Call of Water (Madame Tan's Freakshow #1) - Marina Simcoe Page 0,87
scarier than others. I’d never heard the horrible noises like that. Whatever beast was making them, it must be much larger than any animal Madame currently had in her collection.
Sounds of struggle joined the growling and the hissing—punches of flesh against flesh, followed by groans of pain.
Someone was being hurt out there.
My hands started to shake at the sounds of violence. A new wave of terror trickled cold down my spine. I shoved a fist into my mouth to stop myself from screaming and shut my eyes.
“Don’t feel, Amira,” Radax’s words from long ago stretched across time to me. “Pain only hurts those who are open to feel it.”
Don’t feel. Don’t remember. Don’t hurt.
“Stay outside of the crate, you idiots!” Madame shrieked over what sounded like heavy rocks crashing and rolling on the floor.
More noise followed.
My pulse pounded in my head and my lungs burned. I forced myself to breathe slower.
It will pass.
Everything always passed if I waited long enough. And I had become really good at waiting.
Finally, the scuffle quieted down.
“You will pay for that, Gorgonian!” Madame yelled, her voice full of menace.
The chair that she must have been sitting on screeched along the floor then crashed to the ground.
A moment later, she said in her usual cold, even voice, “You have to realize there is no way back to Nerifir for you. This vile world is all we have now. You can join me in my effort to build a life appropriate for our status among the pathetic humans here, or you will die.”
A long pause stretched after the last word had fallen from her mouth, the echo of it still ringing in my ears.
No reply came.
“If you don’t cooperate,” Madame’s voice took on the lighter tone, which I knew from experience could carry a bigger threat than her yelling, “then you’re useless to me.”
The sound of her footsteps moved farther away, toward the exit.
“Nerkan, lock the crate. And give him not a drop of water from this day on.” Her voice rose with a warning. “If you don’t do what I say, Gorgonian, you’ll never leave this crate. It is much drier inside that crate than in your native wetlands, isn’t it? You’ll die in it, and it will be a slow, torturous death. Without water, your skin will dry out, crack, and peel. As you roll in agony in that crate, I want you to remember that you can end the torture with one little word—yes.”
Another pause followed, this one dark and ominous like the churning black clouds of an approaching storm.
“Pick up the larger pieces, now,” Madame ordered bracks. “Amira will sweep the rest later.”
She left the room, followed by the stomping footfalls of the bracks.
I stayed behind the crate until all sounds subsided, even the muffled growls of the being inside.
Only when I could draw a full breath once again, and the pounding in my head stopped, did I carefully crawl out into the room.
My feet slid in the piles of gravel and dust scattered on the floor in front of the crate. Without waiting for direct order, I quickly grabbed my broom and swept as much of the debris as I could onto my dust pen.
A piece of rounded rock caught my attention. I picked it up and inspected it closely. Wide and oblong, it was shaped like the tip of a person’s thumb carved from rock. The fingernail bed was on one side, with an incredibly detailed web of groves on the thumb pad on the other.
The sight of it—smooth and incredibly lifelike—made my stomach churn and my heart freeze with dread.
What on earth was in that crate?
SERPENT’S TOUCH is coming in 2021.
More by Marina Simcoe
PARANORMAL and FANTASY
ROMANCE
Madame Tan’s Freakshow
Call of Water
Serpent’s Touch- 2021
Demons, Complete Series
Demon Mine
The Forgotten
Grand Master
The Last Unforgiven - Cursed
The Last Unforgiven - Freed
Stand Alone Novels
The Real Thing
To Love A Monster
Midnight Coven Author Group
Wicked Warlock (Cursed Coven)
More by Marina Simcoe
SCIENCE-FICTION ROMANCE
Dark Anomaly Trilogy
Gravity
Power – 2020/2021
Explosion – 2021
Stand Alone Novels
Experiment
Enduring (Valos Of Sonhadra)
My Holiday Tails
Married to Krampus – December, 2020
My Tiny Giant – February, 2021
About the Author
MARINA SIMCOE LIKES to write love stories with human heroines and non-human heroes who just can’t live without them. She firmly believes that our contemporary world could always use a little bit of the extraordinary.
She has lots of fun exploring how her out-of-this-world characters with their own beliefs, values, and aspirations fit into our every-day life.
She lives in Canada with her very own extraordinary hero, their three little mermaids, and a cat who is definitely out of this world.