“One. Two. Hyde’s playing with you.” Do those voices belong to the creepy triplets?
The singing children have Idun promptly whirling around, and we all dart a look to where the other ghosts are still surrounding Violet, blocking her from sight.
Idun charges, as the singing echoes around us with the next line.
“Three. Four,” they sing, as Idun salts the entire gathering of ghosts with barely a swing of her claws.
She stiffens, right along with all of us, when we spot the bloodstained, vacant ground. “We love blood and gore.”
Idun hisses and spins around again, her eyes darting from one place to another.
“Five. Six. We have a whole bag of tricks.”
“Save your fucking tricks, you wretched freak. You’ve lost too much blood, and all you’re doing is pissing me off.”
Violet was…shredded. Completely shredded.
“Fuck the blood. She lost all her organs. There’s no way she’s already up,” Vance says on a quiet breath, brow furrowed, as he turns and starts searching the dark shadows surrounding us.
The tickling I felt…could that have been strings?
I glance down, finding my socks missing. Not a single thread is left.
“Seven. Eight. You opened hell’s gate.”
“I won’t play your fucking little games,” Idun shouts into the darkness, before her eyes land on me. “I know your biggest weaknesses.”
Idun moves so fast that I don’t have time to even react.
A series of rapid-fire events happen next, while I remain frozen and unmoving.
I feel a cold breath on my neck that sends a chill throughout my whole body, seconds before I’m shoved out of the way. As I fall, I look over to see a familiar little girl, fully fleshed, with tiny stitches lacing her together all over. Her head gets immediately severed from her body.
The head rolls around on the ground, as Idun heaves furious breaths. I’m not sure why we all just stare at the head instead of doing anything.
“I’ll just keep shredding you until—”
The body moves so quickly that my eyes can’t gauge the direction it moves, and a child’s laughter echoes through the forest ahead of us. When I look over at where the head is/was, I find it already missing.
Strings whir through the air, my shirt sleeves quickly unraveling.
From my spot on the ground, I look around, searching for a child.
Idun spins, just as a shadow moves in behind her.
There stands the child with a fresh set of stitches on her neck to match the thousands of tiny stitches all over her body.
She grins up at Idun, just as two identical apparitions join her at her side.
“Nine. Ten. You’ll never be on top again,” they state in a sinister, eerie tone.
Idun moves, and the triplets match her move this time. Idun’s claws smash against the child’s arm, and I watch with some admitted shock when the sharp, deadly, indestructible weapons break from her fingertips for the very first time, leaving nary a scratch on the child’s flesh.
There’s a pained scream that follows.
It takes a moment to realize it’s Idun screaming, as she staggers back, clutching her wrist, while blood pours from her fingertips.
“I’d hate to be her right now,” Anna says, suddenly standing right beside me in her apparitional form.
My eyes cut to meet hers, as she grins.
“Those little girls are vicious,” she adds. “I bet you’re wondering what Violet was like as a dark and scary little monster child now, aren’t you?”
My body is back into a state of shock. I hear words. I see movement. None of it is processing.
Too much is happening all at once.
Chapter 46
EMIT
As much as I want to lunge for Idun, I feel rooted to my spot.
“Everything you’ve done to us, we’ve let you do. Now it’s Hyde’s turn to have some fun too,” they state in a songlike tone.
More childlike laughter rings through the air around us, as Idun and the child become a blur of motion. Arion’s obnoxious gate crashes to the ground, and we all jerk our gazes to it.
Idun is tangled in the broken metal gates. How did that happen so fast?
She’s slow to get up, as the heat gets so intense it begins to force the wet ground to catch fire. Snow immediately starts falling from the sky, seconds before the frigid cold snuffs out all the heat.
“It’s cute how hard she tries,” Anna says, gesturing at Idun. “It’s like she really thinks she’s still the queen. Seeing is believing, I suppose.”
A blur of motion, and suddenly Idun is crying out in surprise, as the two of them vanish from sight altogether.
Arion whirls around, eyes leveling Anna.
“Where the fuck is Violet?” he demands.
“Sitting back and watching the show, I presume. I’m in charge right now,” Anna says with a growing grin. “Isn’t this fun?”
He starts to speak, but Anna’s attention turns to Talbot. In a blink, she goes from beside Damien to standing directly in front of his beta. Talbot startles, but immediately lowers his eyes so that they don’t meet hers.
“I remember you now,” she says, still smiling.
That smile immediately falls, and a threatening look crosses her eyes.
“There’s no box anymore. I’m never leaving again!”
He nods very quickly, never lifting his gaze.
She smiles as though that’s good enough for her, and then she vanishes from sight. Idun and the child are gone too, as though Anna purposely distracted us.
“Find. Them,” Vance bites out, glaring over at Talbot, as he points his sword at the shifty blood-magic incubus. “Now.”
Talbot’s eyes close, and he lifts his hands in a motion that typically signifies a prayer.
“Watch for the lightning,” he says in a hushed tone.
A crash of it streaks somewhere behind us, and the hair on my neck raises.
Spinning around, I kick off from the ground with my back feet, and race toward the next streak that lights up the whole town.
