Witches of the Deep (The Memento Mori Witch Trilogy Book 3) by C.N. Crawford Page A

his plans to snatch the relic were shattered. He lay alone in a quiet and musty room that might as well be a coffin.
    He’d failed at everything. Fiona hated him, and he’d lost the trail of the relic. He couldn’t save a single person from death, which meant all the murders he’d committed had served no purpose. He was a broken monster, lingering on this corrupt earth long after he should have expired. Loneliness pressed his chest like a ton of rocks, threatening to shatter his ribs.
    What was wrong with him? He didn’t normally wallow in guilt. Maybe that Fury had infected him with a conscience. Or maybe this is my own personal hell . He tried to sit up, but pain screamed through his bones.
    Grunting, he settled back into the pillow. He hadn’t felt this brutalized since the 1650s. That one day had changed everything. That one day had created this polluted carcass.

11

Fiona
    S he just wanted silence .
    For two days she’d sat in a dark corner, listening to the dogs bark and yap and the wind rustling the honeysuckle outside the door. Byron had returned, apologizing for failing, but Fiona didn’t want to hear from him.
    Whenever Tobias stopped by, asking if she’d slept, she told him she had. He could probably tell by the bags under her eyes that she was lying. She hadn’t slept for longer than twenty minutes, hunched against the wall.
    Celia, Alan and Thomas had brought dire drinks, trying to coax her into the sun, but she wouldn’t budge. If they’d known what was warring in her mind, they would have stayed away. Her thoughts were corrupted with shattered skulls and blood.
    She still wore the chicory-blue dress she’d had on when she heard the news. Since that night, she’d left the kennel only once, quietly slipping into Tobias’s room to fill a backpack with gold bits. She was still mulling over an escape, but it was nearly impossible to think clearly enough to figure out where to go.
    As soon as she was able to get a full night’s sleep, she’d wander out of here on her own. Maybe take a bus to Canada. She’d figure out how to trade gold pieces for real money, and she’d rent a small apartment. She’d change her name—something sassy and intimidating, like Roxy. In a few weeks, she’d have a new life.
    But you needed a passport for Canada. Shit. Mom had always kept track of those things, in a little filing cabinet in her bedroom.
    She clutched her backpack to her chest, all of her possessions now stuffed into this canvas sack. She tugged at a loose thread, staring at the dimming light on the hay-strewn ground. Her Canada plan was ridiculous anyway. For one thing, she wanted vengeance, and she wouldn’t learn about bloodlust from Canadians.
    When she closed her eyes, images flickered in the recesses of her mind. There was the man dredged from the sea—the man whose brains her father had blasted onto the sand. There was the jack-in-the-box Danny had drawn on the wall when they didn’t have enough money for toys—lopsided and red-lipped. When she was five, she had shoved a chair in front of it to avoid catching sight of its empty eyes in the middle of the night.
    She wrapped the thread around her finger, so tight that her fingertip blanched. What was it with psychopaths and clowns? If serial killers had familiars, they’d each get their own grinning jester.
    But the jack-in-the-box wasn’t the worst image creeping through her mind. There was her mom, slack-jawed, a bullet in her forehead. Mom—a gaping cavity instead of a face, blond curls springing from a blasted-out scalp.
    And there was Fiona, looping a noose around Mrs. Ranulf’s neck with a satisfied smile. Fiona jabbing a knife into Mrs. Ranulf’s ribs. Fiona smashing the woman’s head against a rock—Fiona’s curled lips, the shadows below her eyes exactly like her father’s.
    With a small grunt, she yanked another thread from the backpack.
    Distantly, a foghorn blared. It was dark now, and something different hung in the air