Dark Heart of Magic (Black Blade #2)(45)

There was no use lying to him. “Yeah. Although I still have no idea what it is.”

I told him and Felix everything I’d seen and overheard at the Draconi castle. When I finished, they were both frowning.

“What do you think those notes in the Draconi files mean?” Devon asked. “What sort of things was Victor going to give his people to increase their magic? Or whatever he’s doing?”

“Not a clue. I took photos of the files, though. Maybe Claudia or Mo will be able to make sense out of them.”

“And Victor has a file on Deah?” Felix asked. “You don’t think he would actually . . . hurt her, do you?”

He chewed on his lip again and started pacing back and forth.

“Of course not,” I said in a smooth voice. “His notes were all about how proud he was of her mimic magic. Nothing else.”

Devon could tell I was lying, and he nodded his approval at me. There was no need for Felix to worry any more than he already was.

Felix opened his mouth to ask me another question, but Devon cut him off.

“We can talk more back at the mansion,” he said. “I don’t think that the Draconi guards patrol this far out, but I don’t like waving this flashlight around where they might see it either. Let’s go home.”

Devon turned around, the flashlight swinging in a wide arc. I was just about to fall in step behind him when the beam swiped across something that was a bright, glossy red.

Blood.

“Wait,” I said. “I see something. Shine your light back over here.”

I pointed as I walked toward the spot where I’d seen the splash of crimson.

“Lila?” Devon asked, peering into the trees and mist around us. “What’s wrong?”

I shook my head. I didn’t know yet. But something was wrong because it was once again quiet in the forest—too quiet.

No owls hooted in the trees, no rockmunks scuttled through the underbrush, no monsters peered out at us from the bushes. I glanced around and realized that this was the same place where I had noticed the eerie silence before, on my way over to the Draconi estate.

I skirted around a couple of dead, fallen trees, with Devon and Felix trailing along behind me. I hopped over the last fallen tree and stopped, since the ground dropped away into a sharp, rocky ravine that was about ten feet wide.

My friends stood on either side of me, with Devon shining his flashlight back and forth, straight out in front of us, highlighting the dense thicket of trees on the far side of the ravine.

“I don’t see anything,” he murmured.

Me neither. So I looked around, searching for the blood I’d seen before. A second later, I spotted it, splattered on a tree to my right, with smears on the ground as well. A horrible thought occurred to me.

“Shine your light down,” I whispered. “Into the ravine.”

Devon did as I asked, the beam of his flashlight sinking lower . . . and lower . . . and lower....

Until it hit the first body.

A tree troll was lying on the ground about ten feet down in the ravine, its furry gray arms and legs splayed out at awkward angles. Deep, vicious cuts crisscrossed the creature’s chest and belly, and a few small pools of blood surrounded its body, although not nearly as much as I would have expected, given the horrible wounds.

And it wasn’t the only one.

Devon moved the light back and forth, from one side of the ravine to the other, revealing more than a dozen dead trolls. All of them were in various states of decomposition, and many had been reduced to nothing but bones, although none of them had been killed as recently as the one closest to us.

“What do you think did this?” Felix whispered. “A bear? A copper crusher? Another monster?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. I doubt a bear would be this close to the Family compounds, not with all the people, lights, and noise. Of course, monsters are everywhere, but they usually like to stay hidden. But if it was a copper crusher or some other monster, why wouldn’t it have eaten the tree trolls, bones and all? There are so many of them—”

“Too many for one monster to eat.” Devon finished my horrible thought. “Way too many.”

“But why kill a tree troll if you aren’t going to eat it?” Felix asked. “It just doesn’t make any sense.”

I thought of the murdered troll we’d found behind the dumpster yesterday. Once again, that soft, evil laughter echoed in my mind, making me shiver.

“Maybe . . .” my voice trailed off. “Maybe it was just about the killing. Maybe whoever did this didn’t care about eating the trolls at all.”

Felix gave me a horrified look. “You think someone did this for fun? That they caught and killed a bunch of tree trolls? How would they even do that?”

“They’d have to have some sort of trap,” Devon said.

He lifted the flashlight, shining it up into the trees around us and moving the beam back and forth.

I sucked in a breath when I spotted the cage.

It hung about ten feet up in a blood persimmon tree off to our right. A cage. Someone had actually put a cage out here so they could trap, torture, and murder monsters. Anger roared through my body, and I ran over, took hold of the trunk, and started scrambling up the tree.

“Lila,” Devon said. “Be careful.”