Page 61 of Song of the Hell Witch

Thirty

Puck was drowning inside a whirlpool. Except that whirlpool was his own mind, and he wasn’t sure which thoughts were his and which belonged to the velvet voice, deep and soothing, promising him Give yourself over to me, and the pain will cease.

Bea. Your daughter.

Your daughter’s screaming somewhere out there.

Your bones are twisting inside you. Your body’s turning to stone.

Surrender. Surrender, Puck Reed.

“ No! ” The shout ripped into the sides of his throat, and he knew that wherever they were, Mari and Pru probably thought he’d stepped into the flames.

Maybe he had. Maybe, instead of sprinting through Stormlash’s dining room and den, where the fire licked up the walls, devouring tapestries, he was somewhere else entirely, burning alive.

Maybe he hadn’t come down from the tower at all but was still on that bed— the bed you shared with Pru —dying, dying, dying.

It would explain why he was getting colder with each step.

Why the skin between his shoulder blades sizzled like a newly forged brand.

Why his vision kept snapping back and forth, wrenching him into different parts of his life: Stormlash one second, then running through Talonsbury’s streets as a thief, then the cell in Hornsgate, the stone cold at his back.

A hand slid into his and squeezed, and he snapped out of the bar fight that landed him in prison and came back to the Grand Hall.

“Are you with me?” Pru’s dark eyes and sculpted brows anchored him in place. “Puck, answer me!”

“I’m with you.” He blinked a few times to test it, just in case. She didn’t fade, and the heat at his back told him that the fire— Stormlash under attack, Beatrice in danger —was reality. Everything else?

Clear your mind, Reed. Give in.

“Give in to what?” he asked—and in asking, he knew.

The crawling under his skin. The inescapable hum, droning in his ears, dulling every other sound around him.

It had a rhythm. A pleasant rhythm. The kind of rhythm that promised peace … all he had to do was …

“Puck!”

His name in Pru’s voice. It was enough to keep him from following the troublesome tide threatening to tear him away from her. He clenched his jaw and clutched her hand tighter.

Which was when he felt her trembling.

“What …”

It was the hum telling him Look what I have here that invited him. Slowly, he turned to face the floor-to-ceiling windows, looked out onto the moonlit lawn …

Where Paris Talonsbury stood, black wings as wide as the windows, his dagger point jammed against Beatrice’s throat. His little girl hung limp in his arms, her legs useless beneath her. If Puck didn’t know any better, he’d say she was …

No. Please, no.

He held on to hope as he studied the other Ladies. Naomi, Florence, Cressida, and Rita were on all fours, each stooped at the feet of a Zeraph, who stood horseshoed around Paris, their arms behind their backs. Silver basins sat in front of each Lady as if waiting for something.

Arcadie was nowhere to be found.

Rita and Florence lifted their heads up, dazed by whatever Paris had done to them. But they could move. And if they could move, maybe Bea could too.

“Prudence Merriweather!” Paris’s voice pierced the glass—and Bea’s eyes shot open. She stared at Puck, her lips quivering with fear.

He was racing out the door as Paris said, “Come out or watch me gut the Thief Lord’s princess like the she-devil she is!”

He ran for his daughter, possessed by the bone-deep need to punch straight through Paris’s face—and then agony crashed down on him like a steel net.

Puck’s scream would echo in Pru’s dreams for the rest of her life. It was visceral, the scream of a man flayed alive. She forgot the danger before her, forgot Paris’s transformation and his determination to see her burn, and raced out into the garden.

“Puck.” She dropped down beside him, and then her blood congealed in her veins.

Because he couldn’t see her. He couldn’t hear her.

All he could do was scream as the white tendrils webbed across his entire body, strangling him from the inside.

She whipped her head toward Paris. “What have you done to—”

A noise akin to a diamond scratching glass tore through her ears, and her eardrums threatened rupture.

The pain was unbearable. It radiated into her skull, screeching down her spine and into her chest, where it solidified into some kind of lead and formed a web around her heart—a trap for her power.

Her talons receded. Her wings threatened collapse.

Thinking fast, she pinched her eyes shut and plunged into her body, willing the Vultress out, out, out.

It was useless. Her talons slammed back into her fingers, her skin smarting as it sealed them in. Her wings crunched together before folding up along her spine, and she fell onto her forearms. Her shoulder blades and each of her ribs felt broken, like she’d been trampled by a horse.

