Page 69 of Hell’s Weapon

We nearly make it to the stairwell before Seffy calls out and joins us. Rio is with her too, even though his room is on the floor below. No one questions it as we start descending the stairs, the motion sensor lights flicking on.

Outside we’re met with the acrid smell of burning flesh and smoke and I almost coil back into the panic I’ve only just managed to tamper down. Wyatt’s hand pulls me into his body, keeping me in the present.

Tacita turns away from the residential blocks and heads to the side of the main sprawl of teaching rooms. It looks like nothing is amiss from the front but as we round the corner of the building, the sight that greets us is something out of a horror movie.

Part of the building has been blown out, one of the rooms on the second floor by the looks. There are body parts littering the concrete in front of it, tangled amongst brickwork, plaster, and who knows what else. Fire redder than I’ve ever seen licks out of the gaping hole in the building, and smoke plumes twist up into the night sky.

“Move.” Officer Blake’s voice booms from behind us. He barges through, a black panther hot on his heels.

More officers appear and we’re quickly pushed back as they get the scene under control. Another one of the guards appears, his horns and wings on display.

I’m not sure I’ll ever be used to seeing the supernatural.

“What happened?” the male demon asks. “I was doing a flight patrol when I heard the explosion.”

“Looks like one of the teams picked the wrong artifact,” a female guard, standing as a barrier between us and the chaos, replies.

“Bloody hellfire. I didn’t realise the explosives were going to be so destructive. I thought we were under attack.”

The female laughs. “Yeah, I think Derran might be given the night shift for the foreseeable. Though, Zephyr should’ve known Dragons never go small when it comes to fire.”

They both laugh.

I don’t know how to process this. We were warned the games were deadly, but this is insane.

“I think the whole team is dead,” another guard calls from where they’d been piling the bodies. “There’s at least five, possibly six.”

We watch on until the fire gets put out and dawn light starts creeping into the sky. Wyatt and Tacita are quiet beside me. Wyatt tried to get us to leave when some of the others returned to the dorms, bored now they’d seen the commotion. But Tacita had refused. She watched each movement carefully, like she was committing everything to memory.

It was only when the guards started moving the bodies to wherever they were storing them–or burying them I guess–that she broke concentration and all three of us headed back to our room. Wyatt stayed with us without any further discussion.

“Did you see it?” she asks as the door clicks closed, shutting us away from everything once more.

“See what?” Wyatt replies. His hand hasn’t left mine and he pulls me down onto my bed as he collapses onto it himself.

“The weapon they removed. It was a gun.”

“Oh, yes. A subcompact semi-automatic pocket pistol. A bit of a waste of product really, it's for total amateurs.”

Tacita rubs the skin just above her brows with a thumb and forefinger. “Yes, but it was one of the weapons we were discussing. That was the incorrect guess made that cost that team their lives.”

Ripping my hand from Wyatt’s so I can sign, my brain clicks back into action. “Yes. The wife of the lynch pin was given a gun as a present. It probably knocks her off the suspect list.”

“I agree. There must be a connecting player we’re missing. Not just an outlier. We need those additional files.”

“But we don’t know who has them,” Wyatt muses.

“I want to know which ones the team that just got incinerated had.”

“I saw numbers Eight, Thirty-Two, and Eighty-Nine.” I sign.

“Ninety, Twenty-Six and Thirteen were the others,” Tacita adds.

“Thirteen?” Wyatt sounds shocked.

“Yeah, the female from the top floor of the other building. Oh wait, she was one of your groupies wasn’t she?” Tacita doesn’t hide the distaste from her voice.

“Yes, and she was a decent lass.”