were physicians,” she explains, using her foot to overturn a pizza box, sending several mice scattering. “And my grandma was before that. They always mainly served the pack, and I grew up feeling marginalized as a werewolf, but we didn’t live anywhere close to this.”
“It can put things in perspective, that’s for sure.”
We pick our way down the hall, stepping back over the dirty mattress.
The smell of a rotting body intensifies, and Delphi gasps when I use magic to push open one of the two bedroom doors.
A man—long dead—is slumped over in the corner.
There’s a needle on the floor in front of him.
The level of decomposition of the body is going to make him hard to identify.
“Oh my god.” Delphi turns away, face paling.
“Is that a tattoo on his arm?” I ask, shining my light on his forearm. Maggots have already started eating away at him, and it looks like bugs or rats—probably both—have started gnawing on his face.
“It looks like it, but I can’t tell what it is. This could have been used to identify him.”
“It still can,” I say and pull the bag from my shoulder.
“Hold my light.” Delphi gets the light, shining it on this guy’s arm.
I put on gloves and get a bottle of peroxide from my first aid kit and pour it on his arm, rubbing it into the area that’s tattooed.
Only a few seconds later, the chemical reaction makes it easier to see the ink.
“A skull with a snake around it,” I say out loud as a bad feeling creeps over me like a tight wool sweater.
“You say that like you know the guy.”
“I didn’t, but I know someone who was looking for him” I take off the gloves, turning them inside out so the contaminated part stays on the inside and shove them into an outer pocket of my bag.
“His first name is Abbot.” I take a photo of the tattoo so I can show Antonio later.
“I don’t think he was a dealer, so we still need to find Razor Mike. ”
“What are you going to do about him?”
“You have a member of your pack in the police department, right?”
“Yeah, we have a couple, actually.”
“We can tip them off. Or even call 911 anonymously. Say we walked by and noticed the smell.”
I straighten up and take the flashlight back from her, looking around the room. I almost don’t notice it, but when I do, my heart skips a beat in my chest. “Oh shit,” I whisper.
“What is it?”
“Look.” I shine the light on words that are written on the wall in blood. “Ratunku,” I say slowly. I don’t know what that means, but I’ve heard it before.”
“It means help in Polish.”
“It does?”
“Yeah. My ex mother-in-law is Polish. I learned a bit of it so she couldn’t shit-talk me without me knowing.”
“That’s a boss move,” I say and take a picture of the words written on the wall.
The man who ran out into the street, had he been here too?
The smell of the dead body is starting to make my eyes water.
We get out to the bedroom and I use magic to shut the door, which only helps a tiny bit with the smell.
There’s one more room in this house to look through, and thankfully—but also disappointingly, there are no more dead bodies to find.
Someone was definitely staying in this room.
The garbage has been pushed into one corner and the blankets on the bed aren’t as disgusting as the ones in the living room.
The energy starts to feel different, but it’s more like I’m feeling the last memories of the people in this house.
Whatever was here was dark. Old. Powerful.
We step outside, both gasping in fresh air.
Standing on the porch, I get out my phone to call in a tip to the cops so they can come find the body.
If Abbot had people, they should know where he is.
I unlock my phone and it opens to my texts. I take a few steps away from the house—and the smell—and text Xavier, letting him know what I found, but first let him know I’m safe.
Me: We’re out and we’re okay.
Me: I found the third recruit Antonio mentioned. All I know is the guy’s first name is Abbot and he had a tattoo on his arm, like this one.
I send the photo and text bubbles pop up
Xavier: Maybe next time clarify you found him *dead*
Me: lol
Xavier: Come home. I don’t like you there.
I roll my eyes and take a few more steps toward the street. Delphi is already down by the sidewalk, waiting.
Me: Should I call this in to the cops or do you want to talk to your contact or whoever?
Xavier: I’ll have one of my people handle it.
Me: Thanks <3
I put my phone in my pocket and turn, making sure the door is closed.
It might take a while for the cops to show up and animals could come in and start eating the body.
Giving it one last try, I close my eyes and extend my hand, seeing if any sort of stain has been left on the house from the demon.
If I could just get something to identify it with, it would be a start.
I don’t feel anything demonic, but something is pulling me to the side of the house. I motion for Delphi to come with me.
“Please tell me I’m smelling the same body that’s inside and there’s not another out here,” Delphi says, covering her nose with her hand.
“It might be a dead raccoon or—” I cut off when I see a pile of goo on the floor. “A vampire.”
“Oh! Nope. No, no, no. That’s what happens to them when they die?”
“Yeah, they turn into goop.” I pull my phone out to take another photo when something silver glints in the sunlight.
“No fucking way,” I say and carefully step over the pile of goo, reaching into the pile, picking up a silver tipped stake. “These are issued by the Order.”
“Are you sure?”
I flick a rotting chunk of vampire goo from it, turning it over so she can see the Order’s emblem
“Positive.”