Poison Fruit

It had happened.

I had broken the world.

I awoke with a gasp caught in my throat, trapped there by the gnarled, long-fingered hands that were strangling me. The Night Hag sat hunched on my chest like a spider, pinning me to the bed. In the dim recesses of my mind, it occurred to me that Danny Reynolds was right; she looked like a Halloween witch with sunken cheeks and a long, warty nose. The Night Hag’s eyes glowed red as she leaned closer to me, her tangled gray hair falling around my face in a lank curtain.

I tried to move and couldn’t. It wasn’t just her weight on my chest; I was paralyzed. Utterly and completely paralyzed. A wave of sheer physical terror broke over me.

The Night Hag’s face loomed in my vision as she licked her withered lips with a black tongue. “Oh, that was a good one, child,” she whispered to me. “You can hear me, can’t you?”

I couldn’t even blink.

Her hands tightened around my throat. “You’re not like the others, are you, half human? You wanted this. You sought this.”

My lungs were burning for air, and I wasn’t sure if I was actually awake anymore. I strained to lift a hand from the bed and snatch a lock of her hair, to move my fingers, to grit my teeth. Anything.

“Perhaps it would be for the best if you died in your sleep, child,” the Night Hag mused. “After all, the world would be spared the terrible fate of your great and grievous folly. Don’t you agree?”

I wanted to deny it, but I had no voice with which to speak. What was happening to me wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. None of her victims had had bruises on their throats. Scott Evans had broken the paralysis to throttle his wife. Poor old Mrs. Claussen had found the strength to cry out, to raise her hands in self-defense.

But then, none of them was a hell-spawn foolish enough to invoke her worst nightmare. I’d broken the world.

Oh, God, I’d done it.

Except I hadn’t done it, not really. It was just a dream, a terrible, terrible dream, one I’d invoked into being. I needed to fight. I needed to find my anger, but all I could feel was terror—the terror that I was going to die like this, right here in Cody’s bed, the terror that I was going to die knowing I was capable of doing the worst possible thing I could do, and that I’d lose my mother’s love forever because of it.

I would have wept if I could have. Instead, all I could do was wonder whether if I passed out due to lack of oxygen, my heart would stop. I could almost hear my heartbeat faltering in my chest.

“Oh, this is truly delicious.” The Night Hag’s face was inches away, the tip of her long nose brushing mine. Sickened by the sensation, I strained every muscle in my paralyzed body in a futile effort to get away from her touch. Her eyes were like two pools of glowing blood, pupils like black stones in the center. She wriggled her bony buttocks on my chest and licked her withered lips again, deliberately and lasciviously. “You’re the best ride I’ve had in a long time, child.”

Okay, ewww!

Beneath me, my tail curled in revulsion, and all at once the anger I hadn’t been able to access was there, molten and glorious. As my fear took a backseat to fury, the Night Hag’s grip on my throat loosened, her strength waning.

I sucked a great, ragged breath of air into my lungs and found my voice. “I’m not your bitch, bitch!”

The Night Hag hissed at me, baring a mouthful of broken black teeth.

I felt her weight shift and grabbed two hanks of her greasy gray hair before she could pull away. “Oh, no, you don’t!” I said grimly. Tangled in Cody’s sheets, we grappled for purchase on the bed. The Night Hag might have been on top, but back when I was a kid, I’d been Mr. Rodriguez’s star pupil in Li’l Dragonz Tae Kwon Do for four years running. All I needed was one opening to find the leverage to flip her onto her back—and she was careless enough to give it to me.

I pinned her arms with my knees and smushed her face with my left hand, using my right hand to yank a few strands of hair loose.

She let out an unearthly yowl and began to struggle with renewed vigor.

Let me tell you, it is not easy to tie a strand of hair around the neck of an eldritch crone fighting tooth and nail to prevent you from doing that very thing—and I’m not kidding about the tooth-and-nail part. I have the bite marks and scratches to prove it. The Night Hag shrieked and thrashed. I clamped down on her efforts with all the strength I could muster and swore, strands of hair slipping through my frantic fingers.

At some point, I was vaguely aware of Cody shouting at me to wake up, but it seemed to be coming from a great distance. Since I couldn’t afford the distraction, I ignored him.

I don’t know how many tries it took before I finally succeeded. Twenty? Thirty? It might even have been more. The first time I got a strand around her neck in a single knot, I thought I’d done it, but I was wrong. I should have known better. The fey tend to be literal. Anything easily undone can’t be considered binding.

All I know is that I didn’t give up. I just kept trying, over and over, with dogged determination.

At last I managed a double knot, drawing a single strand of greasy gray hair taut around the Night Hag’s neck and tying two knots in quick succession without breaking the fragile strand.

Her body sagged beneath me, all the fight going out of her. Her red eyes glared up at me in sullen defeat.

I heaved a sigh of relief. “Gotcha.”

      Twenty

“Daisy!” It sounded like Cody had been calling my name for a while. “Hey, are you okay?”