ORC G1RL by Gill McKnight

Author:Gill McKnight [McKnight, Gill]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: GA McKnight
Published: 2023-05-01T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

Antal having my number is good for spying but bad for mental health.

He calls the next day. I’m at school and luckily tucked away in the science block eating lunch so no one can overhear. I’m hyper aware of school sounds bleeding through from the corridors into our call. I’m not sure I want him to know I’m still at school. I’ve no idea who or what Antal thinks I am.

“Something urgent came up. You free?”

“What? Now?”

“An hour maybe. Need to get hold of the rest.”

“Um. Okay.” I’m packing away my half-eaten sandwich. I can tell James I’m ill and bailing on him for our next class.

I’m waiting for the van at the usual spot. It pulls up and I jump in. It’s a denuded crew. Jaah, Wigmar, and Bezume are missing. Slyder’s there, which makes me happy. I wonder how I’d feel if he wasn’t. Still safe, I decide.

We head toward the airport and the industrial sites that line the road in. There’s a seventies housing development that’s supposedly marked for demo so the freight companies can expand. We’re going there. It’s a tatty place with broken-down housing and scrapyard lawns. Most of the residents have drug problems and the crime rate is so high, it needs aircraft warning lights.

We pull up on the driveway of a particularly ratty specimen of real estate. I’m surprised we’re out in daylight dressed as we are, like a cheap SWAT team.

Antal herds us quickly inside. And it’s Mr. K’s bathroom all over again, except it’s the whole house. Bodies are festooned everywhere. Draped like doilies over everything. Most are partially eaten. Werewolves then. But who are the victims.

“I know this guy,” Slyder points at a tattooed upper torso. “He’s one of the juice boxes.”

“They’re all human,” Maroom notes, “so they’re all most likely the same, serviles.”

We find about a dozen men and women over both floors. It’s hard to tell, as they’re in pieces and it’s a bit like a jigsaw with the picture missing. We drag those upstairs to the downstairs living room and heap them up, then stand back and look.

Antal is grim. “It’s begun,” he says.

“Turf war,” Maroom agrees. “Are these Knopps?”

Antal shrugs.

“That guy was one of Karoly’s, so these was Knopps,” Slyder says.

“So some other skep did this?” Maroom looks around, unsettled.

“Weres done it. That’s all we need to know,” Antal says in a voice laden with trouble.

I look around at the mess. True, it’s nothing like the precision kills I’ve witnessed so far. This is dismemberment and laceration and huge bite marks. I begin to fidget because I’m terrified. Something about the stench of this place turns my guts to water. I think it’s a primordial thing in my brain telling me predators are around.

“Special orders from She Who Will Not Pay.” Antal grabs a hold-all he’s brought with him. “Go to the van.”

Maroom turns away, but me and Slyder dither. This is an unusual turn of events. Aren’t we going to scoop up the bodies? Antal takes the door to the basement.

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