With no help from his companion, he grabs Julen by the scruff and drags him to where I stand by the altar. To his credit, Julen does his best to put up a fight. He flails and kicks. His screams bounce off the ceiling. But his efforts are ignored as he’s hoisted up as if he were a bag of flour and dropped on the table.
“Quiet,” his captor growls.
And Julen goes silent. His body goes still. His single good eye darts from me to them with a confusion I understand. His mouth makes shapes that end with nothing. Not even when he claws jagged gashes down the soft tissues of his throat.
“Is the offering to us?”
The question has my attention lifting to the creatures on the opposite side of the altar. Both study me back with a focus that is a little too sharp. Too focused. I don’t wholly understand therequest, but I suppose if Veyn is their leader, perhaps they need to be given the go-ahead directly.
“If you make him suffer, yes.”
Satisfaction is hard to decipher on a skull with no eyes or lips, but it’s almost unmistakable as the pair exchange glances. And I don’t question it. It seems unnecessary when we both get something from this. Still, the back of my neck prickles as I take several steps back and find a seat on the jagged path leading up to the hole above.
The two don’t acknowledge my withdrawal. They fix their attention on the squirming and thrashing man trying and failing to escape and take a step back.
The one of blood and tendons seems to be shivering uncontrollably. Hard enough that I can see the faint tremors that course through him. His thin, skeletal arms clutch across his bleeding chest as if he’s hugging himself to stay warm. He hasn’t said a word and his silence puzzles me; he’d been the most vocal the last few times I’ve seen them. More than his counterpart.
But I let it go.
Their behavior is none of my concern.
I’m more fascinated by the invisible force that seizes Julen and wrenches his limbs from their sockets. The sickening snap and pop of bones shattering through flesh detonates through the chamber. His howls remain locked in his throat as he’s pulled flat and restrained. The same force shreds the clothes from his body, baring every flaw and fold to the room.
Maybe because they are demons, I expect them to cause the pain and torture. I wait for them to begin, to cut and saw. To tear him apart. But they never touch him. They simply stand and watch as Julen fights against his binds and screams from a throat that doesn’t work.
I’ve never tortured anyone. Quick and easy has always been my idea of cleaning up a job, not that there have been many.Even at my peak, my focus had been the business side of things. Sure, it could get messy and people — like Julen — would try and encroach on my territory, but torture was a bunch of work I didn’t care for. Most of the time, I let my men handle the … problem.
But I expect something. Anything. And I’m about to ask what we’re waiting for — it’s not like we have a lot of time — when Julen seems to notice something. The full length of him goes rigid as he stares with fresh horror into the corner of the room with his one good eye. Into a heavy pool of shadows that seem to pulse with their own heartbeat.
I follow his gaze, trying to see what has his chest pumping wildly. But there is only the darkness … until I blink and squint. Focus at its center and the faint, blurred outline of two figures.
There is nothing left of them.
No faces.
No eyes.
They stagger into view with charred and flayed skin. Identification impossible, but unmistakable. Even with everything that once made them human gone, I know Julen recognizes them.
Augustus and Bernard reach him with the shambling stagger of two dead men walking. Hollow sockets stare into their uncle’s face. Emotionless, unlike the man splayed before them.
Julen howls. His head falls back and — even without sound — his wails would live in my head forever. His raw agony hits me square in the chest and rebounds.
He feels it,I think numbly.
That hollowing torment of seeing your children’s bodies bloody and broken. Murdered for a crime that was never theirs and taken when they shouldn’t have been. His misery should soothe my suffering. I should feel a measure of pleasure at watching him sob and fail.
I feel nothing.
Not satisfaction.
No regret.
None of it will bring my boys back.
But I don’t stop Augustus as he lifts the same dagger he used to carve open his brother’s chest and start the grueling process of carving up his uncle. Despite the burns and patches of flayed flesh stripping the meat off his fingers, he’s meticulous in his task, balancing the tip against Julen’s hairline and following a straight path down the arch of his nose. The line is surprisingly even, despite Julen’s muted shrieks.
At Julen’s shriveled and flaccid cock, I flinch as the blade carves, splitting the membrane in half like some grotesque flower. Julen watches the disfigurement with a jaw unhinged with disbelief. He doesn’t seem to be screaming anymore as the blade cuts straight down the center and continues over the testicles.
