“How many more floors has this building got?” I asked as we carefully made our way back to the stairwell.

“Two,” Sam said, “including the rooftop.”

“And the cloaks?”

“If there are any more around, they’re certainly not moving.”

“Which hopefully means the rest of the bastards are dead rather than just smelling like it.” Jackson thrust open the stairwell door and looked up. “All clear.”

We made our way up to the next level, and with every step the stench increased, until it felt like we were breathing in a cesspit. The sphere of light cast orange shadows across the bare concrete walls, highlighting the long strings of cobwebs and sending all the spiders, except for the daddy longlegs, skittering away. There was nothing else here, nothing that gave any hint as to why that smell was so bad. Not that I really wanted a hint. Hell, I’d be more than happy to simply retreat and leave whatever it was alone. But I rather suspected neither PIT nor Rinaldo would appreciate such a move.

The next door was locked. Jackson hit it with fire, melting the mechanism with a little more finesse than he’d used previously. The door swung open, and the stench immediately became a million times worse.

“I really didn’t think we’d ever find anything that smelled worse than the decaying cloaks,” he said, slapping a hand over his nose. “But for fuck’s sake, this is vile.”

Which was vastly underdescribing it, in my opinion. I’d never, in all my years of existence, smelled anything that came near the stench coming from this floor. Not even during the years when the Black Death was at its peak and the putrid corpses were tossed into the streets like any other rubbish.

This wasn’t just the stench of diseased or rotting flesh; it was also thick with the smell of ammonia and shit.

Swallowing heavily and trying not to breathe too deeply, I quickly spun more energy into the sphere and sent its light across the heavy darkness.

What it revealed was as gruesome as the smell.

The entire floor was a vast sea of human remains—not whole remains, but bits and pieces. There were decaying heads piled up in mounds and entrails hanging from the metal ceiling struts. Bones were scattered everywhere, many of them bearing teeth marks but all of them clean picked.

“I think we just discovered one of the feeding pits for the cloaks,” Jackson said. “Although it could also be a rather awesome horror-movie set.”

I took a couple of steps into the room, but stopped when the carpet began to squelch underfoot. I really, really, didn’t want to know what the black liquid that oozed away from my weight was.

“This wasn’t always a feeding pit. Not initially, anyway.” I pointed at the nearest bones. “They’re human. The ones in the sewers were mostly animals.”