Page 66 of Watch Me Burn

Even if I can’t help myself from interjecting incredulously, “Hang on… are youmonologuing?”

“What? No. I just want you to know why you’re going to die before I kill you.”

Oh, this has gotta be good.

I could strike her down where she stands. With the fire opal in my pocket, I could be a precision flamethrower, and she knows it.

“Okay. And?”

“Because you’re a witch.”

Wow. I give her a slow clap.

“Supernaturals don’t belong in our world. It’s our mission to get rid of all of them, not just witches. But, I’ll admit, Stephen and I had a fondness for snatching witches off the street and having our fun with them.”

Stephen?

At my sudden look of confusion, her expression turns nasty. “You know Stephen. He’s the one who couldn’t wait to get the cuffs on you to bring you to me. But he should’ve waited for me to join him. Then I wouldn’t have had to follow you all the way to bumfuck Alaska to get my revenge. And I needed to. It wasn’t just a mission for me. I needed to watch you suffer, then watch you die.”

“Me? What did I do?”

Because, shit, that sounds personal. And I know that witch hunters work in pairs, but this is kind of excessive.

“You? You killed him!”

Technically, he killed himself, but I don’t think this is the right time to point that out.

“I loved him. He was my partner and my lover, and you killed him. That’s why I’m going to kill you, witch. And to make sure it really hurts, I’ll let this fire rage until all of Dyea is dead, too.”

Conall.

Elise.

Hell fucking no.

My hands spark. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Of course I would. You don’t need to be a fire witch to set a blaze,” Linda sneers. “A little gasoline, some kindling, and a match gets the job done. It lures out the witch,” she adds, “and the wolf.”

The what?

My head whips around. I probably shouldn’t have taken my eyes off of the witch hunter, but through the bond we just finalized, I know exactly what I’m going to find behind me.

It’s Conall. He’s back in his wolf form, and at first he was trotting toward me. He must’ve seen that the fire died out and waited for me to return to him. When I didn’t, he came padding through the woods toward me.

But I’m not alone. I’m facing off against Linda, and whether Conall knows she set the fire or not—if he knows whether she’s a witch hunter or not—it doesn’t matter. He instinctively recognizes her as a threat, pouring on the speed, baring his fangs as he races toward her.

Because Linda is a human, I underestimated her. I’m a witch. Conall’s a shifter. We could take her on no problem if necessary once she was done yapping.

But she’s not just a human. She’s a human fanatic who’s spent her whole life training to eliminate witches. Her hatred toward everything supe is clear. She wants to eliminate the entire sanctuary.

She starts with Conall.

It happens so fast, if it wasn’t for the moon catching against the bright silver weapon in her hand, I don’t know I would’ve seen Linda remove her witch hunter blade from wherever she kept it stored. She did, though, and without any hesitation at all, she takes a split second to sidestep and aim, then sends the dagger flying through the air.

It’s a perfect fucking hit.

As Conall tore toward her, she angled her body so that the knife arrowed right at Conall’s side. It finds its target in the bulk of his wolf’s side, and though I wouldn’t have thought the length of the blood would be long enough to actually reach through the fur andhurthim, I’m wrong.

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