Page 92 of Deadly Blooms (Psychic Unraveled #1)

DEADLY BLOOMS

Maggie

The world tilted.

Light bled at the edges of my vision, dimming, then sharpening, then dimming again. When I blinked, I was in a hospital bed—bare sheets, soft beeping, the distant murmur of voices behind a closed door.

I couldn’t move.

Everything felt wrong. My limbs were heavy, like they’d been filled with sand. A thick, synthetic scent clung to the room—antiseptic, plastic, and something too sweet beneath it.

Outside the window, the sea rolled beneath the gray sky. I fixated on it, trying to anchor myself. Was this real? Was I dreaming? The ache in my bones said real . But the static fuzz at the edge of everything said otherwise.

Footsteps. Voices.

Portia.

I heard her outside the door, her voice low and sugar-slicked as she chatted with the nurses. My gut twisted into fury at the sound of her voice. Then?—

Click.

The door closed behind her. She locked it.

“Oh, hello, darling.”

Her heels tapped closer with predatory patience, each step slicing the silence. She leaned in—her lips brushing my cheek, then lower.

I tried to move. To pull away. But my body barely responded. My hands twitched against the blanket.

“Don’t overexert yourself, dear” she cooed, smoothing a hand down my arm. “I see they’ve been keeping you alive and well. No worry.”

Her smile stretched across her face like something painted on wrong. A mask with too many teeth.

My heart rate picked up. But I felt weak. My arms were heavy, and my chest felt congested and raspy, like each breath had to filter through water before I could take it.

She reached into her purse and pulled out a syringe—clear fluid glinting inside like liquid ice.

“I have something to help with our little predicament,” she said.

I eyed the syringe and felt the beads of sweat form above my brow. I couldn’t speak.

“Oh, don’t worry, my darling. It’ll be quick.”

She slid the needle into my IV line like she’d done it a thousand times before. Smooth. Practiced. Then, tucked the empty syringe back into her purse as if it were just another lipstick.

Panic seized my chest. My pulse skyrocketed, pounding against my my ears like a drum of war. I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t even breathe right.

Portia turned, calling sweetly, “Nurse!”

She pressed a hand to her mouth, faking devastation so well, the anger coiling inside made me nauseous.

But just before the door opened, her expression slipped. Her eyes glittered with triumph. “That’ll do,” she whispered to herself, digging once more into her purse.

Then, so soft it almost didn’t register, she added, “Silas, we had a few good years, didn’t we?”

A sharp pain lanced down my arm.

My chest squeezed tight—tight enough to shatter bone. It felt like the weight of a hundred horses trampled me from the inside out. I gasped, grabbing at my arm.

But my hand?—

My hand wasn’t mine.

The skin was loose, papery, liver-spotted. An old man’s hand. My blood went cold.

Uncle Silas?

Panic crawled up my throat. Portia was still in the room, still smiling, still talking to him—to me?

Was this what he saw? Was this how he died?

The bitch killed him.

Portia’s voice floated back, soft and controlled. She tilted her head and pulled a tiny bottle of eyedrops from her purse, squeezing a few into each eye with practiced ease. She blinked hard, tilted her head just enough to let the tears fall naturally. Then her voice rose as she unlocked the door.

“Nurse! Nurse!”

Her panic had the perfect edge of hysteria—like a woman who’d practiced grief in the mirror until it fit like silk.

She turned back to me—no, Uncle Silas —her voice pure saccharine.

“Once this is over, dear… my love for you will be a thousand times more.” Her smile twitched.

“I’ll take care of your… our home. Our manor.

You’ll help me get what’s rightfully mine.

You’ll give me your power. Such a good, good lover. ”

Each word dripped with madness.

She was sick.

Another drop. Another blink. She adjusted her tone.

“Nurse! Nurse! Oh, my God, nurse!”

The door burst open. A nurse rushed to the bedside. “What is it, Ms. Valmont?”

“He—he started coughing,” Portia sobbed, her hands flailing as she paced at the foot of the bed. “And he couldn’t stop—then he grabbed his arm, his chest—he was gasping. Oh, God, my love?—!”

She collapsed into a heap of carefully performed devastation.

The nurse called for a crash cart and launched into CPR.

Each compression of my chest sent another wave of darkness crashing through me. The world blinked out, piece by piece—color first, then light, then feeling.

And then I was back.

That grotesque red room swallowed me whole.

I opened and closed my eyes, vision thick with static.

I was standing—but not on my own. Leather straps bit into my wrists, my ankles, my chest—securing me upright against something solid and cold.

I tried to move, but my arms were bound.

