AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She’s doing it. I don’t know how, but this is the crone’s work.
And as if she hears me, her eyes cut my way, and a single message leaps from them and embeds itself in my head. Cover her.
I barely have time to register her message before she shifts all at once.
Then leaps at the prey she so expertly distracted.
37
LILI
“Come along, little wolf. It’s time to play.”
The voice sounds like it’s coming from far away, miles and miles. I can’t tell the direction it’s coming from. It’s like I’m in a fog, and it’s impossible to tell that sort of thing when you’re wrapped in fog. It has a way of altering things, mixing them up.
“Come on, now.” It’s an almost playful voice, teasing and encouraging me. “It’s time to open your eyes.”
Is it Wilde? I don’t think so. Wilde doesn’t usually sound playful like he’s inviting me to get into mischief. And that’s what this voice sounds like.
It almost sounds like Agnes. The part-wolf, part-witch I met earlier today. Was it today? It’s not only a question of where I am, but when I am. The sense of having lost time irks the hell out of me. I’m lost, and I don’t know how to get back.
Slowly, it comes back to me. The necromancers. The blood. The horror and the pain. And now I’m back in my body, and I feel the floor under me, cold and hard. The sound of echoing voices begins to fill my ears, and the scent of so many wolves.
And blood. Blood that isn’t my own.
With my heart in my throat, I open my eyes, and I don’t know what I expect. To be blind? For that burning, sizzling pain to come back and knock me out again? I’ve never been so scared in all my life, not ever, not even when I was sure Dexter was going to kill me. I wasn’t afraid then. I wasn’t even this afraid when my wolf came, and I didn’t know what was happening to my body.
But I open them, and I blink, and I can see.
I can see blood again. Only this time, it isn’t coming from my eyes, staining my fingers and palms.
It’s dripping from the severed head dangling from Agnes’s fist.
There’s hardly any light anymore—someone’s lighting candles and torches, though, and the soft glow gives me enough to see Agnes standing above me. She’s smiling gently, kindly, the way she did before. In fact, there’s almost nothing about her that would send a chill through my heart or make me apprehensive of exactly who and what she is. What she’s capable of.
Nothing except for the severed head she holds by a clump of hair. She doesn’t even seem to care that the blood is dripping onto her shoes.
When I force myself to look at the head, I realize who I’m looking at. The lead witch, her once-glowing eyes wide open and blank now. “Did you do that?” I breathe, and I don’t know whether I’m impressed, horrified, or both. I only know I’m not afraid of her. She’s not going to hurt me. I’m sure of it.
Her smile widens before she nods. “I did. I suppose she didn’t expect me to be her downfall.”
“Lili.” And now Wilde has me in his arms, Wilde is holding me, almost crushing me against him. “I thought I lost you. Are you all right? Did you… are you…” He brushes my hair away from my face with both hands, studying me hard, and the fear in his voice almost makes me feel sorry for him.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” I whisper with a shaky laugh. “I’m sorry.”
“Only you would apologize at a time like this.”
“Here.” His mom crouches down beside us, holding a clump of wet napkins. “I had to improvise.” She takes my chin in her hand and, just like a mom with her pups, washes my face without warning, gentle but efficient.
“I don’t understand what happened. Why is it dark?” Once she’s finished, I look around a little more. “What the hell did I miss?”
Because clearly, I missed a lot. There’s blood on the floor, not only the blood coming from the severed head. The chandelier that hung from the center of the ceiling is now on the floor, and a group of pack members are dragging it into one corner along with the broken table while the guards from the house surround a cluster of witches.
“It looks like Agnes knew what she was doing,” Wilde explains. He hasn’t stopped touching me, stroking my hair, my hands, anything he can to reach me. Almost like he can’t believe I’m here and has to keep reminding himself.
“But what did she do?”
“What does it look like?” Agnes asks with a soft laugh, though it wasn’t her I was speaking to. “You’re awake, and that’s what matters, not to mention you’re safe.”
