“He should be just past the next corner,” I said as the two dots were almost on top of each other, “close to the intersection of another two tracks.”
Aiden grunted and slowed down. Dust bloomed around the truck and momentarily cut vision. Then, gradually, an SUV appeared out of the shadows. It was parked sideways, blocking the road. The door was open, but there was no movement, no sign of life, in either the SUV or the surrounding area.
But there was blood, and chunks of flesh, and bones that gleamed white both on the ground and all over the car itself.
I covered my mouth and uttered a sound that was part horror, part disbelief.
And then the headlights pinned one last atrocity.
A head. Sitting in the middle of the front seat, still oozing blood and gore.
Byron.
Eleven
“Oh God, no…”
The words were all but torn from me. Aiden didn’t say anything; he simply picked up the radio and called in the rest of his team. Then he rang his sister.
“Ciara, did you get a call from Byron?” His voice was very controlled; none of the fury that vibrated through his body could be heard.
“Should I have?”
“He was meant to call but obviously didn’t get the chance. We need you and Luke out here immediately.” He gave her the coordinates and then added, “And pick up Ashworth on the way through.”
“What about Monty?”
Aiden hesitated. “He’s on crunches, and they’ll present problems given the scatter pattern of the kill. We’ll update him tomorrow.”
Monty would not be happy with that decision, even if it was the right one.
“Fine.” She hesitated. “I take it our flesh stripper has struck again?”
“Yes. And this time, Byron is one of the victims.”
“Oh fuck, Aiden—”
“Yeah,” he cut in, “so get out here as fast as you can.”
“Will do.”
She hung up. Aiden took a deep breath, and the anger eased a bit. His expression, when he finally met my gaze, remained controlled, but his eyes burned with frustration and fury.
“We need to find these things,” he said. “We need to kill them.”
“We will.” Somehow.
I reached across and touched his arm. His muscles jumped under my touch, and after a moment, he wrapped his fingers around mine and squeezed them.
“I need you out there in case the Empusae are still in the area—are you going to be okay?”
He meant with the gore, not the Empusae. I swallowed heavily and nodded. “The crime scene is too large for me to create a protective circle around though, so I’ll have to shadow your movements, just in case.”
He squeezed my hand again, then got out of the truck. I followed suit and studied the area with my ‘other’ senses. The night was utterly still; there were no owls hooting, no animals moving through the underbrush, and no growling or grunting from the possums that were undoubtedly in the area. It was almost as if the night itself had been struck numb by the ferocity of these murders.
And while the feel of both evil and death lingered heavily in the air, I didn’t think the Empusae remained in the area. But then, they could well be watching from on high and simply attack the minute we let our guard down.
But as brutal and as ugly as these deaths were, they’d obviously been ordained by fate, as neither man’s soul lingered. They’d moved on—hopefully to a far longer, far happier life.