“So then I got on the Xbox and played some Minecraft. Aite watched, I think she likes the sound of the blocks being placed.” “Mm,” Lysander hummed, “Build anything good?” “Not at all. But! I’ve got seven dogs and three cats now, so I’m pretty pleased.”

“Well,” he began, turning himself around so he could press his back against Lysander’s chest. “I facetimed Hallie while I ate dinner, but then she had to do homework so we had to get off cause I’m ‘distracting’.” Lysander could agree with her on that at least.

“No…” he breathed with a heavy sigh, “Not yet. I just… will you talk about something else? And I’ll listen?” Max gave him a soft smile, reaching out to press his thumb to a bottom lip Lysander hadn’t realized was trembling. “What do you wanna hear about?” “Anything… what did you do tonight?”

Lysander could only nod. ‘Bad night’ didn’t even begin to explain it really. “Wanna talk about it?”

Wordlessly, he put a cigarette between his husband’s lips, flicking the lighter for him, resting his chin on his knees as he watched him pull in a long drag. “Bad night?” he asked quietly when Lysander had exhaled, smoke curling up towards the ceiling.

Max returned before he could do that though, setting a candle and a pack of cigarettes on the edge of the sink before he stripped out of his own clothes. “Scoot,” he told him, Lysander moving to make room in the tub.

He didn’t want to be by himself right then, didn’t want to have to hear his own thoughts. Sinking further down into the water, he contemplated holding his head below the surface. Maybe that would quiet his mind, racing a million miles an hour.

The water was scalding, but that was exactly what he had wanted—something to burn away everything that had touched his skin in that house. “I’ll be back in a second,” Max told him quietly, Lysander frowning as he left the bathroom.

Instead, he turned and pressed his forehead to Max’s shoulder. “I need a bath,” he muttered, voice barely more than a whisper. “Okay,” Max answered, hand in his hair the way Lysander had been waiting all night for, “Want me to come?” He nodded.

“No sleep meds?” he asked when Lysander had finished his pharmacy's worth of prescriptions. Lysander shook his head. He wanted to sleep, but he didn’t think he was ready for the nightmares that would come with it.

His collection of pill bottles was no longer locked away, but he knew his brother counted them religiously. A painkiller for his knee, an antidepressant, an antianxiety, a migraine med, a mood stabilizer Dr. Lindsey was having him try; he took them one at a time, Max’s eyes on him all the while.

He lifted his arms but Lysander put a finger up to hold him off. He needed to do something first, Max watching him kick off his boots before following him to the kitchen.

Max was waiting in the living room when Lysander finally pushed the front door open after what felt like a thousand years since he had last been there. Ren had probably texted him to be ready.

i hate this game

Lysander held his stare. He knew deep down it was exactly what he had wanted to hear all night, and he could see Ren knew that as well. Still, he rolled his eyes as he turned. “I expect a full report when you get home.” “Yeah, yeah, whatever you say, just go.”

Ren came from around the side of the house to join them in the driveway. “No pets, no one else inside,” he reported. And then he looked a little closer at his brother and let out a tired breath. “You go home first. We’ll finish up here.” “I don’t need to—” “Just go.”

“They went to a friend’s house. Their grandma’s sending someone to pick them up in the morning.” He nodded, raising a brow as his demolitions expert skipped over to them giddily. “What?” “It’s just such a big house!” Reese exclaimed, “You never let me set fires this big!”

“What’d you do with the girls?” Lysander asked, watching the clean up team stack bodies in the garage as Reese set up her charges. It wouldn’t be the first time the Wetherby home burnt to the ground, but it would be the last.

He looked to his brother then. “If Max asks, I tried to work this out peacefully.” Ren nodded. “What are you—?!”

Glancing over his shoulder, he met Miranda’s eyes and she nodded. “You two come with me,” she told them, the girls glancing warily at their parents before letting Miranda lead them out of the room.

“Why did you—” “They don’t need to see what’s going to happen in here,” Lysander answered before Alivia could even finish her question. “I might enjoy killing more than I should, but not when it’s children. Children who don’t even know what kind of monsters the rest of their family are.”

The girls shared a confused glance. “Did you know this house had a basement?” he asked, their eyes widening when they realized he was talking to them. Slowly, they shook their heads, and Lysander shook his head as well. “I hadn’t thought so.”

The youngest gasped, grip on her sister’s arm tightening. Lysander shook his head. “I promised my husband before I came here that I’d try to ‘talk things out’ before killing you. He’s pretty opposed to needless violence, you see, but… the more I think about the things I saw in that basement…”

Lighting a cigarette, Lysander sighed. “What do you want?” Nicolas demanded, watching him take a slow drag and hold it a moment before he exhaled equally as leisurely. “What do I want?” Lysander repeated, flicking ash onto the rug. “What I really want is to kill you here and now.”

