Page 58 of Sweet Silver Bells
“Bury it?”
She motioned towards the television. “It still vibrates, hums. If you prefer to keep smashing, you can. It just won't be enough.”
“Enough?” Hunter swallowed. “All of this wasn’t enough?”
Olivia let out an exhale, showing obvious disappointment in his reaction. She shook her head as her eyes darkened to onyx black as she opened her mouth and cleared her throat.
“For the tree, there can never be enough.”
Olivia sang.
“Sweet Silver Bells
Throw Cares Away.”
On the first line, Hunter’s mind went hazy. On the second,he realized whatever immunity he’d thought he had was a severe mistake as his vision went black.
16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN.
Pain tore through Hunter the moment he drifted back to consciousness, his world no wider than the darkness behind his eyelids. His knuckles throbbed, each fingertip a raw nerve set ablaze. He scraped his index finger across his thumbnail and nearly screamed, but his lips refused to part, split and frozen, the skin on his face searing as if he had stood too long against a merciless wind, frost biting deep into his cheeks and brow.
There was nothing there at all—no nail on his thumb, the flesh underneath excruciating to the touch.
What happened?
He racked his brain, twitching various parts of his body, checking to see what else was injured. He calmed after he’d finished his inspection, learning that he was mostly sore and that the most serious damage was in his hands, his missing nail, and his knuckles.
His eyelids fluttered open, and he found himself back on the couch. It wasn’t morning this time, and he was still dressed in the same clothes as before. The smell of dirt clung to him, but it lacked the soft sweetness of potting soil. This wasrancid, ancient, the stench of decay and old earth, as if he had crawled through tunnels burrowed too close to leaking pipes and something foul that festered and fed on anything alive.
The haze still lingered, creeping through his thoughts, blurring the edges of what came before. The last thing he could grasp were those dark eyes—unyielding, merciless, carved from a hunger that would not be denied. She would take what she wanted. She would claim what she needed.
“Olivia,” he croaked, trying to roll on his side. He heard no noise, no response.
Where is she?
Hunter’s heart plummeted to the pit of his stomach.
Is she gone?
And if so, did she leave or was she taken?
If the cops had suspected her, had figured out that she was here, looking for the officer's murderer, surely he would be aware.
You’re a fool. No one could take Olivia against her will.
Of course not. If someone tried, he did not doubt that there would be more bodies to add to the collection of the dead, those who were victims of Olivia’s voice.
Her voice.
She had sung to him, and the haze was beginning to lift. She’d used him. She’d told him that he wasn’t enough, and she’d used him.
For what, he didn’t know, but his missing fingernails were more than enough proof that he had not been lying on the couch to rest.
Hunter wasn’t sure if he was worried, scared, or angry, so he settled at the point where all three of those emotions met.
“Olivia,” he yelled, and winced when the back of his hand and his fingertips rubbed against the back of the sofa.
