Deadly Desire (Riley Jenson Guardian 7)

Kye walked past me, his clean musky scent like heaven against the foul stench of the room. Though he was careful to avoid the pentagram and candles, his attention seemed to be on the ground itself.

Which piqued my interest. What's wrong?

These, He squatted and pointed a finger toward the dust-covered stone.

I walked over and stopped beside him. What he was actually pointing at looked like two wheel marks.

It's probably tracks from Jessica's wheelchair, I said, dismissing it.

He glanced up at me. One of our sorcerers is paralyzed?

The zombie raiser is. That's why she was resting on her belly when she was in crow form at the warehouse.

At least it explains the ramp getting into this place. He rose and followed the tracks around the room. There's a lot of tracks going from the pentagram to these hollows in the wall.

Meaning this is her workplace, not Hanna's. I walked around the opposite way.

Maybe. His voice held an edge of doubt. Trouble is, the pentagram doesn't feel active.

And maybe we should be grateful for that. The stink of rotting flesh got stronger once I'd passed the ramp again, and I studied the shadows intently. I couldn't see anything resembling a body but, given the smell, it had to be here somewhere. Besides, given how careful these women tended to be, it wouldn't surprise me if they hid their victims in walled-up hollows and with magic.

I stepped closer to the cavern's wall, and felt the firefly press of magic against my skin. It was a magic that was slightly different from the other magic fouling the room, yet it was one I'd felt before.

I raised a hand and watched my fingers disappear into blackness. It was another wall like the one I'd encountered in that first warehouse-the one where Kye had rescued me from the hellhounds.

I followed my hand into that blackness, and once again the air had the consistency of glue. The blackness pulled at me, resisted me, making every step difficult and progress minuscule. As before, I pushed forward as hard as I could. This time it didn't take as long to get free of it. Maybe it simply wasn't as deep.

Beyond it were the bodies. Not just one, but several, all in various states of decay. Like the trophy items, most of these bodies each had their own little hollow, but none of them were stretched out comfortably. Some lay curled into a fetal position, while others simply looked as if they'd been stuffed into their holes any old way, leaving bones jutting out and body fluids staining the stone. And unlike the trophy holes, some of these spaces remained empty. Although nine cavities had been carved into the stone, only six had occupants. And there was one body still sprawled out on the floor.

I squatted down beside him and tried not to gag at the wretched smell of decay that, for some odd reason, seemed stronger near the floor line.

This body was young-maybe no more than eighteen or nineteen-and I swear there was a look of terror frozen onto his slack features and wide-open eyes. Blood had matted his dark brown hair and splattered down his white shirt. His dark blue pants were similarly stained, but smelled slightly of urine. It had to be Billy. From the look of it, the poor kid had taken quite a beating before he'd died.

But why was he here, on the floor, rather than in one of the holes like the others? Was it simply a matter of not having the time to stuff him in, or did they have something else planned for him?

Given it was a question I was never likely to get an answer to, I searched through his pockets, finding his wallet and car keys. Neither looked to have been touched in any way, though I guess I wouldn't know for sure until we got them to the lab for fingerprinting.

I reached forward and gently closed his eyelids. As I touched his skin, magic caressed my fingertips. It was the magic of the room, magic that burned my skin and made it crawl in revulsion.

Maybe Billy wasn't quite dead, after all.

Maybe none of them were. Maybe this was Jessica's emergency supply of bodies should resources start drying up elsewhere. Hell, for all I knew, these bodies could be the remnants of interstate kills and graveyard robbings. Some of them certainly looked as if they'd been kept in this half-animated state for a while.

I glanced back down at Billy. There wasn't a whole lot I could do to prevent the reactivation of his flesh, if indeed that was what that magic was about. That was a job for the Directorate magi.

What I could do was stop him from becoming a problem if he did rise while we were still here. It wasn't something I really wanted to do, but at least the kid was dead and his spirit had moved on. He'd never know-and probably wouldn't care-about what I was about to do to his cold, unresponsive flesh.

I blew out a breath, then grabbed Billy's right leg, one hand on the ankle, one hand just above his knee. Then, as sharply as I could, I pushed-one hand down, one hand up. The knee cap shattered, the sound making me wince. I did the same to the left leg, then grabbed his wallet and keys and retreated back through the black wall.

Kye was standing within the pentagram, examining the bloody table.

Find anything? he said without looking up.

The source of the decaying flesh scent, I put Billy's items down beside the ramp, then dug the bottles of holy water out from underneath my bodice. I don't think you should have done that.

Done what?

Step into that pentagram, I uncorked one of the bottles and began sprinkling the water onto the pentagram etched into the floor. Steam began to rise and the stone itself began to bubble.