One Grave at a Time (Night Huntress #6)(73)

“Christ, no,” Spade whispered at the same time I realized that a complete lack of other people’s thoughts was a very, very bad sign. I should be picking up on four minds in the house ahead. Instead, there was only ominous silence.

Spade didn’t open his car door—he pushed it aside so violently that it sailed away from the vehicle with a metallic ripping sound. Then he was nothing more than a blur headed toward the house. The rest of us got out, but not as fast, Ian shoving the car into park to keep it from rolling. Dread made me feel like the blood in my veins had just been replaced with ice water. I ran toward the house, a string of denials resounding in my mind. Not Denise. Please, no. She was my best friend. It would be horrible enough if something happened to Lisa, Sarah, and Francine, but I couldn’t stand it if Denise was . . . was . . .

Spade ripped the front door off as well, disappearing into the house. The three of us were close behind him. Sharp barks coming from upstairs made it impossible to detect any heartbeats, and the sound made Bones pause before entering, dragging me to a halt with him. Maybe Dexter was barking because of the crash the door made when Spade tore it from its hinges.

Or maybe it was because Kramer was still in the house. Had he managed to manifest flesh a day early? Bloody shoe prints showed that someone had come down the staircase and gone out the door, and I didn’t smell any sage burning. Denise was immune to most kinds of death, but Spade always kept some demon bone on hand in case any hellish buddies of the one who had branded her showed up looking for vengeance. Had the bone knife that was made of the only substance that could kill Denise been used against her? Oh God, what had Kramer done to them?

Ian didn’t wait, but went into the house with a brusque, “Get some sage lit before you follow.” Upstairs, Spade cried out, a harsh sound of grief that made my knees almost give out. Tears making my gaze blurry, I grabbed a handful of the waterlogged sage I’d kept in my pants and lit it, hurrying inside and then up the staircase carrying my smoking bundle. From the sounds and smell, Bones was relighting and refilling the jars in the house, trying to form a protective barrier though it might be too late.

I didn’t need to follow the bloody shoe prints that led to the first room on the right. Spade’s choked voice was a heartbreaking beacon. I burst into the room, anguish ripping through me when the first sight that greeted me was a mass of blood, bone, and things I didn’t even want to name splattered on the wall of the open closet. Ian stood to the side of it, Spade at the bottom of that grisly montage, cradling a blood-soaked form that didn’t move. Dexter was off in the corner, growling and barking while tracking crimson paw prints on the carpet.

“I’m okay,” I heard a feminine voice say beneath the barking and Spade’s ragged repetitions of Denise’s name.

I stuffed back the sob of relief that rocketed up my throat. Ian was more practical, pulling on Spade’s shoulders.

“Let her go, Charles. You’re probably holding her too tightly for her to breathe.”

Spade leaned back, revealing the upper half of my friend that I hadn’t seen before, and I staggered where I stood. Denise had three mangled holes in her sweater that looked like exit wounds from bullets. She’d been shot in the back enough times to kill any normal person from their tight placement near her chest, but not enough to put her down. She must have turned around and gone after her shooter. That was why the assailant aimed for her face next. From the wall, her still-misshapen features, and the cherry pie look under the back of her head, he’d emptied his gun into her.

The accomplice had somehow found this place and attacked when the rest of us were away trying to hammer the final nails into Kramer’s coffin. How had he gotten in? I wondered, still shocked from the sight of Denise. She knew not to let any unfamiliar men in, and she wasn’t very easy to take down, as the carnage in this room proved.

Bones appeared, grimly taking note of the blood-sprayed closet and Denise’s condition. “No one else is in the house,” he stated, confirming what my senses had already suspected. “I don’t see any signs that Kramer’s here now . . . or was here before. None of the sage jars are overturned or disturbed. They merely burned out, but not too long ago from the looks of it.”

Spade brushed a matted clump of Denise’s hair back, and I winced at what stuck to his hand.

“Can you tell us what happened, darling?”

From the way her gaze seemed to roll around the room, she was having trouble focusing. No shocker there; I was amazed she was even conscious. She must have been shot a couple hours ago for her to have healed to this extent, but even with her demon-blooded regenerative abilities, she was still in rough shape. I wasn’t sure a vampire or ghoul could have survived all the damage she’d sustained, yet despite the fact that she looked like she’d dove headfirst into a wood chipper, she managed to mumble out a reply.

“Lisa and Francine . . . asleep. Heard . . . awful noise. Came in here . . . saw Helsing . . .”

My kitty wasn’t in the room at the moment, from the two sole heartbeats I heard now that Dexter had quit barking. Helsing was probably hiding downstairs. All the recent run-ins with Kramer had taught the kitty to seek cover at the first hint of loud noises, so the gunshots would’ve sent him running.

Denise lifted a crimson-painted hand and vaguely pointed at the wall behind her. “Pulled him out . . . of the noose . . . then felt the gunshots.”