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No, she shouldn’t have. More, after coming back, she shouldn’t havestayedalive for as long as she had. That wasn’t how it worked. Butfuckif she cared what he thought.
As he walked further and further while her body remained limp and useless, she screamed in her head. Screamed and screamed andscreamedwith fury.
She could hear the roar of the waterfall in the distance. That roaring got closer and closer until it was almost deafening. She again fought the power holding her captive, and she again failed to free herself. Goddammit, she wasnotgoing to die at this bastard’s hands.
Finally, Wagner halted and then dumped her on the hard ground. “There we are. Better. Now … do I take the eye before orafterI kill you?” He hummed, rolling her onto her back. “Before, I think.”
Her eyes still closed, Wynter silently hissed as she sensed him kneel over her … just as one of the boys once had. Right then, she screamed at Wagner to get the fuck away from her, but of course those words never escaped her mouth.
“Hmm, I’d rather have you looking at me while we do this. It’s not as gratifying when I don’t get to witness a person’s pain in their eyes.” He pried open her eyelids and smiled down at her. “Well, hello there.” He held up his knife. “Like it?”
A breeze whispered over her in a gentle, encouraging caress. The entity inside her shoved closer to the surface until it stared out at him through one of her eyes. Black inky ribbons partially obstructed her vision as they slithered over said eye.
He stilled, his brows snapping together. “What the …”
Silently praying to the deity for strength, she again struggled tomove, move, move.Her heartbeat stuttered as two of her fingers jerked. That was all she needed.
Wynter dug those fingers into the ground and thrust her rage and magick deep into the earth. Pure silence fell, as if nature itself had sucked in a breath, and then the ground began to quiver.
Wagner’s eyes widened as the immediate landscape altered. Trees began to crack and blacken. Leaves started to wither. Flowers slowly dried up or wilted while bushes began to thin and decay.
He looked down at her. “What’s happening? What are you doing?”
One side of her face began to burn, and his gaze dropped to where she knew a metallic blue mark would now glisten. A distinctive mark that very rarely showed itself. A mark that would tell him she was Favored by a particular deity.
Realization dawning on him, he paled and scrambled to get away from her.
Now that she could move her fingers, her other muscles began to unlock. Her hands were soon free of the paralytic power. Then her arms, neck, head, upper body, legs.
It was like moving through sludge, but Wynter finally managed to sit upright. She cricked her neck, exhaling a long sigh.
Wagner stared at her, shaking his head, his lips trembling. “I … I don’t understand. This isn’t possible. You don’t …”
“Drink blood or eat flesh to survive? No, no, I don’t. Never needed to, thankfully. That would have sucked. OrI’dhave sucked, if blood had been involved. Whichever.”
He shook his head wildly. “That’s … no, no, it’s not possible. Your heart beats, I canhearit. Nothing that She brings back is really alive. And it never exists for long.”
“I really can’t clear up the confusion for you. I don’t have all the answers. The deity doesn’t tell me much, and She can be kind of cryptic. When She offered to send a monster after those boys, She didn’t specify that I’d be its host.”
Wynter was no longer merely a witch. She wasmore.A vessel for something not of this world. And, as such, she’d become a monster in her own right.
She’d only seen her entity once. When Wynter’s soul had landed in the netherworld—the realm that was effectively purgatory for the souls of preternatural beings—the deity and the monster had been waiting there for her. The deity had sent them out of the netherworld together and into Wynter’s then-dead body, reviving it that easily. The entity had taken control in an instant, torn the boys apart, and then just as quickly retreated.
The monster was … well, monstrous. Neither male nor female, it was as hideous and horrifying as any nightmare. What she remembered most of all were its bottomless black eyes. There was no being that she could compare it to, because it was simply too foreign. And as black tendrils began to creep over her second eyeball, she knew it was about to take her over.
Wagner must have sensed it too, because he tensed as if to flee.
“You can run if you want,” said Wynter, “but it will find you. It’ll catch you. Shred you. It’ll feast on your fear, drink in your screams, and relish your pain. That’s kind of what it does. What it craves, even. After all, it exists only to wreak vengeance. And me? I’m more than happy to let it go wreak.”
The monster lunged to the surface, and her vision went black.
Driving along the unpaved roads that cut through a labyrinth of tall, weathered trees, Wynter felt her hands flex on the steering wheel. “This could be a bad idea. A really, really bad idea.”
Riding shotgun, Delilah tossed her a sideways glance. “You said that when we ate at that Indian restaurant with the dodgy reviews last night. That turned out okay. No one got the shits.”
“I don’t know about that,” Xavier piped up from the backseat, his nose wrinkling as he cast the sleeping female on his left a brief look. “Anabel’s been farting past herself, and some of those farts sounded wet.”
“Shh,” said the elderly woman on his right, her face in her book. “This is finally starting to get good.” In other words, it was a sex scene. Hattie read erotic books like it was her job—the filthier the better, in her opinion.
