CHAPTER SEVEN
This time, there weren’t any flashing lights, empty ambulances, or crime scene tape.
There was only darkness and silence.
There were no neighbors, either. We were on a rural patch of land in western Canada, and the house was at the edge of a sunflower field.
The crops were in full bloom, and it should’ve been a beautiful sight.
Cheerful. But the moon and stars were blocked by thick clouds, making the flowers’ dark centers look like round, eerie faces.
It felt like they were watching as Collith and I crossed the yard.
Even the birds and crickets seemed subdued, as if they sensed that something terrible had happened.
As if they knew that evil had been here.
Collith and I walked up the porch steps, and even now, neither of us spoke.
We’d been silent all the way from Granby.
To my surprise, the wood creaked beneath his weight, distracting me.
Faeries moved soundlessly, and Collith was better than most. The few times I’d heard his footsteps had been because he hadn’t wanted to catch me by surprise.
Faeries were light on their feet … but goblins weren’t.
The thought made my gut tighten. Until now, I hadn’t seen many signs of deterioration, but I’d been a little distracted. Collith and I hadn’t talked about it since that night at the motel. Did he plan to make the full transition? Or was he hoping to bond himself to one of the faerie Courts again?
We reached the top of the stairs, and I glanced at Collith’s face, wondering if he’d noticed the change in his tread.
Before I could see his expression, he sifted.
Collith reappeared seconds later, his hand around the doorknob.
He opened it without hesitation, which meant he’d confirmed there was no one else in the house.
No one alive, at least. The thought made my jaw clench, and I imagined all my emotions emptying out of me like water down a drain.
As Collith’s hand fell away, the door hinges moaned. Within seconds, a dark hallway loomed before us. All my worry about goblins was snuffed out like a candle. Collith stepped inside, his mouth tight and grim. But I hesitated on the threshold.
I could already smell the blood.
Dread blazed through me, leaving a single truth in its smoking wake.
I don’t want to see this. I didn’t want to walk past more people that my best friend had murdered, or relive my parents’ deaths for the millionth time.
I also didn’t want to feel that gut-churning guilt.
To look down at those torn, broken bodies and know that none of them would be dead if it weren’t for me.
Which was exactly why I needed to.
I would look at every single victim in this house, and I would acknowledge the part I’d played here, just as I had at all the other gruesome sites.
With this thought at the front of my mind, I pressed my lips into a thin line, clenched my hands into fists, and forced myself to move down the hallway. My soft footsteps were loud in the bleak silence, Collith’s even more so. It felt like shouting in a graveyard.
The house was in shambles. Through the wide doorways on either side, I could see into each room as we passed.
A single lamp had survived the destruction, casting soft-edged yellow light.
The few pictures that did remain on the wall were crooked.
The floor was covered in broken glass and shattered furniture.
This family had put up a fight, I thought as I stepped over an upturned table.
There were streaks and splatters of blood on the wooden floor.
But there were no bodies. Not yet.
Collith went up a set of carpeted stairs, and I followed him silently, studying more pictures that had survived the destruction.
My stomach clenched when I saw three children, each of them appearing so often that it was obvious they lived here.
There was a framed photograph of a couple who had to be their parents, and there were also images of an older couple, their hair white as an angel’s wings.
I was so absorbed in the pictures that I didn’t notice Collith had halted at the top of the staircase until I nearly collided with his back.
Something about the way he stood made the hairs on my arms stand on end.
My dread got louder. It buzzed in my ears as if we’d ventured too close to a hornets’ nest. I stopped beside Collith and looked over at him, trying to prepare myself.
But that stubborn lock of hair had fallen into his eyes, hiding his reaction.
I swallowed and turned to see what had made him go so still.
Blood soaked the carpet. It was concentrated in such a way that made it obvious someone, or multiple people, more likely, had been dragged away.
Collith and I followed the dark streaks slowly, and they led us toward the master bedroom.
