He sighed and met Kylo’s gaze.There were others, made with James’ DNA, that didn’t survive.For some reason Conrad didn’t question, he kept the conversation private between him and Kylo.
Is it possible to say how many?
Conrad shook his head.Not without digging them up.
The hairs on the back of his neck, which had raised when he’d reached the grave, danced on the still air, and alerted him to something out in the jungle… watching… waiting.
Come and get me. I won’t be like the others you’ve killed!
What is it?Kylo didn’t move as his eyes became cat.
We’re being watched. Can you feel it? She’s urging us to leave.
Yes. I can’t pinpoint where she is.
She’s shielding. I think we need to get more of your men out here and start digging this place up.Conrad smiled evilly at Kylo.Because that is the last thing she wants.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Kylo
There were never any positives to finding the body of a child. Kylo had worked on a few missing children’s cases over the years, and not all of them had positive outcomes. While people might cry and wail and claim it brings comfort to have that body found and brought home, it didn’t. That cherished being was still dead, and finding the child’s body didn’t change that.
And these poor souls weren’t even given a chance to be loved.Kylo carefully scraped the dirt away from a tiny leg bone no longer than his palm, completely focused on what was in front of him. The team was on its way, but it would be an hour or more before they arrived. In the meantime, driven by a need he didn’t understand, Kylo pulled out his small shovels and started digging where Conrad indicated.
Kylo didn’t care that he was breaking protocol and disturbing a crime scene. No one was going to pay for the loss of life he was uncovering. If the perpetrators of the atrocities weren’t already dead, they were long gone. And what was even sadder, at least to Kylo, was that the bodies they were uncovering were manufactured—they didn’t even have parents who cared about them, reported them missing, or grieved their passing.
When the top layers of soil were removed, because the bodies weren’t that deep, it was that thought that drove Kylo down onto his hands and knees as he slowly exposed the remains that had been so callously discarded—all that was left of children deemed unworthy by people who didn’t care.
In their skeletal form, it was difficult for Kylo to tell the gender of the tiny souls he uncovered. There were no rags, or remnants of a shroud, or anything that might have offered those tiny bodies dignity in death. The broken bones and crushed skulls offered a stark realization about how some bodies met their end, and the evidence of such brutality turned Kylo’s stomach.
Kylo and Conrad worked in silence. The heat beat down, sweat soaked Kylo’s shirt and pants, and still they worked. The hairs on the back of Kylo’s neck let him know he and his mate’s efforts were being watched, yet Selina didn’t approach.Is she saddened at all by the unnecessary loss of life, or is she gloating because she wasn’t one of these bodies?
“Some of these remains aren’t as old as the others,” Conrad said quietly. For a moment, Kylo was confused. The three bodies he’d uncovered so far were all tiny—babies discarded soon after birth. Glancing over, he saw Conrad hunched over what seemed like a slightly larger body.
“The discoloration from the dirt into the bones is different,” Conrad said, pointing to the gravesite. “It’s lighter, not as pronounced, and the bones are bigger, too. These bodies weren’t buried as deeply, either. Look here.”
Kylo crawled over because the effort of standing and walking was suddenly beyond him. He looked down into the shallow pit Conrad had dug out with his bare hands. His mate was right. “What do you think that means?” he questioned quietly, although he was well past caring if Selina could hear them.
“I’m sure you have guys who can test for these things. If I had to guess…” Conrad inhaled deeply and looked out beyond the trees, where they assumed Selina had shielded herself. “I’d say someone wasn’t happy when any later girls were created after her, and these are the results. If you look here, the neck bones have cut marks on them, and this one is not the first one I have found like this. See?”
“So their throats were cut.” Unfortunately, Kylo had seen evidence of that before in other cases, but never in bodies so small. His cat rumbled and stirred, and Kylo looked closer beyond the narrow neck bones. “Is that a claw on the edge of that skull?”
Conrad moved swiftly, cradling the top body as best he could to move it so it could lay on upended dirt about a foot away. Kylo’s own claws came out as he dug around what was very definitely the bones of a paw, with the claws still intact.
It wasn’t an animal buried under the original child. Not a complete one. The spine and leg bones were human, but the arms and skull… were not. What sickened Kylo was that the human bones were bigger than the baby bodies they had previously found—indicating a child aged between five and possibly eight years old.
“The first failed experiments,” Conrad whispered, and the bleakness of his tone had Kylo turning to him, wanting to comfort his mate.
Conrad was on his feet, running like the hounds of hell were after him towards the tree line, the tree line where Selina was hiding.
“You couldn’t even give them separate graves, you bitch!” Conrad yelled as Kylo raced after him. “You had to stack your failures one on top of the other because you were too damn lazy to dig a fresh grave. Come out and fight, you demented cow. Come out and face one of the experiments who survived.” He swirled around, smashing his fist into a tree trunk as Kylo reached him.
“She’s gone.” Kylo pulled Conrad into his arms. His mate was shaking, and Kylo couldn’t tell if it was his mate’s anger or anguish he could feel through their bond. “Can’t you feel it? The shield is gone, and so is she.”For now.
“We heard stories,” Conrad said hoarsely, but at least he allowed Kylo to pull him away. “Stories used to torment and terrify us when we were first captured. The men would taunt us with their big knives, gloating at how they were going to chop off parts of our bodies and replace them with the bones and skin of animals. I never saw that… I saw a lot of things, never that… fuck, never that, until now.”
There was nothing Kylo could say, nothing that was going to make Conrad feel better about the things he’d been through. There were no magical words that were going to make right the horrors they’d found, either. As they walked between the uncovered graves, his cat alerted him that the first of his team members were arriving.
