Face the Dark (Hunters of the Dark #3)

by Dave Ferraro

  ***

  They arrived at the warehouse in less than an hour, mostly because Cameron sped all the way there. By the time they pulled up in front of the warehouse, night had fallen, yet Shanna could make out a few other vehicles that she knew other hunters drove, plus half a dozen of the nondescript vans that the scholars used. They quickly made for the front door just as a pair of scholars carried a stretcher out between them, whatever lay on it hidden beneath a black tarp.

  Watching the scholars carry their bundle silently, Shanna and Cameron squeezed through the doorway once they were out of the way, taking in the dim lighting and gray brick interior.

  The smell of blood was thick in the air, along with something else that almost made Shanna gag. It smelled rotten and offensive. She grabbed Cameron by the shoulder as they continued inside, and he wrapped a protective arm around her as he ushered her deeper within.

  “There you are,” Hunter Kiess said, moving toward them from down a short hallway. “We’re trying to clean this up fast and we can use all the help we can get.”

  Hunter was a scholar, one they’d worked with closely in Greece. Shanna liked him a lot. There was something about the bookish brunette with the glasses and boyish smile that melted her defenses. And the British accent was cute. Since he had been in charge of the team of scholars that had mistakenly kidnapped Cameron after a mix-up, assuming he was a shape shifter or some other beast, many of the hunters held a grudge against him. But Shanna knew it was an innocent mistake, that he’d meant well, and didn’t hold it against him. Especially since he’d been instrumental in helping them leave Greece in one piece.

  “What’s the word?” Cameron asked, looking past him.

  Shanna followed Cameron’s example, although it was pretty dim beyond the corridor. She could see a few scholars examining something on the floor nearby, but that was about it. What she did notice, however, was how quiet everything was. It was like they were working silently out of respect for the dead.

  “There are at least thirty corpses in there,” Hunter said. “It’s one of the worst massacres we’ve come across period.”

  “What was this place?” Shanna asked.

  Hunter hesitated. “It was kind of a pleasure palace for demons and vampires, it seems. They tortured people, abused them. We captured about a dozen monsters, but many of them got away. The clean-up is going to be a nightmare. We have a crew of scholars that specialize in cleaning up messes like this, but we need your expertise to determine cause of death and make out any patterns in the rituals they performed that might tell us if something bigger is going on.”

  “Bigger like what?” Cameron asked.

  “Bigger like if they were sacrificing their souls to a demon,” Shanna said.

  Hunter tilted his head. “It’s just a precaution, but that’s always a possibility. And since Shanna’s the resident demon hunter, we thought that she would be invaluable here.”

  “Hey Shanna,” Amelia said, walking by with a body bag levitating in mid air in front of her. “Good to see you.”

  Shanna watched her walk by silently, the witch hunter’s red hair trailing behind her vibrantly. Amelia controlled air, her element of choice as a sorceress, and had massive power that could borderline on scary at times, but obviously, it had its uses, levitation being one of them.

  “We didn’t touch anything that could have been ritualistic yet,” Hunter went on. “Felicia has examined any bodies that have been removed thus far.”

  Felicia Wales was a former hunter who worked for The Agency as a consultant and teacher, and often went on reconnaissance missions for them. She also happened to be psychic. It wasn’t a convenient power, as only snatches of images seemed to come at random, but if anything were to come to her in all of this mayhem, no matter how small, it may help them understand things a little better.

  “Cameron, would you mind helping the scholars carry out some of the victims at the back?” Hunter asked, gesturing deep into the warehouse where they could hear the sounds of bags being zipped closed.

  “Of course,” Cameron replied, nodding once to Shanna before he left her side to comply.

  Hunter smiled at her. “Sorry to interrupt your date.”

  “How did you know?” Shanna asked, smiling despite herself.

  “It’s a small mansion, and the scholars love to gossip about the stars of the show.”

  Shanna scoffed. “It seems like the scholars should have more important things to do.”

  Hunter looked amused as he led her through the warehouse. Shanna took in the scene bravely. There were cages hanging low over tables, shaped like bird cages with rounded tops, blood dripping down over the sides after running the length of draped, dead arms and legs. She saw a hot tub in the middle of the floor whose water was such a deep red that she couldn’t see what lay beneath the surface. She swallowed past the lump in her throat as Hunter ushered her into a small room to the left where a woman lay on the floor naked, positioned in a pentagram made of purple powder, her limbs spread out, her skin shriveled, hanging loose and gray on her bones, despite her youthful blonde highlighted hair.

  Shanna looked away after a brief glance. “Obviously her life force was drained. Sex magick. An incubus or a succubus.”

  “We figured as much, but just in case something was amiss, we wanted to get your opinion.”

  “Hunter, we could use you out here,” a woman ducked her head through the doorway.

  “Be right there,” he called back before the woman disappeared. He turned to Shanna. “Most everything looks pretty straight-forward, with a few exceptions. If you could just take a look around and get back to me if anything seems off, we can get these bodies processed.”

  Shanna nodded as he left her to her own devices. She walked in and out of a few smaller rooms, trying not to look too hard at any bodies once she determined how they’d died. Everything did seem to be pretty much what it seemed. It was chilling to realize that the mutilated, calculated way these people were killed was what came naturally to the monsters that had done this. They hadn’t varied from the way they always used their prey. That consistency, completely removed from the horror and intimacy of their acts, made them that much scarier. It was like they didn’t realize that what they did was so horrifying, like they were just butchering cattle and plucking feathers from the carcasses of fowl. It was just how it was done.

