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“Okay,” Hazel said from behind him. “Let’s go check out the next one.”
Hands on his hips, he hung his head and stifled a groan. This was agony. Yep, he was being tortured, probably some cosmic punishment for one of his many, many wrongdoings. Karma or some shit coming back around to kick him in the ass.
With a long-suffering sigh, he straightened up and followed Hazel back down the path to the car.
* * *
The next location proved to be just as remote.
It turned out that the third sigil was anchored to a wall in an old, dilapidated farmhouse off NE Washougal River Road, on the Washington side of the Columbia River. With no direct neighbors for miles and apparently abandoned for years, it was the perfect location for a covert murder.
Consequently, the witch apparently hadn’t bothered with cleanup as much as at the other site. The stench of decay hit Tallak like a baseball bat to his nose as soon as he stepped inside the house.
Hissing out a breath, he carefully walked toward the source of the smell and found it laid flat in the next room over. Like the human at the site he’d first stumbled upon, this one was arranged in a ritual position on a pentacle.
He held back a snort. Bloody hypocritical, to take what was intended as a ward against evil and use it in a human sacrifice that pretty much checked all the boxes in witch law for the definition of evil.
Hazel entered behind him, holding her sweater against her nose to stave off the smell. Her eyes widened when she saw the body. “Dear gods.”
She moved closer, cautiously, watching where she stepped. Dried blood coated the old floorboards, having spilled out of the many cuts and slashes on the dead man. Head tilted, she studied the body for a moment.
“How old do you think this is?” she asked.
Tallak regarded the body again. “Looks like somewhere between stage two and stage three decomposition. There’s some black putrefaction, but no advanced decay yet, so usually it’d be about two weeks.”
“But it’s not?”
He shook his head. “Longer than that.”
At her quizzical look, he explained, “Blood loss slows down decomposition.” He indicated the mess all around the man. “Bloke lost most of his during whatever butcher practice the witch did on him.”
She raised both brows. “You know a lot about this. Is this another one of those lingering memories…?”
He scoffed softly. “Nah. I just like watching true crime shows. Lots of practical knowledge.” Gesturing at the body again, he added, “Could be three weeks old, for all I know.”
Swallowing, she turned to survey the walls. “Figures,” she mumbled after a moment.
“What?”
“These three walls all are bare enough to hold the sigil.” She waved around the room. “If I’m lucky, I’ll hit it on the first try. If I’m not…”
She’d have to bleed into the jar three times to make the damn sigil appear.
He couldn’t catch a fucking break, could he?
And it was too late now to back out and let her do this alone. She needed him to snap the pics of the sigil, and beyond that, the same damn mating urge that pushed him to want to try some kinky blood play with her wouldn’t let him leave her here, in the middle of a room that smelled like death warmed over. Every instinct he had pounded at him to stay at her side and make sure no harm came to her.
Gritting his teeth, he took her phone and ground out, “Ready when you are.”
She shot him a look. “Are you okay?”
Peachy. “It’s the smell,” he said and waved aimlessly at the room. “Kinda hard on a demon nose, you know.”
Understanding flickered in her eyes, and her face softened. “Right. I’m sorry. I’ll try to make this quick.”
As luck would have it, it did take three tries for Hazel to get the right wall and light up the sigil concealed there. By the time the symbol flared to life and he needed to take photos of it, he was holding himself together by a fucking thread. He was this close to simply licking Hazel’s blood off the grimy wall, and he didn’t dare think about what he might do after that.
He needed to get out of this house and breathe some air that wasn’t saturated with his intended mate’s blood.
