A Torment of Savages (The Reanimation Files Book 4) (26 page)

“What?” Kyo asked.

“It seems as though his number has been disconnected.”

“Maybe it has to do with the monitoring you asked Carlos to do on him to prevent him from running the story early?”

“Maybe…I don’t even have a number for Carlos so I can ask. When he texted me in the past he used a restricted number. I’ll have to trek out to Queens to find out.” I yawned. “But not tonight. It’s been a day and a half.”

Kyo yawned as well. “My body may have been comatose for a really long time, but it’s not the same as sleeping. After three centuries I am looking forward to falling asleep.”

“You can crash in Ethan’s room,” I said. “He has some sweats you can change into, even if they won’t be a perfect fit.”

“Looks like I will have to go shopping,” Kyo said. “Or stealing, since I don’t have any money.”

I gave him a look. “I did not reanimate you so you could start a life of crime. My paycheck from Tielle was deposited into my account. Likely to be my last paycheck, sadly. But we can go shopping. I will introduce you to the wonderful world of thrift stores.” I yawned again, and that was my cue to get up and go sleep off this incredibly long day. It hadn’t started out so well, but it had ended pretty perfectly. I locked up and turned off the lights, and Kyo and I headed to the bedrooms.

“I will never stop saying thank you,” Kyo said, pausing in front of my bedroom door. “And it will never be enough for what you’ve done for me. You’ve given me back something I never dreamed I would have again.”

“And now you get to go to sleep and have some actual dreams,” I said, smiling.

“If sleep should find me and chase me into a dream, may I see only the face of one so beloved, for the light of heaven will never shine more brightly than the eyes of my savior, who pierced not only through the darkness but straight through my heart.”

I shivered. Since when was I so into poetry? I took Kyo’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “Goodnight, Kyo. Sweet dreams.”

* * *

I awoke to the ringing of my cell phone, which was charging on the nightstand next to the bed. I groaned at the unwelcome interruption to my sleep and cracked my eyes open. After nudging Luna off my stomach, I groped around for the phone and answered it. My eyes were too bleary to see who was calling, but my tone let them know how much I did not appreciate the call.

“What?”

“Selene?”

I was immediately more awake and less gruff. It was Ethan, and even though he had only said one word, I knew something was wrong. I sat up and swung my legs off the bed.

“Ethan? What’s wrong? Is it the Savages? Did something happen?”

“Selene…can…can you come get me…pl-please…I…I don’t know how this happened, I don’t know…what’s going on…” Ethan’s voice was shaky. My bad feeling skyrocketed.

“Ethan, where are you?” I kept my voice as calm as I could. “Tell me where you are and I will be on my way. What has happened?”

“I’m at Ailani’s apartment,” he said, his voice a quivering whisper. “And she…she’s…she’s dead.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

When Ethan opened the door to Ailani’s apartment and let Kyo and me in he was shaking, pale, and there were splotches of blood on his face, arms, and clothes. His eyes were wide and his breath was coming in short gasps.

“Where?” I said. Ethan slowly turned and pointed down a hallway that branched off from the living room. Kyo and I exchanged a look, then I led the way down the hall, stopping in front of the first room I came to. The door was open, and when I looked in, I sucked in a gasp.

Ailani lay on her bed in a tangle of sheets with multiple stab wounds all over her body. Needless to say, there was blood everywhere. Her wide-open eyes stared unseeing at the ceiling. I swallowed hard, trying to come to grips with the scene before my eyes and what it meant. Kyo was silent, his face solemn, as he looked from the dead girl to Ethan.

“Explain,” was my next word. I didn’t know if I was capable of full sentences right now. I could not believe for a moment that something could have happened that would drive Ethan to kill this girl. First Andrew, then Ilyse, now Ailani? No fucking away.

“I…I…I don’t…”

“Ethan, I’m going to need more than that.” Guess I could still get full sentences out. And I needed Ethan to as well. Kyo put his hands on his shoulders and gave him a level stare.

“Ethan, it will be okay,” he said calmly. “Just tell us what happened.”

