“He’d have had to behead or remove the heart from the vampires.” Aodhan considered that. “Doable. Vampires sleep, especially the less powerful type of vampires who’d have made their home in a small town like this.”
“Fei must’ve gotten lucky, seen something, run.” Illium’s voice was grim. “No wonder she’s all but mute: imagine seeing your neighbor skinning people you knew, perhaps loved.”
“Could be she tried to find help, only to realize she was the sole survivor.”
“Maybe,” Illium postulated, “she wasn’t in the village when this took place. She talked about wanting to go home. What if she was out foraging for mushrooms or checking rabbit traps in the forest, and ran late?”
“And everyone was dead by then.”
They both stood, thought that over.
Awful as it was to imagine, a single mortal madman could have done this. It also made sense that, in his home, he’d cleaned up only enough so that the carnage wouldn’t be obvious to a visitor.
All the better to lure people inside.
Which made Aodhan think of another possibility. “He could’ve invited people over one by one. Time it well enough and the living residents would just assume they were out foraging, working inside their homes, or sleeping.”
“Can you imagine the terror of the ones left at the end? They’d have known something was wrong but not what.”
“Let’s go through the other places again now that we know he focused on hiding the evidence of what he was doing,” he said to Illium. “I think he got careless here because it was his home—a place where he had full control.”
This time around, they found more evidence of a stealthy slaughter. A cushion placed over a small stain on a sofa, a kitchen rug thrown over evidence of blood, a door pushed back to the wall to hide the fact that the back of it was finely splattered in gore. You could easily dismiss it as nothing but dirt at first glance.
Still, it wasn’t much, not given the scale of the slaughter.
The two of them ended up back in the center of the street after completing their second inspection.
“It took time and effort to clean up, skin, and butcher people.” Aodhan couldn’t believe he was saying those words, but they couldn’t hide from the ugliness of what had gone on here. “A lot of work for a single mortal.”
“We don’t know the timeframe over which it took place,” Illium pointed out. “He could’ve also kept Fei captive—or she could’ve been wandering lost and disoriented in the forest. She was very thin.”
Aodhan looked around again. “Do you believe it?”
The gold of Illium’s eyes was bright even in the dull light of the day now that the sun had been totally eclipsed by clouds. “It all makes sense, but there’s an itch at the back of my neck, a feeling that it’s all too perfect.”
“Yes.” Aodhan scanned the line of trees beyond the houses to his left. “Whoever it was, we need to track them down.”
Illium bent to pick up Smoke, petted her as he followed Aodhan’s gaze. “He’s going to have the advantage if he’s hiding in the trees. We could do with ground support—Jae would be perfect.”
Aodhan knew Illium was right about their wings making a search more difficult, but—“Suyin will send her back if we ask,” he said to his friend, “but we’d have to go out and escort her here.” He reached out to scratch the top of Smoke’s head—the kitten had followed him around earlier, now purred. “I don’t want anyone making that journey alone, even in a vehicle.”
Illium’s expression went suddenly flat. “Aodhan, what are the chances the person or people behind this are trailing the resettlement caravan? What if that’s the reason for Fei’s continued fear?”
The world turned silent, Aodhan’s mind a place of icy peace. “There’s no way he—or they—can get through the rear guard,” he said at last, then looked toward the skins again. “That’s a hoard. No one who went to all that trouble would just abandon it.”
After putting Smoke on the ground so she could explore, Illium stared in the same direction. “Yeah, I have to agree with you there.”
“I’ll warn Suyin regardless.” Aodhan proceeded to do just that. Afterward, he turned to Illium. “To be absolutely certain, one of us needs to fly toward the caravan, see if we can spot any signs of pursuit, while the other one stays on watch here.”
Illium looked up at the sky now licked with a darkness heavier than the clouds—night was coming. “I don’t like the idea of splitting up. What if we’re totally off base and this was an angel? Either one of us could be ambushed.”
“No feathers, no sign of damage caused by angelic wings crashing into things,” Aodhan said, but he didn’t like the idea of Illium flying off alone—because they both knew it made sense for the faster, more agile flyer to go.
“On the flip side,” he said, “Suyin is with the caravan and will be able to take on any threat.” No angel, regardless of their strength or age, could stand up to the might of an archangel. “The vulnerable are well protected in the center of the caravan—and the fact this assailant avoided the stronghold tells me they aren’t confident enough to take on people more powerful.”
Hands on his hips, Illium glanced over to where Smoke was pouncing on invisible prey. “Aerial sweep? Then we decide on our next step.”
After Aodhan nodded his assent, Illium said, “I’ll go to the right.” Striding over, he picked up the kitten and put her inside his tee—after tucking the hem into his jeans.
“She’ll claw you bloody.”
Illium stroked the small creature who’d poked her head out of the neckline, a furry little growth with twitching whiskers. “Nah. She likes me.” Another stroke. “Stay in contact.”
“Don’t take chances.”
Illium gave a small salute and they took off in a rush of air, their wings powerful in flight. Neither one of them blended into the dark gray of the sky, but that was a risk they’d have to take. Aodhan’s section included the stronghold, and he took care to check every corner of it. If the killer or killers had been watching events unfold, they could now believe the stronghold empty, open for squatting.
He saw no signs of an attempted incursion. No shards of glass glittering in the dying light of day, no damage to the areas with shutters. Regardless, he landed and spoke to Li Wei. “Stay inside until we return,” he told her.
“If a vampire or mortal comes to the door asking for sanctuary, don’t allow them inside. Throw out food or bedding from a higher floor if you judge it safe. If not, or if it’s an angel, hide in the most secure place in the stronghold—underground.” No one who didn’t know of the nexus would ever find it.