I froze for a second when I first heard the screams. I know it seemed wrong, someone that had been a police officer for so many decades should not freeze when they hear screams, but it was just instinctual. Kind of like a deer freezing when they hear a noise before running off.
I did recover quickly, wondering what on earth happened in the few minutes since I had left the front door, and decided to go take a look. Whether I was there as the Head of the House or as a human detective, I still needed to know what was going on.
I ran up the creaking stairs and started pounding on the door. "Police! Open up!" I yelled. Stupid instincts. When no one came to open the door, I turned the handle and was surprised to see that it was unlocked. I looked around the foyer and noticed two feet sticking out from the front parlor. I went to them quickly and saw that it was the weird butler laying there, not moving.
"That answers that question," I said out loud to myself, my dark humor coming out. "Can't answer the door if you are dead." I felt his neck just to make sure that there was no heartbeat. Not finding one, I took out my cell.
I called Viktor first. As the enforcer of the Houses, he needed to be here. Luckily for me, he answered on the second ring. "Hello?"
"Hey, there is at least one dead body and a lot of screaming at the House Gypsy. You might want to come and take a look," I said as I quickly glanced around the parlor. Seeing that there was no one else there, I went across the hall into the other room right off the front entrance. It looked like a giant walk-in closet... which would make sense. Once again I did a quick sweep around and, seeing no one there, I continued down the hallway.
"Should I even ask what you are doing there?" asked Viktor. I could hear rustling coming from his end.
"I came to talk to Jenny about taking over as Head, but apparently she was too busy to be able to speak to me." Another room cleared. How many flipping rooms were there on the first floor?!? I hadn't even reached the kitchen yet.
"And what were you doing when you heard the screams?" asked Viktor, this time I could hear car doors slamming. He must be on his way.
"You sound like Mike, I don't appreciate that," I quipped. "And I was outside, looking at their roof," I continued. I was not going to admit to cutting any threads until I figured out what was actually going on. I had a pretty good idea, but that made me even more stressed, so I wasn't going to go there.
"On my way," he gruffed before hanging up the phone.
My next call was to Mike. After giving him a quick rundown and the address, I turned back to clearing the house. There were no other dead bodies on the first floor, and since the screams stopped, I could only assume that I would find more on the second.
Sometimes I scare myself with how right I can be. I quickly ran up the stair to the second floor and found the body of a young woman on the landing. She was face down, and I knew that I wasn't allowed to move her. I pushed aside her dyed black hair and checked her pulse. Like the butler, there was nothing.
I tried to raise my typical level of sympathy for the dead that I had found, but for some reason, I couldn't find it. What I did find was a level of relief that they were dead.
Yup. Since fully freeing my monster last night things just keep getting weirder and weirder.
I forced my thoughts back to the present and the dead body in front of me. I needed to keep going and see if there were any more. Both Mike and Viktor would want answers and I didn't have any that I wanted to give them.
Ignorance was bliss sometimes, and I was going to remain ignorant as long as I possibly could.
I cleared five bedrooms and three bathrooms on the second floor, finding another six bodies. There were four men and two women, and they varied in size and age, but each one had black hair and was face down when I found them. Even after eight bodies, I was still impassive, like this was a good thing.
But death was never a good thing… right? That was what I was taught. Death was never a good thing and those that killed were nothing more than monsters.
I pushed aside the voice of my mother and walked up another set of stairs, this time at the back of the house. This had to be the attic, there was no other possibility.
I knew that this house had a basement. I saw the door leading to it, but I was going to wait until Viktor or Mike and the guys went down first. I might be a monster capable of killing things, but that was a basement! There might be spiders down there or something!
I would check out the potential dead bodies in the attic. Leave the basement and spiders to the men. It's why I kept them around.
I walked slowly up the stairs, wishing that I had my gun on me.
I know that there was probably no one alive up there, I hadn't heard movement since I was in the house, but there is just something comforting about the weight of it in my hand. I had always trained with it when I was clearing rooms at the academy, and I always had it in my hands when I had to clear a house in real life. Not having it in my hands now added to the unsettling feeling that I was having.
I opened the only door at the top of the landing and wished with every fiber of my being that I had waited for the boys before I did it.
And no, there were no spiders waiting for me.