My fingers… oh, God… they were threaded through Uncle Silas’s.

His corpse.

My breath was stuck, nausea swelled in my gut.

The skin was papery and sunken, joints locked stiff like rigor never left him. Our wrists were shackled together, leather pulled tight, biting bone. I tried to pull away, but there was no room—no give. My hands were locked in a lover’s grip with the dead.

I still couldn’t believe she actually dug him up and now posed us in some sort of display. Like some grotesque tableau out of a twisted fairytale.

He loved her. I saw it back at the manor. Felt it in the way he spoke her name, like it used to be his only prayer. And this is what she did to him?

A sick, wheezing laugh echoed off the concrete walls. I knew that laugh. I hated that laugh.

Portia stepped into view.

Only she wasn’t Portia anymore—not fully, anyway.

The red glow from the symbols on the walls licked her skin, casting her face in shifting shadows. Her eyes had become black, hollow and soulless. Her body moved like her bones were wrong inside her. Like something else was wearing her.

She dragged the short sickle along the floor, metal scraping through the trail of blood, petals, and… intestines.

She didn’t speak at first. Just circled me. Head tilted. Watching. Enjoying.

Then—softly, almost sweetly—she said “You should be proud, my dear. Your bloodline is powerful. Perfect, really.”

I froze.

The words didn’t make sense.

Except… they did.

Belvedere.

The cult.

Katie and Derek’s theory.

Extraction.

Oh god.

I looked at Silas again—not just as a corpse, but as a key. He’s my blood. They couldn’t extract magic from him while he was alive—so they killed him. Harvested him.

And now they were moving on to me.

“He always said your line was stubborn,” Portia crooned, like she was reminiscing. “But we know how to break through now. I watched them do it. Blood to blood. Pain to power.”

My heart thundered against my ribs. But then—somewhere beneath the panic—something else stirred.

Something fierce.

Courage, maybe—or desperation masquerading as it.

Or maybe it was that stubbornness she talked about.

A stubbornness to keep her from getting what she wanted.

I twisted my wrists, ignoring the burn as the straps bit deeper. Uncle Silas’s corpse held fast behind me—his waxy skin too intact. Preserved. But not preserved enough.

With a sharp jerk, the sickening sound of tearing flesh filled the space between us. I gagged, bile rising—but didn’t stop.

I couldn’t stop.

With one final pull, his arm shifted just enough, and I slipped my hand free from the shackle. My fingers trembled, slick with something I didn’t want to identify, but I couldn’t hesitate—I undid the buckle on my left wrist and yanked my arm away from his stiff body.

One arm free. One arm mine again.

Maybe now I had a chance.

Portia cocked her head, her lips curling into something far too amused. A soft tsk, tsk, tsk, left her mouth as she took a slow step forward.

Then she lunged.

The sickle arced through the air—clumsy, too heavy for her fragile build—but close. Too close. The blade whistled past me, grazing the air where my face had just been.

“Why are you doing this?” I rasped, breath catching as I yanked at the strap across my chest, trying to free myself from Uncle Silas’s weight. “What the hell is this?!”

Portia tilted her head again, like I’d asked her something adorable.

“Why shouldn’t I?” She hissed, raising the sickle with both hands, her fingers stained dark. “You’ve taken everything. Everything he ever meant to me. Everything he ever meant for me . ”

She stepped closer, her silhouette haloed by that demonic red light.

“Everything I was supposed to become… the power, the fortune… it transferred to you upon his death.”

Her words slithered across my skin, venom-laced and unhinged.

And then—without warning—she raised the sickle again.

My throat tightened as panic threatened to choke me, but I reached for the only weapon I had. “Sorry, Uncle Silas,” I whispered.

Then—I grabbed his already disconnected arm, flesh cold and stiff, and ripped it from what was left of his body. With every ounce of strength I had, I hurled it like a damn baseball bat straight at Portia’s face.

The shoulder joint collided with her cheekbone with a sickening crack, and she dropped with a shriek, crumpling onto the blood-soaked floor like a rag-doll.

Did she really think I’d just lie down and let her do whatever the hell she’d planned for me?

Think again, bitch.

I fumbled with the clasps at my ankles, hands slick, wrists aching. The second they popped free, I bolted for the door. Each step squelched—gore and entrails clinging to the bottoms of my feet, trying to drag me back.

But I didn’t stop.

Not until I hit the hall—and then my body seized.

The displays.

I turned back. Above each grotesque altar, the photographs of the victims twitched. Still moving. Caught in some twisted loop of their final moments.

I had to come back. I had to free them. But I couldn’t help them if I died here.