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Nick should have expected what he saw.

He should have been prepared for it, after all of Brick’s teasing and hints about the insane shit his parents were up to, his mother in particular.

He wasn’t prepared for it, though.

Maybe he never could have been prepared for this.

He stared around the room in disbelief, horror, dread, helplessness.

That intensely nauseated feeling wouldn’t leave him, even though it made no sense, even though vampires didn’t get upset stomachs. Nick knew the feeling was probably some remnant of being human, more of a memory than a real feeling, but he had no way to get rid of it. He couldn’t just throw up the way Kiko did.

He wished he could.

Although that smell wasn’t doing him any favors right then, either.

“Jesus fuck,” Dex muttered from next to him.

When Nick looked at his friend, the middle-aged black man held one of his hands over his mouth, like he was trying not to throw up, too. His skin had gone ashy and pale, and his eyes were too bright as they darted around the four corners of the room, like he couldn’t help himself but take in every square inch of that space.

“Jesus fuck,” he repeated.

His voice held everything Nick felt.

He sounded sick, depressed, revolted, shocked.

In front of them, Armel cursed in French.

His voice might have echoed one of theirs.

He stared around, his hands gripping the sides of his head as if doing everything in his power to keep his emotional reactions restrained, from pouring out of his mouth… maybe even out of his head. He cursed in French a second time, and now Nick heard tears in his voice.

The tears shocked him into a near paralysis.

Then another voice rose in the room.

“Help me,” it said.

Nick turned.

Dex and Kiko turned.

Armel turned.

A teenaged boy, maybe sixteen years old, was chained to the wall with iron shackles. He was naked. His feet were bare. He held some kind of spiked bit in his mouth that muffled his words. His jaw was purple and blue, and Nick guessed broken, and his face was so bruised, his eyes had swollen entirely shut.

He likely couldn’t see them at all, but he had heard Armel’s voice.

Staring at that face, Nick felt his sickness abruptly worsen.

Dex had it right the first time.

This house was fucking evil.

He glanced around at the rest of the room.

At least two people… possibly more… had beendismantled… there was really no other word for it… on top of a treated animal skin spread over the middle of the room.