Page 52 of Cursed by Death

I assumed he meant that the ashes would be tossed out into the trash. That thought really didn’t sit well with me. People weren’t meant to be thrown away like they were no better than garbage. That seemed wrong on so many different levels.

We left the body where it was on the porch and went inside. It smelled like raw sewage and the only source of light came in from the broken windows.

Detective Rowans pulled out a little flashlight and clicked it on. Fox wouldn’t need any extra light to see in here, and if I were being honest, neither did I.

Sometimes my extra, non-human senses came in handy. I didn’t tell any of them that I could see in the dark in here because it wasn’t any of their business. It wasn’t anyone’s business but my own.

There were some secrets about myself that I just didn’t share with other people and when it came to my extra abilities or just anything extra about myself at all. I always kept my mouth shut in favor of not being labeled a monster.

Detective Rowans and I followed Bane through a room and up a flight of stairs. The place was absolutely filthy and there was garbage everywhere. Otherwise, the dirty house was empty and completely devoid of any furniture.

The stairs creaked loudly underneath our feet but at least they seemed to be solid enough.

The smell was even worse upstairs and I hadn’t thought that to be possible. I felt bad for Fox because his senses were better than all of ours combined and I had no idea how he was managing to breathe in here without gagging or throwing up.

We followed Bane into the first bedroom off the right. I spotted three other doors off the hallway.

“Ruby Jane,” Roan murmured as we entered the bedroom. “You’re here.”

Of course, I was here. They’d called for me and I said I would come. It was almost like he hadn’t expected me to show up and was now surprised to see me here, standing in this room with him.

I didn’t respond to him. There was a part of me that wanted to but I was very firmly ignoring it in favor of pretending like he didn’t exist. It was hard to do though.

There was a body on the floor in the middle of the room. His eyes and mouth were both wide open and the expression on his face looked terrified. His throat had been slit wide open and was a gaping, angry mess.

It was the man from the surveillance video who had murdered Thomas.

It wasn’t the dead body that caught my attention though. It was the pentagram drawn on the floor in what appeared to be white chalk beneath his body. He was lying in the center of it.

“I don’t understand,” I muttered. And I didn’t. I’d seen his eyes in the video. He was either a vampire or a demon, I hadn’t been able to tell which one. “I’ve only ever read books about human sacrifice before, and he wasn’t human.”

“If a demon is powerful enough it can sacrifice a lesser demon,” Bane told me. “It just has to be strong enough to control it and keep it contained until the ritual is over.”

“Is this him?” Roan asked me.

“Yes, it’s him. He’s the man from the camera footage though I’ve never seen him in person until just now. So, you’re saying he was a lesser demon?”

I had to know for sure. I didn’t want to leave anything unanswered. The questions would plague me and slowly drive me insane.

“Demons leave a sort of… residue behind,” Roan told me something I actually already knew. “It’s like the stench of evil. That’s how we knew for sure it had been a demon in your guest house. We knew that we were tracking a demon but we only knew it had for sure been one who’d killed your friend because its stench had lingered in the air after he had left. He smelled like—”

“Fire,” I whispered and everyone stared at me.

The Detective looked at me questioningly. But the twins looked at me with a mix of pity and understanding on their faces.

Fox simply refused to look at me at all.

“How do you know what a demon smells like, Ruby?” the Detective asked me.

I knew he meant it innocently enough, because he didn’t know any better, but it was a loaded question and very far from innocent.

The room was suddenly too hot to breathe. It was suffocating in here.

“Because I grew up with one,” I whispered, choking on the words. “I need air. I’ll be back.” I absolutely would not be coming back. Not back up here, and not back into this house.

I stumbled out of the room and only my grip on the handrail kept me from falling down the stairs. My hand felt disgusting afterwards. I didn’t want to touch anything in this house. I was afraid the filth might linger on my skin and then follow me home.

Along with the stench of the demon.

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