A rustle of wings, and then Aodhan joined him in the kitchen of the small home. It was impossible for their wings not to touch in the compact area, and Illium bore the contact with a clenched abdomen and tight tendons. “Look.” He pointed to the small pool of rust-brown below one of the three chairs that bracketed the round table. “That seem like blood to you?”
Aodhan crouched down, his wings folded in and confined by the wall at their back. “Yes. But it’s too old for any kind of scent. We’d need to get a scientific analysis.”
“Yeah, I know. It could as easily be spaghetti sauce.” He shoved a hand through his hair. “I’m jumpy. Sorry.”
Aodhan rose, his wing brushing over Illium’s arm and chest. Unable to stand it, his eyes hot in a way that made him feel stupid, Illium stepped out of the room and continued to explore the home. Neat, lived-in, normal. No signs of struggle or violence.
Next house over and it was his turn to keep watch. He did so in silence.
The kitten stood three feet away, staring at him out of bright blue eyes. He raised his eyebrows. “Meow?”
She skittered back.
Great, now even tiny helpless creatures were pulling away from him. Scowling and feeling sorry for himself, he folded his arms and turned to the right. Washing hung lank and brown on the line of the house next door. He frowned, took a step toward it. There was something . . .
“Aodhan, I’m just moving a few feet away to look next door.”
“I’m done here anyway,” Aodhan said, exiting the house. “What did you see?”
“I’m not sure . . .” Walking over, with Aodhan by his side, and the kitten padding along a little farther back, he saw that the piece of washing was stiff and marked by bird droppings. “Oh, it’s leather,” he said. “That explains—Fuck!”
28
Illium wrenched back his hand before his fingers could brush over the skin.
Because that’s what it was. And not an animal skin.
Not an angel, either, because there were no marks or holes where wings grew out of an angel’s back. Mortal or vampire, then. A fly buzzed over to sit on the skin. That there were no other insects on or around it told him the skin had been hanging there long enough to dry out, lose its smell. Would that happen naturally? Or had someone prepared it?
He swallowed repeatedly.
“Now we know.” Aodhan’s voice, his tone even but his face expressionless. “Something bad did happen to this settlement, and to its people.”
Having managed to get his nausea under control, Illium moved around the line to look at it from the other side. It was no less horrific from that side. “I can see why Vetra didn’t notice.” From above, she’d have seen what he originally had—an old brown shirt on the line.
Aodhan, who’d stepped toward the house, said, “There’s more here.” He shook his head when Illium went to join him. “No, Blue, you don’t want to see this.”
Blue.
A nickname so old that only Aodhan used it, and that rarely. Almost everyone else used Bluebell, a moniker he’d picked up later in life.
Illium froze, caught by the solemnity of his friend’s voice. “What is it?”
“Stacks of skins,” Aodhan told him. “Cured and neatly folded up into piles.”
Illium had seen horror, survived it. But today, his gorge rose for a second time. Swiveling away from the doorway, he breathed deeply to try to keep it contained. When Aodhan walked over to put his hand on Illium’s shoulder, he didn’t shrug it away.
“How?” he said at last. “How could someone capable of that be so calm and controlled that they left behind no chaos?”
It made no sense to him.
“How, too, did the murderer manage to do this to so many people without causing them to flee?” Aodhan said. “Why is Fei the only survivor?” Aodhan ran his hand down Illium’s spine, his fingers brushing the inner curve of his wings.
It was an intimate touch, but again, Illium didn’t shrug him away. He needed his friend at this moment, needed the connection. “We have to tell Suyin.” Illium might be jealous of Suyin, but she was the archangel of this territory, needed to know its horrors and dangers. “She has to know to keep an eye on Fei—I think the girl’s mute out of terror, but we can’t discount the possibility that she might’ve been involved.”
Aodhan pulled out a phone. “I’ll call the general—she kept up with technology while Caliane Slept, seeing it as part of her duty to be ready for the day her archangel returned to the world.”