Page 43 of A Trial By Blood

“Are you okay? Rose? Look at me.”

I looked up at him, my heart pounding. “Y-yes…I’m fine. I’m not sure what happened, but I’m okay.”

Ronan’s nostrils flared, and he took my hand. “You’re bleeding.”

“I cut myself on the edge of the mirror.” I lifted my finger, and Ronan’s gaze locked on it. His nostrils flared again, and he quickly looked down, but not before I saw the point of one of his fangs extend past his upper lip. My blood, it was affecting him.

I quickly sucked it again, and his head shot up, that stare locking on my mouth. He made a strange rough sound that vibrated through his chest before he cleared his throat. “What do you think it meant? What you saw? Has anything like that ever happened before?”

My skin felt tight and tingly, and I forced my eyes to stay on his and not look at his mouth again. “I have no idea what that was. Nothing like that’s ever happened to me before.”

“Are you feeling steady enough to walk?” he asked, looking as if he were about to pick me up.

“I’m absolutely fine. All better.”

He gave me a stiff nod and we got back to searching the room. We poked around a bit more, but there was nothing of interest here. This obviously wasn’t where he kept his collection. Ronan kept that firm grip on my hand and led me to the final door. Like the other rooms, there was nothing of interest.

We made our way back downstairs. The elderly male was in the living room now, the TV on. He had a tray in front of him, eating his dinner, by the looks of it. It was sloppy looking, pale, like uncooked sausage links but without the links. “What the hell is he eating?”

“Intestines,” Ronan said and moved closer to the other male. He scented the air. “Demon.”

“What?” It was a struggle, but I managed not to gag.

Ronan walked from the room, pulling me along with him. He paused, looked around the big room, then headed for the door under the stairs. The hinges creaked loudly when he opened it.

“Why didn’t you just walk through?”

“Because I wanted to see if this door was the one we’d heard him opening when we were upstairs.”

“Good thinking.” A disgusting smell hit me instantly: decay. Most definitely decay. I threw a hand over my mouth. “Oh god.”

Ronan clicked on the light, and it revealed steep stairs to the basement. “Stay behind me,” he said, and we made our way down. The smell grew stronger with every step, and it was so much harder not to gag. We reached the bottom and Ronan turned on another light.

And thank the goddess for Ronan’s power because there was no holding in my shriek of alarm. The room was opulent. Dark wooden shelves lined the walls, displaying a collection of demon artifacts and other things. Skulls that were obviously demon. Jars with disgusting things floating in them. There was an expensive-looking rug on the floor, an antique lead lamp that had to be worth a lot, and a worn leather chair to one side with a drinks tray beside it.

Someone had obviously been sitting there earlier because there was a glass with a little bit of amber liquid still in it, the ice not completely melted. There was only one way in or out that I could see, the door we’d walked through.

Then we both turned back to the horror in the middle of the room. I’d been trying to avoid looking at it again.

A male demon was strung up in the center of the room, his head hanging to the side, a gag across his mouth. His skin was gray, and his stomach was sliced down the middle, his innards spilling out of his body.

“I assume this is where the intestines came from?” I’d never seen anything so horrific in my life.

“Yes,” Ronan said.

“He’s eating demons?”

“It appears that way.”

I glanced at Ronan. His face and voice were emotionless, like the old Ronan, like nothing had changed. I wasn’t sure what to make of it. “Why would he do this?” I searched the room for clues, something. But there was nothing else. “This has to be some kind of ritual, right? But for what? And why hasn’t this demon turned to ash?”

Ronan clenched his jaw, then his grip on my hand grew tighter. And just like that, the new Ronan was back. “I have no idea. I’ve never seen a demon being held in this way before. And he hasn’t turned to ash yet because he’s still alive.”

“What?” I spun back, and the demon’s eyes were wide open, watching us. “How can he still be alive after that?”

“Unless you remove their heads, they don’t die.”

I knew this, but still, seeing it with my own eyes was something else. “We should help him. This is cruel.”