Page 87 of Hooked on a Witch
“Move.” Owen pushed her forward.
She stumbled, catching herself on a low-slung tree branch whose bark burned her palm. Her legs buckled.
He wrenched her back up by an arm, slung her body over a shoulder, and trudged up the hill back toward Merck’s house. Each jarring step shuttled pain through her body.
She focused on breathing to ignore the faintness in her brain. Breath in. Breath out.Slam. She whacked against Owen’s back and gasped. New breaths.Slam.
Owen dropped her to the ground in the backyard. She blinked through tripling vision, relieved to no longer be moving. A scan of the yard for Merck found him statue still on his dock as if he hadn’t moved from where he had told her to run. He didn’t glance her way or deviate from his fixation on the stunning woman with a kid-in-the-candy-store grin. The grin was directed at Shannon.
Anaïs. The necromancer.
“Good job, sweetheart,” Anaïs said to Owen. “Where’s Reevo?”
“Don’t know. He got a direct hit on her, though.”
“Reevo died in Savannah,” Merck said.
“Oh, did he die? Haven’t you heard of fake-death pills? Azalea-induced coma?” Anaïs shot Merck a condescending smile.
“He’s dead now,” Shannon said, but it came out slurred.
Anaïs tugged Shannon to her feet, gripped her neck, and pulled her head backward. “Does it hurt, Shannon? Do you feel the black poison’s spread asDeus Mortemdestroys your body and works its way to your mind?”
“Go to hell.” She struggled against the necromancer’s abnormally strong grip.
Anaïs dragged her closer to Merck, throwing her onto the dock at Merck’s feet. “Get the Trident out of her and give it to me. If you don’t, she’ll die.”
“What’d they do to you?” Merck’s gaze darted down to meet hers. This was the Enforcer again. No warmth lit his eyes. Stone-cold scary. This was good. She needed him focused on business, and deadly.
“Shot me with something in the back. Burns.”
Merck stared silently at Anaïs.
Anaïs said, “Something you’re familiar with. I’m impressed you survived when those Pleiades goddesses went down so easily. Seems I’ll have to come up with something special for you next time. Nothing of this world can counteract the poison, though. But I can. Give me the Trident and I’ll give you the antidote.”
Merck knelt and rolled Shannon over to view her back.
“I’m sorry. I ran toward the creek. I swear.” Shannon found the confidence in his gaze calming.
“This isn’t your fault. I shouldn’t have sent you away when I knew they were here. The mistake is on me.” Merck addressed Anaïs. “What assurance do I have you’ll give me the antidote should I give you what you want?”
Anaïs gestured to Owen, who removed a syringe from an abandoned backpack Shannon hadn’t noticed in the backyard. Anaïs pointed at the first piling still far enough away from Merck to keep Owen out of danger. Owen set the syringe on the piling. His aura swirled with the colors of deceit.
Merck gazed at the syringe filled with clear fluid.
Shannon whispered, “I don’t think whatever’s in that will work.”
***
The syringe had to be bogus. Highly unlikely she could’ve stolen bothDeus Mortemand its antidote from Circe. He saw only one way out of this.
Merck’s addressed Owen. “How do I know the syringe isn’t filled with more poison or just ordinary saline?”
Owen didn’t answer. His gaze remained fixated on Anaïs in an oddly robotic way.
Anaïs shrugged. “You’ve got to believe in something.”
“Why are you with her, Owen?” Merck asked. “You might hang out with some magical assholes from time to time, but you’re not like her.”