  She shuddered as she ventured deeper into the warehouse, the sounds of the scholars and hunters around her growing duller and more far away. She stepped into a little hallway that ran past one of the smaller rooms toward the back of the building, and gazed around at the bare room she stepped into, concrete floors and blank walls with industrial lights hanging low overhead, the hum of the florescent lights groaning as they came to life when she flicked the switch. There were a few cabinets in the room, but that was all that was used to occupy the space. She almost turned back after a quick glance around the room, but she noted a hallway nearly hidden in the shadow of a tall metal cabinet as she turned away. She hesitated, but crossed the room determinedly and ducked into the room before she had a chance to change her mind. She had her cross dagger hanging from her belt should she come across any trouble, and she felt her hand close over the hilt as she ventured into the darkened room.

  Her fingers fumbled over the wall for a light switch, and she gasped as they came into contact with cold liquid. She pulled her hand back and examined it in the light afforded by the florescent from behind her. Blood. Of course.

  Swallowing hard, she braved another search for a light switch, ignoring the feeling of smearing more blood on the wall, and finally located the switch, flicking it on without hesitation.

  The room came to life, and Shanna stared, shocked at her surroundings. If she hadn’t already seen so many atrocities in the previous rooms, she would have been more ill-prepared for the sight and gotten sick on the spot, but it seemed that she was a little desensitized by the rest
of the blood and guts of the warehouse. So the room, almost completely covered in red, as if it had been painted with blood, was bearable, if only barely.

  A dozen bodies hung from meat hooks around the perimeter of the room, their mouths twisted in various stages of pain and terror. One girl hung next to the doorway Shanna stood in, from chains, against the backdrop of a bull’s eye, dozens of darts jutting out of her body. A brunette guy also hung from chains on the other side of the room, covered in blood from head to toe. Between the two chained bodies was a table with three bodies on it, all naked with small cuts all over their bodies. An older man was missing both of his eyes from their sockets, and looked like several organs had been removed before the skin had been sewn over the wounds. An older woman was missing her arms and legs, belts looking like they’d been used as tourniquets to keep her from bleeding to death as other limbs were severed, just above each missing limb. And a young woman lay with bloody spiked instruments beside her, her lower body torn to shreds.

  Shanna felt her stomach lurch, but tried to detach herself from the scene, trying to analyze and see it through the eyes of the monsters who’d done this, like a criminal profiler.

  The bodies on the table all faced the boy hanging from chains on the far wall, so she crossed the room, nearly slipping on the blood that layered the concrete floor. She looked down at the bodies from the boy’s perspective. He’d had a front row view of the mutilations. Had they been torturing people in front of him?

  She turned to look at the boy, arms chained overhead, his wrists crossed. They were bruised, as if he’d been straining against them. All of the bodies in the room were naked, but while the others had obvious wounds that had caused their deaths, this one was harder to pinpoint. He was covered in blood, but she couldn’t tell where the blood had come from, if it had come from him at all.

  His feet were chained to the wall as well, spread eagle, also bruised at the ankles where the chains dug into his flesh. She touched one of the ankles and fingered the area where the chains were bolted into the floor. Looking up, she noticed shallow bite marks around his groin. She turned away and stood up, wiping her hands, as if doing such would wipe the scene from her mind.

  What kind of a ritual killing was this? It seemed more like the type of thing a serial killer would do than a monster. Some demons fed off of pain, some off of fear. If the demons that had been in this room had fed on either, it seemed that they’d gotten a good meal. But nowhere were there signs or symbols of worshipping a higher demon. Small favors.

  She let out a sigh as she let her eyes sweep the room once more. She was sure she was going to have nightmares over this one.

  Just when she was about to leave the room, her stomach rumbled again and she turned and vomited onto the floor, at the feet of the hanging boy. She felt better after doing it once, but waited for a moment to be sure her body was done. Taking deep breaths, she looked up at the boy. He was very good-looking. Chiseled features, a sensual mouth. She wondered what color eyes he’d had. Without realizing what she was doing, she reached up and touched the side of his face. After a moment, she realized it was the side of the face where Cameron had his scar. This boy had no scar. His jaw was rough with dark stubble, but it was whole, and felt somehow reassuring under the weight of her hand.

  She paused and cocked her head as she looked at his face. Wait. His skin felt warm. She nearly gasped as he shifted, a low moan escaping his mouth. She hesitantly withdrew her hand from his face and watched eagerly as his eyes fluttered open. He looked straight at her. His eyes were dark brown, lined with long lashes.

  She returned his gaze, not daring to breathe.

  Then he looked beyond her, his eyes landing on the bodies splayed out on the table behind her.

  “Uh, no, you shouldn’t,” she murmured, trying to block his view.

  He looked up at her and his lips quivered. Then his eyes rolled up in his head and his chin slumped forward onto his chest.

  She quickly turned on her heel and ran toward the door, wanting to get help to cut him down before he regained consciousness again. No one needed to be subjected to that torture again. As she neared the door, her feet slipped on the blood and her legs flew out from under her. She fell flat on her back, the air knocked out of her. Gasping, she lay there for a moment, feeling the blood soaking her clothing, the hair at the back of her head. She felt such immense sympathy for the boy that hung on the wall that tears formed in her eyes. But she had to be strong, so she forced them back and gingerly picked herself up to get help.