Gypsy Truths (All The Pretty Monsters Book 6)

by Kristy Cunning

  “How do you know it’s always the same monster? What the hell are you even saying? Why is this important if it’s so easy to kill?”

  I honestly don’t know what I’m saying, but as I stare at the screen with the blurry image of Jack, seeing his green eyes glowing bright, something uneasy settles inside me.

  “Because I killed the monster by slaying the man it was haunting. The monster is nothing more than some sort of spirit. It lives off the soul of a human. But—”

  “Violet’s not human,” Emit, the bloody brilliant man of obvious insight he is, says.

  “I’m always impressed by your powers of deduction,” I tell him very dryly.

  Lightning crashes so close that all the lights in my home shut off, leaving an eerie silence to follow.

  I glance out the window, seeing my staff’s homes along the river’s edge. All the lights are off, as the wind howls and the storm rages even stronger.

  Emit’s phone rings, as my mind works in circles, trying to figure out how the pieces fall together.

  I’ve seen Violet’s monster. It was nothing like Jack or any of the others.

  “There’s a distinct lack of howls. Tell me my wolves aren’t frenzy feeding right now on all the humans we’re evacuating,” Emit says over the phone, sending my spine rigid.

  Fucking hell. I didn’t even think about how tempting zombie-like blood tanks would be to some of the barely-leashed monsters.

  “No, Alpha,” Charlotte, one of his human mothers he turned several centuries ago, says over the line. “That’s the thing. I can’t seem to even stick my foot outside,” she says, a whine in her voice. “The omegas we have here are cowered under anything they can find. My instincts demand me to shrink for the first time since I became a wolf. I can’t even make it to the fields like you asked me to do.”

  If Charlotte can’t move, then most others will be frozen in true terror.

  “That’s Idun’s power,” Emit tells her quietly. “She’s her monster right now.”

  “Will hiding in the cellars do any good?” she asks.

  “Only from the shifters. Get the children underground. Stand prepared to defend them if they start ransacking our lands. Call me immediately if it—”

  There’s a loud set of feral barks in the background, followed immediately by a scream on the line. Emit’s wolf bursts free, and he crashes through the window beside me in the next instant. His phone topples to the ground after he’s gone, and I hear a loud gasp, seconds before the line buzzes with static.

  With my instincts maddened by the thick, choking tension and imminent danger that is only ratcheting higher with every passing second, and my body still recovering from the confining tomb of silver, I take a deep breath.

  It’s not the first time I miss the man Arion used to be. If he still had a soul, he’d be a better man than me and far more capable of fixing this.

  It is, however, the first time in too long that I’ve had something to lose.

  Chapter 37

  DAMIEN

  Staring out the window, watching the electrical storm build, I find myself stroking Violet’s hair.

  “Twenty minutes is as long as you could make it?” Marta asks, not sounding thrilled with my return.

  “Vance has to figure out a plan. Arion’s going to blow the town to hell with his military-grade weaponry in hopes that it blows the bitch into enough pieces. With any luck, it’ll be hard for her to come back too soon. In the meantime, we all die, sans you and Violet.”

  She simply gives me a flat stare once I finish that lengthy ramble.

  “We’re in desperation mode, in case that’s not already obvious. In other words, this is our last resort, Marta. So, yes, I’ve damn well returned to see her like this one last time, before she realizes how much blood is about to be on her hands.”

  “Idun’s actions won’t be on my daughter’s conscience,” Marta says in a nearly muted tone, cutting her gaze to the window.

  “You’re entirely too calm for what comes next. Are you already defeated, Portocale? Have you lost that much of your fight?” I ask her.

  “This isn’t my fight,” she says too solemnly. “My fight has been fought. Now I’m simply here to aide my daughter in any way I can.”

  Violet’s hair slips through my fingers, and I straighten and stand.

  “What the hell are you talking about? It’s all of our fight, Marta. Violet broke Idun’s fucking bones in front of two crowds. Idun isn’t going to just lie down after that. Idun killed her network feed immediately after, because she’s that pissed,” I remind her.

