Page 84 of The Tracker's Dawn: Sunderverse
“For over one hundred and thirty years I served her, performing every little parlor trick she requested. She has many of us at her service. White, Brass, Emerald, and Azure mages and witches. All at her beck and call. Never Copper or Midnight witches or mages, though. She always makes sure to cut the training short. She wouldn’t want her underlings getting too powerful, would she?
“She put fear into our bones from the time we were able to walk. She starved us, made us clean the blood of her victims, fed on us, tortured us!
“I was her slave, just like my mother, who she sent to her death on some fool’s errand when I was only eight. My mother left one day, and I got nothing back but her charred remains. It was up to me to bury her.”
Oh, God!I couldn’t imagine how horrible that would be for a child that age. This explained why Mekare had seemed so scared of Bernadetta when the vamp helped rescue me.
The Donna was truly evil.
“For years, I’d been planning my vengeance,” Mekare said. “I studied behind her back to become more powerful. It took me ten years to become a Copper Mage, and twenty more to become what I am now. Then my opportunity came. She learned about rhabo. A little bird told her about it. Then she needed me to free the Unholy Vessel from the curse that kept it protected. With those two weapons under her control, she set out to start a war. You see, she misses the old days when she was St. Louis’s virtual queen. Before other Skews started encroaching on her little empire.
“I went about it carefully, afraid of being discovered. I’m not ashamed to admit that. When someone gets under your skin when you’re just an innocent, it’s very difficult to overcome that type of deep-seated fear. But every day I grew braver. Every day my plan developed.
“As her plans for the city progressed, Bernadetta became distracted. It was a lot to deal with. She was killing her own kind and challenging all the packs. So she began to rely more heavily on me. You see, she thought she could trust me. She thought she had broken my spirit, but she was wrong.
“And then you came in, and you ruinedeverything,” she hissed like a snake, her hatred for me vibrating in her words.
In a twisted way, her logic made sense. From the sounds of it, she had suffered the unthinkable at the Dark Donna’s hands. When I thought Damien was dead, I was overcome by my rage and desire for revenge, so I understood why she felt the way she did. Still, I’d just been defending my own.”
The witch inhaled deeply on the other end of the line. “That’s why I’m going to make you suffer. I will take everything you love from you, just like you took the only thing I cared about.”
“What Bernadetta did to you is awful,” I said, “but I had nothing to do with that. And if I got in your way, it was because I was defending myself and my own. If you have a beef with me, then have a beef with me, but don’t you dare hurt anyone else.”
“Oh, dear, but that would be too easy. I want to see you suffer.”
“Easy, you say? It wasn’t easy the last time. If it had been, you wouldn’t have scurried away like a coward.”
“Pshaw, have you forgotten you had a Copper Mage on your side? Before he got there, I’d almost turned you into a chunk of charred meat.”
She wasn’t lying about that. If Blaze/Damien hadn’t jumped on her head as she was about to deliver the final blow, I would be six feet under, wondering when the next flower delivery would happen. Still, I wasn’t afraid of her, and if saving everyone I loved meant my death so be it.
“You’re insane,” I spat. “You’re not better than Bernadetta. Why would you hurt people that have done nothing to you?”
She let out a cackle that did nothing more than prove me right. Shewascrazy. All that suffering had twisted her heart and soul into darkness and evil. No matter how justified she felt in her revenge, it was nuts.
“I never said I was better than her,” she said. “How could I be? I’m what she made of me. But enough of this. I just wanted to talk to you. See how you were feeling about your new sister’s demise.”
I said nothing. What could I tell her that would make her change her mind? There was silence on the other end, then a huff as if she was disappointed she couldn’t goad me into a cursing fit—not that I wasn’t tempted to call her awful things, but I knew it would be a waste of time.
She sighed. “Nothing to say then?”
I held my tongue, especially since it seemed to be bothering her.
She huffed again. “Or maybe this will just get boring, and I’ll need to rip off the band-aid. Show you how it feels to have the rug pulled out from under your feet when you least expect it. That would be fun, too.”
A shiver ripped down my spine as I tried to think of all my family and friends. Where were they at this very moment? Were they safe? I needed to warn everyone, tell them this bitch’s crazy plans. We only had two more days to break Jake’s pact. If everyone could just stay safe until then, we would go after the witch as soon as that was over.
“I guess for now,” she said, sounding resigned, “I’ll just get my kicks elsewhere. Ta-ta, dear. Have fun with whatever you have going on in your little life.”
The call disconnected, and I stood in the middle of the kitchen, frozen, with the phone pressed to my ear.
Jake walked in a moment later. “What’s the matter?”
I set the phone on the counter, took three strides in his direction, and wrapped my arms around him.
“Who was that on the phone?”
It took me several beats to answer. “Mekare.”
