I pushed my way through the shocked crowd and didn’t meet resistance. Then I saw the bodies. The two young men in black robes lay sprawled on the cellar floor. They had been stabbed and their throats cut. Blood was pooled around the bodies. Where were Daniel and Charles?
‘Police!’I called out.’Don’t touch them. Back away.’ The men and women closest to the bodies slinked away. I wondered if they had been about to drink the spilled blood. Wasn’t that the ritual? The pattern for the ghoulish murders so far?  ‘There’s only two of them! Two cops!’someone shouted.
‘We will shoot you/Jamilla called out in a loud, clear voice.
‘Back away. Do it. Where are Daniel and Charles?’ I shouted.  The crowd began to close in on us, so I fired off a warning shot. It echoed loudly. There was chaos in the cellar. Men and women began struggling to get through the doors. No one would get away though.  FBI agents were waiting outside.
Jamilla and I pushed our way into a connecting room in the basement. We started down a narrow hallway lit only by candles.  Daniel and Charles could have come this way when the lights went out. It seemed likely; they knew the house.
There were small rooms crowded next to each other on either side of the dusty tunnel. The layout reminded me............