  “The night I landed in Violet’s biological mother’s body, it was storming just like this,” she says, gesturing outside.

  “This is most definitely not the time for you to walk down memory lane. It makes it sound as though you’ve truly given up. Don’t you dare,” I grind out.

  She doesn’t even acknowledge me, as her eyes stay trained on the windows.

  “It was storming like this the night her head came off too,” she carries on.

  “Damn you, Marta,” I say, shoving a hand through my hair, as the woman stays a shell the one time I want her to keep her furious, relentless fight.

  My gaze darts to Violet, who is still smiling, enjoying the scene of the four of us ravishing her.

  “It was storming like this on her thirteenth birthday, the first time her monster broke free and burst the bubble I was living in. I had no idea I was playing house. I thought I’d built a home with my child, comfortably living in denial. I kept telling myself she was just a gypsy freak, but I knew better. She had a monster inside her, and it was scary to realize the future ahead of her.”

  “Are you saying she’s the reason it’s storming?” I ask, wondering about the point to this ramble.

  “No,” she says with no emotion, her look as lifeless as her words. “She can catch the lightning, but she can’t create the storm. This is someone else.”

  Great. She’s broken. Perfect.

  “Pandora brought the shifters and minor-league blood witches who came to murder her as a child,” I’m quick to argue. “She confirmed to Vance she was handling the shifters in Idun’s family’s absence.”

  She cuts her gaze to me. “I figured as much long ago. Demetria may be a strong beta, but she’s a soldier who follows orders. She lacks leadership skills. They were too organized and entirely too smart at eluding both Van Helsings and Portocales. Only someone as powerful and crafty as that witch could manage that. See, I put thought into this long ago, because it mattered to me long before Violet came into your life and you suddenly started caring. There was nothing I could do about it. Even with her magic dried up, I’m still no match for Pandora on my own, much to my dismay. If it hadn’t been for Violet, Vance would have successfully been lost today. Consider that.”

  She looks back out the window, as though that somehow qualifies as a response.

  “Violet lured them into a trap the day they beheaded her. They had no idea her head would stitch itself back on. She’s a girl who doesn’t fear death. Or at least she didn’t. Not until she lost me,” she continues, her tone still cold and emotionless.

  I look back, finding Violet turned over to her other side, and return my attention to Marta, as she wipes a stray tear from her eye.

  My phone chimes with a text, and I glance down, seeing it’s from Vance.

  VANCE: If you see Anna, salt her. It’s not a ghost. It’s some sort of mystical spirit that haunts the mind and drives it mad. Usually it can’t be seen, which is why I didn’t realize it sooner. It’s always been trapped inside the mind, but it’s found a way to somehow show itself, using the ghost plane.

  Bloody fucking hell. I can’t handle a revelation of that magnitude right now, because I don’t have the energy to feel one more single, exhausting bit of fury.

  Not tonight.

  Not when I’m so close to possibly losing it all.

  And Marta is pointless right now.

  I’ve never
heard her so detached. Marta Portocale is a relentless, spitfire pistol. Not even an eternity as long as ours has slowed her down.

  “I never should have come here. I knew this would happen,” Marta confesses on a quiet breath.

  We missed all the signs that Violet was turning into a mutinous beta. It’s completely understandable as to why she would want to rise against Idun, but…Idun can’t be overthrown by alphas, let alone betas.

  “Betrayal does have a way of riling a monster’s instincts, but Violet isn’t betraying anyone. She never agreed to pledge loyalty to Idun, and she’s not just a Neopry monster.”

  “None of which is relevant, because this is Idun we’re dealing with. And—”

  “And none of it matters,” she butts in, standing and going to stare out the window, as the lightning crashes harder and harder. “I don’t need it explained to me.”

  “I planned. I plotted. I came up with an abundance of wild ideas to prevent this from happening,” Marta adds. “Still, it happened. It’s as though I lost all my influence over Violet the moment I died.”