Ethan nodded and started speaking rapidly. “We were hanging out with some others, and when it got late she invited me back here to crash. Said her roommate wasn’t going to be here. So…so we came back and…ordered pizza and played games for a few hours… And…and…um…kissed and…stuff. I mean not stuff…” He started shaking his head. “We…we just kissed. On the couch. Then went to bed. I mean…I mean she went to bed in her…in her room…and I slept on the couch. But when I woke up, I thought it was too quiet. I thought ma-maybe she went to get…get breakfast. Then I looked in her room and…and…and…” He started dry heaving and slumped against the hallway wall before sliding to the ground. Kyo and I knelt down next to him as he started sobbing. “Oh God, what did I do, what did I do?” he wailed. “I don’t even remember…I don’t remember anything…How did I do this? Why did I do this?”

My heart felt like it was breaking seeing the absolute anguish he was in, but my mind was also churning over his story because things weren’t adding up.

“Ethan, did you have a blackout episode last night?” I asked. “At any point at all?”

“No,” he breathed. “Not at all…You think…you think I did this and blacked out?”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying,” I said gently. I looked Ethan over again, then looked into the bedroom, then back into the living room. “Where is the knife?”

“Kn-knife?” Ethan looked confused.

“She was stabbed,” Kyo said. “Presumably with a knife or some other sharp object.”

“But I don’t see one.” I got up and carefully looked around the apartment, checking all the sharp utensils in the kitchen, even looking in the garbage can in case the weapon was discarded. I didn’t come across a bloody knife.

“Did you see a knife or weapon of any sort when you woke up?” I asked Ethan.

He shook his head. “No, there was no-nothing…”

“And yet somehow she was stabbed to death in her bed,” I said, frowning. “You slept out here, but you have blood on you. How did you sleep through someone murdering her and putting her blood on you?”

“Selene…I didn’t do it, I swear!” Ethan said, fresh tears welling in his eyes. “It wasn’t the blackouts or anything. I swear all I did was sleep!”

“I believe you,” I said to Ethan. It looked damning, but I was going to give Ethan the benefit of the doubt. I knew Ethan. He had killed people, yes, but only when he was being controlled. And he was free from that now. Although…

“What?” Kyo asked, seeing the look on my face. He stood up while Ethan remained on the floor, whimpering.

“I wonder if the ghosts trapped in those runes on his back could be messing with his head.”

“To the point where they’d make him kill?” Kyo said. “With no memory of it? Like they possessed him? I don’t know…”

“Well, we have to assume for the most part it’s the ghosts of violent people in there,” I said. I kept my voice low so Ethan wouldn’t overhear. Kyo and I had moved to talk in the kitchen.

“Yet there’s no weapon,” Kyo said. “So if somehow one of those ghosts possessed him and made him kill the girl, what did it make him do with the weapon?”

“I don’t know.” I frowned deeply. “This is fucking unbelievable. Now we have to call in a dead body and I have no idea how I am going to get Ethan out of this. They’re gonna arrest him.”

“Did you see her ghost rise?” Kyo asked Ethan. We had learned that even though Ethan never carried necromancy power, in this new body he was able to see ghosts when they weren’t wearing energy runes.

“No,” Ethan said, shaking his head and sounding utterly devastated. “Selene…what do I do?” The eyes that looked up at me were so scared and pleading, looking to me to make this all better that I had to look away. I was at a total loss as to what to do.

“Maybe we could…”

But Kyo didn’t get to finish his sentence because all of a sudden there were heavy footsteps and shouting coming down the hallway, followed by the door being kicked in and PTF officers pouring into the room. They made a beeline for Ethan and yanked him to his feet. I thought he’d looked terrified before, now he looked like he might die of fright.

“Ethan Lance, you’re under arrest for the murder of Ailani Leho,” the officer who had a vice-like grip on his arm said. He then proceeded to recite Ethan his Miranda Rights.

“Selene!”

“Let him go!” I tried to lunge for Ethan but was none too gently shoved aside as Ethan was dragged to the door. Paramedics with a stretcher had also arrived and gone into Ailani’s room.

“Ethan did you call nine-one-one?” Kyo and I were running after the officers as they took Ethan out of the apartment and dragged him down the stairs.

“No!” came Ethan’s distressed reply. “Selene, help me! Don’t let them take me!”

“Ethan!” But there was nothing I could do. We followed them outside, where to my shock, a barrage of media were swarming. As soon as Ethan was in their sights, they started snapping pictures and hurtling questions at him. I was aghast. Who the hell had called in the PTF, paramedics, and media?

