Chapter 86: A Night in a Mansion Full of Assassins (2)

The blonde, with a perverse smile drawn across her face and her eyes still burning with an energy that didn’t seem normal, grabbed one of the assassins without any care. She threw him over her shoulder as if he barely weighed anything and carried him out of the room.

The door closed behind her with a dull thud, and the room was once again dominated by Kanary’s heavy breathing, the smell of blood, and the uncomfortable silence of those still there, far too tense to relax.

Veronica didn’t understand anything. She simply remained silent beside the blue-haired girl. “(That lunatic is strange… I hope she knows what she’s doing… At least you’re here, so I guess she does.)”

The cat girl leaned slightly over the bed and studied her friend’s pale face. Kanary was still unconscious, her forehead damp and her chest rising and falling awkwardly, but at least she was still breathing, and that was enough to hold onto.

The assassin who remained in the room laughed and said, “So that bitch survived after all… Doesn’t matter, she won’t last long…”

The man’s laughter sounded dirty, bitter, and far too confident for someone who was still tied up on the floor. Veronica immediately turned her head toward him, and the rage she had been holding back since the dining room finally found a clear target.

Veronica, furious, approached the man with every intention of beating him to death to vent her anger.

Her steps were short, hard, and direct. She didn’t think much about whether Lucian would agree or if Ebony would approve of her breaking the man’s face. At that moment she only wanted to release all the fear, anguish, and helplessness that had piled up inside her.

The man, with a defiant look and sweat on his forehead, said, “You can still run, savage. You can leave here and pretend none of this happened. No one knows you’re here, only us… It’s your chance to live.”

Despite the challenging tone, the sweat running down his forehead and the stiffness in his jaw told another story. Veronica noticed it immediately. The man was still provoking her, yes, but fear had already begun to crawl beneath his skin.

The cat girl, just about to strike the assassin’s face, stopped when a loud noise echoed.

The sound came from another part of the same floor, sharp and violent, as if something heavy had been dragged or slammed against a wall. Veronica froze, her fist still half raised, staring toward the door.

Laughter began to echo from another room. It was loud and shrill, like a maniac’s. Then suddenly, a scream followed.

The first laugh alone was enough to make her skin crawl. She recognized it instantly. It was Ebony’s voice, but twisted by a strange joy, exaggerated, almost sickening. Then the scream came, and the atmosphere in the room changed completely.

Torn screams could be heard from a man begging for mercy. Minutes passed without a single word from either the cat girl or the bound assassin, because the screams would only stop long enough for laughter to take their place, and then more screams.

Veronica slowly lowered her arm. Any desire to strike the prisoner evaporated as she listened to that unbearable cycle of pleas, laughter, and howls. Even the assassin tied to the floor stopped pretending to be brave and remained rigid, breathing with difficulty.

Time seemed to stretch inside the room. Kanary remained asleep, unaware of everything, while Veronica stood beside the bed, unsure whether to go out, intervene, or remain still pretending none of it was happening.

After nearly half an hour, the screams stopped, and Ebony’s voice echoed clearly throughout the place.

“If you want to die that badly, beg harder, you miserable bastard. Yes, yes! That’s it, beg! HA HA HA HA!”

The voice traveled down the hallway and entered the room with disturbing clarity. Veronica felt a tight knot in her stomach, and the assassin against the wall pressed himself even flatter to the floor, as if he wanted to sink into the stone.

Suddenly a loud crash sounded, like a piece of furniture being smashed, and then an overwhelming silence.

That silence was worse than the screams. It weighed on the room in a thick, unpleasant way. Veronica stared at the door without looking away, and for the first time that night she felt real fear about seeing Ebony return.

Ebony then came back to Kanary’s room. She had a manic smile and sweat covering her forehead.

She walked back with impossible calm, as if she had just finished some ordinary task and not something that had left half the mansion trembling. Sweat ran down her face, but she didn’t seem tired, only strangely satisfied.

But what drew the most attention from those present was her body completely covered in blood. Not a single inch of her clothing was clean.

The blood wasn’t just splattered on her. It coated her entirely. It stained her neck, arms, chest, legs, and even parts of her blonde hair. It looked as if she had bathed inside a bucket of red.

And on her shoes were pieces of flesh, apparently pink, crushed into a paste.

Veronica looked away for a moment when she noticed that detail. She didn’t want to think about where that mass stuck to the sole had come from. Nor did she want to ask how much of what she had heard had been real.

“Now it’s your turn. I hope you scream nicely,” the blonde said as she approached the assassin.

Ebony’s voice sounded cheerful, light, almost playful, and that made it much worse. The assassin watched her approach with widening eyes, as if he had finally understood the size of the problem.

“No, no, no, no, no… Please, please, please! I’ll talk, I’ll talk, I swear, just don’t do anything to me!”

Trembling with fear, the man in his thirties was on the verge of crying.

The reaction was immediate and complete. All the arrogance from a few minutes earlier vanished instantly. The man began speaking before Ebony had even finished crouching in front of him, dragging words, breath, and saliva together in the same desperate plea.

Veronica swallowed as she looked at her friend in such a grotesque state.

Even so, she said nothing. She remained beside the bed, one hand near Kanary and the other stiff on her skirt, listening as the assassin began spilling information with a terror-driven urgency.

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.

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After an hour Lucian and Daniel returned to Kanary’s room. On their way they saw bloody footprints shaped like shoes, which worried them greatly.

When they opened the door the atmosphere was still heavy, with the same smell of blood and the same silence of death.

Ebony was sitting beside the bed, still covered in blood while resting her fist under her chin, forcing herself to think despite her headache.

She looked calm, but that calm did nothing to make the scene less disturbing because of all the blood staining the floor where she had walked and the chair where she now sat.

In one corner the two assassins were gagged and unconscious. The one Ebony had taken earlier didn’t appear to have suffered any visible injuries, at least not from the outside, and that only made everything more uncomfortable and confusing.

“What happened here? Did they tell you anything?” Lucian asked, remaining in the doorway. Daniel stayed beside him, stunned by the scene. No one seemed injured, and yet that amount of blood was inhuman.

“Yep, they sang like little birds. Though they’re just pawns. Honestly nothing important, just something about more assassins coming tonight. Since these idiots failed, they’ll send the heavy hitters next.”

“I see. In that case I suppose we’ll need to set up defenses… And are you alright? That’s a lot of blood on you. Were you hurt?” Lucian asked, worried but not stepping any closer.

“Nah, don’t worry. In fact, from what they said we’ll have two extra corpses soon,” Ebony said coldly, as if she were mentioning a minor detail and not something serious.

Lucian stepped forward along with Daniel, both cautiously watching Ebony in that state, wondering if she had lost her mind.

“I don’t think there’s any need to kill them. If they already talked, we can take them to prison or execute them publicly. I’m sure the Melian family would appreciate that.”

Lucian spoke firmly, though there was fatigue in his voice, as if he were clinging to a cleaner way to end the night.

“Oh? Who said the corpses would be those two?” Ebony said, raising an eyebrow.

The question left a brief silence among those present, short but strange enough that no one reacted in time.

Because a moment later Veronica dropped from above with two knives, driving them cleanly into the hearts of Lucian and Daniel.

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