This gunshot wound hurt so much worse than the last one.
“Lucky for me, they’ve dealt with your kind of evil before. They managed to reverse whatever that woman did to me.” Pelt’s lips twisted. “The process was a bit excruciating, but beggars can’t be choosers. Better alive than dead, I guess.”
Her emotions pressed in on me. A tangle of darkness and cruelty threaded throughout. I’d misjudged her before. She wasn’t an innocent who got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. She wasn’t exposed to my world by mistake. She’d gone looking for it, intent on rooting out anyone different than herself.
She got off on power, intent on causing others pain and suffering and never once feeling an ounce of guilt. It’d probably started off small, but then it grew until it was stamped into her very soul.
That’s what I got for interfering. Should have let the medusa finish the job.
“Once you’re dead, I’ll have passed the initiation process. Then I’ll go after the rest of your friends. Every monster you came into contact with over the last few nights.”
Emotion finally touched Pelt’s face, her smile blissful, the thought of murdering a bunch of people giving her intense pleasure.
And she called me the monster.
“I confess I didn’t think it’d take so long for you to turn up. I’d just about given up on you coming. I thought if I set fire to the apartment, it would draw you out. Looks like it worked.”
I struggled to get up, knowing if I continued to lie there, she would execute me. My body refused. No amount of willpower could make my limbs work properly. I was a sitting duck. Defenseless.
Pelt aimed her gun at me.
For the first time, I noticed a mark on the back of her hand between her thumb and pointer feeling. A bow with an arrow nocked—the mark of the hunter.
That was new. I would have clocked it if she’d had it during any of our other encounters.
“Time to die, monster."
Hands appeared on either side of her face. With one quick movement, the person wrenched her head around. Pelt's neck broke and she fell to the ground like a doll with its strings cut.
A stranger stood over her.
A few inches taller than me. His hair brown with a reddish tint in it, just like mine. Eyes the same shape and color as mine looked me over as I gasped, trying to draw breath through damaged lungs.
"Daughter," Bryan Volsk said in greeting.
My gaze moved from him to the dead body at his feet. My mouth moved, struggling to form words.
He walked toward me, crouching beside me.
Pain raced through me as he dug one finger into my wound.
The fire from the silver nitrate and the constriction around my lungs eased. He withdrew, tiny balls of silver clinging lovingly to his fingertip. Suddenly, I could breathe normally again. The pain was still there, but nowhere near as excruciating as it had been before.
"Why did you do that?" I asked.
"Would you rather I let her kill you?"
Definitely not.
On the other hand, I never expected our first meeting to happen over a dead body. It was a tad disconcerting.
I looked up at my still burning apartment and tried to rise. I didn't make it. He'd healed my lungs but left most of the damage from the wound.
"The pixies aren't in there," he said without looking away from me.
I let myself relax, grateful for the reassurance.
"I assume you have questions."
