“Coffin flies,” I bit off, the words coming out nasally.
“Sweet fuck, someone’s down there with a corpse,” Steel rasped.
His words shouldn’t have been the catalyst, the stench and the flies should have been, but his statement kicked us in the ass. As one, we stepped into the shack, peering around and seeing jack shit. We swept our lights over the ground, saw the cellar door, and rushed over.
The clanging sound came again, softer this time. Weaker. Like someone who’d either given up hope or who’d lost the strength to carry on.
Heart fucking melting, I scrambled to find the handle, but if the gloom outside was bad, in here it was worse. And with the stench making my eyes water and the flies fucking with my ears, it was a wonder I could do anything.
“Stand back,” I roared, the second I found a smaller padlock in the bottom corner of the opening. Giving whoever was down there a few seconds, I shot the lock off as I braced myself for what I was about to see.
But even as I prepared myself, even as I told myself to man the fuck up and deal with whatever chaos Lancaster had left behind, nothing could have prepared me for what I saw.
Nothing.
Seeing the shit Nyx could do to sick fucks was nothing in comparison to this.
It coated all five of my senses. In comparison to the sight, the smell, the fucking taste—I could taste it. The sheer evilness, the fucking horror of what I was witnessing drowned all five of them, making me falter for a few seconds as I tried and failed to process it.
Only seeing the girl slumped over, with some kind of pipe in her hand, twitch, jerked me into action.
As I staggered down the few steps into that pit of hell, I realized there were four cages down here. Four fucking cages I wouldn’t have put a goddamn pit bull in. They were half the size of a single bed in both length and width, and how the fuck the one out on the floor had escaped was beyond me.
“Go get the blankets and food, Giulia!”
Nyx’s command had me jerking in surprise, and it had the women in this pit jolting too. A woman, filthy, so filthy I didn’t even see her eyes at first because she was covered in shit and piss—fucking shit and piss—moaned as she slumped onto her back.
My mouth twisted into a snarl as the desire to string Lancaster up by his balls, to eviscerate him, filled me.
I forced my thoughts away from violence and tried to focus on the women. One of them, at least, was dead. That smell, those flies? Someone had to be dead in here.
I flashed my light over the cages, cringing when I saw more fluids, more insects, more of everything no one ever wanted to see, and finding relief when I heard two sets of moans as the women reacted to the light. Only one didn’t flinch. The four cages were lined up in a row. The one to the far left, against the wall, didn’t move, and when I trained the light on her, Steel doing the same, I saw—
My stomach roiled once more, and how I didn’t puke, I’d never fucking know.
Staggering down the stairs, feeling dazed, I made it to the woman on the floor. Hauling her up, I lifted her into my arms, wincing as she pretty much goddamn rattled in my hold. She was a bag of bones, and I passed her up to Steel who I knew would pass her to Nyx.
With her out of the way, I approached the cages. My boots had them flinching, and I whispered, “Luke Lancaster is dead. My brother’s woman killed him. It was slow. She twisted the knife, made sure he hurt, but no amount of hurt is payment for this. My name is Link.” I pointed to Steel. “He’s Steel, and my brother upstairs is called Nyx, and his woman is Giulia. She’s the one who ended that cunt’s life.”
“He’s dead?”
The voice was softer than a whisper, and it was the spookiest shit I’d ever heard. Ghosts were louder than this poor creature.
“Yes.” I gulped. “We’re here to help.”
A cough came from the cage beside the ghost. “Too late for Sarah. Almost too late for us.”
“Too late for Sarah, but just in time for you. What’s your name?” I asked, even as I stepped into the puddles of human waste and tried to find where the openings to the cages were.
“I’m Tatána,” one woman replied, her voice stronger than the ghost’s. “She’s Alessa, and the one you carried out is Amara.”
I hummed at her words, trying to split my attention as I sought a way out for them. It took me longer than I’d like, but there were tiny padlocks keeping them barred. When Steel stepped forward, I cut him a look, saw he had something from only the fuck knew where, and he smashed it into the padlock. On the brink of telling him that wouldn’t work, it worked, and he handed it to me.
It was a brick.
A fucking brick.
The occupant jerked when I slammed into the metal, and maybe fortitude was on my side too, because within five slams, the padlock was broken and I could open the door.
I crouched down, peered inside, and muttered, “You’re going to have to crawl out, honey. I can’t get you out. It’s too small for me.” It was too small for her too. She was crouched on her side in a fetal position, but her legs were relaxed in a way that told me this was as far as she could stretch.
“Too tired,” she mumbled.
“You’re not too tired,” I countered, my throat thickening with tears. Tears! Me. I hadn’t cried at my momma’s goddamn funeral, yet here I was, ready to bawl. “We just got here. You gotta help me help you.”
I flickered a glance at Steel and saw he was chivvying the other girl out. Grabbing her arm, he was half dragging her out of the cage, and although I wanted to shout at him, I knew these women were on the brink of death. If they couldn’t help themselves, we’d have to do the heavy lifting.
Wishing there was more fucking light in here so I could see what I was doing, I reached in, winced when I touched something wet, and tried not to think about it.
Fuck.
Every moment of these past five minutes were going to stick with me for a lifetime, so there was no forgetting any of what was currently going down.
Shoving the thought aside, I grabbed something soft and frail, and started hustling the woman, Alessa, toward the opening. She cried out in pain, and I understood, I did, but fuck, what choice did I have? I had to get her out of there.
Sweat beaded from every single pore as I strained to get her out. She wasn’t struggling, but she was a dead weight, making the job ten times harder. When I managed to maneuver a part of her out of the opening, I wanted to crow with delight, but she slumped, and suddenly, I knew what a deadweight truly felt like.
My heart in my throat, I shook my head, unable to believe we’d come so close only to fucking lose her.
Rage filled me, it burned me from the inside out, and though I was pretty strong anyway, a level of power I’d never tapped into hit me at that moment. It helped me haul Alessa out of the tiny space, helped me drag her onto the filthy floor, and it helped me carry her out of that poisonous prison and into the outside world, where there was only the vague scent of death, rotting flesh, the pungency of a mass wave of insects, and human shit.
Giulia was there immediately, and I wasn’t surprised when she retched, even as she held open the space blanket so I could wrap Alessa in it.
“I-I think she’s dead,” I bit off, even as I pressed the bundle to the ground.
“No. She just fainted,” Giulia rasped, as she pressed a hand to Alessa’s chest. “Feel. There’s a slight vibration. She’s breathing.”