With Presley tended to and on the mend, Claudia’s mind returned back to the worry for her family. Taking off from the chaos of the field, she ran into the Manor, lungs aching from the heavy burn of the smoke and heat as she took the steps up to the third floor two at a time.
When she neared Victoria’s room and saw the door closed over, but off its hinges, her gut dropped. Adrenaline spiking her heart rate, she braced herself and her tired magic with one hand raised as she forced open the door and took in the scene inside.
The smell hit her first. Iron and metal assaulted her nose while her eyes took in the bloodbath of red, and in the middle of it all, Elias -- the former wolf Beta -- his head at an angle too unnatural to be misleading.
Claudia’s stomach rolled, her mouth filling with saliva as she was suddenly reminded of the last time she saw this much blood, this much carnage, and she had to turn away and close her eyes to make sure she didn’t add bile to mess that would need to be cleaned up later.
It was only when she looked away that the glitter of small crystals on the carpet caught her attention. Bending down, she carefully pressed the pad of her ring finger to the small bits, quickly wiping them off on her pants when the crystals began to sting and sear at her skin. Salt.
Goddess, Elias really had come to kill Victoria. Clearly, he’d failed, but there was so much blood.....
She left the room and headed for her Aunt Brigid’s next. With a whimper in the back of her throat, she caught her hands over her mouth, eyes watering at the scene before her. Somehow the lack of a body was so much worse when there was this much blood and destruction and no one to account for it. Drywall cracked, that awful, awful whip unraveled on the floor and yet ---
--- Aurora. Her door seemed intact when Claudia sprinted there next and her knuckles rapped on the door quickly, panicked, half tempted to knock this one off its hinges in her desperate attempt to find out what the hell had happened to the rest of her family.
“Aurora? Victoria? Goddess, are you in there??”