Page 71 of Black to Light

He definitely suspected nothing good would come of them if they left them behind.

Anyway, they might need those recordings at some point.

They might need them to help the cub, if nothing else.

Black shoved the thought from his mind, and removed his hand from the pocket where he’d been fingering the broken memory card. For a few seconds, he’d only been able to stand there, fighting a rage trying to choke him.

In the end, he threw the broken chip in with the rest they’d found.

Once Ace, Cowboy, and Dex got down to this part of the house, he’d have them remove the boxes of chips and that fucking chair and bring it all back to California Street. Fuck these people and their proprietary gadgets. He fully intended to steal as much of it as he could, if only to figure out exactly where Lucian found the girl, who else might be involved, and whatever else he could about the obviously illegal shit that fucker had going on.

They still hadn’t found any implants, unfortunately.

They’d only found one safe, in the wall of the gaming room.

It had been good-sized, with a number of compartments.

Those contained personal documents, passports issued by six different countries, a box of cut diamonds, more boxes of precious stones and jewelry, and a significant amount of cash, close to a million dollars.

No implants. No tech gadgets at all that Black had found.

He and Nick now stood in the corridor connecting the two sides of the basement. Ornate mahogany wainscoting decorated the bone-white walls up about four feet. The upper part of the corridor had iron sconces in the shape of dragons holding thick white candles every few yards. It all looked like part of a European chateau from the thirties or forties.

Or the man-cave of a rich prick who glorified that time period way too much.

“What?” Black asked belatedly, voice gruff. “What’s there?”

Nick didn’t answer.

He continued to feel over the edges of the wood, then jumped. He glanced at Black, then returned his stare to the wall with a harder grimace. Nick felt over some line in the wood Black couldn’t see, then began touching the wall in various places. It looked to Black like he was looking for a pressure panel, or maybe––

Nick grabbed the nearest iron sconce and tugged.

The candle-holder, and the candle itself, tilted forward under the pressure of his fingers.

Part of the wall popped inward.

Black grunted. “Great,” he muttered. “We’re dealing with a twelve-year-old.”

He absolutely didn’t want to go in there. Like Miri, the feeling he got from Rucker’s house was all bad. Lucian only lived here for a few months, according to Gorren, but he’d somehow managed to imbue it with his own brand of sick, twisted darkness.

Nick gave him a mirroring sour look.

“You ready for whatever the fuck this probably is?” Nick muttered.

“No,” Black said. “But we’d better get it over with.”

Nick rubbed a pale hand over his mouth. “Yeah,” he agreed. Without waiting, he shoved the door, widening the opening in the wall, and strode inside.

Black followed close on his heels.

“It’s bad,” Black admitted, fighting the churn in his gut. “It’s really fucking bad, doc.”

“We already knew that,” Miriam said, her voice empty, dismissive.

He felt more than that in heraleimi,of course, even over the headset. It coiled around him, exuding a faint nausea, like him just telling her that much, however vague, was enough to confirm her worst suspicions. She didn’t want to hear it, anymore than he’d wanted to see it, but he knew she would insist on knowing, anyway.

They were all stuck in this nightmare now.

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