Page 215 of The Broken Aztec Princesses

It almost didn’t work, and when I thought she was going to hurt Chris, I was surprised to see my shields dropping not only on me, but on Chris and Bells. That was the time we needed for Vesta to come to the rescue. Something I’d eternally be grateful for, even if it meant we would never see Adam again.

I was pulled out of my thoughts and grief when Martha’s screams turned desperate. Instead of the walls that had been surrounding her, she was now covered up to her neck with hard dirt. Looking more closely, I could see the dirt undulating up and down her body, crushing different parts of her body.

“I don’t think she can breathe, Bells,” Chris called out, making me look at Martha’s face. She wasn’t speaking anymore, but if I looked closely at the lips covered in blood, they were turning blue.

“Are you feeling sorry for her?” Bells asked, and the calmness in her voice worried me.

I felt like she’d gone to a dark place she might not be able to return from.

“Hell, no! But you won’t be able to do what you want, if she falls unconscious,” Chris answered, making me look up at him in surprise.‘She needs to get all her rage out, so she can grieve,’Chris explained via mind-link when he saw my reaction.

Bells nodded at his words, and the dirt appeared to breathe outward around her upper chest, allowing Martha to gasp as her lungs got the first breath of air.

Bells continued playing with the dirt around Martha’s body, as if it was the clay we used to play with when we were little girls, alternating between cutting off the air supply from the neck, constricting the chest cavity until she went blue in the face and then breaking her bones while she let her breathe.

The sickening sound of bones breaking and her garbled screams made me sick to my stomach, but I refused to cover my ears or throw up. I refused to look away. Bells needed us here with her, and I wanted Martha to see who she had messed with.

My phone kept ringing with calls and texts from Cory, asking what was happening to Bells. I finally decided to text him back, letting him know that it wasn’t a good time, and that Bells was safe now. I promised him I’d explain later. I turned off my phone when he called after my text. I loved my brother, but Bells needed me more, right now. After my phone turned off, Chris’ phone began to ring. He pulled it out and turned it off, having seen the text I sent my brother.

Bells continued crushing every bone in Martha’s body until you couldn’t hear the breaking of bones anymore. After a particularly close moment, when Bells compressed her chest to the point where Martha’s eyes rolled back into her head and she almost passed out, Bells allowed her a moment to breathe, before she asked.

“Any last words?”

If Martha was smart, she wouldn’t answer. Bells was ready for her big finale, and anything Martha said would only kick it upa notch. She was barely conscious, now depending on the earth around her neck to lift her head. Still, she licked her lips before she answered Bells’ question.

“It doesn’t matter what you do to me. It doesn’t matter how many of us you kill. Tezcatlipoca will find a way to make it into this world and then your family will pay. Then everyone will see how strong he is.”

Bells walked up to her and hissed, “I hope he does, because I’ll be waiting to return all the pain he’s caused me.” When she stepped back, the ground trembled all around us.

Chris held me to him, spreading his legs a little to keep us stable. The earth beneath Martha started dropping until only her torso, legs and waist were encased in solid earth. Her legs were a nasty color of ground beef covered in flesh, and I wondered for a brief moment if I was going to be able to continue looking at her. I held onto Chris tighter, depending on his arms around my waist to keep me standing.

A spike of hard earth began to appear beneath Martha, growing slowly, and Bells turned around to look at us.

“Chris, don’t let Violet watch. I don’t want this to trigger her,” she ordered.

“I’m not looking away, Bells,” I growled at her. “I want to watch this woman die for what she did.”

‘She’s going to impale her, Violet,’Chris warned me.

‘I know, and I want to watch that woman’s face twist in pain.’

I made the mistake of looking down when Martha let out the first scream, seeing the blood begin to flow down the spike as it tore her in half. My knees buckled, but he held me upright. I took a deep breath, reminding myself that Martha was a part of what happened to me, too, and my resolve strengthened. I didn’t look down again, but I kept my eyes firmly on her face and the way she screamed in pain.

Right before she passed out, Bells encased her face in dirt, muffling her screams of torment and panic. Once there were no more sounds, Bells removed the dirt around her head, and I saw the top of the spike poking out through her neck. Still, whether out of anger or to make sure she was dead, Bells sent a spear through her head, pieces of brain matter dripping from the end. Finally, Bells let the dirt fall from around Martha, and the woman fell to the ground in two sickening piles of flesh.

Bells used her power to remove the dirt from beneath both piles of human garbage and then sealed the bitch’s remains with more earth over her.

“Let her rot there. She doesn’t deserve to have her spirit sent back to Selene,” Bells spat.

Bells began walking toward us, and we rushed to her when we noticed she was wobbly on her feet.

“I spent too much energy,” Bells explained in a tired whisper, allowing us to help her walk back to the pack house. Before we could get too far, though, she made us stop.

“We should go get Hugh and give him a proper send-off. He may have been foolish, but his heart was in the right place,” she told us.

I wrapped my arm around Bell’s waist when Chris nodded at me, and he went to retrieve Hugh. We cleaned Hugh’s broken body and wrapped it in a shroud while Chris built the pyre, as he refused to let either of us near an axe.

After we watched Hugh’s body burn, we went up to the alpha floor. I hesitated at the landing as I watched Bells walk away.

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