Page 44

With Cor’s help, I should have no problem shadowing anyone, even Asha. ‟Yeah, I can do that. But what do I do if she does something bad? And I mean, breach of Contract bad.”

Colton grunts dismissively. ‟That won’t happen with the Hunter’s mark. But there are shit-tons of shady stuff she can still do within the confines of the Contract. We’re a little busy right now, I planned on sending someone to look for Asha the day after tomorrow, but you call me immediately if you have something solid. I will send the cavalry a little early.”

He still sounds a vaguely disbelieving as he hangs up. I can’t blame him for it; Asha has been a hunter under his care for years and years, ever since she was a teenager. She’s like a kid to him, or a niece. Hard to believe someone you’ve only known for six years over someone you’ve been with their whole adult life. I am just glad he didn’t outright tell me to come home and face the music alone, and Asha be damned.

Still, I don’t think Colton grasped how bad this could end for everyone. I’m still trying to decide if I should sneak out to check on Cor no matter the danger, or if I should stay and get ready to shadow Asha, when I hear a familiar car motor start. I barely make it to the window in time to see Asha peeling out of the parking lot and picking up speed at a break-neck pace. Safety-conscientious, grandma-driving Asha is making her tires squeal.

I grab my jacket and my rental keys and bolt out of the door before I am finished thinking my next steps through. To hell with caution; I have to warn Cor.

I STUMBLE INTO the safe house 30 minutes later, the smell of sulfur, death, and blood immediately assaulting my senses. My hand instinctively goes to my holster, ready to defend myself if necessary, but after lurking close to the exit, listening, straining all my senses, I have to concede that there is no movement, no immediate threat.

The hallway walls are dotted with weirdly misshapen burn marks, like holes made by bullet-shaped fire. A viscous, tar-like substance has been smeared along the floor as if someone spilled black paint and then played slip-n’-slide with the puddle. The liquid smells like shit and death mixed together, but the consistency is more jelly-like, and it doesn’t stick to my shoes when I inevitably step on some clumps. The banister of the stairs leading up is drenched in blood, like someone spilled a bucket full of it against the handrail. It is still dripping here and there, as if it hasn’t dried out completely. A disembodied leg is stuck between the wooden balusters, still dripping blood.

I swallow convulsively, drawing my gun after all. This was not Asha’s work. Way too messy. And not fresh enough. Even with her flooring it here, she wouldn’t have arrived early enough for the stink to penetrate through all the rooms. Dodging the mess is almost impossible, but I try my best as I make my way to the living room and kitchenette as quietly as possible. The carnage continues there and gets even worse.

Both rooms are a gruesome mess, sixties furniture overturned, walls splattered with blood, and a faint lingering smell of gunpowder. It almost gets drowned out by the stink of sulfur and—for lack of a better word—the scent of pure evil, but it is there.

Five corpses are scattered throughout the rooms, some still twitching with the last nerve impulses, while others are already cold and lifeless. One of them is missing a leg, and the sight is distracting enough that I spend a few moments trying to figure out how his body could end up here and his leg in the handrail. I give up when my brain reminds me of the sound a joint makes when it is twisted out of its socket. Poor fella was probably still alive when it happened. I swallow dryly before my stomach can decide about what it thinks about that.

After making sure there is nobody left downstairs, I make my way up to the first floor. Both bedrooms are empty, as is the little storage closet I ignored until now. Two more corpses are in the bathroom, one of them head down in the toilet where he drowned, the other one lying in a crumpled heap below the smashed sink, his—or her—face completely destroyed by the force of impact against the porcelain. Definitely very dead.

Which leaves me with… no more spaces. I could try to climb up in the attic, but by now I am pretty sure I won’t find anything there either. My eyes continue to scan the scene with shocked detachment, still searching for any sign of Cor and finding nothing except his victims. The killer has long since fled the scene, leaving behind a trail of destruction. Smart vampire.

