Talon blows out a breath. “This is the most stupid fucking thing I’ve ever heard.” He digs his keys out of his pocket. “We can take my car.”
And that’s it.
Alea iacta est.
The die is cast.
Turns out the two serial murderers I’ve been ordered to take care of have been killing women for the past decade. Adecade. A quick math tells us the creepiest little statistic: Four girls a year. Forty girls total. And the girls were kept alive long enough to watch the next one come in.
I’m not the Almighty Judge, but in my humble understanding of right and wrong, it sure seems like they deserve to be hunted down.
And if that’s not enough to tip a person over the edge, we find out some other gruesome facts.
The couple doesn’t kill quickly. Suffering is basically the whole point. They drug the girls first, then break them down. The Grims said there’s always a spot for two girls to be tied up in the back of the van. Supposedly there’s even a drain in the floor.
The worst part?
They have a custom mix that paralyzes without knocking the girls out, so the body can’t fight while the mind stays awake enough to understand.
Yup.
Certified scum.
Mark screams again from the basement, and for once the sound doesn’t hook into me the way it usually does. It just… slides off.
He’s small fish compared to these fuckers.
“I still hate Rhea,” I say. The girls are long gone, so there’s nobody left to threaten to kill me just for saying it. “But I’m not as mad that we’re going to do this as I was before.”
I turn around and look at my boys. Talon’s a bit more normal by now, but he’s still in a serious mood. Nathaniel’s been scribbling on his notepad for the past thirty minutes, writing down every scenario we might need to prepare for. Cassian is fully in executioner mode.
His jaw ticks left to right as he stares at the map in front of him.
“Yeah,” Cassian mutters. “Seems like a job just for us.”
If not for the hollowness in my chest, I’d smile.
“Does that mean you don’t want to burn the world anymore?”
He glances up from the map.
“I don’t like it when someone threatens you,” he says, as if that answers my question.
Well, in some way, I suppose it does. It leaves room for interpretation, at least. So I take the version that feels most like peace and nod once.
“Copy that, MisterTouch-Her-and-Die,“ I say.
It doesn’t even make him smirk. Or anyone, for that matter. All I see is one serious face after another.
Someone needs to do something about that.
“Alright.” I walk into the center of the room and slap my thighs. “Seems like we need to go on a hunt no matter what. The situation with the wraiths is unresolved, but apparently we have a lead, because Rhea knows about them.”
“Too bad Rhea’s not here to explain this shitfest,” Talon mutters. “I can’t fucking believe she’d go that far. Hurt you like that, Skye. She’s changed. Like… fucking transformed.”
“I can imagine,” I say, even though the image refuses to settle in my mind. “But that’s not the point, is it? The point is we need to talk to her again. And maybe she’ll be gracious enough to help us save the world.”
Talon scoffs. Nathaniel just cocks a brow from beneath his lashes, and Cassian sneers.
