Protecting His Mistress - Evangeline Anderson Page 0,49
asked blankly as Karn called for lights, which came on at once.
The big Kindred frowned.
“Looks like some kind of a kennel,” he growled. “Did Mistress Zangelo breed any kind of animals?”
“No.” Lilli felt her gut clench. “But I do think she might have kept rather a lot of bodyslaves.”
“What a fucking way to live!” Karn shook his head as he looked at the empty metal cages.
Each one had a long chain affixed to the back of it, attached to a choke collar. Some had thin blankets lining their chain-link floors and some had nothing at all. A few discarded water and food dishes could be seen too.
“She treated them like animals,” Karn muttered, glaring around at the cramped, bare cages.
“It’s awful.” Lilli felt hot tears prick her eyelids. “How could anyone treat other people this way?”
“Beats the Seven Hells out of me,” Karn growled. “Come on, let’s get out of here. I’ve seen as much as I want to.”
“Wait!” Lilli caught his arm. “What…what’s that?”
She pointed a trembling finger and he turned to follow her gaze. When he saw what she was pointing at, his face grew hard.
“Come on.”
They walked up to the side of the abandoned metal cage and looked down at the dark streaks dried on its bars and the floor in front of it.
“Looks like dried blood,” Karn said at last, frowning.
“Quite a lot of it,” Lilli whispered. She couldn’t seem to stop staring at the streaks and smears on the cage and the floor. “Do…do you think this is where he did it?”
“I’m still not convinced he did do it,” Karn said, frowning. “Come on, let’s go back this way and try to find Mistress Zangelo’s bedchamber. According to the report I read, that’s where the body was found.”
“Okay.” Lilli clutched his hand tighter and he gave her a reassuring squeeze.
“It’s all right, little Mistress,” he rumbled, looking down at her. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“I know.” It was the only thing that made Lilli keep going. She knew that if she’d been down here alone in the dim apartment where a bloody murder had been committed, there was no way she could have gone on after seeing those awful smears of dried blood. But being with the big Kindred made her feel safe.
She and Karn wandered around some more until they finally came to a large, circular room with what appeared to be a vast round bed in the middle.
“Do you think this is it?” Lilli looked doubtfully at the chamber. It wasn’t set up like a normal bedroom, and the bed, which was covered in a vast black spread, certainly didn’t appear to be a normal bed.
It was big enough to hold eight or ten people for one thing. For another, the bed seemed to be arranged very strangely. Instead of having pillows at the top of it—if a circular bed could be considered to have a top—it had seven or eight large, long, furry pillows arranged in a spoke-like pattern all around it.
The pillows were almost as long as Lilli was tall and they were covered in soft, thick fur in colors that ranged from deep magenta, to burnt umber, to turquoise. They stood out brightly against the black bedspread.
“What’s the point of all this?” Lilli asked, stepped forward to look at the furry pillows in their strange, spoke-like pattern which almost made the circular bed look like some kind of a wheel.
“Don’t know.” Karn shook his head. “But look—” He pointed. “A surveillance room!”
Lilli followed his finger and saw that there was an open door at the far side of the strange bedchamber. She would have expected it to be the bathing chamber but instead, the glint of computing equipment could be seen.
“This could be what we’ve been looking for!” Karn’s voice was excited. “Come on!”
Twenty-Eight
Karn couldn’t believe his luck. The setup in the surveillance room was essentially the same as what Lilli’s mother had in her secret home office. It was humming quietly to itself—clearly the Opulex authorities had neglected to turn it off when they had declared this apartment a crime scene area.
He took a seat and grabbed the manipu-cube at once, looking for files of the night the murder had been committed. Everything was encrypted but that didn’t bother Karn a bit. After years in the Elite Espionage Corps, he was excellent at breaking encryptions. After a few moments, he figured out the rather simple code the programmer had used and he was in.