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THIRTEEN
Talon
Julius and Desstook the lead as we approached the old factory that Blaze had pulled up the address to. The symbol that marked the wall and bookcase in the mansion where Dess had lived—and the back of her scalp—had turned up in a photo on what Blaze called an “urban explorer blog.” From the looks of the worn brick building, no one other than particularly bold and determined explorers had been inside here in a while.
Possibly they’d entered through the same loose window we found. The main door was locked.
As Julius shoved the pane high enough for us to squeeze inside, the stench nearly made me stop in my tracks. Garrison made a gagging sound.
“I told you it used to be a meat factory,” Blaze said, but he pulled a face too as he slipped inside. Dess waved her hand in front of her nose.
Inside, hooks hung from the ceiling where carcasses must have once dangled. It was hard to tell how much of the ruddy marks on them and their chains were rust and how much old blood. The coppery tang to the stink suggested there was plenty of the latter still around. The owners hadn’t done much of a cleanup when they’d cleared out.
I’d smelled blood, and I’d seen houses that had been covered in it, but in the middle of our jobs, it was fresh. The factory smelled of old, rotten blood.
“Whoever left this place like this should be drowned in raw sewage,” Garrison grumbled, pinching his nose as he looked around.
I had to agree. And maybe we could burn the building down for good measure too. No one should be subjected to this ever again.
“Why are we here instead of tracking down that guy from the rally again?” Garrison added, shooting Blaze a baleful glance that the hacker returned.
“Because this is a way better lead than anything my searches for him have turned up.”
A cockroach the size of my thumb scampered across the floor in front of Dess’s feet. She stomped on it faster than I could blink, but the crunch of its shell made me grimace. “Let’s search the place and then get out of here,” she said.
“No argument here,” Blaze piped up.
“Which part of the building was the photo taken in?” Julius asked him.
The hacker spread his hands. “I’m not totally sure. This particular blogger went for flowery descriptions of his exploits over concrete details. The geotags indicate it should be in the back end of the building on the western side. We should check the whole place over to be sure we catch all the evidence that might be useful, though.”
“We’ll find it.” Dess marched ahead with her chin held high, and an unexpected flare of admiration and desire washed through me. My mind flickered briefly back to the amazing fuck the two of us and Julius had shared by the side of the road, of all places.
I generally preferred to have four walls around me if I was going to get down and dirty, but Dess had an effect on me that I couldn’t explain. She was some woman, that was for sure, striding through the wide room all cool and collected like she owned the place.
She skirted the thickest patches of reddish-brown on the floor beneath the hooks. “I wonder what exactly they killed in here.”
“At this rate, it’ll be me next,” Garrison muttered. “Suffocated by the stink.”
“Pigs,” Blaze said. “The blog did mention that. Apparently there are rumors of hauntings in here. According to the guy—if he didn’t just make this up for views—when the factory was operational, an occasional human body was tortured alongside the hanging pigs. I guess that’s one way to cover up murder.”
“Sounds like a myth to me,” Julius remarked, but he eyed the hooks pensively.
Dess marched onward to the door at the far end of the room. “I don’t know why this place would be connected to the household. Let’s grab what we came for and get out of here. I don’t have a great feeling about this.”
Neither did I. Apprehension prickled over me as I moved through the room. I headed to the front hall and unlocked the heavy deadbolt from the inside. “So we can make a quick getaway if we need to,” I told Julius when I saw him watching me.
He nodded in acceptance.
When I returned to the others, they’d split up between the side rooms. Dess was searching a smaller area with a few long metal tables and shelves built into the walls. The shelves were empty.
“It looks like a… filleting room—is that what it’s called?” she asked. “You know, the place where the pigs were skinned and cut up.”
I shrugged. “The butchering room, maybe? I don’t know.”
She peered under the table and nudged the shelves to see if they’d move. “At least they cleaned up a little better in here. The smell isn’t quite so bad.”
I checked a cupboard at the far end of the room and found only a couple of old butcher knives. Dess came up beside me and reached past me to snatch one up with a low whistle. Her arm brushed mine, sparking another rush of heat where our bodies touched.
