Persie Merlin and the Witch Hunters - Bella Forrest Page 0,31

a paper, to sit on the lone bench and think. And though I sensed nothing amiss, Genie appeared to. She stood as still as a statue, her eyes closed. Evidently trying to gauge more from our surroundings by focusing.

“What are you? Why am I feeling like this?” she whispered.

A flash of something pale from beneath the black-painted planks of the bench caught my attention. Three tiny figures, cowering behind the overgrown weeds that tufted up. One edged forward cautiously, her small figure trembling as she peeked out from behind the bench leg. I knew her instantly: Boudicca.

“Genie!” I shouted, running to the pixies. Kneeling to their level, I scooped Boudicca into my hands. Her body shook violently, and all the color had drained out of her. Her wings had turned a worrying shade of gray, and her bioluminescent lights looked like miniature stars that were about to sputter out.

Genie appeared beside me a second later, bundling Cynane and Spartacus into her arms. Unlike Boudicca, they couldn’t even hold their heads up. They just lay in Genie’s grasp, spasming and snuffling as though they were in immense pain.

“What’s wrong with them?” she gasped, her voice tight with panic. “And where the hell is Persie?”

Boudicca managed a pitiful squeak and lifted a weak hand toward a row of spiny bushes on the opposite side of the lookout spot. I looked in the direction of her gesture, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. They were just gorse bushes. Still, something terrible had obviously happened here. And, between the weakened pixies and Genie’s ominous feeling, that something probably had to do with Persie’s absence.

Eight

Persie

My nostrils flared as though someone had put smelling salts underneath them. A rancid stench drifted in on swarming shadows, creeping through my semi-conscious confusion. The gut-churning reek of rotting fish—and not just slightly on the turn, but fully festering, eye-watering decomposition—like opening a can of fermented sardines that were ten years past their sell-by date. Beneath the smell, I could make out the earthy decay of moldering wood and the sharper tang of rust.

Is this one of Leviathan’s dreams? I had no idea where I was, or how I’d gotten here. My eyes still hadn’t adjusted to the gloom. But both the darkness and the claustrophobic sensation in my chest were definitely his MO. I didn’t think he smelled this overwhelmingly foul, but then I’d never encountered his true, physical self without a pane of glass between us. I blinked frantically, as if that would help my vision clear, and I waited for his familiar voice to speak and let me know this wasn’t real.

After a few moments had passed and Leviathan still hadn’t made himself known, and my eyes were still struggling to acclimate, I resorted to one of my other senses: touch. My hands were bound behind my back and I seemed to have been chucked onto the ground, which explained the dull throb in my shoulders, wrenched backward to keep my hands together. I unfurled my hands and reached out gingerly with my fingers, skimming across a cool, hard floor, and retched as a viscous jelly slid wetly over my skin. Gelatinous and cold and stinking.

Where am I? Leviathan was a master for detail, but this no longer felt like his handiwork—he wouldn’t have used restraints. I tried to wipe the slime away, but only ended up smearing more of it over my hands. A spark of hope came to me, only to sputter out when I remembered I hadn’t brought my phone on my jogging expedition, so it wasn’t as though I could call for help.

“H-hello?” I called into the murk. Not my brightest idea, but now I understood why victims in horror movies always said that when they entered a dark, creepy house. It was human instinct, desperation to hear someone’s voice call back and say that everything was okay. But no one answered.

I scrunched up my eyes and thought back to the last thing I could remember. There was the lookout point and the low, terrifying growl. A set of burning red eyes. A strange heat. And then I woke up here. Could it be a djinn? Most of them were living a happy, independent existence in Erebus’s former otherworld, Tartarus. But Raffe and Kadar knew of some who’d broken away from that realm and returned to our world to find a different sort of freedom. Maybe this was one of them? But why would they have targeted me? Did they have an