“I’ll be out soon. Don’t worry.”
He heard more than saw Emma leave the house, heard Miguel order one of the vamps to stay with her at the car. And then his lieutenant was back.
“Do you feel it, Miguel?” Duncan whispered, and sent a fraction of what he was sensing down the link he shared with his vampire child.
Miguel sucked in a breath. “Sick fuck,” he hissed.
“Not sick,” Duncan corrected softly. “Evil.” His gaze traveled up the wide staircase. It would be worse up there. So much worse. “Upstairs,” he said.
Miguel sent one of his vampire guards up ahead of him, but Duncan knew they’d find nothing. There was nothing to see any longer, only to feel. He tightened his shields down hard, needing to know what had happened, but unwilling to let the full measure of Victor’s corruption swamp his senses. What he was feeling was horrific enough. He didn’t need to drown in it.
He climbed the stairs slowly, reluctantly, for all that he was determined to do it. At the top of the stairs, he turned unerringly to the right, the waves of pain and terror like the fingers of a ghost, tugging at his clothing, drawing him closer.
They passed the first room, and the second. Duncan paused, looking ahead. Every one of the rooms up here reeked of lust, of a hunger that would never be satisfied. But the worst of it, the true depths of depravity that had been perpetrated here . . . that had happened in the room at the end of the hall. The door was closed. Duncan wished it could stay that way.
His fangs emerged, sliding over his lower lip unbidden, as he stared at that closed door—as he stalked down the hall to that nightmare chamber. Next to him, Miguel gave him a startled glance, his own fangs appearing in response to Duncan’s obvious anger. Duncan almost staggered when it finally hit him, a red haze filling his vision. He opened the door and halted there, unwilling to cross the threshold. He heard the voices of men laughing, swearing, grunting in release. And he heard the terrified cries of women begging for mercy, screaming in agony.
He swallowed a furious howl, biting down so hard that his fangs sliced his lip. Blood dripped down to his chin, warm and thick. He licked it up without thinking, lost in the memory of what had been done here, of how far they’d gone to satisfy their perverted need to inflict pain on the helpless.
Duncan spun on his heel, unable to bear another moment within that agony-soaked room. It ran in invisible rivulets down the walls, rotting the boards, the carpets; everything it touched was fouled by what had happened there.
He strode back toward the staircase. He needed to get outside before the leftover emotions destroyed what was left of his shields. He shuddered at the thought of facing the searing pain of that house without even a shred of protection.
Miguel hurried next to him, his worried gaze searching every room they passed, not knowing what he was looking for, but feeling the tiniest part of what Duncan was drowning in. Duncan started down the stairs, forcing himself to take them one at a time, when all he wanted was to jump the banister and race outside.
“My lord, what did you find? What should I tell the others to look for?”
They reached the first floor. The nightmare lifted enough that Duncan felt as if he could breathe again. “Tell them to search—” He paused, detecting a fresh sense of alarm from . . . was it Ari? “Is Ari outside?” he asked Miguel quickly.
“Yes, my lord. The backyard.”
“Let’s go.”
Miguel pointed through an arched doorway on their left. They raced through a huge dining room to a wide open kitchen with two sets of French doors that opened onto a covered patio. Miguel snapped the handles down hard, not bothering with locks, and Duncan strode outside, quickly finding Ari where he stood head down, staring at the ground, tension radiating from every muscle. Duncan frowned. There was nothing here, except—
It hit him then, a whiff of decay on the night breeze, growing stronger the closer he got to Ari. When Duncan finally reached his side, the dark-haired vampire looked up, his coffee brown eyes gleaming with wild power that yearned for an enemy to strike down. But there was no enemy here. There was only the dead their enemy had left behind.
Duncan reached out to his vampire—and Ari was his, not a child of his own, but sworn to him in blood—and calmed Ari’s rage with the touch of his power.
Together they studied the minuscule disturbances that spoke loudly to those who knew what to look for, even without the smell of death to guide them. To the untrained eye, there was nothing to see but dirt and a little bit of grass that was dry and brown from the winter. No one had bothered to lay down green turf, as they obviously had in the front yard before Victor’s last party. Had that been the one Lacey attended? If Duncan had still believed in a merciful God, he would have offered a prayer that it not be so. He didn’t want Emma to lose her friend that way, didn’t want her search to end here in this house of horrors. But the world had proven to him long ago that faith had no place in this world.
