Persie Merlin and the Witch Hunters - Bella Forrest Page 0,86

I went an electrocuted meself, so I s’pose I got me just desserts on that one.” He brushed a curl out of his eye.

I eyed him coolly. “Yes, I do understand that something like this, totally beyond your control, is terrifying. What I don’t understand is why you keep coming to me when you’ve clearly been brainwashed to hate magical people? Do you think you can just use me the way you use stolen magical items against the people who made them? I haven’t forgotten the Atomic Cuffs. You have to show respect to gain respect, and you haven’t given me any reason to want to help you. How do I know you won’t just kill me after you’re done with me?”

He slammed his fist into the garish velvet of the sofa. “We ain’t like yer lot. That ain’t what we do.”

There are broken souls in the States who’d beg to differ. I bit my tongue, not wanting to reveal too much about what I knew regarding the missing magical cases my parents were working on. If Reid was part of the same organization who’d tortured those poor people, then saying the wrong thing could put my mom and dad, as well as others at the SDC, in danger. The Veritas or the witch hunters or whoever they were would know that magicals were onto them, and I couldn’t let that happen.

“Ye just said that yer kind has helped normal people before, so why not me? Can’t ye just… look past yer anger toward me, and think about the other people who’re in trouble? They’re turnin’ into Fear Deargs, too. People close te me.” He gripped the edge of the sofa until his knuckles whitened, his face tensing with stress. “Innocent people are gettin’ sick and some are close te dyin’, while there’s others who might do what I did te yer friend, against their will. Remember, not everyone has some magic fella around te bring them back te life when that happens, like yer friend did.”

My mouth gaped, rendered speechless for the second time today. I hadn’t realized the contagious part of his curse could actually kill the people it infected. Not everyone had the ability to overcome the symptoms. The strong would likely survive, while the weak perished, their bodies consumed by the monster of Chaos. But there were no preventative measures for something like this, other than total avoidance. Even then, once the Fear Dearg took over, it didn’t care what its host wanted. It ran wild. I’d already seen that for myself. And the idea of having a horde of Fear Deargs running loose, infecting anyone and everyone they came into contact with, petrified me.

He’s got a valid point. It only took one—him—to kill Genie. And he hadn’t been in control when that happened. If this got out of hand and spread outside of his Veritas folks, it would kill countless people, either from the infection itself or because of the monster they became. Plus, if these were weird human-monster hybrids, then it wasn’t likely they’d fit into our jurisdiction as monster hunters. Nobody at the Institute would have the authority to capture them, and even if they managed to get permission from the powers that be, I imagined that would cause a major headache for magical and non-magical relations—unless the curse could be reversed somehow. Then it might be a case of temporary capture, followed by treatment and release. And, probably, some necessary mindwiping. I kept my thoughts to myself, as they would only bolster Reid’s prejudice that we were cruel, selfish, non-magical haters.

I cleared my throat. “By innocent people, do you mean witch hunters?”

“It don’t matter what they do for a livin’. They don’t deserve te be in this situation because some witch meddled with me, and I infected them. And we won’t be able te keep it contained forever. It’s already snowballin’.” He glanced down at a battered-looking watch on his wrist, his knee jiggling as if he was on a tight deadline. “This is vengeance or somethin’, from a witch who knew I was onto them and didn’t want no secrets gettin’ exposed.”

Part of me wondered if he was right. Desperate times called for desperate measures, as Reid himself had shown. Perhaps there was someone out there who’d gotten sick of being tailed by him, or his witch hunter pals, and had decided to hit him with some payback. Although, if the goal of the curse was to keep the magical world