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He’s weak. Tell me you have an idea. I can try to use my necromancy on him, but it won’t do any good if the wendigos attack.
Reid subtly glances around the circle. If any of Westcott’s followers remain, I can’t see them past the wendigos—one for each of us—but there’s also a group amassed on the outside of the circle, seeming to stretch on forever in every direction.
“I’d be doing you a favor, wouldn’t I?” Westcott purrs, trailing his fingers under my mother’s chin. She stares right back at him, unflinching, exuding every ounce of power she did before despite having no magic to back it up this time. “How many people have you pissed off enough over the years to want you dead?” he whispers. “I think I’d be kinder about it. They’d make sure you suffered. They’d enjoyed watching you die slowly. But then again, maybeI’denjoy watching them tear you limb from limb.”
Slowly, the pressure on my arms eases, and I suck in a sharp breath as the wendigo behind me releases its hold. Daniel makes a similar surprised sound on my left, and I look at him out of the corner of my eye.
What the hell are they doing?
“Don’t touch her,” Calla snaps beside Mom, and Westcott turns his attention to her.
“Andyou, my dear Calliope, you may be my greatest disappointment. I saw so much potential with you. I suppose it’s not your fault that you got more from your mother than you did from me.”
The wendigo behind me slips into the circle first. Westcott’s back is to us, but he stands up straighter as the wind shifts, then turns. His gaze shoots to me, like I’m somehow controlling the wendigo, looking more unamused than surprised.
But then the rest start to move.
First it’s just the layer of wendigos behind each of us, but then it’s all of them coming forward.
My muscles brace themselves for some kind of attack, but they pass each of us as if we’re not even there.
No, they are purely focused on Westcott.
It’s not until his scream pierces the air that it occurs to me these wendigos, they were once his followers too. They trusted him enough to submit to his experiments.
How much of their humanity is left in there?
Enough, apparently, to think for themselves.
And now they’re fighting back.
But one by one, as they make a move for Westcott, the wendigos collapse into dark heaps on the ground. Slowly, their forms fade until they’re reduced to ash.
The experiments, Cam said they required something similar to a blood deal. Going against Westcott, it’s killing them. Yet they keep drifting forward. They keep trying, as one by one, they fade like dust on the wind.
The fog grows thicker until I can’t see anything but flashes of black capes and claws. As each wendigo falls, another is there just as fast to take its place. Daniel grabs my hand so he doesn’t lose me in the darkness, and I reach for Leif on my other side.
There are sickening wet sounds as claws rip through his flesh.
As quickly as they’d swarmed him, a small patch disperses enough to reveal Westcott in the center of them all. The ground beneath him saturated with his blood. Not only are chunks of his flesh missing, but what’s left is peeling, decayed, like he’s rotting from the inside out, looking more skeletal than human. He bares his teeth, his focus entirely on the wendigos as they approach.
They knew they couldn’t finish this. But they can distract and weaken him enough so we can.
I pace forward at the same time Calla, Adrienne, and Mom do. We join hands as we step through the opening of wendigos.
Magic buzzes through our joined palms, our different strands collecting and coiling together. I know the moment it’s ready, the heat coursing through me burning almost to the point of pain.
But we wait until Westcott turns his head.
So the three of us are the last things he sees before he dies.
CHAPTERFORTY-FIVE
Ironically,once Westcott is gone, his followers are incredibly loyal—to one another. No injured or dead is left behind, and everyone helps each other as much as they can. Those who stayed inside the compound while this was all happening immediately open the doors, ushering the injured to the medical wing, several doctors flooding into the field to give help to the more severe cases. The remaining Marionette reinforcements jump in, working alongside them.
I can’t help but side-eye the people who continued to support him, but I try to remind myself that they could’ve been too afraid to stand against him.
What was left of Westcott disappeared along with the wendigos when it was done. The darkness had parted like a curtain, the fog wrapping around them until it became indistinguishable from their cloaks, and then they were gone.