  She tilts her head, staring into the storm.

  “Now it’s too late. I never should have brought her here. I was scared, which is a damn near novel feeling for me these days. I let my emotions get the better of me for the first time in centuries, and now my daughter is a part of this world. I doubted myself and her. I relied on what I knew. I came back here, even though I should have stayed gone. She’d still be blissfully unaware and mildly lost.”

  Wolves break out into a panicked set of barks somewhere in the far distance. Or maybe we’re just hearing them since the storm isn’t quite as loud at the moment.

  Lightning strikes twice as hard in the next instant, drowning out the distant sounds to a certain degree.

  “The shifters have simply been waiting for battle,” Marta says on a tired sigh.

  “Van Helsing knights love a good battle,” I remind her. “The entire Van Helsing family has been diligently grooming those knights for centuries.”

  “How many of your family will stand behind you after your Flame picked a fight with Idun? No one was ready for this to be so abrupt. Everyone may hate and fear Idun, but they still back the winning side because of that fear, Damien. How many alphas will you have at your side tonight?”

  I don’t answer, because I honestly don’t know. It’s very unlikely I’ll have many allies.

  I never planned to do battle with Idun ever again. “I detached myself from my flocks and other people in general, cutting any ties to collateral power Idun could loom over me. Survival was no longer a priority of mine, and I was done fighting—”

  My words end on a sudden hiss, because an excruciating, high-pitched ringing sounds in my ears. The searing pain is so intense and jarring, that my stomach revolts. Bile rises to my throat, a reaction to the outrageous pain that feels to be splitting my skull open for a burning, miserable moment.

  My knees give, and I crash to the ground, while Marta stares down at me with an unchanged, flat expression.

  The room blurs for a moment, as the pain slowly starts to numb. Dizzy and disoriented, I dart a gaze over to the…broken salt line that was around Violet.

  I swallow thickly, feeling the severed link between my mind and Violet’s, and see the empty space, hoping my aching mind is playing tricks on me.

  My panic and dread double, as the lump in my throat becomes harder to swallow around.

  “Where the fuck did she go?” I grind out, trying to force myself to my feet, only to suffer another wave of nausea when I move too fast.

  “She’ll feel terrible about the trouble she’s caused when she realizes what she’s done,” Marta tells me, her tone still emotionless and flat. “But for now, she’s not in very much control. She’s simply along for the ride. She’s a young monster, Damien. You all know that too well.”

  I try to push up, as I hear the lightning crashing repeatedly somewhere in the distance. The link was severed so abruptly and without warning. My head is struggling to clear from the throbbing pressure that has mounted in my skull.

  Clutching my head, I have no choice but to ride it out. The dizziness grows so heavy that it’s making it feel as though the room is spinning uncontrollably.

  “Pandora chose Idun’s side because she knows that devil. She knows that monster. She also knows that Idun will keep the world from being crushed by monsters, because Idun sees us all as expendable infections. Idun never did this for our people, Damien. She only did it for herself.”

  A pained hiss escapes me in place of the words I can’t manage to form.

  “Prepare yourself, Morpheous. They come now,” she says, standing, as she picks up two silver swords.

  The scent assures me it’s Van Helsing silver. Who the fucking hell would give that woman Van Helsing—

  A loud crash has me trying to turn my head to the right, as that steady ringing drones on in my ears, though thankfully at a lower decibel. The storm gains momentum outside, and rain splashes through the open door.

  The wind howls almost as loudly as the wolves, but all the wolves suddenly go silent. Lightning crashes, illuminating the dark room enough for me to see Marta shoving a sword through the vacant air.

  Blood drips, and my cousin becomes visible, his eyes teeming with fury.

  “You’ll see us all dead, Portocale,” he says, forcing the words out, while working to remove the sword from his gut. His eyes cut to mine, and he sneers in my direction. “You fucking fool,” he says as his last words.

