Page 85 of Claws and Feathers

“Mom, it hurts,” she whispered, her voice strangled and cracked. “Daddy…” Abby found the strength to move her head, fighting through the pain, and she rested her eyes on her mother.

No.

Oh, no.

Abby went numb, her mouth gaping open, her insides twisting, her entire world falling apart. She squeezed her eyes shut, unable to look at the grotesque image before her. Gina Stone was still, so very still. There was a fragment of glass lodged into her throat, blood coating her beautiful, porcelain face.There was so much blood.“Mommy!” Abby shrieked, her voice shrill and desperate andterrified. “Daddy, talk to me. Please talk to me.”

She was sobbing now. Tears mingled with blood as her cries mingled with the piercing horn. Rodney Stone was silent. Abby twisted in her seat, ignoring the stabs of unbearable pain slicing through her, and glanced back at her father. “No… no…no…” She was crying so hard her body was convulsing. It felt like she was ripping apart.

They were gone. Her parents were gone.

Abby had killed them.

“No!” It was a ghastly sound, almost inhuman. It echoed through the dark of night, through the raindrops that fell like tears. The sky was crying with her. It was mourning her loss.

Abby felt sick. Nausea swelled in her gut, so she pushed open the driver’s side door and crawled out onto the street with her hands. Shards of glass were scattered across the cement, much like her broken heart, and they sliced into her palms. She heaved onto the roadway, spilling her sorrows, expelling her grief. The rain poured down on her and shebeggedfor it to wash it all away.

Another cry broke through her daze and she forced her legs to stand up straight. Her knees wobbled as she took small steps towards another massacre she had created. Another nightmare.

Someone else’s nightmare.

Headlights shone upon a grim scene, lighting up the figures like a spotlight.

There was a man.

A broken man.

She recognized his sadness; she felt his agony like she felt her own. He was sitting in the middle of the street – in the middle of glass and blood and bone, and unspeakable carnage. There was a woman in his arms. He cradled her against his chest, rocking back and forth. Back and forth. Abby was in a trance as she stared at the scene in front of her.

The Man looked up then. His eyes – oh, hiseyes. She had never seen eyes like his before. They were cutting into her like a hot dagger, twisting and burning, cutting her deep. Tears trickled down her cheeks as their eyes locked, and then The Man let out a gut-wrenching roar. It rumbled through her like a violent earthquake. Like a windstorm.

Like the saddest song she’d ever heard.

“Look what you’vedone!” he wailed, squeezing the woman in his lap, then burying his face into her blood-soaked hair.

Abby saw him then.

A little boy. He was lying beside the woman, partially covered by the weight of his mother.

They were both so still.

Abby turned around, unable to process the horrors that surrounded her. She gazed at her brother’s mangled Firebird. She thought of Ryan sitting at home on his computer, blissfully unaware of the fact that his life was about to change forever.

Her head began to throb. Abby touched along her temple, pulling back her fingers to examine the thick, warm blood. She massaged it between the pads of her fingertips as her balance began to sway. Her legs teetered. Her mind turned to fog.

Abby collapsed onto the pavement, her skull cracking hard against the surface. As she faded out, her eyes landed on the front of her brother’s wrecked car. His license plate was the last thing she saw before the darkness swallowed her up.

LTTLBRD.

Chapter Twenty-Four

“The rain to the wind said,

‘You push and I’ll pelt.’

They so smote the garden bed

That the flowers actually knelt,

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