Cassandra slammed into his back, tangling in his wings and sending inappropriate shivers throughout his body as she attempted to free herself.
She pushed his feathers aside, then emitted a horrified yelp.
Splatters of thick, dark liquid dripped down the walls of the cramped crypt. Tristan didn’t need to inspect them any closer to know they were blood.
The crypt contained two bodies, one face down on the floor, his arm outstretched above his head as if he were reaching for them. Or trying to crawl to freedom.
Along the back wall, another body—Fae by the smell of it—was prone on a stone altar. The male was stripped naked, his long, ash-blond hair streaked with green blood. His entire torso had been ripped open from groin to sternum, and glistening lumps of tissue encircled the altar.
The murderer had torn out his organs. Hastily and carelessly, by the looks of it.
A weak moan floated up from Tristan’s feet. He crouched down and carefully flipped the man over. His chest was a criss-crossed map of blisters and charred flesh, his brown wool robe completely burned away.
Tristan passed the candle to Cassandra, then cradled the man’s head in his lap. The man’s face was deathly pale, his lips purple. He squinted at the candlelight and hissed in pain, as if even the faint light was too intense for his deteriorating senses.
“It’s okay,” Tristan said. “We’re here to help you. What happened down here?”
“Took….” the man croaked, licking his split lip. “She took…” He stilled, overcome by the mere effort of speaking.
“Who is she?” Tristan asked.
“She asked me…to hide it,” the man grunted, his terrified eyes scanning Tristan’s. “The Sister…she…” He coughed up a glob of black blood that coated his chin. “The necklace…” He sputtered and choked, then stilled in Tristan’s arms, his mangled chest ceasing its erratic rise and fall.
Tristan closed the man’s eyelids and settled him on the floor. He stood, plucking the candle from Cass’s limp fingers, and approached the altar.
She rubbed at the wound on her forearm as she crouched down and placed her fingers at the man’s neck, feeling for a pulse.
“He’s gone, Cass,” Tristan whispered. “There’s nothing we can do for him other than carry his body out of here.”
“I know,” she sighed. Just another disposable human caught up in the battles among his species. Guilt tightened his chest before he turned back to the gruesome sight on the altar.
“What the fuck?” he mumbled as he leaned in to inspect the body.
The smooth edges of the gaping hole in the male’s chest suggested that this makeshift operation had been performed with a blade. The lungs and heart were intact behind the ribs, but the rest of his innards were scattered about the scene. His intestines tumbled into a pile on the floor, still attached to his body like a ghastly umbilical cord.
“Hey Cass,” he asked, unable to tear his gaze from the Fae’s open chest. “Does a subject need to be living for you to pull a memory?”
She padded over to him with nary a hitched breath at the gruesome scene; she’d likely seen all manner of atrocities over the years in sacrificed memories. Not to mention mere weeks ago she’d discovered the bloody pile of limbs that used to be the Broker. Pride swelled his chest at the sight of his iron-stomached partner taking in the ruined body with more curiosity than revulsion.
“I’m not sure,” she whispered, her eyes darting towards the Deathstalker’s face. “I’ve never tried it before. Do you think he was working for Maksym?”
“That’s what I’d like to find out, if you can manage it,” Tristan said.
“Even if I could pull the memory, I don’t have anything to contain it in,” Cassandra said. “We wouldn’t be able to view it.”
“What if I created a wind-shield around it?” he asked. “Would that work?”
“Worth a try?” Cassandra shrugged. She stepped behind the Deathstalker’s head, placing her hands at the dead Fae’s temples. She began the low, soft chant several times, but nothing happened. “I can feel something stirring, but it keeps sputtering out just as I’m grasping for the tendrils.” She cocked her head. “What if there was a way to amplify my abilities? Could you share your magic with me somehow?”
“You’d have to ingest some of my blood.”
“How much?”
He tried not to be insulted by how disgusted she looked at the prospect.
“You didn’t have any problems ingesting my bodily fluids earlier today,” he teased, pinching her nose.
She swatted him away. “You have a gift for making sexy things sound spectacularly unsexy.”
