At least his parents will be able to see his face one last time—
“They took his fangs, too,” Z said harshly. “But mostly worked on him below the neck.”
There was another pause, as if he were waiting to see how far Beth wanted to see. When she shook her head, he rezipped things.
Riding a wave of despair, her eyes traveled down the length of the loose bag, from the flat plane of the chest to the straightaway of the legs to the jut of the two feet. She did not know what had been done to him. Couldn’t bear to imagine it.
“He and his parents came in—” She coughed a little. “They came in the night L.W. started to go through his change. Even though they were aristocrats, they were so loving... and the blessing he received for his accomplishments meant so much to all of them. I can’t believe his whole life ends…here. Like this.”
Wrath stepped in, and she felt his arm return to her waist. When he murmured something, she was too caught up in the collision of the past and the present to hear what he was saying. But the tone…the tone was just what she needed. She knew the kind of grief those parents—all of the parents—were going to have to go through in the coming nights, days…years.
“Where were these two found,” Wrath asked.
“In the basement of an abandoned walkup on Thirty-first and Jefferson,” Z said. “Syphon scented them somehow. He’s still out there, scouring that area, even though the killers are likely long gone.”
“My son needs to get thefuckout of Shuli’s house,” Wrath muttered. “It isnotsafe there.”
Clearly, these males had been tortured for information.
“Yeah, he does,” Z said. “And as for these males, we don’t know why they were left behind. Usually, the Lessening Society cleans up after themselves better—they don’t want attention from humans any more than we do. They left their tools, too. Something interrupted them.”
“Have the families been contacted?”
“We’re working our way through the first four right now. Until ten minutes ago, when these two were still considered missing, we were assuming you’d want to be the one who talked to their parents.”
From out of nowhere, Beth heard L.W.’s voice once again:Everyone else is out there in the field. All of the Brothers, all of the fighters—and their families shit themselves every night. But you get a pass because you married the King. You are lucky.
Abruptly, images filtered through Beth’s mind, one after another: Autumn opening the door to her and Tohr’s residence, the worry etched into her beautiful, heart-shaped face…Doc Jane standing in her bedroom, her eyes grave on her injured mate…and then it was all the audiences that she herself had played witness to over the decades, civilians taken down by the enemy.
After that, she thought of every other time she had gone to the Brotherhood clinic and worried over an injured fighter. All those gunshots wounds, stabbings, broken bones…
Finally, she returned to her and Wrath’s last anniversary, in that alley, with L.W.
This had to stop. Somehow, they had to bring the war to an end.
Before her own son ended up in a body bag.
All things considered, Wrath would have seriously fucking preferred that Beth not see any of this. Smell it. Stand next to it. But for reasons he was not going to question, she felt as though she needed to be here. And God knew she’d seen plenty of this shit over the decades he was gone.
“There’s one other thing,” Z said.
Behind his wraparounds, Wrath closed his useless eyes. Of course, there was something else.
“They took the hearts.” Zsadist’s voice changed orientation as he paced around. “Even though thelesserswere interrupted, they appear to have taken both with them. As well as the fangs.”
Great. Fucking wonderful. Wrath had never heard of anything like either of that before, but the Lessening Society was always morphing—and maybe this was payback. After all, the Black Dagger Brotherhood had collected the cardiac muscles of slayers for generations.
What the hell was Lash doing now.
“I do want to go to these males’ parents,” Wrath said. “Do we have addresses?”
“Yup, and Fritz is already on his way here.”
“I’m coming, too,” Beth spoke up.
Wrath brought her even closer to his side. With every inhale he took, her sadness and fear filled his nose, drowning out the scents of gasoline and oil in the garage. He would have spared her if he could, taken her away from all of this—and as he thought about the future, he could really feel his fangs start to tingle. His body likewise became alive with aggression, the swirling anger and hatred coursing through his veins reminding him of their son.
Not the kind of thing he wanted them to have in common.
