She’d grown up and lived during a time when torture was fun, and people were always coming up with new ways to make it more inventive. She’d once seen rat torture in public; it was awful, and she’d had an aversion to the rodents ever since.
When Asher crushed something again, he muttered a curse under his breath. He removed the flashlight from his back pocket but hesitated before switching it on. He didn’t think there were Savages or demons down here, but death lingered in this cave.
Still, he had to know what they were walking on because it certainly wasn’t rock anymore. Flicking on the light, he instantly regretted his decision and nearly dropped it when the beam illuminated the hundreds of bones surrounding them.
The pile he’d stepped into nearly came up to his ankles, and it took everything he had not to kick them away, but he couldn’t bring himself to treat the dead so poorly. So, he stood there, his eyes growing wider and revulsion twisting in his belly as he shone the light around the cave. In the glow of the beam, the bones were a brilliant, horrific, white monument to countless deaths.
Brie pressed her hand over her mouth as she stared around in confusion. Had they stumbled into a coyote or bear den? What animal could have killed so many and then dragged their bones here? And what were they? Raccoon, coyote, deer?
Some of them were rather large and must belong to deer. But as her brain was trying to process what could have brought them all here and what type of animal theywere, Asher moved his beam further.
Brie shifted her attention from the bones to him as the color drained from his face. Since she first detected this putrid aroma, her brain had been trying to find reasons for it. But, in the back of her mind, she’d always known what it was, and now, the look on Asher’s face wouldn’t let her deny it anymore.
These weren’t animal bones. They were human.
CHAPTERFORTY
Brie closedher eyes and took a deep breath before shifting her attention back to the cave. Now that she wasn’t trying to pretend this wasn’t as awful as it was, she noticed more details of the bones.
There were some fingers, hands over there, and a foot further back. Farther down the cave were a couple of skulls. Judging by the vast number of bones, more than a few bodies were here.
As her brain started processing everything more completely, she realized the bones weren’t scattered as haphazardly as she originally believed. The way the light cast shadows over them had created confusion in her mind, but the truth was far more horrible than she’d realized.
The bones were all neatly organized and separated into piles. That wasn’t one hand pointing upward; it was a pile of hands with all the fingers cut off and placed in another stack of fingers. Over there was a jumble of feet, and beside it was a bundle of toes.
There were more piles for each body part. They were mostly in shadow, and she could only see two skulls, but she knew more were behind them. Brie swallowed back the bile creeping up her throat, and her legs quivered as she had the unsettling feeling some of these parts were cut off while the victims were still alive.
And it wasn’t all bone surrounding them. Some of those bones still had flesh on them. That was the smell they’d been following. It was the rot and decay of these remains.
Brie struggled to remain focused on the present as her past threatened to rise from the depths and bury her in a horror far too similar to this one. Gulping, she dug her nails into her palm to keep her grounded on the here and now.
What kind of monster does this?She didn’t know the answer, but when she found out, she would kill it.
“What is goingonhere?” Asher growled.
As her shock ebbed toward fury, Brie started noticing other things about the collection surrounding them. Near the toeless feet was a pile of jackets; some were battered by age, but the ones on top were newer.
Most of them were women’s jackets, but a few were men’s varsity coats with a letter sewn somewhere on them. They either could have belonged to a young man, or they’d been given to a young woman to wear.
She didn’t know how popular the practice of giving your girlfriend your coat was anymore, but judging by some of the bones down here, they could be at least thirty years old, if not more. And the newest hand poking up from the pile was probably only a few days old.
She’d never thrown up in her life, but she was on the verge of doing so as she bent over and rested her hands on her knees. No animal had done this, or at least no four-legged animal.
This was a two-legged monster, and it wasn’t a Savage or demon. There was no way one of them had lurked on this hillside for decades. Such a thing was completely out of character for either species. Savages wandered to hunt; that was what they liked to do.
The demons mostly remained beneath the earth, and while they could have gotten a tunnel to come up and into this cave, this didn’t fit with what little she knew about them. They enjoyed the kill, but this was beyond that. This was the work of a single, methodical creature.
She was aware of the cruelty and savagery humans could unleash. Aware they harbored many monsters amongst themselves too. She’d been the victim of their violence, but she’d never expected to discover anything like this from them.
“It’s a… a… a trophy room,” she breathed. “This cave is one giant trophy room for some psychotic asshole with a whole lot of issues.”
Thiswas why she was so creeped out by this place in her dream. She may not have known what was down here, but her instincts were right when they screamed it was bad.
As she was thinking this, something squeaked and ran out of the dark. She bit back a scream when she spotted the flash of a hairless tail before the rat vanished.
“Oh no.” She hadn’t considered it could get any worse down here, but she was wrong. “No. No. No.”
“Don’t like rats?” Asher inquired.