The rings of black at the edges of her vision pushed in, promising reprieve. She almost surrendered, desperate for the pain to end, when a voice broke through the dreadful ringing that had replaced her thoughts—and renewed energy flared within the cockles of her heart.

Pru, can you feel this? Rita. She didn’t dare look at her for fear of giving her away, but out of the corner of her eye, she saw the gorgon lift her chin a fraction of an inch. Can you hear me?

She tried to call on her own power, but it fizzled and died. The sight of Puck, curled lifeless on his side, didn’t help. Still, she clung to the spark Rita had given her as she sent her answer back: Yes.

Flossie?

Florence’s voice thrummed to life in her head: Here.

I think if we pool our power, maybe we can—

“Brother Samuels.” Paris’s rat-squeal voice drowned Rita out.

The Zeraph behind Rita straightened up, a soldier called to attention. “Sir.”

“Your witch. Her tune has swelled, can you sense that?”

“No, sir. Only High Zeraphel like yourself have that power.”

“Ah. Forgive me.” Paris’s gaze found Pru’s. “Know, dear Prudence, that you had the ability to stop this. Yet you and your friends refused to surrender peacefully, and so you leave me no choice. Samuels?”

“Sir?”

No …

“Slit her throat.”

“No!” Pru made to move, but something white and hot lashed through her mind. Her arms turned to putty, and she fell onto her face. A grunt somewhere in front of her told her Florence had fallen too.

A faint gasp. A blade slicing skin. A terrible gurgling, like someone drowning on dry land.

By the time Pru found the strength to look up, it was too late. Rita’s body twitched over the silver basin in front of her, her open throat gushing into the bowl. A scream stuck between Pru’s lungs.

Florence’s bloodcurdling wail cut through the darkness. She writhed in her captor’s arms, trying to break free, to lunge for her lover. She clawed at his face—and then another shock pulsed through the air and the succubus’s legs buckled beneath her.

Pru wasn’t sure when Mari had rushed out onto the lawn, if it was before or after Samuels had drawn his blade, but she was locked inside Paris’s psychic prison too, pressing her forehead to the grass in obvious anguish.

“Rita,” Florence cried, unable to pick her head up and look at the lifeless body splayed out on the grass. “Rita, please. Answer me.”

“Rita has joined your precious Dark Mother in the bowels of Hell,” Paris hissed at her, and she let out one last whimper before she fell silent. Pru wanted to crawl over to her, hold her and weep with her. But she didn’t dare leave Puck, who was beginning to stir beneath her.

“Puck?” She forced herself to speak through her tears. “Are you with me?”

He managed a nod.

Using the small amount of strength she had left, she flipped him onto his back. The white from his veins had bled into his face. He looked dead, and she might have believed he was if his eyes didn’t flutter open.

“Pru.” He seized hold of her hand, and suddenly, he was wide awake and even more terrified than before. “You have to get Bea, you have to—”

A shadow blocked out the moonlight, and the two of them looked up to see Paris, with Beatrice still in his clutches, looming over them. She was awake, her eyes flooded with fear.

“Daddy.”

“It’s …” Puck stopped talking, out of breath. “It’s okay, Bumble. Just keep your eyes on me, all right? Keep them right here on me.”

“Oh, I’m not sure that’s the best fatherly advice there, Reed.

” Without warning, Paris flung Beatrice away from him, into the arms of the Zeraph who’d killed Rita.

“This next part of the evolution may be quite traumatic for those who care about you. Though you can trust me when I say that the worst of the pain has passed.”

“You stay away from him,” Pru growled at Paris, draping herself across Puck’s body. “You stay—”

Another lash of pain, and she fell, biting her tongue hard as her chin hit the ground.

“This isn’t about you, Prudence.” Her brother-in-law smirked at her. “Not yet.”

Paris crouched low, close enough to touch. Puck pushed himself to his knees, readying to fight him—until Paris grabbed hold of his chin and held him in place.

“The Thief Lord of Talonsbury.” Paris released a dry laugh. “The man who saved a hundred poor wretches from war. Bet you think yourself a hero.”

“More of a hero than you’ll ever be.” Puck’s voice was weak, but the fight Pru loved so much was still there, doing its best to keep him alive.

Fight back, Puck. You have to fight.

“Fool. Protecting your friends from the war merely shielded them from the consequences of their actions.”

“What are you talking about?”