Page 59 of Bold Mercy

Finally, as the effects of Avis’s paralyzing and painful magic drifted away, rage began to swirl in my stomach. My mind slid into darkness, and my heart began to thud faster and harder with hatred. Maybe I was the bad guy. Maybe I would kill everyone who pissed me off. Maybe I hated the world.

The council wouldn’t have chosen me if I were weak enough to let one fucking seer kill me. I smiled as an eager joy added itself to the dark rage.

Hello, Psycho.

“Go ahead and kill me then,” I murmured. “Let’s see how strong you are, pretty girl.”

She jerked so hard the back of her head hit the wall, and a blast of hard purple magic splashed from the wand. It landed on the floor with a splat, and the stones broke beneath it. Genuine terror lit her gaze, and for a brief second, I saw myself through her eyes.

Was I the bad guy?

Yeah. Right then, I was.

She scrambled to her feet, and there was no more delaying. Her fear and revulsion were larger than her reluctance to kill. She steadied her shaking hand and whirled her wand, leaving beautiful traces of color in the air, and then she sent all the power she could muster at me. “Please die,” she whispered. “Please just die.”

Poor thing, so upset at having to kill me. I guess she’d blame that on me, too.

I braced for the impact, but really, one couldn’t prepare for a killing magic. For a few seconds after it hit me, I thought I was never going to survive it. It wasn’t meant to be survived. Simply put, it hurt like a motherfucker.

God, I wanted that wand.

But whatever was inside me didn’t flinch from the pain. It welcomed it. It absorbed it and used it and in the end, it broke her magical bonds. She screamed as I ran toward her, and then fell as she tried to scramble away from me. But I couldn’t let her go, just as I couldn’t let Avis go.

I took the wand. Lennon didn’t deserve such a gift. “Don’t worry,” I told her. “I won’t destroy it. I’ll use it for what it was meant to be used. A weapon.” Then I frowned at her. “Why haven’t you shifted?”

“Because I don’t want you to hurt my wolf,” she murmured, and she was dead serious. “I didn’t want any of you to hurt my wolf.”

“I guess I’m not the only one who has trouble separating my wolf from myself,” I told her. “But you know I’m going to kill you.”

She didn’t scream or run or even try to hit me. She didn’t shift. She slid to the floor, her back against the wall, and stared up at me with a complete lack of hope in her eyes. “Please, Kate,” she said. “Show me mercy. Give me back to my pack, to my alpha. Don’t let me die here.” Then she said nothing more, and she didn’t take her stare from mine. She was almost calm as she waited to die.

And psycho or not, I couldn’t kill her.

“I’ll turn you over to Jared,” I told her. “But I’m keeping the fucking wand.”

Her eyes widened. “Kait. Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me,” I said. “Jared will not go easy on you. If he doesn’t kill you, he will do something worse.” But I could see by the look in her eyes that she didn’t believe me. For a moment, I wavered. He might blame me for everything. She could definitely twist Eli into believing whatever she told him.

If I killed her now, I could blame it on Avis. No one would ever know. And I wouldn’t have to tell any of them the things Lennon had said about me.

But I didn’t kill her. “How the hell,” I said, yanking her up from the floor, “do we get out of this place?”

“Only Larry can admit or expel a person,” she said. “That’s what Avis told me. But I don’t know how to get him to let us out.”

“Larry,” I called. “We’re ready to go. Open the door.”

And apparently it was just that simple. Apparently anyone could give Larry orders and he’d obey. He detached from the wall like a sinister shadow, walked toward a section of the wall, and reached for a doorknob that hadn’t been there a second earlier.

But I couldn’t go, not yet. There wasn’t a nonhuman or counsel on earth that wasn’t going to want to see proof of Avis Vine’s death. I had to take her with us. I wound her hair around my hand—and the wand—and I dragged her across the floor and out the door.

When we were in the hallway, Larry shut the door, and it was simply gone. There was no doorway, no room, and no living Avis Vine.

Not anymore.

But her legacy, that would live on forever.