Carnal

Chapter Forty-Five - Smothered Embers

"One, two, three!"

On his count, Jai lifted me over his shoulders and I grabbed the top of the stone wall and pulled myself over it.

"Do you need help getting over?" I asked, looking back down at him from where I was perched atop the wall.

There wasn't time to collect a response before Jai leapt over the wall entirely, landing on his feet on the other side.

"Are you a Lycanthrope or a spider monkey?" I asked sarcastically.

He turned around and held his hands out for me to jump down into and I did so carefully.

"Follow me," he said, leading me through a garden and over to a side entrance.

Using the foliage as cover, we slowly crept over to the side of the temple where a door was being guarded by a man who was looking the other way. I recognized him as being the third man that left the boat with Jacob.

"Is there another way in?" I asked, looking around the courtyard for another door or a window wide enough for us to squeeze through.

I looked over to see Jai pull a knife from his pocket.

"You don't have to watch this if you don't want to," he said.

I didn't say anything as he quickly stood up straight and threw the knife with such force that it knocked the man backwards against the wall as it caught him in the left eye.

I gulped noticing the spray of blood that erupted against the clean white stone of the temple.

We emerged from the cover of the bushes and flowers to walk over to the door which was now blocked by the body of the dead guard.

As gruesome as the sight was, I couldn't tear my eyes away from him.

He looked so familiar.

"Grab his feet," Jai whispered, lifting his torso up off the ground.

I did as I was told and we moved him out from in front of the door to lay in the grass.

As Jai placed him down, it occurred to me where I knew him from.

"He was one of the men who went missing when my grandfather did," I said. "I think his name was Philip."

"That doesn't really surprise me," Jai said, standing. "Now that we know that Weber was actually Zosak and he was working with Jacob, I can imagine that all of those men were turned so they could be recruited into this chaos."

I stood over the bloody corpse feeling somewhat reminiscent of the times when I was blissfully unaware of the world around me, believing I was doing a good thing by trying to find the innocent men who had gone missing like my grandfather.

It felt like it had been years since I was on the floor of Cain's office, papers spread around me as I looked tirelessly for a connection between the missing men.

Nearly two months later, there I was with all of the answers I had searched for—yet somehow, I wished that I was still as oblivious and naïve.

"C'mon," Jai said, pulling me from my trance.

Tearing my gaze away from the dead man in front of me, I turned to follow Jai.

With a one hand on the door handle, Jai turned back to me and held a finger to his lips, ensuring I knew to be quiet.

Did he honestly think I was going to burst into the Habanera when he opened the door?

Jai must have known how pathetic I thought his warning was because he smiled before turning back to the door in front of him and opening it slightly.