Page 146 of Her Psycho Beasts

In a voice that is dull and so devoid of warmth that it burns, he says, “Good morning, Aurelia.”

“Howdareyou come here.”

“Sit down, you impertinent child.” Something ten years old in me rears its ugly head at the utter contempt in his voice. On old reflex, I pull out the chair and sit in it.

I hate myself right away.

Darkness drips off my father. A cloak of oil and dark fire. Once I sit down, it’s like it’s being draped over me too. I fight the nausea of it. Of the sight of him, sitting so tall and proud, with a slight curve to his thin lips as he regards me with cold calculation.

I thought Scythe once looked at me in the same way, but I immediately know I was wrong. They aresodifferent. My father’s gaze is penetrating and violating. It’s cutting and serrated. It’s the gaze of a man who violated my mother every month for the last fifteen years.

He has to be rattled by our intervention. By the loss of her. By the loss of control and power. Remarkably, he showsnoneof it.

That’s the most fury-inducing thing of all. With all the hatred and agony in my heart, I hiss, “I will see you slaughtered. If it is thelastthing that I do.”

He smiles as if I am a child whispering silly things. “You took Athena away from me. Now, I will need a replacement. Which of your friends here would you recommend? Some are reginas, I hear.” He waves a hand to indicate the families around us. Minnie in the far corner, chatting away with her parents. Connor hugging his grandfather; Stacey with her mum.

“I would die before I see them in your hands,” I hiss.

“If you were dead, you wouldn’t be seeing them at all.”

“You really have lost all humanity, haven’t you?” I say with disgust. “Maybe you had none to begin with.

What he says next is completely without emotion. “You forget, child, that I know you better than anyone else in this room. Better than your so-called mates. Better than your little anima friends. I know who you really are. I know you would sacrifice yourself to save them all. A noble quality if it were serpents you were martyred for. But these creatures?” He casts his gaze about the room, his mouth twisted in distaste. “They were never worth it, Aurelia. You will see that in time.”

One fact would never change. Hehadbeen a loving father once. Once, when it had served him. And a knife wielded by your parents cut deeper and faster than any other weapon possibly could. He always had a way of speaking that incited silence in others. And I hate that a stunned silence strikes me now.

“Your mate, Scythe Kharkouros,” he continues, “thinks he is untouchable. I am here to tell you that if you do not comply, he and the rest will all be dead before the year is done. Their deaths are signed. You have not seen the terror I can cause, Aurelia. You have not seen the extent to which I will execute those you love to get what I want. Their lives mean nothing to me.Yourlife means nothing to me. You are new to this world where I have been playing master for decades.”

A chill wracks my bones. Cold and absolute, his words are. And I believe each syllable.

He leans forward and lowers his voice. “I will make what we did to Sabrina look like child’s play. Do you understand me?”

I am struck into a state of utter shock. In this level of evil, I am outmatched. Outsmarted. Outwitted. How can I compete with this level of abhorrent calculation?

“I can see my words have hit home.”

There is no reply that will save me. Not from him.

“I am done playing, Aurelia. No more chances. Only funerals await you.”

I speak from between clenched teeth. “What would you have me do?”

“What I wanted from the start. If you want this to cease, surrender to me. Lay your allegiance to me.” The sound of his chair scraping back barely registers. A shadow passes over me before he is gone, leaving an utterly cold scream in my ears in his wake.

Chapter 75

Xander

People call after Snake Spawn as she rushes out of the hall long after Scumbag King is gone. Sitting in the corner, watching the hall, I’d heard the entire septic conversation while everyone else was caught up in their own.

I stalk her because she is likely to do something extremely stupid that might endanger us all. She is volatile. Dangerously stupid. Stupidly dangerous.

Patting the kangaroo joey as it squirms in its sack around my neck, I stride across the lawn. She doesn’t even notice me, so caught up in her own selfish melodrama. She’s headed right into the anima dorms, and to my surprise, when I broach the entrance moments after, Christine the gargoyle lets me in with an irritatingly chirpy, “Good day, my lord.” I think I’m in her good books because of that one time I stopped Savage from trying to behead her.

Spawn heads exactly where I guess—to the anima hideout they’d used during her period of rabidity, the place Minnie calls ‘The Phantom of the Opera dungeon’. Through the old dragon painting, down the spiral stone staircase and into the watery canal she goes, and I follow her like one of Scythe’s phantoms.

I just need to swap my joey for a mask like Ghoul has to complete the look.

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