Chapter 509: Off Glenwood

The scent of unwashed bodies came up through the door. He staggered forward, gritting his teeth as his skin screamed every time his hand hit the wall. Sirens wailed, muses cried, druids moaned low, pained sobs. The sounds of childbirth and horrid crimes echoed. Making it impossible to hear.

"Is anyone down here?" He cried out, shuddering.

Silence answered him.

His eyes burned. He shook his head, struggling to breathe around the mounting grief.

"Please," he whispered. "If anyone down there.... Please say something. Anything."

Silence. He stumbled down the stairs, missing the last three and dropping, sliding down.

"Abraham!" Boots thudded after him, but he pushed himself up and slumped against the wall, heart thundering, tears streaming down his face.

Too late.

He'd been too late.

An enforcer came to stand in front of him, hands on his face, forcing him to look up. He was talking, saying something urgently, but a dull, high-pitched whine had taken over his hearing.

A flicker of light caught his eye. He reached out with his mind and magic. Light flooded the hallway of stone, extending left and right from the landing and further down into a lower level.

The enforcer pulled him close and pressed his head into his shoulder. His voice vibrated in his chest, but no words made it through Nikolias' ears. The man turned him toward the stairs he'd fallen down and pushed him to sit, crouching in front of him with a medical kit open. Tiny, glowing vial and bandages. Nikolias slumped against the wall as other enforcers rushed forward, heading down the stairs.

The man in front of him turned back, shouting over his shoulders into the whining silence. A woman hustled up the stairs, carrying a body in her arms, slumped and small. Too small to be any older than a toddler. Her little hands were covered in grime, her feet were bare and dirty, blood stained her dress. Cuts littered her arms. Thin, dirty hair hung limp and tangled in a net of dirt and ash.

But her eyes... her eyes were open, looking at him, staring with recognition and light. He couldn't look away, meeting her gaze, letting the sound of her breathing pull him out of the whining noise. He pushed the man's hands away and pushed to his feet. She stared back at him, aquamarine light pooling in her eyes, crystallizing on her lash lines.

He reached out. Blisters swelled and burned, but he stroked the thin hollow of her cheek, over her cheekbones.

He couldn’t speak. Air scraped out of his throat past the dryness from the fire.

She reached up, wrapping her hand around one of his blistered fingers and squeezed.

"You came..." Her lips twitched. "You're Mr. Abraham, aren't you?"

Nikolias swallowed, a breath stuttered out of him, and he nodded. "The younger."

She squeezed his finger as a solid aquamarine tear rolled down her cheek and clattered on the floor.

He stroked her hair. "Let the enforcers get you somewhere to get looked at, okay?"

She blinked sleepily and turned into the woman's arms and falling asleep. More faces looked up from the lower level, staggering out together and up the stairs in a long, steady march.

His escort hovered nearby, keeping him from hitting walls as he wandered through the halls, watching enforcers and EMTs come and help people out. Some came out on stretchers, others could walk, or they were carried up. Twenty rooms in a hallway. A woman with a bandage around her throat, still alive, hair a mess.

"Evidence chest." He coughed and called up the stairs. "The evidence chest!"

Nikolias swatted his escort's hands away, sorting through the chest to return what could be returned. The tear jewels clattered to the bottom, but the orb shells and feathered cloaks, the vampyr hearts and fresh branches with pulsing roots, he returned, watching light return to vampyric eyes and color fill druid's cheeks. The sirens swallowed their orb shells whole, pressing their hands to their throats if the wound was uncovered. He hadn't even known that a druid's flowers could be harvested. The jewel-toned scales he didn't know what to do that, but by then the cells were empty.

There had been over a hundred people under the house.

The Williams and anyone connected to them weren't going to get out of this. When he'd finally got to Tyler's room, the only thing he could bring himself to grab was the package of paperwork, the few books that were there, and the notebooks. His clothes and shoes, while clean and relatively in good condition, were all human-made and tainted.

New clothes. Lots of sweaters and button-up shirts and slacks, whatever the hell else he wanted to wear.

When Nikolias got back into the car, another officer had taken the other one's place. He called Theodore.

"Hey, kid. I put you up off Glenwood."

He chuckled. "Mom bought more property?"

"I... It's your father's house, actually. I didn't think you'd want to stay in your old house, but it's near if you want to visit."

"Thanks. I don't. I do... want a bath."

"I sent stuff ahead, and food should be on the way."

Thank the winds because soon after taking a bath he was going to need to eat and pass out for at least twelve hours.

Derek looked up at the giant mansion Havoc pulled in front of with wonder and confusion. It was as wide as the estate, though not as wide, and too big for Nikolias to be in there for a weekend stay.

He might be bad with money math, but there was now way he was that bad with money.

Though maybe this was the only place in the city that could accommodate a magical person?

He shook his head. Houston was nothing like Seattle, where the I.C.S. only controlled one building, or like Portland, which was mostly human-occupied.

"Why would Niko' be staying here?"

"Because he owns it, silly!" Havoc's laugh filled the cabin. "Go, go, go! Begin your romantic weekend."

Derek scowled at the screen. "If you've brought me to some random millionaire's house."

"I brought you to the right billionaire's house. Thank you."

Derek scoffed, grabbing his bag out of the back seat and trying not to gawk at the brilliant white of the siding and everything else that made this house seem like something out of a magazine. With stone and wood panel siding, it had a modern, sort of quirky exterior and multi-level roof. The gray stone echoed the cool white of the paved stones and the gray cement. There were no trees in the yard, but the walkway was lined with neatly trimmed shrubs.

A gate wrapped around one side before meeting a fence of straight, warm-toned cedar boards.

He bit his lip, gawking up at the giant doorway. Why would any door need to be that tall? Cautiously, he pressed the doorbell, hearing the chime through the frosted glass.

Nikolias' voice came through the speaker panel. "Hold on, just a second!"

Derek's stomach jolted with nerves.