“You act like I’m a rubbernecking ghoul,” I said. “Jude’s right. It’s my home. If it’s been violated, then I should know how.”
Nathaniel did not respond. He dropped his arms and led us through the laundry area to the door of one of the two storage rooms. This one was for the tenant of the first-floor apartment, but as far as I knew, Daharan had never put anything inside it. The coppery-tang scent of blood was strong here even before Nathaniel pulled the door open.
It took a long time before my eyes could figure out what they were seeing. The small space looked like a slaughterhouse. It’s easy to forget how much blood the human body can hold. That is, until you see it painting the walls and floors.
All of Chloe’s organs had been removed and then diced and tossed around. The only reason I knew it was Chloe was because her head was intact, her eyes wide and accusing.
“She must have suffered horribly,” I said. I was too sad to be angry. “There was no reason to make her suffer. She wasn’t a threat to anyone. I don’t want Samiel to see this.”
“I did not want you to see this,” Nathaniel said.
“So noted,” I said, sighing. Chloe and I had not always seen eye-to-eye, but I would never have wanted this for her. And Samiel loved her, and I didn’t know how I would tell him about this. Every death was another weight on my heart, and some deaths hurt more than others. This was one of them. “What I want to know is who did it, and how. Anything magical and powerful enough to do this wouldn’t have been able to get in, right? So it would have to be a human. But what human would break into my house just to kill Chloe?”
“A human who came at the behest of some master,” Jude said, his eyes sad. Jude had always liked Chloe, who had figured out how to restore the memories of the pack’s cubs after they were kidnapped. “A human who came for one of us, but instead stumbled on Chloe, who was likely poking around looking for Samiel. And that human didn’t even have to break in. The back door was wide-open.”
“I think the two of you are deliberately ignoring an obvious perpetrator,” Nathaniel said. “Chloe is in Daharan’s space. And Daharan is missing.”
I stared at Nathaniel. “Daharan wouldn’t do this.”
“You think he is not capable of murder?”
“Well, no. Everyone is capable of murder if pushed,” I said. “But there’s no reason for Daharan to do something like this to a woman he’s never met. Whoever did this . . . they enjoyed it.”
“You forget that Daharan is Lucifer’s brother,” Nathaniel said. “I have seen Lucifer do all this and more simply to relieve his boredom.”
“Daharan is not Lucifer,” I said.
Nathaniel opened his mouth to argue some more but stopped when a very loud thump came from the other storage space.
“There’s someone in there,” I said, my heart quickening.
Nathaniel and Jude immediately stepped in front of me.
“It may be the killer,” Nathaniel said.
“You couldn’t smell an intruder?” I asked Jude as the two of them cautiously approached the other storage area.
Jude shook his head. “Too much blood. It overwhelms everything else.”
I nodded my head, remembering the time we had stumbled upon Azazel’s lab and something similar had happened.
Nathaniel and Jude moved in fluid synchronicity, silently exchanging glances as they moved into place. Nathaniel yanked the door open and Jude rushed in with a roar, Nathaniel directly behind him. Their footsteps stopped abruptly, and I moved around the door so I could see what was going on. The two of them had stopped just inside the entrance, staring at a figure on the floor. All I could see was a pair of legs clad in blue jeans and pale bare feet.
Not another body, I thought.
But it wasn’t. The two men moved aside as I joined them, staring down in surprise. It was Jack Dabrowski.
His hands were bound behind him, his mouth covered with tape, and his eyes were terrified. As soon as he saw me his gaze widened and he kicked out his feet, trying to move away. He shouted through the tape, shaking his head back and forth.
I had a strange sense of déjà vu as I looked behind me, saw no one standing there, and pointed a finger at my chest. “Me?”
“The shapeshifter again,” Nathaniel said. He knelt down to try to help Dabrowski, who’d been able to flee only a foot or two before he came up against the boxes of who-knew-what that filled most of the room.
Most of the boxes had been there when my mother was alive. Interestingly, when Daharan had rebuilt the house after the Retrievers burned it down, he’d duplicated the original structure and contents down to the last detail. It was almost as if the house had never been destroyed at all.
Jack wriggled around on the floor, making it impossible for Nathaniel to take the tape off his mouth and cut his bonds.
“For the love of all the gods that are and ever were, hold still,” Nathaniel said through clenched teeth.
Jude joined him, holding Dabrowski’s legs to limit his movement. Nathaniel managed to rip the tape from Dabrowski’s mouth and the blogger immediately began yelling his head off.
“Get her away from me! Get me out of here! I saw what you did. I saw you. And everyone in the world is going to know you’re a monster.” His face was pale and sweaty and his eyes rolled in his head like a wild horse.
“Jack,” I said. “Whatever you think you saw, it wasn’t me.”