Lockhart's Legacy (Vespari Lockhart Book 1) Read Free

one matched up to Alviva, he thought. She appeared to be in charge of the others. She did look the oldest, so it made sense. Given her size, it appeared she also got the majority of their meals. Beyond the others, her sagging skin consisted of rolls of fat accentuated with a flopping gut hanging below her skin. Much of her exposed flesh had large brown moles speckling it. Long, whisker-like hairs protruded from them similar to quills on a porcupine.
    “I don’t want to be a wraith!” the little one repeated yet again, cowering behind Alviva’s considerable girth.
    That made her Estrild. Her cowardice easily separated her from the rest of the coven. She’d been the most afraid of him when they spoke, and that was no different now. Estrild appeared younger than the others. That’s not to say she looked young, just not as decrepit as the other beldams. She was also much shorter than the others, being the only one Lockhart could look down on from where he hung. If it were possible to compare such a thing, Estrild also looked the most unkempt. Her hair was a mess of tangled knots, she had red stains on and near her mouth, and her clothes were in shambles, more so than the others.
    “Shut up, Estrild!” the muscular one said. “I’m going to kill it. The only use it has is food.”
    Mabilia. She was big. Not fat. Big. Mabilia looked strong. She looked like she could rip him in half if she wanted to. She definitely wanted to. One of her eyes bulged from its socket, while the other was nothing but a slit with yellow pus seeping out. As the pus reached just above her lips, she scraped her tongue up on her cheek to wipe away and consume the sludge. Lockhart had seen a great many disgusting things, but seeing her lick her own eye pus made his stomach turn.
    “Wait, wait,” the last one repeated. “We’ve captured a vespari. Just think what we can do with that.”
    This made her Petronila, the one who spoke in a slithering speech. She was tall and slender. Lithe. Elongated even. She would have been even taller if she didn’t hunch over, though despite holding her body curled forward, she was still taller than Lockhart. Still taller than the other beldams too. He stared up at her, seeing the warts, boils, and cysts on her face. On her back was a huge hump that protruded through a rip in her clothes. Disease covered nearly every inch of her slender frame, but she seemed no worse for wear.
    For his part, Lockhart just hung there from those hooks, feeling like his guts were slowly slipping out of the wound in his stomach. Given how they’d strung him up, he felt the wound stretching and tearing ever wider. He was too weak to do anything. He was at their mercy, and they knew it.
    “He just killed Gunnilda,” Mabilia reminded them, pointing to the still smoldering pile of ashes at the side of the room. “He has to die for that.”
    “And he will,” Petronila told her, the words slithering out of her mouth. “He will. We can all agree that he has to die.” The beldam crept up to him and stuck a finger into his guts, making him cringe with an electric pain. She coated the tip of her finger in his blood and lifted it up for the others to see before slurping the liquid off. “See?” she asked. “Even if we don’t do anything, he’s going to die. It’s just a matter of how.”
    “We could rip his legs off!” Estrild suggested, emerging from behind Alviva.
    Lockhart shot her a glance, and she cowered back behind the fat beldam.
    “I don’t care how he dies, as long as it’s painful,” Mabilia said.
    “Again,” Petronila replied with a long nod toward the ground. “We can all agree to that. Pain is important.”
    Lockhart looked over to Alviva who stared at him, licking her lips. Petronila saw this too and moved between him and the fat beldam.
    “Now, now, Alviva,” she said, curling down even further so that she was eye to eye with her. “We don’t want to eat him.”
    “Speak for yourself,” Alviva said,