Page 34 of All Hallows Trick

“Do not,” Miz said quietly, “speak her name.” He pulled me closer.

“There’s nothing to undo,” Poppy told me with a kind smile. The kind smile that had made me think she was ordinary and nice and on my side. Instead, she was a fucking psycho.

“There’s no cure?”

She laughed. “Why would I invent a cure? It’s not an illness or disease. It’s agift.”

I ground my teeth, anger spreading, casting its fire further, merging with the dark velvet of shadows inside me. A smile flickered at the edge of Madness’s mouth.

Make her scream. She needs to pay for hurting you.

Yes, she did. Anger beat against my ribs as I stared at her, this woman I’d thought was so genuine but who’d been conducting torture and experiments in the woods this whole time. She experimented onmy brother.

“Did you tell Phil to bring me here last night?” I asked slowly, my temper not a rapid spike this time but a slow, slow burn. Its scorch was hotter, deeper. I took another step closer. “Did you tell her to hit me over the head with a rock and drag me through the woods?”

I remembered Phil mentioning ahebut that didn’t mean Poppy wasn’t behind my abduction.

“I don’t come into contact with Nightmare’s terrors,” Poppy replied, watching me in a way that made me uncomfortable, too fond, too… familiar. Like me being twisted by her serum connected us in any way. “Except for classes, I only spend time with my children.”

“Your experiments,” I spat. “They’re not your children, Carmilla. They’re your victims.”

She reeled like I’d struck her.

“Where’s the rest of the antidotes? Tell me where to find them, or how to make more.”

She shook her head. “There’s no need. You’re per—”

“Yeah, cut the shit. Where can I find more syringes?”

She just sighed, watching me like she was disappointed in me. It fanned the flames of my rage, and she inhaled sharply, watching me.

“You’re something special,” she murmured, staring at me. “Not like the others. Being the Bride of Death has made you… exceptional. Look at your eyes.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Tor growled, angling between us.

Madde moved so fast I didn’t even see the shadows swirling around his hands until he’d wrapped them both around Poppy’s neck.

“Madde!” I cried, jerking forward a step in the small room. “You can’t kill her, we need her to make more antidotes.”

The smile that stretched across his face dropped my temperature by a few degrees.

“By the time I’m finished with you,” Madness told Poppy, “you’re going to beg for death, but you won’t have a voice left. Your vocal cords will be shredded, your brain will melt inside your skull, and every bone in your body will be broken. You hurt my lioness.No onehurts my lioness.”

Of all the reactions my body could have had, the tension leaving my shoulders and air filling my lungs wasn’t the one I predicted. The band across my chest eased. The cramp left my stomach, muscles sore and aching in the aftermath.

“Can we take her to the domain?” I asked, looking to Tor. “Can we… question her there?”

A flare of light hit his eyes, glee and dangerous intensity making my stomach flutter. “It would be my honour to torture answers out of her, beautiful.”

“What?” Poppy asked, breathless. “You can’t do that. You can’t torture me. Not when you know—”

“Oh, yes,” Tor said in a low purr so completely different to the way he spoke to me. This voice promised the torture he’d been named after. It promised suffering, endless and eternal. I shuddered, my sore pussy clenching. “I know you’re dead.”

I jolted, stumbling into Miz. “What?”

“She’s a ghost,” Tor explained, his teeth bared at Poppy. “She’s dead, Cat.” He gave Poppy a cruel look I’d never seen on his face before. “But even ghosts can be tortured.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

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