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Nick saw arms, parts of torsos, legs, feet.

Tongues.

Cocks.

Symbols had been drawn with their blood.

On the walls… on the floor… over the doorways.

Nick worked homicide for over fifteen years, and he’d never seen anything like it. Buckets of blood sat on the floor, buzzing with flies. Hooks hung from the ceiling where they’d likely been drained. The smell in here during the day, in the heat… it must be utterly unbearable. Like being in a slaughterhouse with the windows closed.

How in the fuck had no one realized what was going on here?

He remembered it was a large house, with large grounds, and likely far away from any other houses.

Still, they must not have any visitors at all.

None that left here alive, anyway.

From the doorway, a female voice rose, making Nick, Kiko, and Dexter jump.

“You’ll understand one day,” Virginie said, looking at her son.

She gripped the doorframe, smiling at him.

Something in the complete indifference of that face as she watched her son’s horror and despair made Nick feel like he was losing his mind all over again.

“You’ll understand, Armel,” she repeated. “You’ll know why we did this for you. For all of us. You will be a king one day. No one will be able to touch you.”

Nick, Dex, and Kiko exchanged grim looks.

Nick opened his mouth, about to ask a question of one of them, maybe both of them, when both apparitions vanished, leaving the room empty, and dark.

20

YELLS IN THE DARK

Kiko let out a shriek.

It was the darkness.

It was the feeling that they’d been left alone in a room full of dead bodies, only now they couldn’t see the bodies because it was too dark.

Nick jumped too, but he also managed to recover faster. Probably because his vampire eyes allowed him to see the now-empty kill room, to know there was nothing there.

The bodies had vanished.

The room looked disturbingly innocuous.

Nick swore he could still smell blood, but he knew it wasn’t real.

Shaking off the feeling, he remembered his human friends.

He looked for light switches on the walls, and found one.

He clicked it on, and a sickly, yellow glow flickered and slowly illuminated the room’s corners, shining brighter in the center where a yellow-stained fixture hung from a mold-streaked ceiling. Dust covered the glass light fixture and a collection of dead bugs lived in the bottom, near where it screwed into the metal ring holding it to the bulb.

The whole room had a yellowish tint, even apart from the light.