“Elyse,” Manny called to her. “Do you… feel anything?” he asked.
Elyse looked back at them over her shoulder, her brows knitted together. “I feel…” she began, acid rolling off her tongue, “like this is a waste of time.”
Without further ado, she marched up the stairs. She pulled her knife from her belt, swiped at the vines that criss-crossed the open doorway, and disappeared inside the house.
Killian glanced sidelong at Manny, whose lips were a tight line. Sera’s eyes, normally so full of light, were dark with worry.
No, this didn’t bode well at all.
They ascended the stairs, their footsteps muffled by the weeds. Killian glimpsed the manor’s interior—shadow and vine writhing together, swallowing all happiness. As he crossed the threshold, he could see the foliage was equally as invasive on the inside of the house as it was on the outside. Ivy smothered the walls, and the furniture looked more like gruesome shrubbery than chairs and tables. And beneath it all was a simmering evil that made bile rise in Killian’s throat.
In the dim lighting, Killian couldn’t make out his friends’ expressions. Sera clutched her arms around herself, and Manny placed a hand on her back. Elyse merely sauntered over to the nearest wall and leaned against it, crossing her arms. The casual gesture looked so at odds with the massacre around them.
“We’ll stick together and search the house,” Killian said, his voice cutting through the eerie stillness of the room. He tried to picture it as it might have been a few days ago, grand andelegant. He tried to imagine laughter, guests entering through the doorway, greeted with embraces and warm regards. But in the absence of any light or hope, it was impossible to envision.
Elyse trudged through an archway on the right without so much as an acknowledgment of Killian’s words. The rest of the group followed warily after her, careful not to catch their toes on any rogue vines.
They found the first body in the kitchen.
Sera nearly tripped over it. She stopped abruptly and gasped, pointing at a spot on the floor where the ivy was thicker, like a welt. Manny dropped to his knees and began cutting at the vines, and Killian joined in. A rotting stench flooded the room, and Sera covered her mouth and turned away. It took several minutes of hacking at the vines before the body was uncovered.
A sadness weighed on Killian’s chest, even as the ghastly scent clouded his senses. There was nothing they could do for whoever lay on the floor before them—someone’s mother or child or friend. The corpse was too desiccated to tell, as if the weeds had drained the life from the body, feeding off it like soil. It was a death no one deserved.
“Fascinating,” Elyse breathed out.
Killian shot her an appalled look. She stared down at the corpse, her eyes wide and bright. A different sort of sadness clawed into Killian’s chest, one that deepened the longer he watched Elyse. One tinged with disgust.
“Keep searching,” Killian said quietly.
They found four more bodies: two in the dining room, one in the parlor, and another in a bedroom upstairs. Each was as horrifying as the last.
While horror settled in Killian’s stomach like a stone, Elyse remained unaffected. She studied each death with a subdued intrigue, standing over the bodies without a shred of reverence.
“Does this not bother you?” Killian asked her. They stood in a corridor on the uppermost level after completing their search.
Elyse merely shrugged. “I didn’t know them.”
Killian blinked at her apathy. She was angry at Lazarus, but not for the right reasons. She wanted revenge for the way he had manipulated her for years, but it seemed that she took no issue with his slaughter and destruction—like she was immune to his horrors as long as they didn’t affect her.
Sera shook her head as if she might shake off Elyse’s detachment. “We should give them a proper burial,” she suggested quietly.
Killian nodded. It was too late to save these strangers, but they could at least give them a sense of dignity in their deaths.
Elyse looked around at the vine-covered walls of the corridor. The long hallway stretched from nearly one end of the mansion to the other, both ends swallowed in a dark sea of foliage. It might have been mystical were it not for the death lurking in every shadow.
“Let me burn it,” she said abruptly. She faced the group, eyes bright with excitement.
“Absolutely not—” Manny began, but Elyse didn’t let him finish.
“You’re going to dig five graves?” she asked, indignation rolling off her tongue. “That will take all day, and it won’t be nearly as fun as watching this place burn.”
Her words, thick with a sickening eagerness, made Killian’s stomach churn.
“We can’t burn it down,” Sera breathed, a plea in her tone. “They might have family heirlooms—their loved ones might want something to remember them by.”
“Then theirloved ones,” Elyse mocked, “can be the ones to bury them.” She slipped past Sera and headed down the corridor.
Killian glanced at the door they’d come through, thinking of the corpse on the other side. He detested the idea of leaving their bodies. No one seemed to be coming to mourn them or pay any respects. The whole place had been abandoned, as if the townspeople feared they too might end up smothered by sentient vines. Yet Sera made a point. There might be family members on their way, and it would be cruel to burn any material objects they might cherish. It would be more cruel, though, to make them witness their family’s ruined bodies.
