Slowly, Aric opened the creaky door.
Foot marks cut into the thick layer of dust. Drops of dried blood splattered like raindrops alongside each step. My growl rumbled in sync with the wolves. My tigress didn’t like it here. But she hated what waited even more.
Pockets of light trickled through the holes in the wall, illuminating sections here and there in the otherwise pitch-black room. The increasing aroma of death forced my claws and fangs to shoot out. I barely kept my tigress from emerging.
A set of stairs led up to the second floor. A small office with a door opening to another room sat to our far left. The vast room on our right housed bent and broken pieces of metal office furniture. This must have been the area where the administrative staff worked back when the mill had still struggled to stay open.
We abandoned the small sectioned-off area without so much as a sniff. After all, the revolting fragrance of sulfur permeated stronger to our right. A few folding chairs leaned against the dirty 1960s wood-paneled walls, and a tattered armchair lay tucked in the corner. The calendar push-pinned into one of the panels remained opened to February of many years past.
We followed Aric through the large room, trailing the footsteps, and of course, the blood. I bit back a gag, the smell of decay threatening to bring up my lunch. Taran swore beneath her breath. She didn’t have to possess an inner beast to sense the death. Death slapped at our faces and demanded respect.
The roar of the river echoed from the back. Likely a section of wall had caved in based on how loud the sound of rushing water carried through the mill. We passed through a small room where the branches of firs poked through the busted sections of moss-eaten walls. Despite the growing Grim Reaper aroma, I thought we’d have to cover more of the building until we found our quarry.
I thought wrong.
The mill opened to one enormous area strewn with burlap sacks, broken rakes, and, oh yeah, a stack of corpses. Most girls got flowers, or maybe chocolates on their dates. I got dead bodies. Lots of them. Lucky me.
Taran stumbled away, choking back her sickness and burying her face into Gem’s chest. Aric gripped my arm, offering me comfort. He didn’t need it. He witnessed death as often as I witnessed life as a labor nurse. And yet as much as I wanted to mirror Taran’s actions, my tigress kept us in place and took in the horror.
Four males lay slumped like a deck of cards toward our right, their bodies rigid, but no obvious signs suggesting cause of death. The lack of decomposing flesh and the few flies circling their forms suggested they’d met their demise fairly recently.
And yet as gruesome as I found them, they didn’t compare to the naked woman left abandoned in the center of the room. My hands trembled. Perspiration slid like ice against my chilled skin. Her clouded eyes stared blankly at the ceiling while an expression of sheer terror and agony froze the features of her young face. Her entire abdomen appeared chewed open from the inside out and her half-eaten bowels lay over her hips like wet ropes. Flies swarmed her and took their fill. Small water bugs crawled along her bloody nails. She’d clawed at the splintered floor. God only knew the pain she’d endured before her heart had mercifully stopped beating.
Part of me wanted to run screaming. The other part struggled not to release my tears. Humans generally feared me. Their fear often manifested into dislike and more than often hate. I’d been mistreated to the point of cruelty throughout my life. But as horrid as others had often behaved, no one deserved to die like this. No one.
Aric pulled me into him, his voice harsh yet gentle all at once. “You don’t have to look, Celia. And you don’t have to be brave. If you prefer, Gemini can escort you and Taran outside.”
I shook my head, unable to rip my gaze from the poor soul in the center of the room. “No. I’ll stay.”
Aric gave me one last hug before releasing me and stepping forward. He said I didn’t have to be brave. So I wasn’t. I stayed put as he and Gemini’s wolf examined the bodies. They inspected the males first, circling their forms and drawing in their scent. I stopped trying to work so hard to smell. It remained my last-ditch effort to keep from hurling. All the dead men had their mouths open. They probably had screamed until their last breath. A cricket crawled out of one whose tongue hung open. That’s when I stopped looking as well.
I heard Aric and Gem’s wolf tread toward the woman. They paused. “Do you see what I see?” Aric asked, rage clipping his words.
“Yes,” Gemini’s human side answered. He clutched Taran close against him with his head lowered. I supposed he could see with his other half. “Two burrowed out in separate directions.”
I forced my mouth open. “Two what?”
Gemini raised his dark almond eyes. “Demon children,” he answered.
Taran’s shakes turned into full-out convulsions. She jerked when I touched her, burying herself deeper against Gemini. I didn’t want to scare her further, especially now that it appeared her dreams were transforming into reality. Nor did I care to frighten myself more. As it was, I wouldn’t sleep until roughly the following spring. And yet I asked. Despite my reservations and the aching pain claiming my belly, I asked. “What are demon children?”
Gemini stroked Taran’s hair, probably debating whether to explain in Taran’s presence. Aric’s body heat warmed my back, preventing me from jumping when his arm circled my waist. “They’re the extremely rare offspring of a demon and a human female.”
“How rare?”
“Very. The last one we’d heard of was the one my great-uncle prevented from being born.”
“So then, how did this happen?”
“A witch likely called the demon forth and used that poor woman to incubate the spawn.”
I took a chance and glanced over at the men. Bad mistake. More hungry bugs had found them. “That doesn’t explain the men.”
“No. It doesn’t. Something else ate them.”
I swerved my body to face his. “Ate?”
Aric nodded. “Their bodies are drained of blood.”
“But not from infected vampires?”
“No. Definitely not. Vampires lick their fang marks to seal the wound when they’re done feeding. It’s an ingrained response. Infected vampires aren’t in a frame of mind to maintain their practiced habits. All they care about is quenching their thirst.”
I wasn’t a racist. But I hated infected vampires. All of them. They were big, green, mean, and hard to kill. On the plus side, they didn’t
“As they consume flesh and organs, yes, but they would have left bite marks.”
The image of the woman’s body hit me like a sack of rocks. She’d been gnawed on by her babies. Okay. I was officially done with my questions then.
The wolves and I whirled around, growling at the sound of approaching steps. “It’s just us,” Koda snarled from the front. Our not-so-happy feelings and the aroma of mutilated-demon-consumed body parts had peeved his wolf. And he’d yet to get a gander at the bodies. Good times.
“Keep the girls there,” Gemini ordered. “We’ll come to you.”
That was Taran’s cue to storm out of the house of decomposing corpses. I chased after her, more out of worry than anything. The presence of the four wolves eased my tigress’s fury, but not her vigilance. And every sense I possessed told me my sister needed me. “Don’t go outside without us,” Koda warned.
Taran did anyway, followed by Emme and Shayna. Taran didn’t stop until she reached the center of the path. She bent forward, placing her hands on her knees as she took in huge gulps of air. The air continued to carry the heavy scent of death, but paled in comparison to the bowels of the mill. Shayna knelt in front of her, her blue eyes wide as she took in Taran’s pallor. “Dude. Are you okay?”
Taran’s glare knocked Shayna back on her butt. “No,
