Page 163 of Scars Like Wings

Stabbed.

Any energy Mom had within her immediately faded away. Her body slumped against the man and the blade. She had nothing left to give. I could see it. I felt it. I held the same place against my stomach, expecting to feel wetness there. Instead, my hand just shook. I wanted to do something. I wanted to change this. This just couldn’t be real. This couldn’t be real. This couldn’t be real.

Mom.

The man lifted Mom into his arms with ease. He was tall and muscular, but he lifted her like she was an empty box. He put her in the back of an ATV and pulled out a walkie talkie. His voice was deep even if it was muffled through his mask. I recognized his voice. It was the leader from before.

“We have what we came for. Move out and return to the rendezvous point.”

He raised his fingers to an earpiece and listened. Then: “We have what we came for. I will not repeat myself again.”

He started the ATV and drove away. I turned to see that Everett was still fighting off the hunters in front of him. He didn’t see Mom had been taken. No. No no no. I knew there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t touch anything. I couldn’t change how this ended. But I also couldn’t sit idly by, either. So, I followed.

Once I was through the trees, I was teleported again. Now, I was sitting in the trunk area of a large SUV. It was dark back here even without accounting for the heavily tinted windows, but my eyes quickly adjusted. Before me, Mom lay in a strange box. There was a silvery aura around it just like the weapons. The knife was still in her stomach, her blood pooling beneath her. Her eyes were distant and half-closed as she stared at nothing in particular. Her breathing rattled as it escaped from her lips.

She was dying.

“Mom, no…” Wetness streamed from my eyes and nose. I tried to reach out for her, let her know I was here and she wasn’t alone, but my hand went straight through the box and her. It was torture. This had to be a nightmare.

“Oh, my sweet baby Byrd.”

My head snapped up. There she was. My mom. She was alive and vibrant, whole and healed, smiling at me.

Sobbing, I looked back down into the box, but there was nothing there now. I shook my head, eyebrows furrowed. “B-but h-how?—?”

Mom lifted my head to look up at her now, and not where she had been before. Her fingers were warm on my jaw. She could touch me. She was real. “I didn’t want you to remember me that way, honey. No child should have to see their mother like that. I made that same promise when I lost my mom.”

“You’re here.” I gripped her wrist. When she took my face in both her hands, I sank into it. I had forgotten how warm her touch used to be. “You’re real.”

“Not quite, my love. This is simply old magic only our people have. Power like ours doesn’t simply vanish once we die. Nothing just stops after death. But our magic is passed down to those we care about and would die for. Or in my case, did die for.”

“Mom, what?—?”

“I died thinking of you. I hoped you would be okay and safe no matter what. It was my final wish. All of this was for you. It always has been. It was for you to thrive happily and free. That may be hard to understand. You may feel like you were robbed and not given the choice. But always remember, my baby Byrd, that at the heart of everything I or your father ever did was our love for you and our hopes that you would live long, love hard, and be happy. Nothing else mattered.”

“Mom, I am okay now.” I held tight to her hands around my face. I swallowed and finally found the words I have been wanting to say for years. “I love you so much. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of you. But… I’m okay now. I found my okay. I long used to wish things were different. But then, I wouldn’t be who I am. As painful as that is, I wouldn’t be me and I wouldn’t have found the happiness that I did. I’m okay now, Mom. I swear. Your wish came true.”

She wiped the tears from my eyes with her thumbs. Mom smiled, her dark sard eyes glinting with nothing but love and pride. “You are ready then, my baby Byrd. Remember, I love you more than all the stars in the sky.”

“I love you, too,” I said before she vanished.

Arrow

Iwoke up feeling too awake.

I gasped for air as the past released its grip on me for the present to grab me instead. I felt disoriented and jittery. My necklace and its obsidian pendant were on fire on my chest and around my neck. Every single one of my senses were a raw, exposed nerve. They were so heightened that they were sensitive and overstimulating to me. I was too aware of everything.

Which explained how I was able to smell her before my eyes fully noticed her.

There was a woman standing right next to the bed near me. She was by every definition abig bitch. She had to be at least five feet nine with more muscles and curves than Quinn or I had. She was dressed in all black with a mask and a hood over her head. The only thing not covered was her eyes. I could only make out her side profile, but she was a black woman with eyebrows that I knew took a hot minute to do and eyelash extensions that made her resemble a Muppet. Her eyes were almost indiscernible, but I could make out blue contacts as she looked away from me. She was enveloped in one of those loud celebrity perfumes that made my head spin in my current state. I could hear the woman’s heart beating rapidly.

Her grip was tight on a glistening red dagger. It pulsated darkly with some otherworldly magic that I had never seen before, swirling like smokey ruby shadows around the blade. I knew that magic. I had seen it before. It was so familiar. Although I had no idea where I knew it from exactly, I knew one thing for certain down to my bones:

It was deadly.

I could feel it. I could taste and hear it even. It radiated lethality. Something deep within me roared in rage at the weapon, having been asleep but wide awake now. In the face of the weapon, my teeth and claws lengthened. I growled quietly at it. The dagger was aimed inches from me, right above my heart. It wouldn’t take much effort to plunge it in.

I pulled my eyes away from the weapon to look at what had the woman distracted and looking elsewhere. Behind her, hundreds of crystal shards floated in the air angled at the assailant. It was shattered glass from the balcony door and mirrors within my room. I could even see the stones I had picked with Quinn on the beach. They were as close to her as the dagger was to me, seemingly connected. Actually, it seemed like they were drawing closer now that I noticed them.

---