Page 28 of Cursed by Death (Ruby Jane #1)

T he homeless man on the porch was dead. He’d had his throat slit but with the scarf wrapped around his neck you couldn’t see it. He’d been murdered on the porch but he’d been dead for a few days. The heat wave had dried up the blood on the porch, making it look like a giant paint stain.

Detective Rowans got out his cellphone and made a call because he had to call this in. That didn’t give us a whole lot of time before other cops started showing up.

I felt bad for the dead man and asked the Detective what would happen to his body if he really was just some nameless, homeless person.

“If his body remains unidentified and no one comes to claim it after a certain amount of time then it will be cremated. After that, if no one comes to get the ashes after so long then they will be disposed of.”

I assumed he meant that the ashes would be tossed out into the trash. That thought really didn’t sit well with me. People weren’t meant to be thrown away like they were no better than garbage. That seemed wrong on so many different levels.

We left the body where it was on the porch and went inside. It smelled like raw sewage and the only source of light came in from the broken windows.

Detective Rowans pulled out a little flashlight and clicked it on. Fox wouldn’t need any extra light to see in here, and if I were being honest, neither did I.

Sometimes my extra, non-human senses came in handy. I didn’t tell any of them that I could see in the dark in here because it wasn’t any of their business. It wasn’t anyone’s business but my own.

There were some secrets about myself that I just didn’t share with other people and when it came to my extra abilities or just anything extra about myself at all. I always kept my mouth shut in favor of not being labeled a monster.

Detective Rowans and I followed Bane through a room and up a flight of stairs. The place was absolutely filthy and there was garbage everywhere. Otherwise, the dirty house was empty and completely devoid of any furniture.

The stairs creaked loudly underneath our feet but at least they seemed to be solid enough.

The smell was even worse upstairs and I hadn’t thought that to be possible. I felt bad for Fox because his senses were better than all of ours combined and I had no idea how he was managing to breathe in here without gagging or throwing up.

We followed Bane into the first bedroom off the right. I spotted three other doors off the hallway.

“Ruby Jane,” Roan murmured as we entered the bedroom. “You’re here.”

Of course, I was here. They’d called for me and I said I would come. It was almost like he hadn’t expected me to show up and was now surprised to see me here, standing in this room with him.

I didn’t respond to him. There was a part of me that wanted to but I was very firmly ignoring it in favor of pretending like he didn’t exist. It was hard to do though.

There was a body on the floor in the middle of the room. His eyes and mouth were both wide open and the expression on his face looked terrified. His throat had been slit wide open and was a gaping, angry mess.

It was the man from the surveillance video who had murdered Thomas.

It wasn’t the dead body that caught my attention though. It was the pentagram drawn on the floor in what appeared to be white chalk beneath his body. He was lying in the center of it.

“I don’t understand,” I muttered. And I didn’t. I’d seen his eyes in the video. He was either a vampire or a demon, I hadn’t been able to tell which one. “I’ve only ever read books about human sacrifice before, and he wasn’t human.”

“If a demon is powerful enough it can sacrifice a lesser demon,” Bane told me. “It just has to be strong enough to control it and keep it contained until the ritual is over.”

“Is this him?” Roan asked me.

“Yes, it’s him. He’s the man from the camera footage though I’ve never seen him in person until just now. So, you’re saying he was a lesser demon?”

I had to know for sure. I didn’t want to leave anything unanswered. The questions would plague me and slowly drive me insane.

“Demons leave a sort of… residue behind,” Roan told me something I actually already knew. “It’s like the stench of evil. That’s how we knew for sure it had been a demon in your guest house. We knew that we were tracking a demon but we only knew it had for sure been one who’d killed your friend because its stench had lingered in the air after he had left. He smelled like—”

“Fire,” I whispered and everyone stared at me.

The Detective looked at me questioningly. But the twins looked at me with a mix of pity and understanding on their faces.

Fox simply refused to look at me at all.

“How do you know what a demon smells like, Ruby?” the Detective asked me.

I knew he meant it innocently enough, because he didn’t know any better, but it was a loaded question and very far from innocent.

The room was suddenly too hot to breathe. It was suffocating in here.

“Because I grew up with one,” I whispered, choking on the words. “I need air. I’ll be back.” I absolutely would not be coming back. Not back up here, and not back into this house.

I stumbled out of the room and only my grip on the handrail kept me from falling down the stairs. My hand felt disgusting afterwards. I didn’t want to touch anything in this house. I was afraid the filth might linger on my skin and then follow me home.

Along with the stench of the demon.

Fox followed me out of the house. Of course, he did because he was supposed to follow me everywhere. The poor man.

I paused on the porch and sucked in a huge lungful of air. I caught sight of the dead man and choked on it.

I couldn’t catch my breath.

“I think you’re having a panic attack,” Fox informed me as he gently took hold of my elbow and led me down the porch steps.

I allowed him to guide me to the car and I didn’t even protest when he pushed me down until I was sitting in the front passenger seat and he closed the door.

He got in the driver’s seat and I still didn’t say anything to him. We drove off without saying anything to the others and, even though I knew it wasn’t right, I didn’t have it in me to care.

Maybe Fox was right and I was having some sort of panic attack. I didn’t know because I had never had one before. But I didn’t really think that was it.

I knew.

I wasn’t panicking. I was filled with a sense of dread and foreboding.

And something far, far worse than that.

Something that made me feel absolutely sick to my stomach and I knew I wouldn’t be the same again after this.

I was filled with disgust and loathing.

That smell that had been in the room with the dead demon, the lingering stench of hellfire… it had been the strongest smell in the room, the strongest smell in the entire house. Stronger than the filth and garbage downstairs. Stronger than the initial stench of death upstairs.

It was a scent I was familiar with, even after all these years. I would forever recognize it.

Because I’d spent my childhood surrounded by it mixed in with the sweet fragrance of my mother’s perfume. She’d always smelled of vanilla and freshly baked sugar cookies.

It was my father who’d been in that house, I was absolutely certain of it.

He’d killed the man who had murdered Thomas.

I just didn’t understand why.

But I would figure it out. And the easiest way I could think to do that would be to talk to the man himself.