This Wicked Fate (This Poison Heart #2)(70)

A short man in a tattered T-shirt and jeans rushed in. He pointed at Persephone. “She’s still up. Hit her again!”

Persephone moved toward the man and caught his outstretched hand in her own. The bones popped as she crushed it. The man howled in agony, clutching his mangled hand to his chest. A woman barreled into the room and stepped closer to Persephone.

“Sleep,” said the woman through gritted teeth.

Persephone immediately collapsed.

I willed a length of vine to wrap itself around the strange woman, but before I could order it to choke the life out of her, she looked me dead in the eye.

“Sleep.”





CHAPTER 19

I heard the retching first and then I felt the pain. As my mind found its way back to the confines of my skull, my senses awoke one by one. My entire body ached, like I’d fallen asleep in the most awkward position on the most unforgiving surface.

More retching and then a sour smell that made the muscles under my tongue seize up. I wanted to puke. I tried to roll over but the ache in my bones kept me pinned to the floor. At least, I thought it had to be the floor. I forced my eyes open and the light was like a knife cutting into my brain. I groaned.

So did someone else nearby.

I reached to touch my face and found that my hands rose up together. I focused on my wrists and saw that they were bound with zip ties.

“She’s up,” a voice said.

Footsteps rushed over and hands roughly pulled me into a sitting position. My head pounded, the room spun, and my stomach turned over again. I found my glasses dangling from the chain around my neck and slipped them onto my face. The lens was cracked over my right eye and the frame was bent, but as my eyes adjusted, the remains of a small stone building came into focus around me. This one didn’t have a roof and only three of its four walls were still standing. Leaves, dirt, and broken branches littered the ground. A man sat on the edge of a wooden bench, clutching his stomach as he vomited onto the stone floor.

I turned away to keep myself from doing the same thing. I tried not to breathe. How did I get there? I didn’t remember walking out of the other building or anything after the strange woman had told me to sleep and my body obeyed without question.

The same woman now took me by the shoulders and violently shook me. My head felt like it was going to come off my neck.

“Wake up. Get it together.” She slapped me hard on the side of my face, knocking my glasses sideways. The sting of her palm sent slivers of light through my gaze. My eyes involuntarily teared.

I gritted my teeth. “Don’t touch me.”

“Or what?” the woman asked. “What are you gonna do?”

“Viv, don’t antagonize her,” said another man who had been standing behind me. He went around and patted his incapacitated friend on the back then sauntered over to me. “Just relax. We won’t hurt you if you just do what we ask.”

“The hell we won’t,” said the woman. “She’s the reason Katrina is dead, Dre. I should kill her right now.”

“How are we gonna get the last piece, then?” the man called Dre shouted back at her. “Look at Calvin. He’s—he’s not in good shape. We can’t even get close to the wall.”

They knew about the Heart.

They’d tried to get there and clearly, judging by the thick yellow vomit Calvin was spewing onto the floor, had run into something they couldn’t get past without severe consequences. And they knew Katrina Valek—Mrs. Redmond.

“We don’t need her!” Viv shouted. “We’ll figure out another way.”

“We do need her,” said Dre. “And there isn’t another way. Katrina had the right idea but you know how she was. She never wanted to wait too long for anything. She should have kept up the front a little longer and then maybe we wouldn’t have to be in this position.” He turned to me and scowled. “Katrina’s our sister. Or at least she was. She’s dead now, thanks to you.”

I adjusted my glasses and stared back and forth between them. I could see the resemblance. I could also see the resemblance to someone else—Hermes. I wondered if they even realized how close their immortal ancestor was or how repelled he’d been by them to not even care what happened to them on the island.

I suddenly wondered if these were the people Phillip had encountered when he tried to sell the counterfeit pottery shard. It would explain why he couldn’t get his story straight. The woman, Viv, was able to knock me out without laying a finger on me. She’d probably done the same thing to him.

There were three of them, but the goddess Persephone said four people had come ashore. Karter had to have been the young man she mentioned.

“Karter was with you, wasn’t he?” I asked. “Where is he now?”

Viv scoffed. “Probably dead.”

I was annoyed that a part of me wondered how she could be so callous toward her own nephew, but I was quickly reminded of how his own mother had treated him the very same way. I pushed aside the pity I felt for Karter. He’d stood by and watched my mother be poisoned to death and kept me from helping her. I hated him more and more with each vivid, terrible flashback.

“This island is a curse,” Dre said. He walked back over to the man they’d called Calvin, who seemed to have emptied the entirety of his guts onto the floor. He sat shakily on the bench, his eyes glassy. Open sores tore across his skin. The flesh on his fingers was black from rot. One of his hands was folded awkwardly. He had my Persephone to thank for that.