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“That said, please warn me what I’m stepping into first.” Her brown eyes cut to Jon, a twinkle of mirth in them. “I never know with this one.”

I said polite hellos, which Lachlan echoed.

That seemed to be our cue, so I opened the trunk door. I chose to take one suitcase with me, as no matter how this shook out, at least half of its contents were about to come in very handy. Lachlan grabbed the other, Donovan grabbing the salt and bucket filled with spray bottles. Jon and Gaines led the way, opening doors for us, and the second the front door opened, my nose fled for greener pastures. God, it was rank in here. An abandoned butcher shop would smell better than this. No wonder a neighbor had called in!

The tiled foyer wasn’t too bad, although I did see traces of blood here and there, but the further in we went, the more of a horror show it became. Had they just willy-nilly killed people? Eaten them while sitting on the couches? Truly, this was insane. They were going to have to burn the house down and start over—in fact, I’d recommend they do so. They’d never get the stench out otherwise.

We kept going, unfortunately, and down basement stairs. The basement was well lit, at least, I’d been in worse. Huge, too, the size of the upstairs, and was clearly set up to be an entertainment area. Or had been, until someone used it to stockpile the macabre. Was that a whole shelving unit of brains? Oh my god, what the fuck!

I couldn’t help but voice, “This isn’t the work of one man.”

“Oh, no, he has accomplices,” Jon said, glancing over his shoulder as he spoke. “I could see it in his lines. He’s not admitting to anything currently. It’s why I’m going to interview him after this.”

Donovan’s shoulders shook with evil snickers. “He’s going to regret staying.”

Curious, I asked, “Why?”

“Oh, you don’t want to piss my husband off,” he answered with a wicked grin of pure anticipation. “Jon will keep certain things in confidence right up until you piss him off. Then he tells all. It’s so, so much better if you can at least control the narrative, but most perps can’t seem to figure that out in time. Makes for a good show and looong sentences.”

I bet. For that matter, I bet watching Jon dissect someone visually was a pretty entertaining show. Maybe I could wrangle getting in there once to watch him in action. Well, I might need to anyway, just so I could completely grasp how his ability worked.

Shaking the thought off, I followed Jon around the corner into a back room of the basement and that’s where I found my problem child.

The sight of it almost made me regret my early lunch.

“Kuso,” I bit off, truly disturbed.

A warm hand came to rest at the small of my back, a silent signal from my fiancé that he was right there, an assurance I was heartily grateful for.

“Spell it out for us, leannan,” Lachlan said quietly.

“Jon, unfortunately, our initial theory seems to be correct. That is a living power bank, and those little glowing circles crammed around it really are mini portals, feeding energy from a living person into the pool.”

Everyone groaned, no one happy to hear this, and I wanted to cry. This was going to be madness to undo.

Officer Gaines shuffled in closer to my other side. “Why? I mean, what’s it supposed to do?”

“I think they were building up to something.” I released the suitcase to walk around the power bank, keeping a careful five feet at all times. The damn thing really was trying to suck in any nearby living energy. The poor corpse laying nearby was a testament—he’d gotten too close and paid the ultimate price for it. “It’s closed off right now, charging. Like a phone plugged in, not in use, but with the potential of it. Fortunately for us, otherwise this would go from hairy-scary to Doomsday real quick. What they intended to do with it, god knows. I can tell you, it probably wouldn’t have worked, whatever it was. This is way too much power to handle.”

I paused at the other side of the bowl and stared for a long moment. The portals were very neatly done, each one about the size of a silver dollar, and how the hell had he managed to stack them on top of each other? Normally, if portals touched, they did really unpredictable things—meld together, destroy each other, or reverse directions. These, though, were very steady and without any signs of fluctuation. And there were easily a hundred. Good god. Huh. It’s almost like the source of the portals weren’t here at all, but were instead somewhere completely else and we were only looking at the tail end—ahh, actually, that made sense. The initiation of the portal was done on the sacrifice, no doubt. Smart. Also puzzling. With that much blood pouring into the basin, you’d think the patients would be dead within a day, but somehow it was like the blood was just a tether? Was I seeing that right? There was something really funky going on here and I couldn’t quite sort it out with eyesight alone.

Really hated that the psychic behind this was so clever. He could have used his talent for so much good and instead, this was what he’d chosen. Fucker.

Blowing out a breath, I sank onto my haunches and looked at the base of the bowl. Then winced. Yeah, that was what I’d expected. The collection of energy pooled downwards, into that very interesting power column covered in glyphs. God, I didn’t even know how to undo the damn thing. I’d absolutely call Elio in a minute.

“Problem is two fold.” I stood again, warily keeping an eye on it as I came to stand near Jon. “First, the source of the portals is with the victims, not here. It’s why they’re able to be stacked without the portals destroying the fabric of reality.”

Jon winced. “God, there’s a visual. Second part?”

“That damn power column. With the way it’s being fed live energy, even just coming within range of it will suck you right in and you’ll be dead before you can get a hand on it.”

Donovan pointed to the body. “That what happen to him?”

“Correct, he didn’t protect himself and his life force got drained. I can feel it trying to drain my energy too, I’m going to have take serious precautions.”

Whistling low, Donovan muttered, “Glad no one tried to touch it.”

“Truly, thank you for exercising your common sense and calling me. It’s why I’m saying the creator wouldn’t have been able to do anything with it, though. I’m pretty sure trying would have killed them.” I had a thought or three on how to handle that power column but I’d definitely ask Elio first. He’d come across something like this before and why guess when I didn’t have to? “Jon, I hate to say this, but we’re going to have to do this in the reverse. I can’t axe the connection here. I’ll endanger everyone in the room including me even trying, and the odds of it blowing up in our faces are unfortunately very high. It would also kill the people attached to those portals. The backfire of energy will stop their hearts and no amount of CPR will revive them.”