I shined the light over them, frowning more and more at each new detail I picked out. These bodies were at least a couple of days old. Did that mean that their killers had been fully infiltrated into the refinery for two days? If one of the dead men was the major, then his impostor could easily have ordered staff changes of any kind. Reassignments, replacements. It’s not like Iran has union reps who can make protests or ask questions.

How deep did the infiltration go? And what was its purpose?

I walked around the mound of dead. The injuries were traumatic. Crushed skulls. Arms and legs torn out of their sockets. Throats savaged.

I took a step forward and my foot crunched down on something. I lifted my foot and looked at what I’d stepped on. Dentures. Big buck-toothed dentures. Or … maybe false teeth is a better word. The Hollywood kind that fit over regular teeth. Like the major’s teeth.

“Oh, crap,” I said, but I was only half surprised.

The major had been an Upier. Had to be. I replayed the fight in the security office. The major had gone down easily, but he’d gone down because Ghost attacked him. Ghost was a white dog—a fetch dog, as far as the Upierczi were concerned—and he was covered in garlic powder. Ghost had eaten some garlic too, and during the fight he’d bitten the major. Garlic was supposed to be fatal, but there might not have been enough of it in Ghost’s saliva for a lethal dose. Instead it had probably weakened the Upier, but not enough to keep him from breaking out of the cuffs. Then he’d killed the other guards and fed on them. Disgusting as that sounds. What had that done for him? Probably like Popeye eating spinach.

As I looked at the corpses, I understood that there had to be a lot of Red Knights here at the refinery, and they’d just started their workday with an O-positive energy drink.

Ghost trembled beside me. I tore my gaze away from the corpses for a moment and looked at my dog. He was cross-trained for all sorts of things including searching for dead bodies, and he doesn’t weigh moral or social implications. He shouldn’t have been scared by this. Excited by blood and the evidence of slaughter, sure, that’s hardwired into his animal brain. But not mass murder. And yet he was clearly terrified. His eyes were huge and rolling as if he was checking every possible line of escape at once, and drool dripped from the corners of his mouth. At the point where his body touched my leg I could feel his heart hammering away at dangerous speeds.