metal bouncing around inside as the door swung open by itself. 'Not at all creepy,' I said to Tommy who nudged the door further open with his nose and padded inside.
'You ready?' I asked Sara.
She nodded, and we followed Tommy into the house.
However decrepit the outside appeared, the interior was even worse. The staircase was rotten and falling apart, wooden boards jutted dangerously from the wall. And anyone who actually managed to get upstairs would have found only empty air where the floor above used to be. I stared up through the massive hole in the ceiling, where sunlight streamed through the destroyed roof.
'Who could stay here?' Sara asked.
There were no doors, and the plaster had fallen from most of the walls, leaving bare brick or wood in its place. 'Someone desperate,' I said. 'Or someone who doesn't want to be found.'
Tommy's bark could be heard from the rear of the house, so Sara and I walked toward it, carefully watching where we placed our feet for fear of falling through the floor. Surprisingly, the floor held, in fact it was of good quality. Someone had done recent work on it.
We found Tommy sitting in front of a door in what used to be the kitchen, rat droppings littered the floor where once-white, hard tiles now lay broken and stained yellow.
Tommy's bark turned me away from the apocalyptic scene before me. He was staring up at the shiny new lock that had been fitted onto the basement door in front of him. It was a heavy duty job, and using magic to knock the lock out of position as I had with the front door would probably just rip the door apart, causing more noise than just kicking it in.
'So we have a falling-down house, with a locked front door and a basement door with a brand new lock. Anyone else got a really bad feeling about this?'
Tommy barked.
I motioned for everyone to stand back and then kicked the lock as hard as possible. The door didn't budge. It didn't even sway as the shock travelled up my leg. 'Steel posts inside the door,' I said rubbing my knee.
'So how do we get in?' Sara asked.
'With noise,' I said and orange glyphs flared to life over my hands. A blade of fire extended down from one hand, stopping after a few feet. I sank the blade into the door, just under the lock, and dragged it up in one smooth motion. The sound of steel sizzling made more noise than I'd have expected, but after a few seconds I removed the blade and booted the door once again. This time it slammed open into the plasterboard behind it. The residual heat from the metal started a small fire, which I quickly put out with my hands, before removing the glyphs altogether.
'How'd you do that?' Sara asked, her mouth agape.
'Fire magic,' I said with a smile, which was broken by a deep growl from Tommy as he descended the steps into the blackness beyond.
'You want to stay here?' I asked Sara, who shook her head.
I closed my eyes as the orange glyphs came back to life. When I reopened them, the world was a mixture of red and orange, allowing me to see in the dark. It wasn’t as good as Tommy’s night vision, but it was better than falling down a flight of stairs.
I led Sara down the stairs, making sure she didn't trip. Once we reached the floor, I found Tommy, crouched in the corner. His hackles were up and a low growl was emanating from his throat. A girl sat in front of him. Her hands were above her head, tied behind a pipe, or pole, of some sort. Long hair covered her face, but it was easy to tell that she was dead.
'Take Sara out of here,' I told Tommy.
But before he could say or do anything, Sara had knocked a light switch, bathing the entire room in a low, white light. It took her two seconds to spot the body, and she screamed, probably more from shock than anything else. But then she spotted the large mass of blood on the walls and floor and realised what had happened here and for a moment I thought she was going to faint.
'Oh, my God, oh, my God,' she said over and over.
'Tommy,' I said. He dashed over to Sara and began to nudge her toward the stairs. Getting pushed by a normal dog can move a fully gown person, getting pushed by a thirteen stone pack of muscle like a wolf, will move anyone. Sara had little choice but to comply and she soon vanished back into the house. After changing back to his human form, Tommy would call whomever he needed to, and hopefully give me enough time to figure out what had happened.
I looked around the room. Someone had covered all the windows with cement, and it looked old. This place had been prepared in advance. I turned back to the dead girl, and noticed the marks and bruises on her arms. Moving closer, I got a good look at the deep cut that had severed her throat, but even from a distance I could tell it was deeper than it needed to be to kill someone. It had been done with a lot of anger.
I got a closer look at her face, a mass of bruises and cuts. Her entire front was drenched in blood, cumulating in a large pool that spread out from under her bare legs, which were covered in smaller cuts and bruises. Whatever had happened here had been premeditated and prolonged. If there's one thing I know when I see it, it's torture. And the poor girl in front of me had gone through hell.
Chapter 5
I took my time searching the prison that someone had created for their victims. At first I'd thought Neil had to have been responsible, but he was the kind of person who wanted instant gratification. Whoever had built the prison wanted their victims to suffer for a very long time.
Loft insulation covered parts on two different walls, where thick, black welding tape held it in place. I pulled some of the tape off, and found that the insulation had been added over what appeared to be concrete-covered windows. The room had been made pretty much soundproof.
The pole the woman had been handcuffed to was fixed to the floor and ceiling with steel rivets. Four huge steel rings sat in the opposite wall, where blood smeared the white plaster. The wear on the steel suggested that they'd once been used to hold thick chains, but I couldn't find any remains of them in the room.
The sound of cars pulling up outside flooded through the open door at the top of the stairs. Tommy had probably called the police, and I needed to finish before they cut off my access to the basement.
I made my way to where the four holes in the wall were and placed my hand in the dry blood. I couldn't see them, but I knew that black glyphs were spreading out over the palm of my hand, crisscrossing over my wrist and up my arm. Blood magic is addictive and dangerous. Most sorcerers use it to aid with healing, or make their magic more powerful. But some use it for horrific ends — curses, controlling people, torture.
A few seconds later, when I'd finished gathering information from the blood, two things surprised me. Firstly the blood comprised of four different people. And secondly, they were male.
When finished, I walked over to the dead woman and placed my hand on the pool of blood under her legs, using the same magic as before. Information about her flashed through my head. I was about to remove my hand, when all of a sudden a wave of power jolted through me and it took all I had to not collapse to my knees. Some form of magic had been used on her, and it had been incredibly powerful.
When I’d caught my breath, I thought about wiping my blooded hand on my jeans, but decided against it and instead made my way out of the basement and back through the house to the outside where a gun was pointed directly at me.
'Stay where you are,' shouted a well-dressed man with long blond hair.
I did as was told whilst a young, red-headed woman walked toward me. She was both confident and beautiful, and her eyes sparkled with an assured power. 'I'm Director Olivia Green, with the LOA. You must be Nathan.'
She held out her hand which I stared at for a second, before showing her the blood on mine.
The blond man took a step forward, his gun still trained on me.
'Step back, Agent Greaves,' Director Green said.
Agent Greaves stared at me for a heartbeat before lowering his gun, but he didn't step back.
