The ribs of monsters hung from kitchen hooks. The cook picked up a butcher knife from the cutting board and offered it to Lu Li.
"We brought our own," Anna said, holding up her own knife. The cook muttered sothing as he put his away, grumbling about pretentious aristocratic rituals and the like.
"You two can handle the ingredients, and I'll prepare the sauce," Anna said.
The cook and the owner exchanged a glance and nodded, eagerly turning their attention to the ribs on the cutting board.
Now they stood with their backs to Lu Li and Anna, completely defenseless.
Thump-thump!
Two quick, muffled thuds sounded in the kitchen, their noise dampened by the wooden door to the main hall.
The Spirit Gun had dissolved the two anomalies as if with holy water from the legends, leaving only two slowly cooling bodies behind. Cleaning up now was out of the question. Anna dragged them behind a shelving unit, out of imdiate sight for anyone who might enter.
"There must be prisoners here," Anna said, her gaze falling on a massive wooden door in the corner. "In the basent?"
"Let's deal with the guests first," Lu Li replied. He took a folded apron from a shelf, put it on, and tied it behind his back.
Anna ca over and took the apron strings from him. "This is risky. I should be the one."
"You have another task," Lu Li said, nodding toward the cutting board. "Create an appetizing aroma."
Making food delicious required skill, but making it sll good was far simpler.
Anna nodded, deftly tied Lu Li's apron, and found a piece of beef in the corner that wouldn't unnerve him.
Ten minutes later, the kitchen door swung open. A cloud of fragrant steam enveloped the dark-haired figure in the doorway.
The patrons in the hall all lifted their heads at once, inhaling the tantalizing scent that made them swallow hard.
"Who wants a taste?" Lu Li asked, calmly surveying the room.
Forgetting all restraint, the guests raised their hands in unison.
"There are enough ribs for everyone," Lu Li announced, choosing a "lucky" patron and leading him into the kitchen.
The door closed, and a minute later, it opened again.
"Who's next?" Lu Li's calm deanor made the kitchen behind him seem anything but a trap.
He chose a delighted guest, and the door closed behind them once more.
One by one, the guests entered the kitchen and vanished. When only two remained in the hall, what little humanity they possessed finally sensed that sothing was terribly wrong.
"Where did the others go?" one of the remaining patrons demanded, staring at Lu Li in the doorway.
"Inside. Would you like to take a look?"
The reply ca in the sa imperturbable tone. For so reason, that placid face was like a roiling undercurrent, sending a shiver through them, as if they were facing an anomaly... But that was ridiculous! They were anomalies themselves!
"Hey, you!" The patron's voice trembled with an inexplicable anxiety. "Where is everyone?"
There was no answer.
Then Lu Li turned and called into the kitchen, "Anna, co out."
Only two guests remained—they could be dealt with directly.
When Anna appeared, knife in hand and shrouded in a sinister aura, the guests cried out in horror, "You killed them?!"
"Th-that's against the rules..."
"It's perfectly within the rules."
Lu Li replied, unfastening his holster. As he walked past the candelabras in the hall, he blew out the candles one by one.
The hall plunged into semi-darkness, hiding the scene from any outside observers. The fire in the hearth flickered, casting bizarre shadows. Anna tossed the last body in with the other seven, then scanned the room, searching for where the bony tentacles had hidden themselves.
"Behind the door," Anna said, pointing Lu Li toward the kitchen door. A freshly nailed board was clearly visible on it.
She found so tools, pried the board loose, and peered into the darkness. A rustling sound ca from within.
Anna began dragging the bodies over. Like flies to a carcass, the bony tentacles surged toward the gap. They tore noisily at the wall, widening the opening, and pulled the bodies into the darkness as if on a conveyor belt.
The crowded kitchen was quickly emptied. The tentacles vanished back into the crack like a closing flower bud. Lu Li took an oil lamp that was hanging on the door, lit it with a brand from the hearth, and descended into the basent with Anna.
Their footsteps echoed in the cool darkness. Anna caught the scent of blood in the basent's damp air, but that was to be expected. The people the owner kept here were rely a source of blood.
However, the scene was more horrific than she had imagined. Dark pools of blood stained the basent floor. Naked figures lay inside three cramped iron cages. The bad news was that the chests of two of them were no longer rising.
The good news was that the woman in the middle cage, curled into a ball, was still breathing. Thick, caked blood covered her body like a tattoo. Only her wrists were relatively clean, but they were covered in deep gashes that had long since stopped bleeding.
The wrists of the two lifeless bodies on either side were mangled in the sa way. They had died from blood loss and the horrific conditions of the basent.
The barely living woman kept her head bowed low, matted hair falling over her face and obscuring her features.
"This is your domain. I'll wait upstairs," Lu Li said, averting his gaze. He handed the lamp to Anna and took off his coat.
"I won't be long," Anna replied, watching Lu Li ascend the stairs.
She knelt before the cage, holding out the coat. "We're exorcists. We're here to rescue you."
The head in the cage slowly lifted. Her vacant eyes reflected nothing but despair.
...
Lu Li returned to the top of the basent stairs, listening to the quiet fragnts of conversation drifting up from below.
Knock, knock, knock...
A knock on the restaurant door drew Lu Li's attention.
More guests?
He thought, glancing at the kitchen door, and began to count in his head.
Three... Four... Five...
Knock, knock, knock...
Exactly five seconds later, a second, unhurried knock sounded.
Lu Li was about to move, but a pale hand reached out from the basent's gloom and grabbed his wrist.
"I can't feel anything..." Anna whispered. "Is it the Door's trap?"
Lu Li nodded.
Knock, knock, knock...
The third knock ca right on schedule.
"What about the woman?" Lu Li asked, noticing Anna was still holding his coat.
"She's dead..."
Anna had thought the woman revived out of hope and a will to live, but it was just a final burst of energy before death. After speaking a few words, her head had fallen limp again.
She had lost too much blood. Surviving this long was all she could manage.
Creeeak...
Suddenly, a blood-chilling creak echoed through the empty, dark hall.
The restaurant door... was opening.
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