Page 1 of A Light in the Darkness
Chapter one
Remy
From the air, the sprawling estate and lush gardens looked exactly as they had the last time I was here. Now that I’ve got boots on the ground, I can see the subtle differences. Clearly, someone is still caring for this place. But perhaps not with the same level of detail as they would with more oversight.
The Carrara marble statue in the center of the garden looks somehow more severe, the mid-afternoon sun casting long shadows around us, making his smile seem sinister. Maybe it’s a trick of the light, or maybe I just know the truth about who he is. Either way, as we draw past it, the anger in my veins grows. I’d shoot the fucking statue to splinters right now if I wasn’t concerned about giving away our position.
“Fucking creepy,” Michael growls over the comms. From the corner of my eye, I see him shudder, as if the statue is giving him a visceral reaction.
“You don’t love the giant statue of a rapist?” Dimitri asks drily. He’s on the opposite side of the property, approaching from the south, but he’s studied the drone footage of this place more than I studied for my SAT’s. And I actuallywantedto go to college.
I’m fairly certain Dimitri could sketch this place with his eyes closed. Besides, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more statues around the back of the house featuring other monsters and predators, both mythical and physical. Alexandre Davos is a monster of the first order—he’s built an empire on the backs of men and women stolen from their lives and thrust into a world of horrors.My father forced me to be a foot soldier to the empire, but now I’m going to dismantle it.
“Nah, I don’t vibe with people who have God complexes. It’s why Remy and I have such a love/hate relationship.”
Someone chuckles across the comms line, and I adjust my grip on the gun. For one moment, I consider letting my finger slip over the trigger. A graze in the back of the calf would stop that laughter real quick and remind them that this is serious business, not a fucking slumber party.
I waited to take on this mission until Michael was healed, but a small part of me misses when he couldn’t talk. His jovial attitude is far too blasé given what we’re about to do. But I suppose he’s not used to all of this yet. He’s still new to recognizing the horrors of the world, just now learning how wicked it really is. I suppose shitty attempts at humor could be his coping mechanism, and who am I to deny someone their coping mechanism?
My coping mechanism for years was meaningless sex. Nothing shuts your brain off quite like being buried in hot pussy. Nothing helps me sleep either. After a good fuck, I can tell myself that the screams I hear when I close my eyes at night are women in ecstasy, women who have come apart under my touch… women who gave themselves to me to be destroyed, knowing they could put themselves back together the morning after.
And then my little sister’s best friend went and ruined years of progress, destroyed my coping mechanism, and left me a fucking mess. I let her go because a woman like Claire deserves a real shot at life—the whole nine yards, a picket fence, an engagement ring, and as many children as she can stand. I can give her none of that, which is why even though she soothes my storm and silences the screams, I sent her back to finish out her degree. The last few months without her have been a different sort of hell.
“Tighten up.” Kent commands, from wherever he is approaching on the east.
“Andshutup.” Rich adds, his voice tight. Usually not the stony silence type, Rich turns into a different person when we’re on a mission.
He’s been an invaluable part of my crack team as we’ve chased down leads that don’t pan out, make plans, and strategize. We’ve found a half dozen potential storehouses where Davos may be hiding, where he’s keeping humans in captivity. It’s been months of finding the right people, planning in silence, letting Davos think I’ve moved on.
I haven’t moved on from any of it—not what he did to me, to Genevieve, to Claire, my mother…
I’ve assembled a menagerie of fuckups to storm the castle, and I’m probably the most fucked up of them all. I’m also the only one who knows exactly what we’re about to walk into.
Kent said he’s seen shit that I can’t imagine, and I’m sure he’s right. He’s been in war-torn countries and put a man’s intestines back into the hole in his stomach, but has he seen women in steel cages with that dead look in their eyes despite their bodies being very much alive? Has he seen them paraded around naked like a trophy kill and auctioned to the highest bidder? Even if he’s seen all that, I doubt he’s seen a surgeon line women up on gurneys to take out their uteruses, one after another, so they can be used as living fuck toys.
Being back here after all these years feels like walking into my nightmares willingly. I’m covered with a sticky sheen of sweat despite the mild weather, and every nerve in my body feels ready to ignite. I’ve spent years preparing for this, and I’m ready.
But no one has said the thing we’re all thinking. There are no signs of life around the property anywhere—no one clipping the hedges, which are slightly overgrown, no one going for a walk in the garden, no one doinganything. I was here for a party the only time I had the misfortune of coming, and it had been crawling with people that night.
We waited intentionally for spring solstice, knowing there should be some sort of gathering to bring the masses together. They don’t need much of an excuse to party, but this should have been enough to at least warrant a small gathering. Every Solstice is when they introduce the untouched… virgins.
I’ve never attended one, so I can’t say where the parties may occur, but we’d come to decide upon this place. This is, after all, the place where they dragged me into this nightmare. And yet, as we draw closer, no sound comes from inside the building. No music, no chatter, no screams, and certainly not the laughter of a guest.
Michael hangs back in the cover of shadow as I step onto the porch and reach for the doorknob, testing it with the expectation that it will be locked. Instead, the lever presses all the way down, and I feel the pop of the seal release. I pause there just long enough to listen for footsteps on the other side, and then push open with the barrel of the gun aimed ahead of me.
I motion behind me for Michael to hang back while the door swings open, creaking on its hinges as I stay behind the cover of the other door. When the silence is uninterrupted, I follow the path that my gun carves, slipping quietly inside and sweeping the area for any signs of life.
The quiet is thick, like the dust that coats the chandelier in the center of the room. Specks of it float through the air, illuminated by the light that filters in from behind me. “Papa Bear,” Michael’s voice cuts into the silence, an incessant chirping in my ear.
I’ll fucking kill him before we find Davos if he keeps calling me that. Michael was keen on the idea of earpieces and happily chose code names for everyone before I told him that I absolutely would not respond to a code name. It’s not like Davos doesn’t know who I am, for fuck’s sake.
And apparently, he knew I was coming.
I’m not an expert in dust, given that I’ve always had housekeepers to clean before it could accumulate, but if I had to guess, I’d sayno one has walked through this way in months, at least. But that doesn’t mean the house is entirely empty.
“Approaching the rear entrance.” Kent says, at the same time Michael repeats, “Papa Bear? Everything okay?”
“You won’t be if you call me that one more fucking time.” I hiss, turning around to push the door open. I glare at him from across the yard, driving my point home, and motion for him to join me.