A scream echoes to me, but I have no idea who is screaming. My head is racing with millions of tiny details all trying to sift together at once.
Vance leaps over me, and the vampire races by in a streak of motion. I pound the pavement under my feet, chasing after them. Feeling Damien close behind me, I take a sharp turn, cutting down an alleyway that I hope is a shortcut.
The next bolt of lightning strikes ahead of me somewhere, and sparks fly through the air, as glass shatters all around me. My heart hits like a drum, and the world seems to move in slow motion around me for a weightless second.
It doesn’t even register that I’ve been thrown back by some unseen force, until I’m crashing through a wall of a shop. Spices all assault me, and I sneeze numerous times, before scrambling back up to my feet and leaping back through the hole I just made.
Shaking my head and snorting out as much of the spice as I can, I chase the sound of the next bolt of lightning, seeing it light up the sky much farther in the distance.
Anna is suddenly directly in front of me, sending me sliding to a halt.
“Sorry, wolf. Somethings are better left unseen,” she quips. “Violet has rules, you know.”
She gives me a wink.
I’m blown back again, only this time, there’s no bolt of lightning. My hair raises all over me, as sparks zap all along the metal pipes that line the sides of the buildings. Even though the power’s been cut, the entire street before me starts lighting up.
Shoving back upright, I chase the light, catching barely a glimpse of a dark-haired woman—the same one I saw when I was racing toward my wolves.
She gives me a black-tooth grin that distracts me so much I almost miss the sight of Idun racing toward me in a blur, even as she limps on one leg.
She crashes to the wall next to me, hiccupping out a pained sound, as she shoves her shoulder back into
socket. Her eyes are wide and almost bloodshot, and her face is solid white.
“You have to stop her!” she shouts, sounding entirely too distressed, and…I freeze, because there’s another tremor to race through me.
I don’t know what causes it, but it forces my knees to lock in place, and my body becomes statuesque.
There’s a crackle of energy, a loud pop, and suddenly music starts blaring.
Monsters plays overhead, and a screeching sound echoes through every alley surrounding us.
Idun shudders and shoves by me, racing away. I stare in empty confusion, until there’s suddenly a set of solid black eyes before me. This time, the woman is in flesh instead of being a fucking ghost, and it definitely makes her far more unnerving than annoying.
My mobility quickly returns.
Stumbling backwards, another small tremor snakes up my spine, as the woman’s mouth opens much wider than humanly possible, and she screams in my face.
My ears ache, as the scream breaks through the remaining windows surrounding us. Glass grazes my skin, but I stare inside the monster’s mouth, since it’s all I can see before me.
A dizzying, black-and-white pattern lies in the throat that is still vibrating with the never-ending scream.
She snaps her jaw shut, grins as she touches my fur, and then there’s nothing but a whisper of cold air before me.
My hair still standing on end, I spin in circles, searching for which direction she went. Though I have no idea if my feet would allow me to follow right now.
The wind howls, as the rain begins falling again, though I have no idea when it even stopped. It patters against the pavement in an increasingly steady stride, as thunder rumbles overhead hard enough to surely startle the bones in the cemetery.
My own bones are a little shaky as I take an uncertain step. I pause in front of a cracked window, seeing my reflection, once the sky lights up with the distant, yet blindingly bright, streak of lightning.
There’s a patch of fur—where her hand touched—that is solid white. There’s another strip on my other side near my ear.
Fuck. Me.
She scared me so bad I now have white patches in my fucking fur. I’ll never hear the bloody end of this.
Shaking out of my own head, since I’ve apparently gone into too much of a stupor to find an appropriate reaction, I take a seat.
In the pouring rain.
In the middle of the street.
Idun was fucking desperately fleeing, and my fur is white.
The music distantly echoes back to me, because it’s apparently moving with the impossible rush of electricity.
With somewhat shaky motions, I shift back to two legs, and stand at my full height.
The rain slaps my face for a moment longer, until the storm begins to ebb.
Exhaling a shaky breath, I stare into the reflective surface once more. My hair doesn’t have any white patches in this form.
“Well, that’s new,” I manage to say, after clearing my throat a few times.
Pandora’s full power is barely a memory, but I certainly don’t remember it being this intense. This storm has raged for hours now, and Talbot Lane can control the lightning.
How much stronger is he than the woman who started this fucked up world?
My feet start moving, chasing the lightning once again. My instincts are in a frenzy, because I don’t even know what to do if I find her again.
I just froze.
I fucking froze.
At this point, I haven’t seen a single sign of Violet since her monster took possession.
Another scream in the distance has me racing that much harder, because now I don’t trust that Idun’s going to be the only toy of the night.
What if Hyde is here to stay?
It’s certainly fucking enjoying its freedom, and I know it took some of us a long time to push the monster down after the initial change.
What if the gentle Violet can’t control her monster ever again?
Chapter 47
ARION
Pushing up from the ground, wincing in some pain, I stand to my feet, staring ahead at the road that has been split apart by the most ferocious lightning strike yet.
