Page 8 of The Wolfing Hour

If I’d had any doubt before, this confirmed her identity.

Bloody godsdamned Mary.

She responded as if she’d heard my thoughts. Her smile was too wide, too happy, too celebratory. She thought she had me.

“Bring the child.” She sprayed out a mouthful of blood as she spoke.

Good thing I was dressed head-to-toe in black. Even my hair was the darkest shade of brown, so although it, too, was drenched, it didn’t immediately look like blood.

It was at this point that Cecil made a snick sound, alerting me that I was still inside the containment circle. A rookie mistake, damn it. I eased back a few inches, until my heels butted against the soil-salt line.

Mary floated over to me. She didn’t appear to have feet. The hem of her tattered gown hovered a foot off the ground. Her insectile arms morphed into smooth-skinned black serpents that wrapped around my throat, loosely at first, with pulsing squeezes that told me how easy it would be for her to kill me.

“Chiiild.” The sound of her voice was what your soul being wrenched out through your ears must feel like. Too much of it, and I’d find myself slip-sliding into madness.

“Bloody Mary. I banish you. To Hell.” I managed between squeezes.

“Do you?” She cackled. “Poor, stupid human. You’re going to learn that I am not so easily evicted.”

Fennel growled. He paced the outside of the circle, fur standing on end. He leapt onto the bed and hissed at Mary, an obvious attempt to draw her attention away from me.

“I fear no one, feline of the depths, not even you. There is nothing you can do to me that is worse than the horrors in which I reside. Bring me the child or I’ll kill this—” Her eyes, twin dots of red in the center of ivory bulbs of sclera stared into mine. They widened, revealing the upper and lower curvatures of each orb. “Witch?”

She loosed her grip on my throat, and I fell to my knees in the blood.

“You.”

The second I hit the floor, I crawled out of the circle, careful not to break the lines. I collapsed against Violeta’s bed, coughing and rubbing my throat.

“Witch. Lilibet Lennox.”

Hell. It knew my name.

“I go by Betty,” I rasped. Sarcasm was my love language, but it was also my hate language. And my scared language.

“LennoxWitch,” she repeated. “Kin to the grave demon, child of—”A whistling sound erupted from her throat. It took me a moment to realize she was choking.

“Sorry. Sorry. Sorry,” she said.

Her neck cracked, and her head flopped to her left shoulder. The serpent arms disappeared. The insectile ones made a quick appearance then they went away, too. Two decidedly human feetsprouted from the hem of her dress. Her arms reappeared and were also human. Her eyes shrank, sinking back into her face. Her jaw hung open.

She bent at the waist and flew back through the monitor ass-first. This time when blood spurted out of the screen, I was certain it was hers.

The monitor collapsed, deflating like Gnath’s flesh, until it was a puddle of melted plastic.

Ida burst into the room. “Betty? Are you okay? I got locked out. I heard someone calling for Violeta. Did Mary show up?”

“Yeah.”

“Is she still here? I don’t see any signs.” She peered around the room then behind the door. “When Joyce summoned her, there was blood everywhere. We had to repaint the damned room.”

“Of course there’s blood. Take a look around.” I gestured to the room.

“Where?”

“Everywhe—” I slowly lowered my hand. The blood was gone.

Every single drop.