Persie Merlin and the Witch Hunters - Bella Forrest Page 0,48

safety of my Grendel relied on its perceived level of threat. So, I supposed it was a relief to find out that he’d decided to hide instead of rampaging across the island. The moment he hurt a civilian, I knew Charlotte and the hunters would have carte blanche to use lethal force.

“What about the man who kidnapped me?”

The hunter shrugged. “Same news on that front. Whoever they are, they’re keeping a low profile. And they were smart, as well—they didn’t leave anything behind for us to track and trace.”

I already knew that. That had been the strangest part about returning to the fishery last night. My abductor had been meticulous—staying, or returning, to clean up after himself, even after a brutal fight with my Grendel.

I thought of a quote from Fyodor Dostoyevsky as we walked on in silence: People speak sometimes about the “bestial” cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts. No animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel. It struck a poignant chord within me, bringing back the conflict I experienced every time I brought another monster into the world. The Grendel had charged into the fray with no thought for his own safety and without knowing if he could trust me. He’d heard my plea and acted, and I was alive and back inside the Institute because of that. And yet, even having harmed no one, he was being hunted down right that very moment. Once captured, all it would get as a reward for saving me and going against his hungry instincts was a lifetime in a glass box. Just another log on the furnace that kept our world running. If that wasn’t artfully, artistically cruel, I didn’t know what was.

“Are you feeling all right?” the hunter asked.

I blinked, remembering where I was. “I’ll survive.” It was more than could be said for my Grendel.

Fifteen minutes later, my exhausted body got some respite after I sank into the comfort of the cream-colored wingback armchair in Victoria’s office. She sat opposite me in an exact imitation. I’d already downed the two full glasses of water she’d offered, which took the edge off my arid throat. Fortunate, considering I had a lot to say. She’d asked me to go back over the details of last night, leaving no stone unturned, no matter how small or insignificant it might’ve seemed to me. I’d rattled through most of it, struggling to piece it together in a linear fashion.

“Um… he said someone had called him a Fear Dearg when they’d seen him turn, because of this curse. He mispronounced it, but I knew what he meant. It starts as this thick red mist that tumbles over him. The mist kinda sparks with embers, and… when the mist touched me, I felt this overwhelming sense of terror and dread.” I neared the end of the recounting, my third refill of water at the ready. “That triggered my Purge, I puked up a Grendel; they fought, and I ran away. That’s when I bumped into Nathan and Genie, while they were waiting for backup.” I hadn’t forgotten what Genie had whispered to me on the walk back to the lookout point—that they’d been instructed to stay put and had been flagrantly disobeying when I’d run into them. I wasn’t about to throw my pals under the proverbial bus.

I remembered the abductor’s clumsiness, his small gestures of humanity, and decided to throw caution to the wind. “This might not mean anything, but I don’t think it was super planned. It felt like he was acting out of… desperation, on behalf of these Veritas people,” I added.

Victoria sat there in stiff silence for an eternity. I tried to read her expression, but she was chillingly good at maintaining a poker face. She was like a majestic swan gliding effortlessly across a lake, while its orange, webbed feet paddled frantically, invisibly, underneath. Watching her, I realized that her silence said more than she wanted it to: she was trying to figure out what to say, and how to say it.

Which meant something in my tale had rattled her.

What aren’t you telling me? There was something undeniably fishy going on. Neither Charlotte nor Victoria seemed surprised by the existence of Veritas or witch hunters. It stank of the same need-to-know secrecy that my parents employed. Perhaps it hadn’t been a big deal before now—a backseat problem that had never come this close to the Institute’s borders.