Blinking against the rain, I watch as a blue-haired belly-dancer gives Idun a lap dance. And by lap dance, I mean she’s dancing only on Idun’s lap, because Idun is in two pieces.
Idun’s upper body is desperately clawing at the ground, heaving her top half away as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, the blue-haired, pink-eyed version of Anna laughs with the red-headed apparition of Anna.
The triplets dance in a circle around Idun’s top half, moving along with her, singing Ring Around the Rosie. Every time they ‘all fall down,’ Idun cries out in pain and slams to the ground with them.
They laugh merrily each time, while Red-Headed Anna sings to Blue-Haired Anna, giving her a beat to grind her hips to.
I…have no idea how to feel about any of this.
Staring on, unmoving, I watch through the rain, listening to the sound of Idun screaming again. The only male ghost is dancing with a ring of female ghosts. Then that group comes to join hands with the triplets, expanding their circle around the ‘unstoppable’ alpha.
Idun’s next scream is twice as loud when they all fall down.
Idun scrambles to move, practically racing toward me on her hands, with her eyes frozen wide in…terror. I’ve never experienced anything like I’m feeling right now, so I have no idea what to even label it as.
Stunned and confused are just two of the many pointless reactions my immobile body allows me to have.
She grabs my leg in a desperate hug, but my eyes lift from her to all the ghosts, who swing an eerie look in my direction the moment she touches me. They grin in unison, while the blue-haired version of Anna shifts into the redheaded one before my eyes, stealing the flesh.
Her red-lipped grin twists into one of pure evil. She moves with less visibility than a shadow, even to my eyes, and she’s very suddenly standing in front of me, eyes peering up, as she twists her hair around her finger.
Idun makes a startled sound, releasing my leg very abruptly, and scrambles off on her hands once more.
“Taste her fear, Vampyre?” Anna asks, her grin unwavering.
Down to my bones, I’m fighting the urge to tremble, due to some inconveniently wild and unexpected fear of my own. I’m too frozen to move or form words.
I feel her presence for the first true time, and it’s…terrifyingly exciting and undeniably powerful. It transcends any presence Idun has ever emitted.
The lower half of Idun’s body comes running by me, as if Anna is turning Idun into a bad parody of her former self.
“Keep watching. The show’s just getting started, and you know how much Idun loves a captive audience,” Anna adds with a wink.
In the amount of time it takes me to blink, Anna is missing, which leaves me quickly darting a look around, searching for the direction she’s gone.
When my gaze lifts to a rooftop, I spot Talbot Lane staring down at me with an intense and dark expression. He turns and is gone in the next instant behind a veil of unrelenting rain.
January Violet Carmine hasn’t just been keeping secrets from us; she’s been hiding an entire identity.
Not that we’d have ever believed a word of it.
Glancing down, I lift the leg of my pants, spotting the bruises Idun left behind with her desperate cling.
The rain pelts me harder, as I start to move and stop. Then I start again and…stop again.
Why isn’t Idun’s monster out? Why is Idun running? How the fucking hell did we not know Violet’s been this powerful all along?
I run a hand through my drenched hair, as my shirt clings to me, the fabric so soaked it’s become nothing more than a weighted hindrance.
I could use some gin.
Maybe more than some.
“I’m glad I trusted my brother,” Emily says as she drops from the rooftop beside me.
My senses are so distraught that I never even felt her coming.
I cut my eyes to her, as she gives me a timid, shaky smile.
“I guess I should respect you for how very little you’re intimidated by extremely powerful women, huh?” she asks, her voice hesitant.
“Shhhh…”
The hissed warning comes from a ghost that magically appears at Emily’s side, causing my sister to startle and stumble back a step. The ghost’s head spins in a full circle, as it laughs with its distorted mouth.
The long, dark hair turns into tiny snake heads, as the dark eyes of the apparition glisten under the distant lightning.
“No witnesses, Vampyre,” the ghost tells Emily in that hissing tone, a snake’s tongue darting between its sharp teeth. “You only get a free pass because you’re his favorite sister. For now.”
After the next strike of blinding light fades from view, the ghost is gone.
I’m not sure when my sister grabbed my arm, but I now feel her nails digging into me, as she trembles all over.
“That was just a projection, right? Yet I still felt its presence?” she asks, her grip tightening. “That’s the first time I’ve felt its presence.”
I say nothing, since…words aren’t forming. I’ve never before been as speechless as I’ve been this night.
“Arion, I’m going home. Call me when this is over,” Emily says with a dead, flat tone, as her entire body trembles once more.
Just the ghost’s presence sent her survivalist instincts into overdrive.
She pauses, while I remain somewhat lost in my state of shock.
“Arion,” Emily says quietly, calling my attention once again. She turns her head enough to look over her shoulder at me, seriousness in her eyes. “Power like that could destroy the world. Imagine what life will be like when there are betas for that monster. I know you love her, and if Idun is shamelessly running in terror, you certainly can’t defeat the monster breathing down her neck. But that thing is certainly not the sweet girl you’ve been parading around. What happens next?”
For a moment, I simply stare at her, unable to answer. After another few beats of silence, she nods.
Gypsy Truths (All The Pretty Monsters Book 6) Page 41