AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Where her left eye had once been was now nothing more than a bloody hole, and the skin around her temple was burnt from the heat of the gunshot. Still, Mercy stood in front of us, her face half missing, and she smiled.
Her smile had always been a bit unsettling, but now it was downright horrific.
“I only die when she dies,” she laughed. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Out of the corner of my eye I caught movement from the back of the room, and when I was finally able to register what I was looking at, my heart sank.
The charred, broken body of Morgan Scott moved towards us through the dark, her jerky marionette movements looking especially frightening in the context of the rest of the scene laid out before us.
Just when I thought this stupid night couldn’t get any worse.
Now I had not one, but two of these stupid specters waiting in the wings to kill me. I didn’t bother to dwell on how Morgan had come all this way. How had Lucas shown up in Louisiana? How had any of these happened? Sometimes there wasn’t an explanation that made sense, sometimes there was just magic, and you had to accept that it was fucked up and illogical.
Perhaps a part of Morgan had always been here waiting for this moment. This was where she had died, after all.
She stayed in the periphery silent and watchful, but just out of arms reach. I wonder if she was waiting to see if Mercy finished the job for her.
Mercy either didn’t notice the other wight or didn’t care, because she launched another attack, having barely recovered her footing from the first. This time she lunged for Secret, and the suddenness of the gesture caught Secret off guard, because Mercy was able to knock the gun right out of her hand, and grab Secret by the hair, pulling her face in close.
“I’ve waited a long time for this.” Her hand, still a demented-looking claw, reached for Secret’s chest. The nails shredded the cotton of her shirt, and blood started to blossom against the light fabric.
Secret screamed, her face twisting in pain, as she groped at Mercy’s hand and tried to push it out of her.
I remembered.
I remembered what I’d come here to do.
I found my voice, hoarse and broken as it was, and said, “You’re going to have to keep waiting.”
I felt the magic before I saw it, a wave of pure hatred that flowed through me in hot pulses so intense I thought it might melt my skin and turn me into a puddle of red-hot rage on the floor.
Placing my hand on the good side of Mercy’s face, I saw her look at me first in confusion, and then her expression became something different. My hand glowed red, and I pushed every ounce of my bitterness and anger into her. Every bad thing she had made me feel I sent into her a thousandfold, and when she realized what I was doing, her eyes—her eye—bulged in horror.
“No.”
“You said I should use my power more,” I wheezed. “I’m just trying to make you proud.”
“You can’t do this.” Her skin was already melting under my fingertips, like a melted candle that turned to ash once there was nothing left to burn.
I was about to say the final word when Morgan moved towards us.
“Ustulo,” crossed my lips and just as Mercy burst into pieces like ashes in the wind, Morgan pushed her towards me.
I gasped, breathing in sharply as a cloud of my mother hit me in the face. I fell to the ground coughing, her remains coating the inside of my throat as I choked and gagged on them, trying to get the acrid taste off my tongue.
Morgan, barely recognizable as human anymore, looked down at me and her damaged mouth curved into a smile.
The smile was all I needed to see.
Morgan didn’t need to kill me.
She’d gotten exactly what she’d come here for.
Chapter Thirty-six
“I don’t think she can hear us,” Desmond said, snapping his fingers in front of my face.
I blinked at him, not sure why he’d say something like that when it was very clear I was listening. I swatted his hand away.
