Blood Prince by Shannon West

Author:Shannon West
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: magic, gay, SF, fantasy, wizards, m/m, alternate worlds
Publisher: Dark Hollows Press, LLC
Published: 2014-06-13T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter Four

They stripped him to his little shirt,

bound him in an iron chain,

And burned him in a holy place.

Little Boy Lost—William Blake

The small farmhouse sat on a small patch of ground on a narrow two-lane mountain road not all that far from Pigeon Forge, but heading south and closer to a little place called Townsend. Despite the tourism in the nearby area, and the many stores, restaurants and hotels nearby, the homes outside the tourist centers were often far from affluent. This house was a small, single story with a long front porch running along its entire length. The stair rails leaned drunkenly on one side and the house desperately needed a fresh coat of paint. An ancient, battered truck was sitting up on blocks by the side of the house, next to a rusted-out child’s swing set. The front yard was green and soggy from the rain, and behind the house, at some thirty yards distance, lay the dark, verdant woods.

Cole looked up at the gray sky and wondered if the rain was about to start up again. It had been coming down off and on all morning, and a rainy day in the area caused these thick clouds that gave the Smoky Mountains their name. The fog settled near the ground in the valleys and along the ridges, lending the scene an added degree of eeriness, as if it was even needed, considering they were going to the scene of a multiple murder. Cole glanced over at the woods behind the house. The low-lying fog crouched near the ground among the pines and leaned out from the tree line as if listening to the screams that Cole could hear even from where he sat inside the SUV.

It sounded like the hoarse screams of a man, but Cole couldn’t be sure, and even as he rolled down his window to hear, the sound was suddenly cut off, leaving an uncanny silence. Cole got out of the car and walked around to the other side to join Levi, feeling unaccountably nervous. He’d been to plenty of crime scenes before, but he’d had a feeling of dread ever since Levi got the call from Gonzalez, and he couldn’t seem to shake it.

Levi had pulled up at the end of a long line of vehicles with flashing lights and Blount County sheriff’s logos emblazoned on the sides. Bill Gonzalez and a member of their team Cole only knew as Fredericks got out of their own dark SUV as they pulled up. Both men’s faces were grim as they stepped up to greet Levi.

“A neighbor made the call to the sheriff’s office after hearing the sounds coming from the house.” He pointed down the road to a small mobile home some hundred yards away. “Neighbor lives down there. He’s upset at what he saw when he finally decided to investigate. It was pretty bad. EMTs are treating him.” Gonzalez nodded toward an ambulance pulled in the narrow driveway. Cole realized that it was from this vehicle that the screams he’d heard had emanated.

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