Persie Merlin and the Witch Hunters - Bella Forrest Page 0,123

eyes flashing with fear. “No,” he said quietly.

“No? To which part?” I pressed. “The facts are there, Reid. It’s up to you if you choose to accept them or not.”

He shook his head forcefully. “No… yer lyin’. I’m human. I’m normal. I ain’t one of yer sort. It’s yer magic that’s all kinds of wrong, it ain’t me, so don’t ye dare try and trick me.”

“It’s not a trick. Think back to your childhood,” I urged, watching him shift uncomfortably. “Did anything ever happen that you couldn’t explain? Have you ever felt something, like an electric current running through your body, that felt strange and inexplicable? Did you have a relative who could do things nobody else could, and passed it off as sleight of hand or a trick of the eye? You can deny it all you want, but your curse wouldn’t have infected anyone else if you were ‘normal,’ as you put it.”

Reid’s expression darkened, his eyelids flickering as though he’d seen something distressing. Perhaps he had, deep in the well of his memory. Only he knew what, but it looked to me like some cogs were whirring.

“No,” he repeated more firmly, shaking his head to dismiss any lingering disturbing thoughts. Looking pointedly away, he pushed past me, heading for the exit. Atlas shot me a look, asking what I wanted him to do. I knew I ought to send Atlas after him, but I couldn’t bring myself to do so. I’d given Reid something to think about, regardless of his monosyllabic denial. Perhaps, after he’d had time to mull things over, we’d meet again. Or maybe we wouldn’t. Maybe, knowing that there was a chance he was one of us, he would put as much distance between himself and magical kind as possible. Either way, I wondered if this was the last I’d ever see of Reid Darcy: his tall, broad silhouette melding into the shadows and disappearing completely.

But, right now, I had two far more important people to worry about. I turned to Atlas. “Can you help me with my friends?”

He gave a snort and prowled across the ground toward them. Thanks to him, we’d won our first battle against the witch hunters. And I hoped, with self-aware naivety, that his appearance would achieve the initial part of the deal—that the witch hunters would leave this part of the world alone in return for our Fear Dearg antidote.

And if they came for us again… Well, I had a feeling I’d just unlocked the ability to Purge at will. And I had a lot more where Atlas came from.

Thirty-Three

Nathan

I screamed as loud as my exhausted esophagus would allow. A monstrous face with two burning eyes glowered down at me, the scent of bonfire and rotten fish filling my nostrils in a rather unpleasant olfactory collision. My last memory was of having the life strangled out of me by a Hangman’s Rope—a vile piece of archaic anti-magical technology, usually reserved for the persecution exhibits of magical museums. I realized I must have passed out at some point from lack of oxygen, as everything still appeared to be in good working order. Heartbeat? Check. Respiration? Check.

But what was this creature? A Fear Dearg?

“It’s okay!” Persie appeared in my line of sight. “This is Atlas. He’s my latest Purge beast.”

Then Genie poked her head into view. “That was a heck of a scream. You almost beat my decibels. But I like to think mine had more of a holy-crap-I’m-about-to-get-eaten timbre to it.”

I sat bolt upright and twisted around to get a better look at the monster, everything slightly blurred. “My glasses… Has anyone seen my glasses?”

Genie knelt and placed them onto the bridge of my nose, one of her hands holding the back of my neck in a way that made my skin tingle. “How’s that? They’re a bit scratched up, but no major breaks.”

“Much better.” I sighed with relief as the world came into focus, only to jolt again as the shape of the monster became clear. I squinted at him, wondering if my brain was still waking up. Usually, I could tell what family a monster came from at first sight, but this one… No matter how hard I racked my memory for an answer, none came back. I’d never seen this monster before. Not anywhere. And that hadn’t happened in a very long time.

“He takes some getting used to.” Genie got up and scratched the fur under the monster’s chin, which tapered to a point like a