The veins in her eyes were silver, which meant someone had pumped her full of poison. He held out her forearm, showing me bruises that had occurred before death. Someone had purposely pushed iron intravenously into her system.
“They were murdered,” I whispered, fighting the saliva building in the back of my throat. “They were brought here, experimented on, and murdered?”
“Yeah, and the half-breeds died of natural causes. There’s no sign of foul play in any of the corpses. We assumed there was because they’d been disposed of, and left to the elements. The blood that covered their corpses wasn’t theirs. It wasn’t even blood. It was a mixture of iodine, and something else I’m running test on to discern what it is. I have the pictures of the men up on the dark web already. No hits for missing persons, or criminal records yet. My guess is, if it is an experiment, we have not seen the last of mass body dumps. There will be more.”
Nodding at his forewarning, I chewed my lip, peering down at the fae woman. “The alternative is that they’re so fucking desperate to create children that they’re willing to die for them. It’s sad and disturbing.”
“Xari,” Onyx whispered, staring down at one of the half-breeds that she’d been examining. “It’s Jenna.”
Moving closer to the body, I peered down at one of the seven women taken days ago from our compound. Jenna had been among the first women taken in the assault that had ended up with my father vanishing.
“You know her?” Brodie asked, peering down at the woman. “She was among the bodies, but she had only a trace of hormones in her blood. Not anything like the other women had. According the sheriff, there was no child sat beside her, either.”
“She’s only been missing for a couple days,” I informed, watching his eyebrows pushing together before they shot up on his forehead.
“She was taken when your father was?” he clarified, moving to more of the women, uncovering them for us to see.
The blood left my face as I slowly slid my gaze over the familiar faces. How had we missed it?
“When did these ones come in?” I asked, watching the way he frowned before answering the question.
“Last night,” he confirmed, nodding toward the bodies that appeared pregnant. “With them. None of these fresh ones had hormones though. They were just deceased, and left with them.”
“Do they have injection marks?” I countered feeling my stomach churning with unease.
“Bruises that indicated they were restrained and tearing around their vaginal area. They appear to have been raped, and then death occurred. I haven’t concluded my autopsy report on them yet.” He lowered the sheet, revealing wide bruises on their legs and wrists. They also had bruises covering their nether regions, and bruises that looked like handprints. “They do appear to be severely dehydrated, and malnutrition might have played a role in their deaths. But if they’ve only been missing for a few days, that doesn’t add up.”
“It does if the fae tried to breed them without the help of artificial assistance. A few years back we came across a case that was sickening. It appeared a half-breed woman had been put into a cabin, and used to breed a child for a fae couple. She was skeletal like, and when we touched her, she evaporated into dust particles. A week later, we found an entire laboratory of women that were similar to her. But where she’d become nothing more than dust, the remains were more like husks of dried tissue.”
“You think they’re breeding half-breed women? That would only give them heirs, that would end up be like the ones they condemned for not being pure enough,” Onyx snorted, tossing her hair over her shoulder.
“If you wanted a child, and you couldn’t make one yourself, what would be the next best thing?” I pondered, twisting my mouth to the side, staring down at the hunters that had suffered because I hadn’t been able to save them.
“You’d take what you got, and accept that it couldn’t be what you wanted it to be,” Brodie stated softly, exhaling. “I assumed this job would be easier than dealing with trafficked women, and here we are, with victims that were sexually tortured by monsters.”
“They’re not monsters,” I grunted, hating that my father was unintentionally responsible for this mess. He’d taken the one thing that would allow them to breed away from them, and in turn, they were looking for a way around it. “They are designed to create life. Each couple has one thing that adds to their realm. If you take away the elements, the world becomes unstable. It isn’t the child they’re working to create. They’re trying to stabilize their world, because the elemental wheel is broken. He fucking broke it, and knew what would happen. He had to know what would happen to them,” I whispered, fighting the pang of regret that rushed through me.
“Who knew?” Onyx asked carefully.
My phone chirped, and I peered down at the message.
Kieran: You have a situation developing. I’m bored waiting on your decision. Time to play, woman. Are you ready for me? I did something bad, but it felt so good.
Me: What the hell did you do now, psychopath?
Kieran: Come play with me. I miss that taste of your pussy dripping down my face, Sunshine.
Me: Stop that. It isn’t happening again. You’re insane. Mistakes were made that night.
Kieran: Is that a no? I don’t like being told no, Sunshine. Besides, you’ll change your mind soon. Very soon.
Me: Get used to being disappointed.
My phone rang, and I snorted, peering at the number before swiping it, answering Noah’s call.
“Hey, what’s up?” I asked.
“We have a situation. I’ll send you the address,” he stated, hanging up before I could get another word out. My phone chirped and I scanned the address, nodding at Onyx.
“We have to go now,” I stated, watching as Brodie covered up the bodies before turning toward where I watched. “If you find anything else, call me. Once you’ve finished with the autopsies, let me know. I’ll arrange transport to get them to the estate to give them final rites.”
It was becoming the new normal to have more questions than answers. I hadn’t even blinked at the wrongness of the entire situation. I needed to figure out what was happening with the infants, and where they were being taken. If there were fae children being created, they needed to be found immediately before they ended up in the wrong hands.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I pulled up to the address Noah provided, slipping from the Jeep to scan the thick forest surrounding the rickety home. It had taken me longer than usual to find the place, but it was deep in the country’s backwoods. The terrain had been a bitch to maneuver, but we’d managed.
Exiting the vehicle, I glanced around the area, taking in the high rock walls that made it difficult to see the property from the road. A rock quarry had once owned it, but they sold it several years ago to a private investor. The quarry on this property had closed after the sale. So there was no reason for someone to come out this far or this deep into the abandoned mines.
Noah appeared on the large wrap-around porch of the old shack, his face downtrodden as if he felt sick from whatever he’d discovered in the home. Frowning, I mentally prepared myself for what I would find inside the deserted, boarded-up house.