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Not, the Daughters are gone. Not, everyone has disappeared. Just…the rooms are empty.
Movement came in the dark as London stumbled out from the stairway and kept going until he slammed his hand against the hallway wall, bracing himself.
“London?” I stepped close.
But he stopped me with a shake of his head. “No…not yet.”
“Not yet?” I jerked my head to where the silence waited.
Guild…Guild wasn’t here. He was down there…in the dark. In all that blood. I shoved forward.
“Vivienne! WAIT!” Carven roared.
But it was too late.
I didn’t slow, not when I hit the first stair and my knees nearly buckled with the impact. I grasped the banister and held on as I hit halfway and all but fell the rest of the way until the bottom.
That’s when I saw him.
Guild, with his back to me, staring into the darkened room.
All I smelled was blood.
But I knew there was more.
I reached up, knowing there was a cord for the light switch…
My fingers grasped something.
Click.
The dull yellow light seemed to ooze into the darkness, eating at the edges of the emptiness…spilling around the mess.
Then I saw it, even as thunder came on the bottom of the stairs…and Guild jerked his goggles from his head then spun. There was blood…so much blood. It arced across the wall, slipping out of the bullet holes that peppered the wall and pooled on the floor, around the bodies.
All the…all the…all the…Daughters.
They’d fallen in piles. Arms and legs wrapped around each other. Some missing half their heads, others half their faces. Some…some facedown on the edges of the piles as they’d tried to run.
That same tilt came back to me now.
Sweeping my feet out from under me.
Strong hands grabbed me.
“I got you, sweetheart,” Guild murmured in my ear, until more hands grabbed me. “I got you. You shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t see…this.”
But it was all too late. I had seen…I had seen.
“They killed them.” I lifted my head, and through the blur, I saw their faces. “They killed all of them?”
Carven looked away.
So did Guild and Harper.
Only London didn’t turn away from me. Those dark, merciless eyes were deeper and blacker than they’d ever been before.
“Why?” The word was a wounded moan.
