Page 34 of My Master
Savvy snorted and pushed up his glasses again. “Okay,Mr. Jealousy, I just got a police report that wasveryinteresting, complete with surveillance video and everything…” He laughed, or so it seemed, to Antonio it only sounded like a bunch of snorting rolled into one loud noise.
“Get to the point,” Terrance growled in annoyance.
“The point is,Terrance, you guys are wanted at 9453 West Rosehill Stream.”
“Why?” Terrance leaned into the screen, Antonio could only make out his backside but he assumed that his face was expressionless, as it always seemed to be.
“Because that girl you’re looking for? She was found on the surveillance video, caught up in a massacre. You might wanna get down there before people start contaminating the crime scene.”
Antonio felt as though his heart had stopped beating in that instant. Isis was caught up in a massacre? Was she okay? What if something had happened to her? He didn’t think he’d be able to live with himself, and not to mention what that would do to Ezzy.
He looked at her; her face had gone as pale as a ghost, her eyes wide with fright. Carefully, he slipped into her thoughts and heard them loud and clear.Isis, oh my god, Isis…
Terrance cursed then clicked the screen off. He pulled out a little ear piece and practically growled into it. “Come back to the van, all of you, now!”
A minute passed in silence when they arrived, Victoria burst the doors of the van open first, a glare on her face. “What the hell is going on?”
“9453 West Rosehill Stream.” Terrance growled.
Victoria narrowed her eyes at him but didn’t question it. She barked out orders for them to be taken there and hopped in with them, sitting next to Terrance. He filled her in with urgent whispers into her ears, which she focused on intently as she pulled on her pants. When he finished filling her in on what Savvy had said, she told him that there had been no trace of anyone in that abandoned building.
All Antonio could think of was Isis as he held onto Esmeralda. He half expected her to break down and cry, but she kept her head held high, staring blankly at nothing and frankly, that reaction worried him even more.
It took thirty minutes to arrive at the designated destination. It was a small building, yellow police caution tape around the perimeter. They all got out of the FBSI van in a rush and went inside of the building. Victoria had handed them all gloves and hairnets to avoid crime scene contamination.
Antonio could only gape in horror.
Savvy had been correct when he said it had been a massacre. Nothing but blood covered the tile floors, they were ankle deep in it, dead bodies and body parts were strewn around the room, but the most grotesque part of it all were the heads, separated from the bodies of their owners and staked on metal rods that protruded from the tile floors, as if they had been hammered in there.
He did a sweep of faces. None of them belonged to Isis.
“Oh my god.” Maria was the first to speak, covering her mouth with her fingers, staring at the scene with disgust. His father tensed next to her, looking around the place, Esmeralda simply held onto Antonio for dear life, she looked as though she might vomit.
Victoria turned to the first officer she saw. “You!” she demanded. The man approached them, a look of horror on his young face. “What the hell happened here?” She demanded angrily.
“We aren’t sure exactly, ma’am,” he said in a nervous voice. “We have a surveillance video with the culprits, and a very clear message sent out to supernaturals and humans everywhere. We have no idea who these guys are, though.”
“Take us to see the surveillance video.”
He nodded and motioned for them to follow him. They did so in silence until they were at the far end, in a corner, away from the bloody battlefield, but still in a spot where they saw it at full view.
There were a few men who had set up a station with a laptop and they were leaning into it with their eyebrows furrowed together. They looked up upon their approach.
“Show us this video.” Victoria moved around the table to look at the laptop with them, Terrance just behind her. Antonio stayed with Ezzy behind the table, their backs to the staked heads behind them. He wasn’t sure he wanted to stand in front of the laptop, knowing his eyes would be drawn to the grotesque scene. It was too disgusting for him to even crave the blood.
Instead, he watched their reactions to the video. First Victoria’s, her eyebrows were crunched together, causing wrinkles to form around the edges of her eyes, and her features twisted into a mask of repugnance. The men around her avoided looking directly at the laptop, instead they rubbed their fingers across their eyes. Terrance, however, was looking at the screen along with Victoria, his eyebrows furrowed together—the only emotion Antonio had ever seen him show thus far.
Victoria twisted the computer to face Antonio and Ezzy. “Can you identify anyone on this video?” She rewound it and pressed the ‘Play’ button.
The video was on full screen, and in color. There was a woman behind a desk, sorting papers into a pile and speaking into a phone, when there was a shattering sound, almost like glass, but Antonio thought it might have been static. Then again, he saw the broken entryway and knew that it probably was glass.
The woman behind the desk dropped the phone and scattered the papers, ducking behind the desk until she was invisible to the camera. As soon as she disappeared, three people stepped into the picture.
The first one to approach was a man, tall and broad, with muscles bulging against his tight red and black gear—at least, Antonio thought it was gear. His hair was black and cut short, combed neatly; his eyebrows were dark and thick. There was a girl with short black hair behind him on one side, her mouth quirked up in a smile; on his other side stood Isis, her face an unreadable mask, and she was standing, immobile.
The man made a movement with his wrist and a blur of fur jumped from behind them and over the desk, dragging the screaming woman out of her hiding spot. The wolf threw her at the man’s feet and then they began talking—something about god, and a message that needed to be sent—he wasn’t entirely sure because his stomach was clenching and unclenching.
The woman spit in his face, he gestured to the vampire girl with the short dark hair behind him. Happily skipping up, like a child, the vampire lifted the woman up so easily, “Long live Caesareon,” and brought the woman’s throat in contact with her teeth. She chewed and she gnawed and in one fast movement, a head was severed, falling to the floor. Her lifeless body soon joined it.
