keep looking.”
All the vampires that had been in the house were now bits of ash out on the street. There were no corpses in the house, vampire or otherwise. Our killer hadn’t conducted the spell within the nest, which didn’t surprise me. I could feel the energy here, but not as strongly as when we walked through the apartment where the first spell was cast. That energy had crawled across my flesh and left me feeling dirty.
My companion didn’t seem particularly surprised that we didn’t find anything either, but we had to search the house for any evidence. We had so few leads to go on as it was; we couldn’t risk overlooking any possibility now.
“Where do we go now?” I asked when we were standing in the backyard. It wasn’t very big, but the grass was neatly trimmed and the flower beds were carefully edged with smooth river rocks. It probably would have looked beautiful in the summer, but right now it was all dead and barren.
Gideon led the way across the backyard and through the gate to the neat redbrick house on the right. All the windows were covered with blinds and there hadn’t been a peep out of the occupants despite all the chaos that had whirled about the neighborhood. I could feel the eyes of the cops on us from the street as we strode up the front porch and entered the house without bothering to knock. Not that a warlock or witch would have knocked. Crap. Acting the part of a Towers asshole was a lot harder than I had ever expected it to be.
We didn’t have to go far before we found four headless bodies sitting around a large dining-room table. The glossy finish was now splattered with blood and bits of brain matter. While it was hard to gauge without heads, the four victims looked younger than the killer’s first. Their bodies were smaller and their clothing made me think that he’d grabbed four kids from the local middle school. My stomach lurched at the sight and it was a struggle to get my feet to move forward into the room. How much horror did I have to wade through before we finally caught up with this bastard? He tore through an entire nest of vampires, and now . . . kids.
Gideon frowned as he carefully circled the table, picking up his robe so that the hem didn‘t drag through the growing pools of blood. “Go check the rest of the house. Find the owners,” he barked without looking up at me. His voice was gruff but emotionless. He seemed cold, but it was a lie. There was a tightness around his mouth and his jaw looked hard as if he was tightly clenching his teeth. The warlock had packed his emotions away so that he could find the killer that much faster, relying on the sharp focus of his mind to see him through the grisly scene around him.
I needed to follow his example, but I was just grateful to be away from the nightmare in the dining room. The living room was empty except for an ugly floral-patterned sofa and love seat set placed around a coffee table heavily laden with magazines. As I wandered down the hall, the smell of rotting flesh hit me. Raising the sleeve of my jacket to my face, I pushed open the first bedroom door. The remains of an elderly couple still in their flannel pajamas lay in the queen-sized bed. Judging by the degree of decomposition, they had been dead for several days at the very least.
The couples’ throats had been slit while they slept. It wasn‘t the fastest or most painless way to die, but they hadn‘t been the target of the killer‘s latest spell. He had just needed their house in which to work.
Continuing down the hall, I drew in a somewhat clear breath of air while I explored the rest of the first floor. A quick inspection took me through a spare bedroom, a bathroom, and a tiny eat-in kitchen. Most of the house was untouched. The kitchen had some empty food containers and broken dishes from where the killer had obviously ransacked the owner’s goods, but he hadn’t stayed here long.
After a couple tries, I finally found the door that led down to the basement and I kind of wished I hadn’t. There weren’t any dead bodies waiting for me, or even reanimated vampires looking to tear out my throat.