Persie Merlin and the Witch Hunters - Bella Forrest Page 0,38
than he’d previously let on.
“Wait… what is Veritas?” I pulled my head back, away from his fury. Judging by the sudden widening of his eyes, he’d let something slip that he really shouldn’t have.
He shrugged and turned his back, trying to cover his mistake. “Just a nickname for me and me mates.”
You need to learn to lie better. I didn’t believe a word. Whoever the Veritas were, they were important. I could see it from the beads of sweat that bloomed on his forehead, one trickling down his temple where it soaked into his bandana. He started pacing, his whole demeanor agitated. I had a feeling they were the very people who’d sent him to watch me. The people he was defying by bringing me here, so he could prove something. An instinct I knew all too well, but I wasn’t a fan of being the catalyst to his self-discovery.
I decided to try to wiggle open a path of enquiry. “Are you working for magicals? Why did they ask you to watch me specifically? You already said this wasn’t part of their plan, so I’m guessing you’d be in trouble if they found out.”
He stiffened, pausing in his pacing. “As if I’d ever work for the likes of ye! Yer exactly like the rest of them, thinking yer smart, tryin’ te get intel out of me, but it’ll not work. These lips are sealed.”
The rest of them? A horrifying thought splintered my skull. What if this group, the Veritas, were the same people who were taking magicals—the ones who’d likely snatched Charles Burniston and who knew how many others? The venom in his voice after I’d suggested he was working for magicals spoke volumes. This had to be a non-magical organization, and it was obvious they had decent intelligence filtering in. Yes, he’d gotten some details mixed up, like not knowing the term “magicals” and thinking that someone like me could fix his problem—details he wouldn’t know unless he was a magical himself—but someone was certainly giving information to the Veritas.
“Did you get your intel from magicals? Do you have allies from my world, or do you just torture it out of them?” I couldn’t hide the anger and fear in my voice. I’d heard about the returnees that came to the SDC for treatment. They’d been so badly tortured that they were terrified of their own shadows, and that was only when they weren’t staring blankly ahead like the living dead. Is that what he had planned for me? My stomach roiled violently, a sheen of cold sweat bristling across my skin. The muscle spasms and the shakes would come next, followed by a blinding headache, and then he would wish he’d never brought me here.
Unless the Cuffs push the Purge back down… Another horrifying thought. I had no idea what would happen to me if I couldn’t physically get the Purge out. If it got trapped inside me, maybe it would poison me? Make me ill? Transform me? Break me? The thought scared me more than Purging in front of this bastard who only gave a flip about himself.
“That’s it, ain’t it? Ye think we’re all brutes, no better than animals compared te ye in yer lofty towers.” He whirled around and flicked on the lighter again, so close to my face that I could feel the heat on my skin. The flame danced in his dark eyes, until I didn’t know if he was turning into a monster again. “I’m givin’ ye a chance te tell me everything ye know about this curse. I’m offerin’ ye a way to go free. All ye have te do is tell me who did this, and then get rid of it. I don’t have no quarrel with ye, aside from what ye are. I’ve got a quarrel with the person who made me like this.”
Join the club. He wouldn’t have cared, but he and I were in very similar boats. He had become a monster because of a curse someone had put on him, and I spewed monsters out of me. He didn’t want people he cared about getting hurt because of him, and neither did I. The parallels resonated in my clenched chest. Had he not already decided to hate magicals, I wondered if I might’ve been able to win him over. But I couldn’t change whatever brainwashing he’d endured, not if he loathed us this much.
“I’ve told you, I can’t do it.” I grimaced as a shooting pain