Chapter 2 Cullen's Secrets
He couldn't believe that she was alive.
Cullen, his older brother, hadn't come back from his weekend at the old cabin he insisted on keeping. Ian was irritated that his brother had not picked him up from the airport as planned. He had been gone for three months looking for new art for his galleries and was looking forward to showing off some of his finds. After waiting three days he had had enough, and had driven the four hours to get to Cullen's cabin, which happened to be in the absolute, ass end of nowhere. The cabin had all the lights on and the front door wide open. Cullen was nowhere to be found. There had been no answering hail to his call for his brother, just vague, muffled sounds from below his feet.
As he stepped into the cabin, he was hit with how rustic it appeared. It was rather sparsely decorated with real wood paneling and hardwood floors. Ian was a bit surprised. Cullen had always been very contemporary in his decorating, all clean lines and minimalism. Hell, there was even a stuffed deer head on the wall, looking at him with its glassy eyes. The cabin was small, just a small living room with a woodstove, a galley style kitchen, small bathroom and bedroom. It was not Cullen's style at all.
Eventually he discovered the trap door, closed. The large box full of wood for the large cast iron woodstove had been slid to the side and forward into the room. It was obviously designed to hide the trapdoor. He grabbed the ring, pulled it open and was assaulted by a variety of smells, decay and death primarily. Screaming, insane and repetitive started, sending chills through him.
The room the ladder descended into was something out of a medieval nightmare. The ceiling was higher than he would have thought it would be, and the room was huge, much larger than he would have expected given the size of the cabin. Manacles and chains hung from the ceiling, whips of every description were held on a rack, knives of every variety, sex toys and implements of sexual torture lined the shelves, arranged ever so carefully. One wall was lined with skulls, empty eyed and grinning at him from their carefully arranged places on the shelves. 'My God what the hell is going on here?' he thought, his heart beginning to pound. He continued to take in the room, looking around in shock.
Dark stains of what he could only assume was blood covered the floor and the large, oddly shaped table in the center of the room. The room reeked of decayed flesh and rancid blood. A few steps and further back to the north side of the room he could see a large pentagram gouged into the cement floor. The etchings were filled with a silvery metal, both inside and outside of the circle. It was large enough for even him to lay down spread-eagled and still be inside the circle. There were chained manacles bolted to the floor at strategic places. Ian shivered. It looked like it had been set up for some kind of ritual, with fresh chalk lines and black candles. He didn't go too close. He didn't know much about black magic but what he did know was you didn't go near that kind of thing unless you knew what the fuck you were doing.
"Cullen, what are you doing?" he whispered to himself.
One of the small doors on the west side of the room held the ravening, mindless, screaming remains of a half-turned human. It had a heavy collar around its neck and was securely chained to the wall behind it. He pulled out his handgun and put it out of its misery. Shaking badly, he was surprised that only one shot had been required. The stench was overwhelming and he suppressed the urge to turn and run, back upstairs and into the clean, outside air. Littering the small room were the remains of bones that crunched under his feet. His mind reeled for a moment. Cullen had to know about this. How could he not? His big brother, how could he be involved in this?
A few more steps led him to a second door. This room stank of sour urine, dust, and blood. Here he found the remains of Cullen, stabbed through the heart with one of his own blades. He fell heavily to his knees. The dry, withered remains of his brother were swathed in a black robe with ornate black glyphs on the hem. It was obviously some kind of ritual robe. His rational mind refused to believe what he was seeing. Cullen was responsible for the first room, for the mindless thing in the second, probably for the skulls that lined the shelf and God only knew what else.
His eyes didn't register her at first. Lying on the floor, on the other side of the room, was the nude, broken body of a young woman, his last victim lying in a crumpled heap. It looked like she had been flung there, like a broken doll. She was painfully thin and so battered her skin looked like a patchwork of blue, purple, yellow-green and gray. He had done this, the bruises, the lash marks, the bite marks on her neck, oh God. She had killed Cullen, that was obvious, and then lacked the strength to leave the hell she then died in. Horror rose within him. His hands continued to shake as he covered his face for a moment.
He had killed before, but that was different. This was sick, sadistic, relentless torture and murder. By the look of the skulls, Cullen had been doing this for a very long time. Random, wanton killing was forbidden. It attracted too much attention. This was going to cause more than a scandal.
He heard a faint whimper; she was alive? He crossed the small room and knelt. Bite marks were plain up and down her neck, the insides of her wrists to the elbow, her femoral arteries. She had been whipped, beaten times beyond count, and bled until her skin was pale and drained of any hint of color, and still her heart beat, her body breathed.
Almost without thinking he reached out to check her pulse. With the single touch on her cold skin she had cried out, wordlessly, agonizingly. Her mental pain assaulted him: despair, agony, and a tenacious will to live that was crumbling. Ian jerked back, strengthening his mental shields. It wasn't often that he picked up on other's emotions so easily. He carefully lifted her into his arms. He carried her upstairs and in the strong light of the well-lit cabin she looked like a skeleton covered with skin. She was so light she felt like she would float if he let her go.
She had taken water frantically, gulping it down, moaning in protest when he pulled the glass away. He had been afraid she would choke, or vomit it up if she got too much. He vaguely remembered something about electrolytes. Looking in the fridge, he grabbed a bottle of Gatorade. Rising unbidden was the thought that it was Cullen's favorite flavor. He fed her an entire bottle, making her take it in small sips. He brought another bottle with him into the bathroom. The smell that had permeated her made him sick, reeking of blood, semen, and death. He drew a warm bath. He would get her warm and clean all at the same time.
Ever so carefully, he supported her so she wouldn't drown and tried to clean her without taking the scabs off of her half healed injuries. The water went from clear to black within a minute as he scrubbed off accumulated filth and dried blood from her skin. He had had to change the water three times before he finally got her clean to his satisfaction. Her hair was now clean but very tangled. Her skin was very fair where it wasn't bruised; a sharp contrast to his tanned hands. She also looked young, far too young.
