Every cell in my body came to attention. This document had obviously been stapled to the other page— they were torn in the same places. Mom’s face looked out at us and the world seemed to stop as we both stared down at the photo. She looked impossibly young and incredibly scared.
Beneath the photo, they’d noted specific details. Height, weight, physical characteristics.
“One live infant,” Evie read over my shoulder and pointed. “Look at the date.”
I’d been two and a half years old by then. The infant was Evie. Our mom had been here, and she’d likely given birth to my sister in this lab. I raised my head and we stared at each other for a long moment.
“What the hell am I, Danica? Some kind of sick experiment?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I snapped, and she shook her head.
“Even you can’t explain this one away.”
Samael stepped into the room and ran his hand along my lower back, a silent show of support. He studied the papers over my shoulder, expression grim.
Sitri approached, his expression even more grim.
“Looks like most of the prisoners were killed, Boss. Slaughtered in the outdoor ‘exercise yard.’ It’s a sea of blood, but no bodies. We think some of them were loaded out and transported, but we have no idea how many.”
“Can you tell when they left?” I asked.
“Bael is the best at sensing that kind of thing, but it’s not exact. Best he can tell is we missed them by a few hours.”
Evie’s hands shook. “I think we need to involve the police.”
I stared at her. “Seriously?”
“We can take what we need, let Samael’s demons process the scene first— if that’s okay with you,” she glanced at Samael and he nodded. “But we need to tell the human authorities what happened here. There are so many more of them than there are of the demons, and they can spread the word and do their own investigations.”
I glanced at Samael. He didn’t look at all concerned at the thought of the human police stepping on his toes.
“Nelson did seem like good people,” I mused. “He’s trying to increase cooperation across the factions. Mentioned some cities are creating joint task forces between paranormals and humans. The problem is that this is way outside of his jurisdiction.”
Evie shrugged. “At the very least, he might know who to get in touch with, right?”
She had a point. “Okay. I’ll call him.”
I walked a few feet away as Evie went back to poking around. We needed more help. Samael had incredible resources, that was for sure, but as far as I could tell, there was no real downside to involving the human police at this point.
“Hello?” Nelson’s voice was gruff.
“Were you serious about that whole cooperation thing?”
He was quiet for a moment. “Ms. Amana?”
“Danica. Did you mean what you said?”
“Yes.”
“We have reason to believe that the people who attacked the coven are connected to a lab in Tennessee. We’re here now, and there are no signs of life, other than some bloodstains.”
He let out a bitter laugh. “So you went in, fucked up the crime scene, removed any important information, and now you’re throwing the humans a bone.”
I winced. “Yes, that’s exactly what we did, but we’re not throwing you a bone. We’re wearing gloves, and being careful. You’ll have access to everything we found, along with the recordings from when we accessed the lab. It’ll all be transported to the tower.
Silence.
I waited him out.
