I stepped towards the room and slowly opened the door.
Blood splattered the walls and pieces of flesh and muscle littered the floor. In the corner was a creature bent over thebody, slurping up the vampire’s intestines like a long piece of spaghetti.
I watched in avid fascination as he licked his fingers clean, a euphoric hum pouring from his lips.
He had pale, ashen skin and sharp white horns that rose from dirty white hair. His hands were long elegant fingers that ended in sharp white fingernails and his face was sunken lines and sharp angles. He looked like he’d stepped straight out of a nightmare.
I took another step closer, the floorboard creaking under my foot.
Shit.
The creature’s eyes hit mine, and I froze. They were the palest blue, like ice chips caught in the sun. He cocked his head to one side, his eyes narrowing and his gaze assessing.
“Friend?” he asked, his voice a gentle low hiss.
“Not really,” I replied, hoping that honesty was the best policy here. There was a dirty mattress in the corner with a scrap of fabric for a blanket and a metal bucket in the corner.
His eyes narrowed even further. “Enemy?”
“Not unless you make me one.”
A crash came from the next room and the creature’s gaze darted to the wall, a bolt of fear making him flinch.
In all the excitement I’d forgotten about John Brown. I’m surprised he hadn’t run. Fucking idiot.
I pointed to the next room. “I’m going to go and deal with him. Enjoy your… snack and I’ll be back. If you’re still here, I’d like to help.”
He didn’t say anything, just stared at me as I walked slowly out of the room, closing the door softly behind me.
Was that a fucking wendigo?
What the hell was a wendigo doing in Misthaven?
“Everything okay?” Bishop asked, startling me out of my thoughts.
“Yeah. These idiots are holding a wendigo.”
“As in a flesh eating, organ digesting wendigo?”
“Yes. He’s currently eating one of his captors, but I’ll see if he wants help when I’m done with Johnny Boy.” I pushed open the only other closed door left in the hallway and saw John standing on the other side of a table, looking slightly stupefied. There was a pile of burning papers in the fire grate and a couple of open laptops on a desk behind him.
John’s eyes were glassy and his pupils were blown wide, almost overtaking the brown of his irises. He stared at me but made no indication that he was going to move. Something wasn’t right here. There was no way a vampire would just stand there.
“He is coming,” John said, his voice bland and as empty as his eyes.
“Who is coming?” I asked and stepped closer. Still, he didn’t move. He just kept those dead eyes fixed on me.
“The King. He shall come with fire and brimstone, and he shall burn the world.”
What the fuck was this apocalyptic shit? “Who is the king?”
“He shall come with fire and brimstone, and he shall burn the world,” he repeated.
Was that all he could say? Fuck. He’d been compelled, and he was useless. “John, what were you burning in the grate?”
“He is coming. The King is coming. All shall bow at his feet.”
Fuck this. I walked around him as he spewed that biblical sounding shit and grabbed the laptops. Hopefully Bishop would be able to get something useful off them, but why burn the papers and not destroy these? Nothing made sense.