"One at a time, then."
With the whole structure seeming to sway in the barely existent breeze, she could hardly disagree. He turned, running up the stairs so fast his feet barely seemed to touch each step. She followed more warily, trying to ignore the shudder that went through the wood as she climbed. Unlike many of the other buildings that still remained in the old town, the whorehouse had a flat wooden roof. The sides of the building rose a good three feet above the roofline, providing a nice amount of shelter from prying eyes in the street or nearby buildings. Shelter someone had obviously needed. She stopped on the last step, her gaze on Michael rather than what lay in the middle of the roof.
"Here's your ritual killing," he said, squatting on his heels. "Complete with pentagram." She took a deep breath and let her gaze drift left. Compared to what lay in the room below, this killing was almost sterile. A black star had been etched onto the roof, and a man lay in the middle of it. Candles sat on each point of the star, their bluish flame shooting odd colored shadows across the surrounding walls, and lending the man's skin a weird, almost luminous glow. He was naked, his body white and flaccid. His hair was dark and still looked damp, and his cheeks and chin were free of stubble, as if he'd cleaned up before coming here to die. This impression was reinforced by the fact there was no terror in his face, and his eyes were closed. He would have looked asleep, were it not for the two inch wound in his chest, and the tiny trickle of dried blood that ran from the cut and down his left side.
"There's not enough blood," she said.
Michael glanced at her. "The knife went in through the chest and out through the back. Gravity took care of the blood, I'm afraid."
"So it's his blood dripping from the ceiling below?" He nodded. "There's a lot more than blood missing from this body, though." She stared at him for a moment, silently debating whether she really needed to hear the rest of it. "What do you mean?" she asked reluctantly.
"I mean, he has no heart. It's been sucked out of his body. As has his brain." Her stomach threatened to rebel again as her gaze went from the small wound in his chest to his hair, and she realized it wasn't water that dampened his hair. Yet there was no obvious cut near his head that she could see—not from this angle, anyway. And she wasn't about to change angles. Her stomach couldn't take such a discovery right now.
"How?"
He glanced at her, one eyebrow raised. "You're the witch. You tell me." Had she been Seline, she probably could have. As it was, she didn't have a clue. "Dunleavy worships the dark Gods."
"The pentagram has been drawn in black soot, and the candles are black. There's definitely black magic at work, so possibly, he was sacrificing to his Gods."
"And they answered the call, taking the heart and the brain."
"Either that," he replied grimly, "or Dunleavy has a taste for the brains and heart of his victims."
"Vampires can't eat."
"My point exactly. So why was Dunleavy sacrificing to his Gods?"
"To help maintain his strength, and therefore the strength of the barrier," she said, frowning as she studied the man's feet. They were burned in the arch—and the burn marks oddly resembled lips.