Page 28 of Snake Eyes & Bad Luck

“But…but…then why did you need me?” Avelina hiccupped, unsure where her questions were even going. She really just wanted to keep talking as to avoid the conversation he was likely wanting to have…Why did she kill Neddy?

“Like I said, warlocks are really handy. But Neddy wasn’t mine. She also couldn’t leave this cursed swamp. She was tied to that tree.” Callum nodded toward the Bark Father and Avelina turned to stare up at it. The tree seemed more menacing than before, a mean sneer etched into it with gnarled branches and blanched vines.

“I think she wanted me to do it,” Avelina confessed. “As a part of our deal. I think she taught me how to be a warlock solely so she could get out of it.”

Callum was quiet for a long time as she stared at that tree. When she finally dared to glance back at him, he answered, “She was alive for hundreds of years, little viper. Imagine livin’ for many lifetimes, tethered to that evil ole’ tree, unable to go anywhere or seek out a new life for yerself? I know it’d knock me off my rocker.”

Avelina noticed a tone in Callum’s words that wasn’t that of a ruthless outlaw. Not a man with endless blood on his hands. She imagined he ought to love where he was, at the top, nothing but underlings and pawns beneath him. But it’s lonely being at the top, she knew that. Her father knew that. Married to a woman who didn’t love him with a child he never wanted to be around. Top rank in the Order, feared and beloved by all the other Paladins, and yet, he preferred to eat alone.

She didn’t want that. It dawned on her that she wanted to travel. She didn’t want to be tethered to one place, stuck under someone’s boot. Avelina wanted to see the world, beyond her mother’s wardrobe, her father’s shadow, and Cottonmouth’s crew…and she had the power to make it happen. She just needed a little push.

Avelina made a promise to herself as she followed behind Callum, silent and sullen with her head hung low. Crackles of lightning overhead with a symphony of insects hunkering down for the storm as they marched through an eerily hollow Gloomsedale.

I’m gonna get out of here. I’m gonna get out of this place. I’m gonna leave all of this, alive. I’m gonna see Tala again.

In order to do that, she’d need to stop thinking like a Paladin’s daughter. She needed to start playing games back, starting with Callum. Starting with getting on even ground with the pissed off viper that saw her as only a pawn.

Chapter Fifteen:

Cottonmouth

Damn, she really did a number on Neddy . Callum wasn’t scared of his warlock, per se, but he’d be a rotten liar if he didn’t think she was powerful. Neddy and Callum got into a tussle the first day he slithered back into the swamp wearing the name Cottonmouth. Neddy allowed regular people to take up refuge and dwell in the swamp. Even took care of them. If they didn’t have food in their pantries, she made them dinner.

Then he came back home, daggers on his belt, name on a poster, bad attitude…boy did they wrestle. He bit her three to four times, but every time he pumped poison into her veins, she got stronger. Took him a bit to figure that out, and then he called a truce. She took the deal. He’d feed her tree and she let him live there. Only him and his crew. The other outlaws never figured out how he conned his way into Neddy’s good graces, but he thought she saw a kinship with him. She never liked the others, forcing them to take up space on the outskirts of her swamp, facing the searing wastes. Or worse, she drove Madman Marvel into the Dreadflats…Callum never did see that bastard ever again.

Neddy was a tough nut to crack. And somehow his sweet as a bunny, petrified warlock sent the old witch into the next life—express delivery.

How? He couldn’t wrap his mind around it. Neddy looked like she’d been injected with ink. Poison, venom, nightshade; he’d never seen a single drop put a dent in that swamp witch. It’s like Avelina filled her veins with liquid death. The Bark Father would have to con some other fool to do his bidding.

Callum watched her from the doorway as she lay in bed, despondent. Her eyes stared across the room at the wall. The howling wind against the cabin kept the eerie quiet of the swamp at bay. Most of his crew hunkered down in their homes, Rat’s ship strapped to the stilts of Callum’s cabin. It wasn’t the heavy rainfall or the lightening that was the threat—it was the ripping winds. They felt like being carved with shards of glass. They could take the legs right out from under the cabin. They often threw a person clean out of their boots and into the trees. Wind would kill a person just as fast as a burst of lightning or drowning floods in Gloomsdale.

“You gonna mope all day or you gonna come out here and read me something out of that book of yours?” he teased, leaning against the frame.

“Go. Away,” she whined, not bothering to get up from the bed.

“I’d love to, darlin’, but we’re kind of trapped in here. What with the storm out there.” Callum slithered closer inside. Avelina rolled onto her back, glaring at him. Someone has started to grow a backbone. He wanted to hate it—she was so much easier to manipulate when she was a terrified bunny rabbit.

But he liked the sneer that curled at her lips just a little too much. “Why don’t you go toss yourself into it and leave me to my misery.”

He struck forward, watching her eyes widen and body stiffen in response. Callum pinned her to the bed. Knuckles to the sheets, blanket trapping her legs beneath him, he leaned over her with a wicked grin. Oh yes. Callum enjoyed her so much more when she was bold. Not that she needs to know the extent of it. “Careful now, someone’s growin’ a spine, I fear. Watch yer mouth, darlin’. I enjoy your spunk, but yer only alive and well because I find you…mildly entertaining.”

“You find me more than mildly,” she whispered back. While her eyes had widened, and he could feel the tension in her muscles, there was something in her stare. It wasn’t there before, something sour and rotten growing within her chest. A cruelty she’d not yet explored. Maybe she always had it, he wouldn’t doubt for a second a festering seed of hatred, put there by her father. Or maybe she’d learned it from that friend of hers. The pawn he sent to keep an eye on—and if need be, kill—Tala had yet to send word back, so he couldn’t tell if this was influenced or homegrown.

He secretly hoped it happened naturally. That she’d always had a deep-seated rage within her. Behind that sweet, obedient nature there was a boiling pot of acid that was finally spilling over. Only so much a person can take.

“Watch yerself, darlin’.”

“You need me,” she countered.

“Do I?” He laughed, pulling back from the bed. She sat up with him, still only dressed in one of his shirts. Hers were never large enough to sleep in, and he’d grown accustomed to seeing her thick, pale legs sticking out from under the stained cotton. “I think yer countin’ chickens before ya’ve laid any eggs. Ya’ve not even really done a job for me, yet.”

“Then I should just leave,” she sighed dramatically, shrugging too. Avelina pulled back the sheets and threw them off her, giving him an inch or two more of her skin. He could see the already fading bruises along her chest where he nipped. He’d not come into the room to feast on her. But damned if he wasn’t suddenly hungry as she stood up. The shirt fell around her, a curtain pulled over her nest of curls. He’d only gotten a glimpse, and it was all he needed for his stomach to clench up.

“By all means,” he bluffed. With a swoop of his arm, he motioned for her to leave the bedroom. She stomped past him. Callum followed, slithering across the creaking floorboards. He cleared his throat, “But…”

She whirled to glare at him.

He smirked, crossing his arms over his chest. The front door rattled suddenly, and her attention darted to the door. If the poor thing wasn’t careful, she’d break her own neck. The windows shuddered as rain pelted against them. Between the trees violently swaying outside, the inches of rainwater that turned into a fast-churning river, and the lightning, he didn’t believe for a second she would leave. Avelina returned her gaze to him. Callum grinned even broader, spreading his arms out to his sides. “We both know you’re not going anywhere.”