Deeper Than the Knife

Chapter 24- Bloodbath

We were interrupted about an hour later by another one of The Orders lackey. I guess by my own logic, Yukino and I were lackeys too.

"We found a secret door hidden in the up stairs hallway that has a secret staircase leading to a dungeon." The lackey said all in one breath. I'm pretty sure his name was Brian, but I could be wrong.

"What was in the dungeon?" Yukino asked.

Brian looked ready to puke, not very secret-organization-for-runaways lackey kind of material. "Cages, about twenty, big enough to hold one person. If that person stood still upright like a statue that is."

"Were there people in these cages?" I asked. I'm sorry Brian, but I was getting impatient.

"Yeah." I gestured for him to continue. "Fifteen teenage girls in only bra's and underwear, plus five dead girls."

"What?" I whispered-yelled. "Any you left them there?" 

"No!" Brian whispered-yelled back. "Two of our groups went down there to let them out and get them to safety. Another group went with my partner to find the location of where the auction is being held." 

I looked at Yukino and asked, "ready to kill some rich people?"

"Hell yes." 

We followed Brian through the mansion looking for another possible hidden entrance, running up and down the stairs over and over again as we doubled and tripled check the upstairs and downstairs areas. We got a message from the group that had stayed behind to help the captives that they had gotten all fifteen living girls out safely and were leaving the mansion. That was good and all, but we hadn't gotten an update from the others and Brian was a complete mess by the time we found the entrance that lead to the basement.

Yukino pulled out our weapons from under her dress and gave me my kusarigama. The entrance wasn't hidden very well, it was located to the right of the ballroom at the end of the hallway. Just turned out to be a very long hallway. I knew our fellow lackeys had been here by the 'TOS' marked on the door. Other than that, there were no signs of the three other members.

Since rich people seemed to love wearing terrible smelling perfume, there was a strong scent of said perfume coming from behind the door. I don't know if Yukino or Brian could smell it but I definitely could and I suddenly wished I didn't have such a good sense of smell.

"Based on the amount of perfume fumes in the air, there's at least fifty people down there." I said, pinching my nose to stop the smell. It didn't work.

"We could freeze them all," Yukino offered. 

"But Kimi and the others are probably down there." Brian said. I was starting to assume Kimi was more than just his partner in this mission, something about the way he said her name gave it away.

"He's right," I said, "we can't do anything rash." I looked Yukino directly in the eye to send a not-so-secret message. "One of us should go down first to see what's going on and report back."

"I'll do it." Brian offered rather quickly.

"Got any stealth training?" I asked.

"Don't worry, I'm from a family of ninjas." I wanted to high five him. I didn't. "If I'm not back in twenty minutes, seal this entrance."

Yukino and I looked at him like he was insane.

"Um, no," I said.

"We're going in." Yukino finished. 

Brian smiled as he pulled two small knives from his tux sleeves. I was weirdly reminded of Jake when he did that. "That's nice of you two, but we can't risk these guys escaping and continuing this somewhere else." He did have a good point. "You'll seal the door, evacuate the guests, then burn this place to ash and ruble." I was all for burning the creepy mansion to the ground, but not if our men were still inside, dead or alive. Brain looked at me, "you are from the Hi no ōkami Clan, aren't you?"