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“Nothing to see here.” Bunny’s shoes squeak behind me. “You good now?”
“What are they hiding?” There’s nothing here. I expected to have to search for clues, but I didn’t think they wouldn’t have anything. There isn’t even a door leading further into the house. “Why’s this so plain?”
“I don’t know, man. Maybe their goddess mommy requires it. Since they’re big on chastity, maybe it’s a huge empty space for virgin sacrifices.” She shudders. “I can’t believe I said that out loud.” Staring upward, she says, “Please don’t let there be sacrifices here. Or anywhere.”
“You always talk this much?”
“It’s been a hard week, wolf. My kids and I almost got trapped in that hotel fire. Hey.” She yanks on my sleeve. “Check that out.”
The stained glass above us…it moves. Or at least the art depicted in it does. I squint for a better look, my vision still a little hazy from the aftereffects of inhaling all that wolf’s bane. “Is that—Are they—?”
“The word you’re looking for is orgy,” Bunny whispers. “I would expect something like this at the House of Nymphs but not here with the Huntresses. The glass is spelled so those women…fornicate with animals in a painted forest.”
The wild forest that I thought I smelled outside. “We can’t exactly judge. Maybe the animals are shifters.” I tilt my head, unable to look away.
“Quit staring at it.” Bunny smacks my arm. “Men.”
“Fine.” I scan the room again, looking for an entrance, a trap door, anything. Finding nothing, I let my beast take over. The sound of water trickling comes through, and the faint scent? I inhale, letting the sources sort themselves out. “I smell a wolf.”
“Duh,” Bunny says. “I wasn’t going to say it, but you kind of stink. I guess bleeding out while walking around after getting shot can do that to a guy.”
“Not me.” I sniff. “She-wolf. And blood. Lots of it.
Bunny stares at me like I’ve lost my mind, but I follow the scent. It’s strongest at the far wall. Running my hands along the marble, I tap in a few spots where the temperature feels warm instead of the cool stone. “There’s something back there.”
“Do we really need to find out?” she asks, her face doing that nervous twitch thing again.
My fingers hit a dip in the stone, streaking the bright wall with my blood. Oops. I step away, but with a hushed creak, a door swings open. “Wait here.”
“No way. The scared bunny who stays behind always gets axed in the stories.”
I almost ask her what freaky bedtime stories she’s been reading to her kids, but stop. One awful mystery at a time. This room’s much warmer with a fire pit that blazes in the middle of the floor, casting flickering shadows over the glass and gold trophy cases surrounding it. I circle the room slowly, resting my hand on the butt of the gun. Something feels wrong about this place.
In the first case, a musical instrument is propped against an ornate chalice. I have no idea what the instrument is. It looks like the ancient version of a flute or pipe but with multiple holes to blow in. Despite the pain blasting through my chest and into my shoulder, I almost snicker. Holes. Blow. I blame my inner fox’s sick sense of humor. The stone carvings of animals in the next case look so primitive they should probably be in a museum somewhere.
I keep walking. A cave opens behind the cases, bubbling with water in a grotto that smells of natural springs. “What did they build this place on top of?”
“I don’t know,” Bunny admits. “Each of the Houses sort of sprung up from whatever the immortal parents gave to the deity daughters. The Nymphs have oak trees and pools of fresh water running throughout their property. The Muses have stages and perfect acoustics. The Furies supposedly have spaces to fly and fight. But this? I have no idea.”
The next case holds jewelry, and I almost skip it as being more of the same except one ring catches my eye—a sparkling sapphire solitaire on a gold band with tiny etchings. Fear and anger collide, sparking in my chest like a grenade.
If I had enough light to check, I know I would find that the little carvings in the gold are wolves. I went with Lowell to pick it up from the designer. My little brother had loved that ring for his mate. The last time I saw it was on Hazel’s finger at Sadie’s family home while they planned the wedding. Then, it’d been stripped from Hazel. Along with her ring finger that’d been torn from her hand, a detail I’d left out when telling Sadie.
The Huntresses killed my brother and Sadie’s family.
I glance toward Bunny, spying a silver tablet in yet another case that has been etched and broken into pieces—arrowheads. “We need to go.” I back away, trying to shove down the shock so I can do the right thing and get the civilian out of here. If they’re the serial killers, she’s not safe here. None of us are.
“Uh, marshal, what’s that?” The terror in Bunny’s voice has me pulling my gun—curses be damned. She points to a giant statue with a shaking hand.
A stone satyr looms above the room, cloaked in shadows. For a second, I’m not sure the thing won’t come to life and stomp us out of existence. I’d found drawings of the god Pan in the holograms that ranged from the perverted to the cute to the grisly. This Pan’s a monster with curling horns, a raging face, and powerful goat legs that end in hooves. Below him stands a stone bowl of blood—shifter blood by the smell of it. The fire crackling in the pit shoots into the air, and sparks fly.
“We have to get out of here now.” I reach to drag her along if necessary.
Footsteps rushing toward us have me pushing Bunny behind me.
“Bankston.” Captain Zaleski appears in the still open doorway, her service weapon drawn and aimed at me. “A good wolf marshal would’ve stayed where I ordered him to.”
23
