It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not real.

All my instincts, both natural and engineered, propelled me away, and I stumbled again, scrambling backward to the side door.

Fear had ignited my entire body, making it hum, making me lose control as my hand flailed around for the doorknob, losing my hold on the flashlight. There. A wave of hot power surged from my core and down my arm as I yanked on the knob. The door broke open, snapping the bottom steel hinge in half.

A blink later, the sensation vanished.

Oxygen filled my lungs as I bent at the waist, bracing both hands on my knees, my right hand still curled around my weapon, trying to reclaim those lost moments of precious air and shake away the mental fuzziness. So fast. It all had happened so fast.

A long shadow across the warehouse floor shifted. I glanced up as Hank cleared his throat, giving me a raised eyebrow and then stopping the door from swinging with one hand as he ducked under and stepped inside.

“Might want to prepare yourself,” I said, picking up my light. “It’s worse in here.”

He straightened and scanned the area. “What’s that smell?”

“Not sure. Dead rat, maybe? There are owls here. Could be their leftovers.”

Whatever happened, it was just me and Hank. We worked on a need-to-know basis with the ITF, which meant they didn’t need to know what the hell we were up to unless we wanted them to. We were the only 5th Floor agents in Atlanta, and if we bought it, two others—willing or blackmailed into it—would take our place, going outside the boundaries of the law to bring down the most vile and vicious off-world criminals in the city.

To our covert supervisors in Washington, we were replaceable. And, for now, we were on our own.

“You feel anything?” I asked.

“No substantial presence. Nothing but smut,” he said, using our popular term for negative energy signatures.

“Nothing but smut,” I echoed softly and took a step forward.

The whining charge of Hank’s Hefty filled the cavernous space. Until we knew what we were dealing with, an Elysian or Charbydon threat, we each drew separate weapons. My own Hefty was safely tucked against my left side and on my hip was a human firearm—a 9mm SIG Sauer. Three weapons for the races of three different worlds.

Both of our lights crisscrossed the darkness as we moved down the center of the warehouse. The force of whatever lurked beyond was so strong, so negative that it felt as though we were trudging through knee-deep mud. We passed old sleeping bags and shopping carts, cardboard boxes that were once used as makeshift shelters. Who knew how many homeless had lived here at one time—or who might, even now, be watching us from the dark corners beyond our flashlights and vision.

“It’s getting thicker. Damn eyes are burning,” Hank whispered.

I felt the weight of the energy, but not the sting. Hank, being one hundred percent Elysian, was way more sensitive to smut than I was. I glanced over my shoulder. We were so far in now that the darkness had closed in behind us, wrapping us in a cocoon of noxious black energy.

I jumped as Hank’s hand touched my arm. He’d stopped cold. I returned my light to the path in front of us. “What the hell is that?”

A mountain of debris. The source of all the negative energy.

I covered my nose as we approached; the smell of something rotting was bad enough to trigger my gag reflex. Our lights beamed against the jumble of trash and debris and—dear God —limbs.

With a sinking realization in my stomach, my trembling light traveled slowly over the pile, revealing pieces and parts of several corpses mingled with the debris. Tendons. Flesh hanging off bone. A torso. An arm. A mass of curly blond hair.

“Looks like we found our missing Adonai,” I said, stunned.

“Hold on,” Hank muttered. “There’s an office …”

I backed away from the pile as Hank made his way to a glass-enclosed office. He shoved a desk end over end, tossed a mattress to the side, and found his target—an electrical box.

The switches Ebelwyn never found, four in all, echoed loudly in succession like church bells tolling the dead. Large round lights, running in spaced intervals down the length of the warehouse ceiling, sputtered to life. Some bulbs popped, some didn’t work at all, but enough blinked on so that the mound in front of us lit up like a Broadway stage from the depths of hell.

As Hank returned to my side, I gestured with my flashlight to the top of the pile. “They’re fresher at the top.”

No need to say more. I think we both understood what we were looking at. A dumping ground, a place to toss the latest victim like they were garbage. Not even buried or hidden. Not even worth that much.

The horror of it made me turn away, and I wondered if I’d ever be able to wash away the smell, if I’d ever get the burn of it out of my nose and throat.

My eyes began to water. “Okay, I’m done.”

“You see those symbols?” Hank asked, not hearing me. “There, on the wall? It’s a charm. Probably to hide the stench. Otherwise, we should’ve been able to smell this place a mile away.”

“What about those?” I pointed to an odd batch of symbols on the opposite wall.

“Not sure. Never seen script like that in vertical rows before. Some of these letters or symbols look like ancient Elysian, but the others …” He shrugged. “Could be Charbydon.”

“Aaron or Rex can probably tell us.” I took out my camera phone and snapped a few photos of the unusual script that also bore echoes of Enochian, Egyptian hieratic, and Aramaic. Definitely odd. Bryn probably knew what this was, too, but the last thing I wanted was to bring my sister into another investigation—the last one, fighting Mynogan and his followers to save my daughter, had nearly killed her, and left her with an addiction to ash that was making her life miserable.

“I’ll call the chief.” Hank walked away, cell in hand.

Our medical examiner, Liz, was going to have a field day with this one. She and her team would need months to sort through the carnage.

From the very beginning, from the moment we learned that six members of the Adonai race had simply vanished, I knew the outcome would be bad. Adonai were the ruling elite of Elysia—some called them divinities or angels, and for good reason. They were the most powerful beings from that heaven-like world; they didn’t just vanish into thin air, not without a fight. Whoever had done this was very powerful—a butcher who, until now, had left no trace of his or her crimes.

Was it carelessness to leave the bodies here like this? Or had the killer wanted us to find them? Or maybe it was just complete and total arrogance. Maybe our perp didn’t give a shit either way, so sure of his power and right to kill that law enforcement really didn’t factor into the equation.

I went to turn away, but a flash of pale skin caught my eye. A hand, palm upturned, on the floor near the edge of the pile. I moved closer.

“Hank!”

I dropped down next to what appeared to be the remains of a female nymph. Her tanned skin was sunken, as though every ounce of moisture and fluid had been sucked from her body. Her dark, wavy hair was matted and held bits of debris, possibly due to a roll from the top of the pile.

Ebelwyn’s nymph.

He must’ve kept his light trained on the ground in front of him, the light beaming on this body first. And then he ran, never knowing what else lurked in the debris pile. His broken flashlight lay nearby.

I grabbed a pair of latex gloves from my inside jacket pocket, pulled them on, and then reached into the front pouch of her thin hooded sweatshirt. A few dollars. A set of keys. A gym ID with her picture and name: Daya Machanna. No purse or wallet that I could see from a quick scan around the body.