He sighed. “I have to talk to Emma first. Then I’ll make the call.”
Chapter Eleven
Emma was sitting in her car, the engine running to keep the heater blowing, because despite Duncan’s jacket, she was freezing. It was more than the winter temperature making her cold. She was scared. More scared than she could ever remember being. More than when she’d been forced to kiss her dead grandmother as she lay in the casket. Even more than when her mother had died and left her all alone. She’d been too young then to appreciate all the things that could go wrong, and young enough to believe she’d be fine on her own.
But not anymore. She knew exactly how the world delighted in fucking with her by taking away everything. Everything but Lacey. If she lost Lacey, too . . . She convulsed in a fresh round of shivering, and turned the heater up another notch.
Something awful had happened in that house. Duncan was a master at keeping anything from showing on his face, but his very stillness told her it was bad. If he was working that hard at keeping it inside, it had to be very, very bad.
And she was terrified.
The vampire standing guard on her stiffened abruptly, his gaze riveted over the top of her car, around the right side of the house. Emma stared through the windshield. Was something coming? Was it whatever awful thing lived in that house?
She caught a flash of movement, and saw one of Duncan’s vampires racing around the house and into the backyard. Curiosity won out over fear, and she opened the car door enough to put one foot on the ground.
“What is it?” she asked her guard. “Have they found something?”
The guard didn’t respond right away, his attention wholly focused on whatever was happening beyond the house. Emma was about to ask him again when he turned and urged her back into the car. “You should stay inside,” he said tightly. “It’s warmer.”
“Why? What did they find?” she asked, searching his face, knowing somehow that she was right. They’d found something. Not in the house, but behind it. She’d been back there before Duncan arrived, and there was nothing there except a strip of covered patio. Beyond that was a wide patch of dead lawn and then open field. What had they seen that she hadn’t? What could there be—
Emma’s breath caught as pain squeezed her chest. She must have made a noise of some sort, because the guard reached out to her, the look of sorrow on his face confirming her worst fears.
“No,” she whispered. “No!” she screamed and shoved the door wide open, knocking it into the guard and throwing him off balance. She raced for the backyard, knowing she’d never make it, that the guard’s vampire speed would catch her and stop her, but she ran anyway. She had to see, had to know . . .
The guard grabbed her before she’d gotten two steps down the side of the big house, scooping her up and wrapping her tightly in iron hard arms. “You don’t wanna do that,” he whispered against her ear. “Trust me, Emma. You don’t wanna see.”
“Let go of her, Baldwin.” Duncan’s voice was hard as he walked toward them.
Her guard, Baldwin, released her immediately. “Forgive me, my lord,” he said.
Emma didn’t know what he was apologizing for—letting her get away or holding her too tightly, but whatever it was, she didn’t care. “Tell me what you found,” she told Duncan. “And don’t lie to me.”
Duncan closed the distance between them, his hands coming out to take hers and pull her into a rough embrace. “Emma,” he started, but she pushed away from him.
“No. Don’t do that. Don’t coddle me like some fragile flower who can’t handle life. I’ve been taking care of myself since I was eleven years old, so don’t you do that. Tell me what you found,” she insisted.
Duncan sighed. “A body. We’re—” Emma made a pained noise in spite of herself, her fist coming up to her mouth as if to trap the sound inside. Duncan paused. “Emma, Baldwin’s right. You don’t—”
“Don’t tell me what I want! Is it a woman?”
He studied her a moment, then turned his head slightly, as if listening to what was happening in the yard. When he turned back and met her gaze, she knew. “Yes,” he said unnecessarily.
“I want to see. If it’s—”
“No. That’s not necessary. We have a picture of Lacey, and they’ve buried her things with her. We can identify—”
“I want to see,” Emma repeated in an uncompromising voice that she barely recognized as being her own. “It’s my right, Duncan. She’s my—” Emotion stole her voice, and she drew a breath, turning away for a moment. “Lacey’s my friend,” she continued, ignoring the hot tears rolling down her cheeks. “Mine.”
Duncan clearly didn’t want to give in, but he just as clearly believed that what Emma was saying was true. It was her right to be the one, her right to lay claim to Lacey, and no one else’s.
“Very well,” he said unhappily. “You may view the body. But, Emma, decomposition has already begun. You may no longer recognize Lacey even if it’s her.”