BANE
The smell hits me first. Death's got this particular stench that you never forget once you've been intimate with it. A blend of copper and shit and that sickly sweet rot that starts settling in before the body's even cold. I've been around enough corpses to know when I'm walking into a fucking morgue.
Three guards down in the service corridor, throats opened with skill. Not messy, not showy. Just dead. The kind of kills that speak to professional efficiency rather than passion. My hand goes to my sidearm as I move deeper into the building, every nerve screaming that this has gone sideways, and not in the way we were planning on.
"Report," I bark into my comm, but all I get is static. "Carlisle? Elias? Anyone copy?"
Nothing. Dead air where there should be chatter, updates, Felix's dry observations about our tactical patterns. The silence makes my skin crawl worse than finding the bodies.
Another guard around the corner, this one took a blade to the kidney before getting his neck snapped. Quick, quiet, efficient. Whoever did this knew exactly what they were doing, and theydid it without raising any alarms. The auction house has gone tomb-silent, that particular type of quiet that means something catastrophic has happened.
I push through the main doors to the auction floor, and my brain short-circuits trying to process what I'm seeing.
Bodies. Everywhere.
The entire fucking audience is down. Some slumped in their chairs like they just decided to take a nap, others sprawled on the floor in puddles of their own vomit and blood. The rich fucks who were bidding on human beings five minutes ago are now cooling meat, their designer suits soaked with bodily fluids that definitely void the warranty.
"What the fuck?" The words come out louder than intended, echoing in the death-quiet space.
Movement across the room catches my eye, and I've got my gun raised before I recognize Elias's silver hair. He's kneeling beside one of the bodies, fingers pressed to a neck that's definitely not producing a pulse.
"Elias!" I pick my way through the corpses, trying not to step in anything that'll leave DNA evidence. "Did you—did we—what the fuck happened here?"
He looks up, those blue eyes clinical even surrounded by this massacre. "Poison," he says simply, standing. "In the champagne, from what I can tell. Fast-acting neurotoxin. Most of them were dead before they hit the ground."
"Did one of ours do this?" I scan the room again, looking for any sign of our people among the dead. "Carlisle's got access to this kind of shit, but this isn't his style. Not personal enough."
"No." Elias strips off the latex gloves he must have had in his pocket, because of course the good doctor comes prepared for impromptu autopsies. "This was planned in advance. Whoever did this wanted everyone in this room dead."
"Another vigilante group?" I ask doubtfully.
"Seems like a mighty big coincidence," Elias murmurs.
"The comm's down," I tell him, checking my earpiece again like it might magically start working. "Can't reach anyone."
His jaw tightens. "Mine too. Went dead right after I reported my position." He pulls out his phone, but I can see from his expression that it's not any better. "No signal. They're jamming us."
"Fuck." I run my hand through my hair, trying to think through the implications. "The rendezvous point. If shit went sideways, that's where they'd go."
We move together through the building, past more bodies, more evidence of systematic execution. The backstage area's been hit too. Handlers, security, all down. But no omegas. The cages where they were keeping the "merchandise" are empty, doors hanging open like someone got here first.
The collection area's worse. Blood spray on the walls suggests someone put up a fight here. A guard's missing half his face, another's got his chest cavity opened up like someone was looking for prizes inside. This is messier, angrier. Personal.
"This wasn't part of the poisoning," Elias observes, crouching beside the faceless guard. "Someone did this after. Recently, based on the blood coagulation. And I believe the guards were already dead when they did it."
"Felix?" I suggest, though it doesn't feel right. Felix kills clean unless he's making a point. Unless he's furious.
"Possibly." Elias stands, and I can see the gears turning behind his eyes.
"Bane."
Carlisle's voice makes me spin, gun raised before I register it's him. He looks uncharacteristically disheveled, his perfect suit jacket torn, knuckles bloody like he's been introducing his fists to someone's face repeatedly. Probably whatever guard managed to survive what happened here.
Behind him is Felix, and fuck, I've never seen him look like this. My immediate relief at the sight of him is tempered by the realization that Juniper isn't with them, and he looks haunted. Gone is any pretense of control, any mask of indifference. His silver eyes are wild, feral, like something inside him has snapped and what's left is pure predator. His hands are shaking—not with fear, but with the kind of rage that needs to tear something apart or it'll turn inward and devour him whole.
Yeah, he's definitely the one who mutilated those bodies. I know a man whose sanity is hanging by a thread when I see one.
"Where's Juniper?" The question tears out of him before I can speak. "Have you seen her? Found any sign?—"
