Wapun Meadow grind to a halt

a cunning light flickered to life in merrick's eye: the waking radiance of knives he had honed to pry up the edges of someone's mind. the boy who drew closer provoked a merciless chuckle from the coywolf; he gave avicus all his attention, that catacombs voice rolling out of her small body. 
he would have said something, except that next his his tiny rosefinch uttered the name of his own mother, and to hear it from so visible a resemblance shook merrick for a brief moment he exchanged only with the child. and to the bitch he gave his attention then. "she said that because she is your great-aunt laurel. and this must be," he said of the half-familiar young man, though his voice simpered back into a fang-ridden smirk. "quite the reunion."
"she isn't back," he cut toward laurel in the next instant. merrick turned on a dime and this moment proved no exception. "she's dead. forever." indra did not live in avicus. he was convulsed with fury at the very notion, an affront to his offspring. he thrust his body between them, prickled by the possessive nature of her frozen stare.
"i put her in the fucking ground," merrick chuckled, voice crystalizing into that self-same frost. "go look for her bones,  auntie." a moment, and then he shifted the harsh golden flint to the darkshade boy, lips still thinned into that odd, wan smile. "'kill your mother, so that you might live.' that's how i thought of it."