Right now, there are too many disparate pieces: the bodies. The bugs. The positioning of the body. The tunnels. The DNA…
DK? He’d rather be anywhere else, most obviously, between Arianette’s thighs, but I’ll give it to him. He hasn’t left my side.
The clear plastic box sits in the middle of the table, the small black beetle we pulled from the tunnel crawling along the bottom. There are holes in the top for air, and I sprayed water inside.
“You keep looking at that thing like he’s going to tell you something,” DK says, leaning over and squinting at the bug. Thememento moritattoo over his eyebrow looks warped through the plastic.
“Maybe he will,” I murmur, standing. I cross the library to the tall cabinet in the back corner and fish the key out of my pocket. The lock opens with a click and the doors creak open. I’ve been back and forth to this cabinet a dozen times. Read and flipped through almost every book. This time I pull out a slim, ancient volume bound in dark green calfskin, title embossed in faded gold:Ritus Obscurorum–Sacra Noctis et Umbrae.
I drop into the chair across from DK and open the book carefully, the old leather creaking under my hands.
He leans forward. “You got something?”
“Maybe,” I say, distracted, eyes already scanning the marginalia crawling along the page edges. My thumb traces a line of crampedLatin then the inked shape beside it, a scarab, stylised but unmistakable.
“Did you know,” I say, eyes still focused on the text, “in a lot of pagan and funerary rites, the beetle’s a rebirth symbol?”
DK shifts, boot heel hooking the chair rung. “Like reincarnation?”
“Closer to transformation.” I turn a page. “The scarab in Egyptian lore pushes the sun across the sky, a cycle of death and return. In later European rites, it shows up in grave charms. Body decay, soul renewal. The idea that something new crawls out of what died.”
DK’s mouth tightens. He glances, involuntarily, at the specimen box.
“And the stag beetle,” I go on, tapping another illustration, mandibles exaggerated into crescent horns, “was tied to masculine force. Virility. Dominance. Sometimes storm gods. Sometimes underworld guardians.”
“Huh,” DK says. “I didn’t know that.”
“Well,” I murmur, eyes drifting to the photo clipped to one of the folders the King gave us: Kelsey’s face, mottled and gray, lips forced open, dark shapes visible behind her teeth. “It does.”
Silence drops between us, thick as ash.
“The way they packed those beetles into Kelsey’s mouth,” I say, voice low, “that’s not disposal. That’s placement.”
DK’s fingers go to his eyebrow ring, twisting it back and forth. “What are you trying to say?”
My fingers move again, following the diagram lines, limbs angled, torso orientation, marked by tiny sigils. Insects inked at the throat, the womb, the mouth.
“We knew this wasn’t random,” I say. “It’s ritual staging. Mouth as entry point. Breath. Voice. Identity.” I swallow. “If you choke someone on rebirth symbols, you’re not cleansing them.” I flip another page. “You’re remaking them.”
DK stills.
I turn the book around and gently shove it across the table. “There.”
He leans in.
The illustration shows a circle of six bodies, five splayed outward like spokes, and one at the center, folded on her knees, spine bowed and jaw wrenched open. Beetles spill from her mouth in a dark cascade.
Above it, in ink faded to brown:
Baronum Sigillum–Custodes Noctis.
“Seal of the Barons,” I translate, tapping each word. “Guardians of the Night.”
DK exhales hard through his nose. “Fuck.”
I nod once. “You know what this means?”
“There’s a Baron connection,” he says quietly.
