Dozens of bodies, arranged in a circle around an empty stone platform. An altar. There had to be at least thirty of them, their tuxes and gowns still peeking through the blood-stained cover of their ceremonial robes. I recognized each combination of clothing and mask from the ballroom. I knew – but I fucking knew that there was something messed up going on with all those animal heads. Rich people and masks? Never, ever a good combination. Their bodies were broken, pulverized as if struck by a massive blunt force. Smashed with a huge hammer, or an oncoming truck. This was bad magic. Dark magic.
I gagged, the back of my throat tasting like bile. “Oh my God,” I croaked. “I think I’m going to hurl.”
“Please,” Sterling said. “You’ve seen worse.”
I clutched my stomach, gagging again. “I really, honestly haven’t.”
He shrugged. “Honestly, if I were still human? It’d be the smell that would bother me. It’s like an abattoir in here. I mean, to me it smells sweet. Delicious.”
Sterling brought a cigarette to his lips, lighting it, then blowing twin streams of white smoke out of his nostrils. Really? Right there?
“If that’s supposed to help with the smell – ”
“Oh,” he said. “It really isn’t. Metallic, isn’t it? The smell of all this gore. Terrible. Really gross.”
“Oh my God, Sterling, please stop.”
“Arf,” the dog said, playing at our heels, its little paws splashing in shallow pools of blood. My stomach seized again.
Then it ran over to one of the corpses – an older woman, possibly one of the Ramseys – and tugged at the hem of her robes.
The woman gasped, convulsing, crimson liquid rocketing from her mouth. She turned to her side and shuddered, sobbing the whole while.
“It lies sleeping,” she croaked. “Not truly dead and gone. It waits.”
“That’s Delilah Ramsey,” Sterling hissed. “What the hell is she talking about?”
“Hallucinating,” I said, locking away the possibility that Delilah was talking about the darkness that lived in my chest. “Delirious, maybe, from blood loss.”
Delilah’s eyes focused on something in the distance, something we couldn’t see. She fell silent, then vomited again, blood and bile tumbling past her lips.
The corgi looked up at me with its oddly adorable smile.
“Barf,” it said.
I held it in like a champion, because the alternative was to barf, just like the dog told me to, all over my dad’s shoes.
Chapter 3
“I thought you’d have a stronger stomach than that,” Sterling said. “Honestly, Dust, how embarrassing.”
I threw my hands up. “Embarrassing for who, exactly? Me or the dog?”
He shrugged. “Pick one.”
We’d left very shortly after verifying that the Ramsey woman – Delilah, as Sterling correctly pointed out – was actually alive. We beat it the hell out of the mansion just as soon as we heard the telltale pops of teleportation magic, as the Lorica’s Wings arrived on the scene. Let them deal with her, I thought. None of our business.
I didn’t envy the crew that would have to rinse out the Ramsey House. Hell, I didn’t envy the coverup job Royce would have to pull, either. Something fucked up had happened in Delilah’s little sacrificial chamber. You know how I feel about sacrifices, and I had an inkling that whatever she and her sister were attempting would have involved slaughtering the corgi.
“So, are we all sure that it was a good idea to bring it here?”
From Gil’s lap, the dog bared its teeth and growled at me. I was convinced it had something to do with the massacre.
“Better with the Boneyard than the Lorica,” Carver said.
He wove his fingers
in intricate patterns as he activated his false eye, the one he used to scry, detect magic, take notes – a multipurpose tool, really. Our boss was an undying lich, a sorcerer with an artificially extended lifespan, but as far as I was concerned, he was basically a cyborg in a tailored suit.