I could do nothing but watch as the officers put Ethan into an armored vehicle and drove off. Soon after, the paramedics came out with Ailani’s body. At this point Kyo and I had receded into the lobby because once the news reporters saw me, they aimed their questions my way. Once the medics were out, I slammed the door shut and stood there staring through the frosted glass door with wide eyes at all the people moving around out there.

“Oh my God,” I said, dragging my hands through my hair. “They have Ethan. They came and took him away. What am I gonna do?” I started pacing in a tight circle. It felt like a ton of bricks had just slammed into me. Again. The first ton had been Micah turning into a Savage. Now this. How much did the universe or God, or whatever higher power was out there really think I could handle? I was going to end up losing my mind worse than Renton Morse had.

“They didn’t come back,” Kyo said thoughtfully. I stopped pacing and stared at him. “And they acted like you and I weren’t even here. That’s not typical behavior for when you find three people in the home of a murdered woman, is it? You don’t just take the one covered in blood.”

“No, you don’t,” I said, once again frowning. A frown might end up being my permanent expression at the rate my life was going. “We weren’t taken in for questioning. And there is the issue of how the PTF, paramedics, and media all just showed up here if no one called in a murder.”

“And they showed up shortly after we got here,” Kyo added. “It all seems too neat. I may not know exactly how things are done these days but I’ve learned a lot these past few months.”

“Meaning you’ve watched a ton of Law and Order,” I muttered. But he was right. I’d been involved in enough crime scenes by now to know that there was something off about this one.

“It’s almost as though it was set up,” Kyo was saying. I stared at him again, my mouth falling open.

“Set up,” I repeated. “Holy shit.” I pounded my fist against the wall. “This was a set up. No murder weapon, no memory from Ethan of committing the murder, the conveniently timed arrival of the cavalry. It was a set up!”

“Jacob,” Kyo said.

I nodded. “That son of a bitch.” Cold rage spread through my body. “His quest to destroy my life didn’t go so well with those articles he had Taj write, so he resorted to murdering an innocent girl to thrust Ethan and thus myself, into the spotlight in the worst possible way. Ethan already has a track record with murder; who knows what this will do to him.”

“I agree that it seems likely that Jacob set this up,” Kyo said. “But we can’t just go to the PTF and tell them that. We need proof.”

Proof. I looked around the lobby and spotted the security camera. I pointed it out to Kyo.

“That may be how we get proof,” I said. “Let’s pay a visit to Carlos and see if Jacob McNabb shows up on this camera.”

* * *

Carlos wasn’t there. Which shouldn’t have been that alarming, seeing as he had to leave sometime and didn’t exactly provide office hours, but the fact that his space was in disarray set off alarm bells. Kyo and I stood there looking around at the upturned and broken computer equipment. Even Carlos’s worktable had been flipped over. His large monitors were sprawled on the ground with cracked screens.

“Oh, no.” I moved forward, looking around everywhere on the off chance that Carlos was lying around hidden by some piece of equipment.

“I don’t see anyone,” Kyo said. He’d been looking on the other side of the room. I stopped by Carlos’s broken down desk and blew out a breath. Kyo came over to me.

“What do you think happened?” Kyo said. “Think the PTF did a raid?”

“That’s what I initially thought,” I said. “But if it was a raid, they would have confiscated every piece of equipment in here. It doesn’t seem as though anything is missing.”

“Okay, so maybe a dissatisfied customer took out their rage on him…”

“Yeah, I guess…” I trailed off as something on the ground caught my eye. It was half hidden under a tangle of wires, but as I bent to pick it up, a myriad of emotions were going through me and my hands were shaking.

“Oh my God,” I said. Kyo looked down at what I was holding.

“Shades?” he said, frowning slightly. He looked up at me. “Why do you look so spooked because you found the guy’s shades? Do they have blood on them or something?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “These aren’t Carlos’s shades. They belong to Taj.”

Kyo’s frown deepened. “The reporter guy? Are you sure? Why the hell would his shades be here?”

“I’m sure these are his,” I said. I looked at the ground again and spotted something else that sent another jolt through me. I picked up an expensive-looking watch with a large face and thick, leather wristband.