loomed before her, calling her forth. Whatever lay behind it was wrong. So wrong. She felt it to her very core.
Even so, she kept going, her feet nothing more than a whisper over the floor. The lock proved intricate and advanced, but she’d dealt with worse. She crouched before it, her knees aching. The puff of her breath obscured her view, and she willed herself calm, willed her numb fingers to work.
The tiny snick of the lock turning sent her whirring heart into high speed. Slowly she rose and lifted the hatch lever. Damp, hot air escaped the door in an audible gasp, and the fetid scent of iron, blood, and human waste assaulted her. Opening all of her senses, she slid the spiked baton out of its hiding place within her sleeve and grasped the handle tight. And then she crept into the dark maw of the room.
Steam curled her hair and filled her lungs. All was quiet. She eased into the room, keeping her back to the wall, and glanced about as her blood pounded in her ears. It was dark, but that was all right; she could see well enough. A table, iron and crusted over with dried blood, sat dead center. Blood coated the floor, creating sticky pools that pulled at her boots and released them with a sick, squelching sound as she moved on. Despite the unbearable heat of the room, her hands turned to ice. An orange glow came from the far corner, the source of the heat. The small furnace burned at full power, hissing and cackling as it ate up its fuel. Her mouth went dry. Another step and she was almost next to the furnace, and the whole of her left side burned, her skin going tight and too hot. Her body shook as she scanned the rest of the room and stopped. A scream surged up her throat and came out in a helpless gasp.
She stumbled forward, her gaze darting around. She was alone. Save for him. And then she let herself really look, and bile burned her throat. She’d found him.
Jack Talent hung on the wall, naked and crucified. Thick iron spikes drove through his hands, shoulders, thighs, feet, and heart. Iron to keep him from shifting. His blood ran in thick rivulets to be collected in iron pails beneath him. Hair shorn off, his head hung forward, resting against one pike.
“Jack,” she whispered, shaking so hard it came out as a sob. Whatever she felt for him, he did not deserve this. No one did. He did not move. The scent of death was too thick for her to determine if it was his or another’s. Oh, but he was pale. So pale. Her baton clattered to the floor as she reached him. His skin was clammy yet hot and covered with symbols carved directly into his skin. A grunt, so low and weak she might have missed it, broke from his cracked lips.
“Help!” She hadn’t realized she’d shouted the words until footsteps pounded along the iron floor. She glanced back and saw the familiar outlines of Mr. and Mrs. Lane.
Mary pressed her palm against Talent’s quivering side, and his pain screamed in her ears. “Help him.”
The inspector swore as he rushed forward, his strong arms lifting Talent’s weight off the spikes as he began to wrench them out. But it was Mum’s face that captured Mary’s attention, for it promised vengeance and death.
Jack lay within the womb of his bedding. If he kept perfectly still, barely drawing a breath, he could almost remain numb and think of nothing more than how good the weight of the quilt felt on top of him and the softness of the mattress beneath him. But it was impossible to keep himself in that state of nothingness forever. A sound would break out from somewhere in the house, a laugh or the creak of a floorboard, or perhaps the rattle of a passing conveyance outside, and he’d flinch, his entire body seizing with terror and pain, and then the panic would claw at him. He was safe. Safe in Ranulf House. His true home. The thought held as much weight as smoke. It drifted away too soon, leaving him with the memories. Pain, degradation, the sick slide of it that had him shivering like a babe and burrowing down further into the bed.
When the terror had him, those once soft and secure blankets meant nothing. They could not protect him. Not from