I go back down into the living room and carefully step through the scattered bodies, my stomach churning with each movement, trying to see any signs of who the dead people are. Humans, mortals, that’s for sure, because their injuries would not have been enough to kill a supe. But that still leaves a myriad of magic casters to go through. And one of them being, of course, cultists.

Since some of them are wearing actual purple robes, I wouldn’t hesitate to point a finger at them if I was asked my opinion. It would also explain the scorch marks in the hallway, and maybe even the black stuff. The smell of gunfire, not so much, but who knows, maybe one of them decided to be on the safe side and bring something more modern than a wand or a magic amulet. Poking through their pockets, I find nothing useful. I am not even sure what I am looking for exactly, but I haven’t the faintest idea what else to do now.

“An hour ago,” Cor’s voice breathes behind me. He is so close I can understand every single word even though his voice has almost no sound to it. So close that my shoulder brushes his face when I startle upright and whirl around to face him. So close that our lips touch briefly before I jerk back as he leans in to kiss me.

My brain does what it always does and simply shuts off gleefully, as if we weren’t standing between corpses. “W-what?” I stammer, touching my lips at the phantom sensation the fleeting kiss left there. The relief comes a second later, and I sink against the hallway wall with a deep sigh. “Thank fuck,” I curse and close my eyes for a second before the relief can overwhelm me. “You’re not dead.”

Cor looks smug. There is no other word for his expression. It fades as fast as it came, thankfully, and he looks to the side and lifts his chin at the dead people. “The attack. An hour ago. Three more fled.”

‟You held them off all on your own? That is… impressive.”

As if to show he’s not lying, he holds out his left arm to present me with blueish-purple burn marks. The way they look, it’s impossible to assume they are anything else than what they are: supernatural wounds, made by something very much not normal.

Dark magic. I have never seen it up close until now. My fingers brush over the wound before I can stop myself, and Cor winces at the slight touch. The skin under my fingers is brittle and slick, flaking off in a fine shower of dust. The meat beneath looks bruised and swollen.

‟Sorry,” I mutter and pull back my hand.

Cor shakes his head and turns away from me, walking into the kitchen through the heap of corpses. ‟We go to another place,” he more or less orders as he opens the fridge to pull out a small mason jar of blood—wherever that might have come from—and my snacks. ‟This place, not safe.”

‟You can say that again,” I mutter and shake off my state of shock to check the windows for more attackers, or passers-by, or, god help me, Asha. For now the streets are empty, but that might also be because people have already run off to call the police. Cor is right; we will have to leave here, and fast.

‟I said, not safe anymo—‟

‟I heard you. It’s just a thing we say nowadays, sorry.” I grimace at him and pull out my phone. I should let Stanley know what happened.

For once, he actually picks up within the first three rings, which has to be a sign of his guilty conscience over blabbing to Asha. Not that I blame him; how was he supposed to know that I don’t trust my so-called partner? Not that it stops me from using his guilt to my advantage when I explain what has happened at the safe-house and that we will need someone to come clean up, because we can’t hang around. He is not impressed in the slightest, as expected, but surprisingly, not as angry as I would have assumed him to be. As soon as he hears it’s cultists, he seems unhappy with the mess, but fine with the murder spree.

‟Cor being a Norseman’s man,” he mutters at my descriptions. ‟His Kiss has a tendency to go on such rampages. We’ll take care of it. As part of our fee, of course.”

I can’t help but grin. ‟Of course,” I say and hang up.

He didn’t ask if we need a new place to stay, and I didn’t mention it. For once, we seem to agree: If the cultists found us here, they will find us again. And when that happens, it would be best not to be affiliated with any of the supe groups before the damages surpass the fees I can realistically ask of them for the breaches of Contract. Especially if I’m running the increasing risk of being the one committing them.

When I hang up, reality hits me in a wave that makes me feel physically ill. So many people died tonight, and here I am standing, bantering with vampires, grinning… And the night isn’t over yet. Not by a long shot. And if nothing changes, there will be a lot more dead people before the week is over.