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I gave a heave to pull myself up to the attic’s small window, which Talon had already reached and unlocked. As he helped me in, Julius hefted himself after me. I stretched my arms, working the aches of the climb out of them.
“Maybe we shouldn’t let Blaze come up with plans like ‘scale a three-story building with nothing but your bare hands’ when he gets to sit around in the car in the meantime,” I muttered.
“He had a point that grappling hooks might have made enough noise to draw attention,” Talon said.
Julius grunted as he eased into the room, setting his feet carefully on the floor so as not to make a sound. “Not the most fun I’ve ever had in my life, necessary as it might be.” He tapped his headset. “We’re in.”
Blaze and Garrison had stayed behind to stand guard in their various ways, Blaze monitoring nearby street cams with his computer and Garrison keeping watch with his eyes, ready to create a diversion if need be. The hacker also hoped to tap into the internet and cellular networks in the area to grab data from the devices of the events’ participants. Who knew what he might be able to find out from these people?
Still, I couldn’t help envying his cushy seat in the car while we crept through the dark, dusty attic that smelled like mothballs.
Faint music and periodic warbles of a voice filtered through the floor, too muted for me to make out any words. At least it’d have drowned out any small noises we’d made during our climb.
“Let’s see,” Julius murmured. He prowled through the space, avoiding the stacks of film reels and projection equipment. When he reached a trap door in the floor, he knelt and cautiously eased it up.
The voice got louder. “I hear thirty thousand. Can I get a thirty-five? Thirty-five K, anyone? There, thirty-five thousand. How about forty?”
It was an auction, I realized. But what were they auctioning?
Julius motioned Talon and me over. We slunk down the worn ladder beneath the trap door onto the theater’s small balcony.
No one was seated up here. It didn’t look like anyone had made use of the three rows of seats around us in ages. The velvet cushions were covered with a thick coat of dust.
Below us, maybe two dozen figures were clustered in the seats at the front of the theater, right by the screen. An image was projected there, smaller than a typical movie, only taking up about a quarter of the space. But I could still make it out just fine from here, and what I saw made my gut knot.
The video playing showed a young woman sitting on a chair, surrounded by concrete walls. She looked uninjured, but her eyes were wide with terror, her limbs posed stiffly around her lingerie-clad frame. Her gaze darted over her surroundings, only occasionally glancing at the camera.
And if we’d had any doubts about the Blood Hunter’s involvement in this production, his emblem showed like a logo in one corner of the recording.
Someone in the crowd raised a small sign. “We have forty thousand!” the voice said with a slight crackle of static. It was being projected over speakers—I couldn’t see the man who was talking. He must be staying out of view while he carried out this auction.
This auction for the woman in the video. The figures below us were bidding for the right toownher. The Blood Hunter was offering her up as merchandise.
I swallowed thickly, more nausea bubbling up inside me. The bidding ended at forty thousand, and the projector screen went briefly blank as someone cued up the next offering. I peered over the railing, but I couldn’t see any sign that the women were actually here.
There was nothing we could do to save them, not right now. My hands itched to strangle every rich asshole in the gathering below, but that wouldn’t help their victims. We needed to find out more so we could protect the women from their intended fates.
Was the Blood Hunter here? In the darkness, I couldn’t see anything other than the vague shapes of the people below. The voice didn’t sound like his. It’d probably make more sense if he kept his distance from the most horrendous crimes he orchestrated. Just like he had when he’d sent me after the Maliks.
Julius gripped the railing next to me. His voice came out raw. “This is sick. Fucking disgusting.”
And it got even more horrifying. Another video flashed onto the screen, and this one brought bile to the back of my throat.
It was a child. A literal child, no more than thirteen, her immature curves clothed in lingerie just like the woman before her. Her face was frozen in a rigid mask of fright. She clutched the edges of the stool she was perched on, looking ready to faint.
“The bidding on this fine specimen, guaranteed virginal and fully obedient, starts at twenty thousand,” the announcer said. “Do I have twenty?”
Oh, God. My jaw clenched so tight my cheeks started to ache. If I got my hands on the prick listing off her selling qualities and price, I’d tear him to pieces. Julius looked as if he was considering the same thing.
“We can’t let this happen,” I hissed under my breath.
Talon grasped my shoulder. “We can’t do anything yet.”
Julius nodded, though his expression was taut with anger. “If we charge in there, all we’ll do is temporarily break up the show. The Blood Hunter will find other buyers, and he’ll know we’re on to him. We find out everything we can and let Blaze do his thing too, and then we crush the bastards like the roaches they are.”
My fingers curled into my palms, but I knew he was right. Still, as the bidding raced up to seventy-five thousand before the auction finished, the need to take action quivered through every muscle.
The people seated below me were the worst, most vile parts of humanity. Lord only knew what horrible things they’d put these girls and women through. And the Blood Hunter held these “events” everymonth. How many victims had he sold over the years?
The Maliks had done sickening things. I would never think of them as anything other than monsters. But watching this show, a sense of certainty gripped me like never before.
What I’d thought when I’d confronted the Blood Hunter face to face for the first time was true. He was an even bigger monster than those I’d already taken down, and we still didn’t know how to topple him.
