Chapter 30
Hudson
My throat burned. My eyes ached with feeble tears, not enough water left in my body to even mourn properly.
Every muscle screamed in time with the wails that came tearing out of my chest as four men dragged me up the stairs through the sanitarium—following the monster that had just wrenched my heart out, crushed it to dust, and scattered it to the wind.
I was going to kill him. First chance I got, I was going to rip every drop of blood from William Hargraves’ body, split the ground open beneath his feet, and send him right to hell.
I no longer cared what became of me. No longer cared if I lived or died, or if I became the monster blood witches had been made out to be.
As long as I took the piece of shit capable of murdering his own son with me.
“There.” William gestured to a lone gurney in the middle of a wide open room filled with nothing else but scattered chairs and trash. Large windows stretched from floor to ceiling on one side of the room, the pale red light of the moon illuminating years of graffiti and vandalism.
The men hauled me onto the gurney, one of them catching my bare foot in their face. “Fuck, you little shit!”
“You’re gonna feel a lot worse than that!
” I roared through my tears, thrashing even as they pinned me down, locking the iron shackles to the bed.
I tugged and wrested the chains, shaking the gurney.
I might not have been able to use magic or possessed the strength to escape them, but I was still going to make their ritual as inconvenient as possible.
“Take these off, and I’ll rip you apart! ”
William drifted over, jabbing a needle into my neck. “That’s quite enough of that racket.”
I sucked air through my teeth, setting my jaw and glaring up at him. “He was your son.” The fight began to leave me. “How could you…” I couldn’t say the word.
I couldn’t admit Tyler was dead.
For the faintest moment, as my vision went out of focus, William Hargraves met my eyes. “My son died years ago. I honored him by putting what remained of him to rest.”
I wanted to leap at him and tear his throat out. If my strength hadn’t been stolen from me almost completely, I would have. “We’re not the monsters…” I muttered weakly, my lip trembling. “You are. Just like he said.”
Everything began to blur. Whatever conversation was taking place became muffled and distorted. The nerves in my forearm screamed as something sliced my skin open. Then the other arm, from the crook of my elbow to my wrist.
The shape of Mister Hargraves over me grabbed my chin, forcing me to look at him. “You’ll join him soon enough.” He glanced up. “Take off the chains. He won’t be able to cast anything like this.” A victorious smirk crossed his lips as he stared down at me again. “He’s as good as dead.”
A fleeting hope filled me as someone removed the shackles around my wrists and neck. I could feel my blood dripping down my arms to the floor, every drop begging to be given purpose. I tried to wield it. Intent filled my chest, crying out.
But no answer came. The room grew darker.
The world spiraled away, my body shivering. Cold. Unbearably cold.
“Look where your… are you really going to stand by and…”
A woman’s voice, breaking in and out. My brow furrowed with what little energy I still possessed as the life seeped out of me and onto the floor.
There hadn’t been a woman in the room.
A man’s voice replied, clearer than those of the wolves and full of disdain. “Fitting that we should be forced to speak now… the end of it all.”
“Of course, even after a century and a half, you’d rather let the last of our line die than open that rigid mind of yours.” I’d heard that voice before. In the forest. Shrouded in red.
“Better the Garlands end than become twisted with your unnatural magic, Lenore.”
A translucent shape loomed over me, eyes completely red in the dark. “You sound just like the man doing this to him, Henry.” A shadowed hand drifted over my cheek, colder than the air freezing me to the bone. “Have hope, Hudson. We haven’t played our last card yet.”