Page 48 of Heir

Now that she was coming into her powers, her sense of smell would intensify too. If she mated Zandren, it would get even stronger.

Zandren held her tight. “Little One, you don’t want to go in there.”

“Yes, I do,” she growled, shoving against him. “Aunt Delia, are you home?”

Drak was already in the house, and he made his way through it, down the hallway toward the kitchen in the back. Zandren stayed with Omaera on the porch. I entered the house as well, checking out the study, the living room, dining room, the one bedroom on the main floor, and the bathroom.

Drak hadn’t said anything yet, which meant he hadn’t found the body.

We met at the base of the stairs leading to the second floor and took it together.

“Lerris?” I asked.

“Someone looking for Omaera,” he said with a dark tone. “More than one, from what I can smell. Both demons.”

“This is three stories. There’s a basement too.”

Drak shook his head as we reached the top of the wide staircase. “No. She’s up here. I can smell it.”

I swallowed and followed him down the hallway to another bedroom where, sure enough, there was a body of a woman lying on the floor. Blood pooled out of her ears and nose, and onto the tan and sky-blue rug.

The demon had done to Delia what Omaera was involuntarily doing to Drak, Zandren, and Gemma. They’d tortured her for information until her brain hemorrhaged and she died.

“I thought mages could do mind blocks,” Drak said, crouching down to close Delia’s gray, lifeless eyes.

“We can,” I said. “But if they beat her first, which it looks like they did, she’d have been too weak to keep up the block. It takes a lot of energy to block a powerful demon trying to enter your mind. We still don’t know if she even was a mage. I don’t smell mage in the house. Then again, there are spells to block the scent.”

I pointed out the bruises on Delia’s weathered face, the cuts on her mouth and through her eyebrows. She’d definitely been beaten.

Gently, I lifted up her striped blue T-shirt to just show her abdomen and there was bruising there too. Probably internally as well. She’d have been in too much pain to maintain the block.

“What are we going to tell Omaera?” I asked.

“The truth,” he said with no inflection.

“You need to let me go,” Omaera argued with Zandren downstairs. “I need to see her.”

“Little One, it’s not a good idea,” he protested.

“Let. Me. Go.” Her feet thundered up the stairs and her wild curls bounced as she entered the room, slightly out of breath. She took one look at her aunt and her hand flew to her mouth as she gasped, her eyes going wide. “Is she?”

“She is dead,” Drak said. “I am very sorry.”

Omaera rounded on him. “You’re sorry?”

“Careful,” I said quickly. “You can’t get angry. You can’t. I know you want to. I know you probably are. But you can’t. You’re not able to control your powers or rage yet. And you could kill him.”

Her nostrils flared, and her chest rose and fell rapidly as a rush of color filled her cheeks. “Who did this to her?”

I shook my head. “All we know is that it smells like demons.”

Zandren entered the room and rested his hands on her shoulders. Instantly, she turned into him for comfort and he wrapped her up in his arms, bringing her over to sit on his lap on the bed.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t jealous as fuck, but I stowed that green monster. We had other things to deal with right now.

“I told you we needed to get to her last night. Nobody listened to me. I could feel her fear. I could feel her pain. We could have saved her.” She sobbed and shook in Zandren’s arms, and I ached to go to her too. To relieve more of her agony. To absorb some of her heartache.

Then it hit me!

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