“You are certain this is correct? I see no taint of Darkness about the place.”
Kylie had half turned in her seat as she began maneuvering the vehicle between two others already parked at the curb. Apparently, she found she could spare enough attention from the task to roll her eyes at him. “What? Nocturna—nocturnis like to decorate the front yard with severed goat heads and human sacrifices on pikes? Somehow I can’t see them wanting to draw that kind of attention to themselves.”
He grunted, but didn’t bother to protest or comment on her smart mouth. Again. But if she knew some of the things he had seen the servants of the Darkness do in the past, she would not be so quick to make fun. He refused to put anything past their evil minds.
He unfolded his large frame from his seat and extracted himself from the car, which the human had assured him was a perfectly normal size (“Not even a compact,” she had scoffed). When he emerged, he felt a wave of gratitude for the freedom. His legs appreciated the chance to stretch themselves as he followed her down the concrete sidewalk to the front of the white house. Kylie approached the front porch, squinted up at some numbers beside the door, then shook her head and turned away.
“We have the wrong address?”
“No, but the numbers by the door are actual numbers, one through four. Our guy’s address said apartment B. I’m guessing that means basement, and I’m also guessing the entrance is going to be along the side of the house or out in back.”
She led the way down a narrow drive beside the building, gesturing to a low jut of concrete blocks sticking out about three-quarters of the way along. “See? Basement entrance stairwell. Told you.”
Her supposition proved correct. Rounding the low barrier, Dag found the awkward structure to be part of a retaining wall that supported a narrow stair dug into the ground. The tight path led to a white wooden door with two narrow panes of glass at the top. Kylie bounded down the stairs with no apparent worries and knocked before he could stop her.
Hissing, he grabbed her by the arm and hauled her away from the door. “What do you think you are doing, female?” he demanded. “Have you no sense of caution?”
She looked confused. “What do I have to be cautious about? We came here to talk to this guy, right? Well, it’s a little hard to talk to someone if you don’t, you know, meet them. That’s how this visiting thing works. You go to someone’s house, you knock, they answer, you have a conversation. Unless you’re selling something, in which case they probably slam the door in your face.”
“That is not how this works when the person you wish to speak to is a servant of the Darkness,” he snarled. “What if he had warded protection on the door? You could have been harmed. Or what if instead of politely answering your knock, he opened the door only to hex you with a black casting? Until we know who this person is and what he is capable of, we will proceed with caution. Do you understand?”
“Please, I’m not deaf.” She jerked her arms from his grasp and gestured toward the blank surface of the door. “Nor do I appear to be injured or in danger of being hexed at any moment. In fact, I’m guessing the lack of an answer to my knock means that our friend isn’t even home.”
Dag battled back the urge to seize her again and shake her. Perhaps he could rattle some sense loose inside that head of hers. Instead, he turned his glare on the door. “Are you certain?”
Kylie shrugged. “Try it yourself.”
He shouldered past her in the narrow space of the stairwell. The knock he gave packed a bit more force than the human’s had. So much, in fact, that when his knuckles made contact for the third time, the panel shuddered and clicked before swinging an inch or two inward.
He took a single breath and froze.
“Wow, it must have been unlocked. Maybe he really is in there.” She stepped forward, her face alight with curiosity. “Should we just go in, or—”
Her hand reached out to push open the door and made contact before he could stop her. She didn’t press hard, but it was enough. The door swung halfway open, and the distinctive, sickly sweet miasma of death rolled out over the threshold.
“Don’t,” he snapped. “Wait here.”
He could smell the blood and the taint of expelled waste that accompanied death, but no other fragrance greeted him in the small apartment. Instinct told him the killer was long gone, but he would make certain before he allowed the female to enter.
The body of a young man lay in the center of the main room, half on a layer of worn beige carpet, the other half sprawled over a grimy expanse of gray vinyl flooring. His throat had been slit in a stroke so deep the white bones of his spine peeked out through the gaping hole. Another, equally deep wound bit through his chest from his sternum nearly to his pelvis. Blood pooled beneath the corpse, already congealed on the slick surface of the tile and soaked deep into the pile of the carpet. The male had clearly been dead for hours.