Gino opened his mouth and Lysander raised a hand to stop him. “No, the adults are talking now, you’re annoying me.” “How dare—?!” “𝘎𝘪𝘯𝘰.” For the first time in what seemed to be his entire life, Gino fell silent.

The boy grinned. “And what’s your name—?” “Gino,” his father snapped, “enough.” Lysander tutted disapprovingly, inspecting chipped black nail polish as he did. “No proper security and no leash on your children either. What 𝘥𝘰 you have around here, Nicolas?”

He didn’t wait for confirmation, continuing on like there couldn’t possibly be a person alive that didn’t want to hear his rambling. “I was impressed, actually, I didn’t think that coward would ever find the balls to even try, much less 𝘴𝘶𝘤𝘤𝘦𝘦𝘥—” “His name is Anatoly,” Miranda cut in flatly.

Nicolas sneered. “It is not—” “You’d think something escaping that basement would have told you it needed tightened, but I guess not.” The man paused, but it was his son who answered first, huffing a laugh as he smirked. “You found that little lab rat then, I guess?”

“Security's pretty shit around here,” Lysander informed them as their eldest child finally crashed into the room, the same mix of furious confusion on his face that had been on his father’s, like he couldn’t even fathom the idea of someone daring to break in.

Lysander bit the inside of his cheek but otherwise remained stone faced. He refused to give the man the satisfaction of a reaction. He should have known people so disgusting were related to Enoch somehow though. “Before my brother put a bullet between his eyes, yes.”

The smile that spread across the man’s face was vicious, knowing, and punctuated by razor sharp fangs where his canines should have been. “Enoch’s plaything, I assume?”

“Who are you?” Alivia spat, tone venomous, “Who do you think you are breaking in here—?!” “He’s a Pickingill,” her husband interrupted calmly, Alivia falling silent in an instant. Lysander gave a singular nod.

“That won’t be necessary,” Lysander told him, “Or possible.” The two held his stare, neither backing down or breaking eye contact. Until their daughters stumbled into the room, half asleep but obviously alarmed by the noises.

The first to appear was of course Nicolas Wetherby, his wife close behind him. Ren’s gun in his face kept him from entering very far into the room, but it didn’t stop him from frowning in aggravation, turning to his wife. “Alivia, call for security.”

Getting people’s attention was something Miranda had always been good at, even if sometimes she didn’t want to be. This time though, she was more than happy to cause a ruckus, grinning from ear to ear as she threw heavy antiques through windows, glass shattering deafeningly. "You see that one?!"

But first he had to take care of the people responsible for this. “We’re good for plan A,” he told the backup listening at the other end of his earpiece.

He needed out of that basement with a desperation that clawed at his insides. He needed to get away from it, to scrub the smell from himself till his skin was raw and a fresh layer had to replace it. He needed to lay down in bed with his husband’s fingers in his hair.

A dingy wooden bed was pressed into the corner, a small table beside it holding candles and books. Dried blood spilled across the floor, smeared on the walls. He didn’t have to guess who the occupant had been. “I’ve seen all I need to,” Lysander muttered, the other two nodding.

“Is that a fucking crib?” Ren whispered. It was empty, but it was a baby’s bassinet all the same. Across from it was the only other furnished cell.

There in that basement, it was overwhelming, pressing in on him from every angle, trying to choke the air from his lungs. Death hung heavy through every cell. Innumerable lives had been lost there.

Lysander didn’t have to look to know what was there; he could sense death, a body rotting. It was a power Vultus had taught him in his training, to feel out the difference between life and death, the gentle slope that separated the two.

“Is it wrong to say this isn't as bad as I expected?” Miranda asked, breath catching on a gag when she peaked into the last cell on the right. “Nevermind, it’s worse, don’t look in that one.”

The lock clicked, door creaking open readily when he turned the knob. “Oh…”

He bit down hard on the inside of his cheek until his mouth tasted of rust, kneeling to pick the lock of the door at the bottom of the stairs. This was not the same basement, but the more he tried to remind himself of that fact the more familiar everything felt.

Descending the stone staircase, the stench worsened. It was hot, like rot and mildew mixing together. Everything about it tried to drag him back to that month he’d spent with Enoch.

Lysander wrinkled his nose. The air was pungent for some reason, only getting worse when the bookshelf shut behind them and trapped it inside. He pointed to a spiderweb at the top of the steps and Ren kicked it away. “This has got to be the creepiest thing we've ever done,” he muttered.

“Goddamn…” Miranda muttered, eyeing the old chandelier hung from the stone ceiling. “This is a fucking one eighty from the rest of the place.” “Sash said everything but the basement had been demolished,” Ren reminded her, glancing down the staircase cautiously.

This one was empty, the bed made up nicely and surfaces lacking any character to show who the room belonged to. A bookshelf sat against one of the walls.

The next room was a home theater, an indoor basketball court just past that. Lysander had to roll his eyes. Some people had too much money to know what to do with it. Across the hall from the basketball court though was another bedroom.