Just like last time, I kept putting one foot in front of the other until we reached the doorway, where I knew we’d find what was left of this family.
All my instincts shrieked to look down, look away.
Instead, I raised my gaze to memorize every detail.
The bodies were in the same condition we’d found the others.
Laurie’s comment about there being too many pieces made sense now.
If I’d had to guess, I’d have said there were two victims. They were probably the parents I’d seen in the pictures, but after what had been done to them, it was difficult to tell.
The man was tied to a chair, his head bent, and the woman was on the floor.
They seemed to be human, judging from the color of the blood.
There was so much of it that the floorboards looked like they’d been painted.
It was everywhere else, too—on the legs of the furniture and sprayed over walls.
Along with bits of bone, skin, and other things I didn’t want to identify.
I stopped a short distance away. I may not have had any forensic training, but it was obvious these people had been tortured.
The man was missing fingernails, and the woman’s fingers had been cut off.
It looked like her eyes had been gouged out, as well.
Did that mean the other victims had been tortured, too?
Was it for sport, or did Oliver actually want something from these people?
I studied the grisly scene in search of answers, breathing through my mouth and ignoring how the room had started to tilt.
“He made him watch,” I said quietly. I saw Collith’s head turn in the corner of my eye, but I didn’t look away from Oliver’s victims. I could see what had happened clearly now, almost like a movie in my head.
My stomach rolled as I went on, “The Beast tied the man to that chair so he had to watch his wife die.”
Collith didn’t respond. He’d stayed near the doorway, and his mouth was a thin, dark slash. At least there was no sign of the children, I thought faintly. But what would we find in the other rooms?
“He was here,” Collith said finally.
There was something in his voice, like a serrated edge, and I knew instantly who he meant. I stared at Collith in disbelief, my pulse quickening. Lucifer and Oliver really were working together? Did that mean he’d been telling the truth about being controlled, too?
It took me a few seconds to respond, because I was still trying not to puke all over the floor. My fault. This is all my fault. “You’ve never picked up on his scent before,” I managed. “What was different about this family?”
Collith just shook his head. All these houses, all these bodies, and we still had no answers.
I tried to scrape my thoughts together. I told myself I could fall apart later.
Right now, I had to commit every detail around us to memory, because I sure as hell wasn’t taking pictures of this with my phone.
We were looking for a pattern, some way to predict where Oliver—and apparently Lucifer—might go next.
So we could actually save people, instead of staring down at what was left of them.
My gaze went back to the man in the chair. I shouldn’t have been so surprised Lucifer was involved. He was the one with a taste for torture, and only a twisted mind like his would think to murder a man’s wife in front of him for information.
“Fortuna,” Collith said. I turned at the sound of his voice, and he inclined his head. “There’s more.”
More. The word echoed through me as if I were a hollow shell.
I just nodded and followed him out of the room.
We went back down the upstairs hallway, through a door at the opposite end, and up another flight of stairs.
This one was much darker and narrower than the former.
The boards creaked underfoot as we climbed.
Seconds later, we arrived in an attic study. I turned my head slowly, taking it all in. On a normal day, I would have called it cozy, with all the thick rugs, the walls of bookshelves, and the big, arched window. Today was not a normal day.
When I confirmed there were no children in the room, I felt a horrible twinge of relief.
But there had been a third adult in the house, and I recognized the white-haired man from the pictures.
He sat behind a desk and wore an old, pressed suit.
It was immediately obvious Oliver hadn’t killed this one.
Because he’d shot himself.
“Collith,” I said, noticing the blood splatter on the window.
“I see it.”
Unlike the couple downstairs, the person in the chair hadn’t been human. The stains on the glass behind him were blue.
“We should look in the desk drawers,” I said. Before Collith could say anything, I circled the desk and drew close to the body, tugging my sleeve down so I wouldn’t leave any fingerprints. Just as I reached for the drawer, I noticed something white in the male’s limp, dangling hand.
He was holding a piece of paper, I realized in a rush.