Page 90 of Thorns from the Fall

I blink at him, confused. I’ve been in a fucking daze since the second I heard that gunshot.

“What?”

“Hale’s trying to get in touch with her. Since she couldn’t go back to the penthouse, I assume you put her up in a hotel?”

My mouth goes dry when I realize my fuck up. It’s been over four hours, and I’m just now realizing she didn’t say where she was going. I didn’t even think to put her up in a hotel. With Agnarr after her, she could already be fucking dead.

“She just left,” I say, and my heart begins to race. “I don’t know where she went. I-I wasn’t thinking straight.”

“Okay,” he says, “Call her.”

“If Hale can’t get through, you think I can?” I snap, but I’m digging my phone out of my pocket anyway. I call Gwyn, and of course there’s no fucking answer. “I heard the Chevelle when she left.”

Nico calls Margot, probably to have her scour traffic cameras, but when she answers, the hairs on the back of my neck raise.

“You need to get here. Now.”

The line goes dead, and Nico floors it.

35

GWYN

“You’relucky it’s me, honestly,” the witch says, and my fangs extend behind my duct-taped lips. “You’d be dead, otherwise. Although, I suppose you might wish for that by the end. Either way, I’m trying to help you, so remember that later.”

I’m strapped to a cold, metallic table, probably in a fucking morgue somewhere. Everything is sterile, like a hospital, and she even wears scrubs. Behind her, I see a wall of metal doors. I turn my head, trying to look toward the other side of the room, but there’s a giant standing lamp, like you’d see at a dentist, aimed right at us. I can’t see past it.

I can’t remember her fucking name, but she’s the same witch who had been helping Emile in Roman’s backyard. She had forced me to drive, gun pressed to the back of my head, to what appeared as an abandoned police precinct. Though I’d asked her what the point of her magic was if she needed to resort to something so rudimentary, she hadn’t been forthcoming with answers.

When she made me get out of the car, she sliced her palm open and splashed blood at my feet. Next thing I knew, I was waking up here, strapped to a fucking table where I’m certain dead bodies have laid before.

Obviously, she’s been working with Agnarr all along. But I don’t know why she didn’t just take me when she knocked me out in Roman’s backyard. Perhaps she was afraid he wouldn’t let her.

“Now, your blood reacted strangely when I did the DNA test,” she explains, and I don’t fucking care. I knew she’d done something to me that night, and it makes sense she took a sample. But all it would do is confirm what I already know.

Agnarr is my father. Born half-vampire, half-hunter, I Ascended as a vampire. She keeps calling me a hybrid, which is true, I suppose.

“This is going to be unpleasant,” she says, and then a sharp slice to my shin confirms it. My back arches, and I lift off the table as she drags a scalpel up my leg. My scream is muffled through the tape as she pours a powdery substance over the open wound. “Silver,” she says, and then a moment later, “Fascinating.”

“Again,” comes a deep voice outside of my field of vision. The faint accent gives him away.

She takes the scalpel to my leg once more. It feels like she’s opening a freshly healed wound, but with silver impeding my healing, that doesn’t make any sense.

This time, when she pours the powdered silver out of the small vial, I inhale. Burnt metal fills my nose, and I keep my eyes open long enough to see what looks like steam rising from my leg. With Agnarr watching, I feel a sick satisfaction over the fact I manage not to scream.

“I think it will leave a scar, but that is a small price to pay, right?” the witch asks, voice high and hopeful. She’s gotten a haircut, and it jiggles like she’s bouncing on her heels. With her ginger hair and that ugly fuckass bob, she looks like Ronald McDonald. I hope I get the chance to tell her she’s a fucking clown.

“I’m sorry I doubted you, Caitriona,” Agnarr says, stepping closer. He leans over me, but with the bright fluorescent light behind his head, it’s hard to make out his face. “You were right about the healing. But hunters do not have an Ascension. How do you propose we make this work?”

“That’s where I come in,” the witch says as she slices my shin open again. “I think with my magic and her blood, we can force an Ascension of sorts. No need to be scared of hybrids if you can make your own.”

“Fearful is not something I have ever been accused of being,” Agnarr says, cold and precise.

“And yet, you wanted this one dead, did you not?”

“I am not afraid of a person. Of this person, no less. I am wary though—of ideas. Ideas, when given room to fester, can cause a devastating infection.”

I close my eyes when I catch the hint of burning silver once more, and this time, a faint sizzling sound makes me want to retch. Agnarr’s footsteps grow quieter as he leaves the room, and finally, I can tell it’s just me and the witch, Caitriona. I make a noise in my throat, trying to get her attention.

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