  The glint of silver is barely glimpsed, before the sword slices through his neck, and his head rolls to the floor.

  “See you in twenty-two years, Marcus,” I hear Marta saying, as I try to catch my breath, my vision dimming. “Hurry up and pull yourself together, Damien. I won’t be able to take on all the alphas who’ll side with Idun without some help.”

  Bloody hell. How did this day get so out of control?

  “Where. The fuck. Is Violet?” I grind out through gritted teeth.

  She gives me a bleak expression. “If I had to guess, she’s on her way to Idun.”

  My heart kicks my chest, and the pain in my temple multiplies, as I stagger to my feet. I barely get upright, before I see a waver of someone’s illusion.

  “Behind you!” I shout.

  Marta doesn’t even hesitate to stab the sword behind her, slamming it into the side of someone.

  The second I get a whiff of their oozing blood, I decide one very important thing: Violet’s fucking scent-masking apple products are going to make tonight hell.

  Marta spins so fast that I barely register the motion, and another head flies off, ending the illusion, even as she hisses out a pained breath.

  Marta staggers back, cupping a slice to her throat that came too close, and she grips her bleeding neck. The head of one of my least favorite sisters falls to the floor.

  The brutal Portocale makes beheading an alpha seem simple, when it’s no simple task at all.

  “At this rate, we’re going to have to kill my entire fucking—”

  A blade whirs toward my head, and I barely dodge it in time. Marta tosses me a sword, and I turn, getting the blade up in time to halt the next attempt to remove my head.

  My nose bleeds, as I mentally force my way into the room, buffing the illusions cast around me, using all the power I have.

  When the room clears and becomes visible, Marta sucks in a breath, backing toward me.

  We’re completely surrounded by the remainder of my family. My father gives me a small glare, and I narrow my eyes at him.

  “You have the audacity to rise against me?” I bite out.

  He takes a step forward, crossing his hands in front of him, as the rest of my family simply stands and waits.

  “It must have taken most of your power to break through all our illusions. I’m sorry, Damien. You can’t check out for so many centuries and expect the family to back you all of the sudden, especially when you do something
as rash and clumsy as you’ve allowed your darling little monster toy to get away with today. You’re once again thinking with your prick, son, and that’s playing a dangerous game. You made this decision too easy.”

  Amos slides in at my side, causing my father’s brow to furrow.

  “You really think you’ll stand a chance against all of us, even with Damien fighting at your side?” Father asks him. “All because of one fucking Simpleton Portocale bitch your brother couldn’t keep his dick out of?”

  “I’ve lived a long damn time, and for the majority of it, I let you and Dorian fuck my head up,” Amos answers, jaw grinding, as he draws his sword. “Who knows? Maybe this will be the moment I finally manage to start redeeming the bloody soul I’m stuck with for all eternity.”

  My father twirls his sword, smirking. Marta grins with anticipation, eagerly awaiting the battle.

  My mind is still reeling, and anger stirs inside me, because I’m far too desperate to reach Violet.

  “Very bloody well,” I say, watching as my mother shoves my father aside, her eyes glaring directly at Marta.

  “Very bloody well,” my mother agrees with a smirk.

  In the next instant, swords clang, and I meet my father head on, as Amos tends my back. This is going to have to be quick. My chest is aching, my mind is racing, and the world is barely a blur around me.

  My instincts demand I find Violet. Even if I have to litter the floor with the heads of my own kin to reach her.

  Just as my sword swings against my father’s, Vanzuela Van Helsing crashes into the room, barely saving me from a brother attacking me from behind.

  “Never thought there’d come a day when I was fighting alongside Marta Portocale, let alone Damien and Amos Morpheous,” Zuela grunts through a mystifying amount of swordsmanship, making the shit look easy. “At least not in a real battle.”

  My father uses the distraction against me, and at the last minute, I bend backwards, narrowly dodging his nearly lethal strike. Kicking out a leg, I knock him backwards, and spin in time to slice through the neck of Theodore, my least favorite cousin.