Page 81 of A Resistance of Witches
Roger chewed on something as he regarded her. “Why doesn’t she come out here herself if she wants to talk to him so badly?”
Rebecca shrugged. “You’d have to ask her.”
Roger spat on the ground and didn’t reply.
“Look, I can tell her she needs to come out here herself, but then she’ll be pissed off with both of us instead of just me. Your choice.”
Roger sneered. A fleck of something dark clung to one of his teeth. “Fine.” He looked at Henry. “Let’s go.”
“I’ll take him,” Rebecca said, too eagerly. “Lucas has something he wants to show you out front.”
“Lucas, eh?” Roger squinted at her, and she knew that somehow, she had made a misstep. He spat again, and a strand of yellow spittle clung to his chin. He wiped it away with his sleeve, then cocked his head. “Come here.”
Rebecca took one step forward. Inside her coat pocket, her fingers curled tightly around the wooden handle of the knife. She could feel her pulse in her fingertips, but whether it was fear or focus making her blood pump faster, she couldn’t tell anymore.
“Whose coat is that?”
Merde.
“I don’t know. I just threw it on.”
“Mmph. You planning on going somewhere?” Before she could react, Roger reached out and snatched her by the coat, shaking her hard.
“Hey!” Henry shouted.
Rebecca pulled the knife from the coat and slashed wildly, catching Roger across the cheek. He cried out and released her, pressing his hand to his bleeding face.
“Bitch!”
“Run!” Rebecca commanded. She turned to flee, but found her exitblocked by an enormous man holding a gun.Pierre, Rebecca remembered. They called him Pierre.
“Ah, no.” Pierre smiled apologetically. “So sorry, lovely girl. Nobody is leaving. Put that down.” He looked at the knife in Rebecca’s hand. Rebecca dropped it.
Pierre turned to Roger. “You all right?”
“She cut me! Cette putain!” Roger shouted, still holding his cheek.
Pierre said nothing, and Rebecca saw what might have been the hint of a smirk tug at the corners of his mouth, as if he found the whole thing amusing. He looked at Henry, and then at Rebecca, and finally back at Roger.
“Claire says it’s time.”
Twenty-Two
They were taken to the Citroën and forced into the back seat, with Pierre and Roger in the front. Pierre drove, while Roger sat in the passenger seat, one hand pressed to his face, the other holding Rebecca and Henry at gunpoint. Rebecca felt a surge of dread at every turn and bump in the road, watching Roger’s clumsy finger as it fondled the trigger.
“So”—Roger licked his lips, the gun bouncing in his hand as they drove—“Claire won’t do it herself after all, eh? No stomach for it?”
“Her stomach’s fine.” Pierre gestured toward Rebecca. “She and this one have history is all.”
Roger’s face twisted into a shape Rebecca had seen many times before, an unmistakable marriage of revulsion and arousal that had become all too familiar to her.
“I knew it.” He curled his lip in disgust, even as his eyes wandered over her body.
She understood what came next. She and Henry would be executed,their corpses left with a note identifying them as collaborators, a warning to others. She should have been terrified, but as the car rattled through the darkness, black trees passing in and out of their headlights, all she could seem to feel was an incredible flush of rage.
She stared at Roger with a look of flat contempt. “He was a moron, you know. Your cousin.”
Roger’s smug smile turned to a frown. “You shut your mouth, whore.”
