Then he opened his eyes and pointed down one of the side halls. “Blood,” he said, voice suddenly thick with hunger and longing. “So much blood.”
We ran. Malena would just have to catch up with us once she was back in the theater. I had faith that she could; Pax was great for following the smell of blood, but Malena was a distance hunter, and she could follow the smell of us.
The hall ended at a closed door. I was the first to reach it, followed by Alice and Dominic, with Pax bringing up the rear. We all stopped, hesitating as we looked at it.
“Anyone know where this leads?” I asked.
Silence told me no one did.
“Great,” I said. Producing three throwing knives from the waist of my pants, I signaled for the others to be quiet before leaning forward and turning the knob with my free hand. The door swung inward, revealing a flight of stairs leading down into the dark. My nose was nowhere near as sensitive as Pax’s, but it didn’t need to be.
The smell of blood was strong enough that I could pick it up on my own.
“Come on,” I said, and reached through the door, feeling around for a light switch. There wasn’t one. Bracing myself against the potential for things to go terribly, incredibly wrong, I started down the stairs. The others followed.
It was impossible for us to descend silently into the dark. We had to hunt for our footing, and the stairs were metal; our footsteps clanked, not every time, but often enough to alert whatever might be lurking below to our presence. Something scraped on the wall above my head.
I decided to risk it. “Malena, find the light,” I hissed.
The scraping intensified, moving away. I realized my mistake and covered my eyes a split second before the lights came on, bathing the room in burning light. Behind me, Dominic made a small, disapproving sound. Alice said a bad word in what sounded like Latin, identifiable as profanity only in its inflection. Pax didn’t say anything.
The brightness was a momentary distraction. I uncovered my eyes and turned to the floor, already knowing what I was going to see. The blood had been notification enough, like a marquee sign leading toward horror and the grave.
Mac and Leanne were stretched out side by side, his head by her feet, her head by his. Their hands were joined in the space between them, pinned to the floor by a spike of what looked like ivory, or polished bone. Like the others, they were naked, their bodies laid bare to the unforgiving world. Runes were carved into their skin, so deep in some places that bone glistened through the gore, blindingly white in contrast to the red around it. The runes were larger this time, more elaborate.
The others saw it, too, but it was Alice who put it into words: “They’re not afraid of getting caught. Those pictures you showed me before, those were a mess, but this . . . they took their time and made sure every little detail was Just. So.” She shook her head. “This is sick.”
“What are the differences between this scene and the last?” asked Dominic. He had a high, tight note in his voice, like he was stepping back from the situation and putting it behind a glass wall, something clear enough to let him see, but solid enough to distance him. It was his Covenant training coming to the fore, and I almost envied him the ability to become divorced from the terrible things that were going on.
I had no such training. My training was less about killing and more about saving: it never let me step back. Instead, I took a step down, moving closer to the mess, and said, “Some of the runes are the same, but there are more of them, and some I’ve never seen before. The spike is new. That’s physical evidence of what they’re doing. The last two victims weren’t holding hands.”
“They’re not sliced down the middle,” said Malena. I glanced up at her. She was still sticking to the wall, and her transformation toward her more canine form was continuing; spikes had broken through the skin of her neck and shoulders, and her complexion was shifting toward a dusky gray. It was a slow process. She’d be able to talk for a while yet, even if she chose to keep transforming. “There’s no way the killers could’ve gotten to their guts.”
“So we either have two ritualists, or the ritual is evolving.” I pulled out my phone and began snapping pictures. “Malena, I’m going to need you to take the overhead shots again.”
“We need that spike,” said Alice.
“We can’t take it,” said Dominic. His voice was sharp. We all turned to look at him. He shook his head, and said, “Whoever is doing this, they use the confusion charms to keep people from realizing the eliminated dancers have vanished without a trace—everyone thinks they’ve seen the missing people with someone else. Our killers aren’t aware that they have an active opposition in the building.”