Page 14 of All Hallows Trick (Sick and Twisted #3)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CAT

I shook my head like I could knock Poppy’s words out of my ears, like I could unhear them. My children. She was behind this whole sick experiment, splicing human with animal and fuck knows what else.

“What is wrong with you?” I demanded when the shock wore off. I’d been terrified outside but now looking her in the eye, it was rage that filled me, not fear. I took a step closer, but my eyes were on Madde, silently begging for the dark velvet of his violence to fill me. He didn’t disappoint, shadows swelling inside me, brushing their soft edges against my soul, gentle to me but brutal to anyone else.

We’ll tear her to pieces, my lioness. We’ll make her screams rattle the treetops. Together.

My next inhale was ragged, but I curled my free hand into a fist and held tight to Miz, facing down the monster who made the serum.

Poppy seemed to realise my question was rhetorical because she didn’t answer. She watched me with the softness and care that made my chest hurt. I should have known better. Byron. Phil. Darya. I couldn’t trust anyone. Not Poppy, not a single person on this cursed island.

“Why do you have all that blood?” I asked, trying to form my thoughts into a coherent shape. There were so many it made me sick . “In the next room, on all those shelves. Why all the vials?”

I knew why. Nightmare had tasked her with creating an army of terrors capable of harming a death god. But I wanted to hear her say it.

“The serum is my breakthrough,” Poppy responded, struggling against the grip Tor had on her. His eyes widened, shock flashing through coffee brown, when she slipped out of his and Madde’s hold. “My miracle, my greatest invention, capable of taking an ordinary person and turning them into a marvel.”

“Into a monster,” I snapped, trying not to choke on the scent of this place; blood and chemicals. “Those marvels murdered people and ate them, Poppy. What about Caroline? What about the florist in the village? Innocent people were ripped apart in the most horrific way. For what? Science? Your precious breakthrough?”

“I wanted to see what they were capable of,” she replied in that same soft tone, not matching my anger. Which just made me angrier. “We couldn’t test them when they were caged down here, but when they were let loose…” Her tone was dreamy, affectionate. I thought of all the scars on my brother’s body, the injection marks.

“You tortured them, you psycho bitch,” I snarled, lunging forward another step. “My brother is traumatised because of you.” He hid it well, but I saw it. “You injected them, shot them up with your experimental serum, and forced them to change at a molecular level all because you wanted fucking children and Nightmare wanted an army. And the worst part is you don’t think you’ve done anything wrong. It’s not a miracle or a breakthrough, it’s inhumane.”

A deep well of sadness filled her eyes behind her glasses. “You don’t see the gift you’ve been given yet—”

“The gift?” My voice dropped lower. “I hurt my husband so badly he was knocked out all fucking night. My men are in pain because of you. What was in those vials, because I know it wasn’t only blood?”

“A perfect blend of serum and blood, with a drop of goddess blood. How did your genesis happen? Did you drink it?”

Goddess blood…? Nightmare’s? Rage made my gut clench. “I found a vial of my blood in a fucked up lab, and you think I drank it? I tried to destroy it!”

Her eyes flashed with intrigue. “How?”

“I shattered the vial.”

“Fascinating,” she breathed.

“Horrifying,” I snapped, jerking forward another step, Miz squeezing my hand in comfort or warning, I couldn’t tell which. “I was terrified. How did you get my blood? I never gave you it.”

“But you gave a sample when you enrolled at Ford.”

I rocked back. Every single student. Poppy had every single student’s blood. She could make monsters of us all. “Undo it,” I breathed. “Your fucked up serum did this to me, so you can undo it.”

A furrow formed in her dark red brows. “Undo it? But you’re perfect. There’s nothing to undo, Cat.”

“Do not,” Miz said quietly, “speak her name.” He pulled me closer.

“There’s nothing to undo,” Poppy told me with a kind smile. The kind smile that had made me think she was ordinary and nice and on my side. Instead, she was a fucking psycho.

“There’s no cure?”

She laughed. “Why would I invent a cure? It’s not an illness or disease. It’s a gift.”

I ground my teeth, anger spreading, casting its fire further, merging with the dark velvet of shadows inside me. A smile flickered at the edge of Madness’s mouth.

Make her scream. She needs to pay for hurting you.

Yes, she did. Anger beat against my ribs as I stared at her, this woman I’d thought was so genuine but who’d been conducting torture and experiments in the woods this whole time. She experimented on my brother.

“Did you tell Phil to bring me here last night?” I asked slowly, my temper not a rapid spike this time but a slow, slow burn. Its scorch was hotter, deeper. I took another step closer. “Did you tell her to hit me over the head with a rock and drag me through the woods?”

I remembered Phil mentioning a he but that didn’t mean Poppy wasn’t behind my abduction.

“I don’t come into contact with Nightmare’s terrors,” Poppy replied, watching me in a way that made me uncomfortable, too fond, too… familiar. Like me being twisted by her serum connected us in any way. “Except for classes, I only spend time with my children.”

“Your experiments,” I spat. “They’re not your children, Carmilla. They’re your victims.”

She reeled like I’d struck her.

“Where’s the rest of the antidotes? Tell me where to find them, or how to make more.”

She shook her head. “There’s no need. You’re per—”

“Yeah, cut the shit. Where can I find more syringes?”

She just sighed, watching me like she was disappointed in me. It fanned the flames of my rage, and she inhaled sharply, watching me.

“You’re something special,” she murmured, staring at me. “Not like the others. Being the Bride of Death has made you… exceptional. Look at your eyes.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Tor growled, angling between us.

Madde moved so fast I didn’t even see the shadows swirling around his hands until he’d wrapped them both around Poppy’s neck.

“Madde!” I cried, jerking forward a step in the small room. “You can’t kill her, we need her to make more antidotes.”

The smile that stretched across his face dropped my temperature by a few degrees.

“By the time I’m finished with you,” Madness told Poppy, “you’re going to beg for death, but you won’t have a voice left. Your vocal cords will be shredded, your brain will melt inside your skull, and every bone in your body will be broken. You hurt my lioness. No one hurts my lioness.”

Of all the reactions my body could have had, the tension leaving my shoulders and air filling my lungs wasn’t the one I predicted. The band across my chest eased. The cramp left my stomach, muscles sore and aching in the aftermath.

“Can we take her to the domain?” I asked, looking to Tor. “Can we… question her there?”

A flare of light hit his eyes, glee and dangerous intensity making my stomach flutter. “It would be my honour to torture answers out of her, beautiful.”

“What?” Poppy asked, breathless. “You can’t do that. You can’t torture me. Not when you know—”

“Oh, yes,” Tor said in a low purr so completely different to the way he spoke to me. This voice promised the torture he’d been named after. It promised suffering, endless and eternal. I shuddered, my sore pussy clenching. “I know you’re dead.”

I jolted, stumbling into Miz. “What?”

“She’s a ghost,” Tor explained, his teeth bared at Poppy. “She’s dead, Cat.” He gave Poppy a cruel look I’d never seen on his face before. “But even ghosts can be tortured.”