Page 172 of Memories Like Fangs
Nothing stopped her.
Nothing slowed her down.
There was nothing I could have done to avoid her attack.
Lilah plunged the sword straight through where my shoulder met my chest, far from a lethal blow, which meant Lilah had other plans.
As soon as her blade hit my scales, my world blew up with a crackling burst of light. My crystal dragon form shattered, scattering the magical sapphire fragments all around us like shards of glass in a hurricane. They floated in a slow, confused orbit, twinkling stars that had been torn from their constellations and thrown to earth. Adrift in a galaxy that no longer had a center, they hovered, flickering inconsistently and waiting. The sapphire magic had been ripped from me with such force that it felt like a black hole within my heart. I longed for their warmth and security, but I had no time to mourn their loss.
No longer the towering dragon, I was now back to my smaller hybrid form. My red gown was in tatters, barely clinging to my body in places. My skin ranged from just clammy with a fine sheen of sweat to dripping with blood that was either mine or Lilah’s. My wounds from earlier were barely healed and bleeding. What remained of my wings now were still, shredded, and uneven behind me, broken and glistening with fractures of light just like cracked stained glass. My tail lay on the floor, limp and half unusable because of the unpatched bisection from before. My bare feet trembled, trying to keep me upright and standing on the cavern floor. My taloned hands, which were my normal tawny skin color instead of dipped in opal stone, were too weak to even grip Lilah’s wrists and forearms as she rammed the sword further.
This pain was worse than any other time that Lilah’s blood magic had struck me. Lilah’s blade tore a new hole through my shoulder and out my back, just shy of clipping my wing. The debilitating pain didn’t stay centered around where the blade pierced me. No, it ravaged through me. It waseverywhere. The venom was like being struck by lightning while you were injected with acidic poison from hot needles in every pore. My blood wasn’t blood anymore. It was molten lava, coursing through me. The magma rocks clawed my veins while the flames burned awayat me until there was only ash and smoke within. It made every aspect of existence too much to bear in an instant. There was no escaping the smoke of agony clouding my lungs and robbing me of my breath. My eyes widened, and it was agony to blink. Moving even slightly was like trying to walk through a storm of solar flares. I couldn’t roar. I couldn’t even gasp. I was a prisoner inside my body, frozen and trapped in my own suffering.
Then, Lilah cocked her hand back. Her long black stiletto nails glinted like polished knives. There was no hesitation or mercy. She thrust her hand forward, stabbing her claws deep and straight into my chest through skin and muscles.
Right over my heart.
At first, the anguish halted, disappearing like it had never existed. The blood stopped dripping from the sword’s gash, and it felt like time was reversing as the blood was returned to the injury. The easing would have been a relief. Itshouldhave been. Instead, something else took its place.
Something far worse.
Tendrils spilled from her fingers, wet and cold and coiling. They invaded with purpose and hunger, feeling foreign and violating. The inky strands created new channels within me, flooding the hollows of me and expanding like vines wrapped in iron. They swelled, weighing me down with their energy. It wasunbearable. My limbs no longer responded to me. I was unable to breathe before, but now my breath caught somewhere between my throat and heart, caged by pressure. I felt like I was being constricted and stifled, like someone was pushing and pulling my very soul from me. I felt Lilah’s tendrils rummaging within, wanting to steal something from me.
My vision blurred with chilled tears I didn’t remember crying. Wetness started to tickle the outside of my ears and leak from both of my nostrils. My saliva thickened in my mouthas bile and something sharp and metallic bubbled up from my throat.
The sapphires flared brightly and vibrated with distress as if they were yelling.
My dragon roared, the sound part warning, part plea, as it echoed through my ribcage and rattled the ropes of Lilah’s blood magic.
Beyond the haze of my sight on the other side of the cave’s entrance, I could make out Quinn, my Quinn. She pounded against the blood wall keeping her from me. Her fists slammed into it, again and again and again. Her strikes sent pulses of reddish light like incomplete spiderweb fractures along the barrier. She didn’t care that her hands were blistering and bleeding from the blood magic, her pain the faintest, tiniest whisper through our bond. She kept fighting, sending a tidal wave of emotions through to me while calling for me using our bond and her mouth. The others echoed her screams.
I wanted to answer their calls, I really did. I fought and ran toward the sounds. But the more I reached for their cries, Quinn’s golden eyes, the warm magic of the sapphires,anything, the more darkness encroached. Already, they sounded so quiet, muffled, and muted like I was being pulled underwater. Things were getting cold. The world was narrowing and shrinking into a tunnel of pain and ash.
Death was back again. She didn’t knock gently. Instead, she broke my door down as she decided to take me by force?—
Not yet, baby Byrdie.
Light warped at the edges of my vision. It was so brilliant that it cleared the shadows from my vision and brought me back from the depths. I knew it was not from blood loss or magic but something more, as time seemed to shift and slow, too.
As the chaos stilled, my mother materialized in the light of the sapphires. She was just as beautiful as when I had lastseen her in my dream, her curls down and fanning out around her face. Her ruby gown glimmered just like her scales and wings arching behind her, but nothing shone as bright as her eyes, looking at me with so much pride and love. On the other side of me was my grandmother with her Georgia red clay locs braided beautifully down one of her shoulders in an ultramarine blue dress of her own that complemented her wings and tail encircling her waist. Her smile was so full and happy that it looked like she was about to burst into laughter at any moment. Sire Kaya had her arm around my grandmother’s waist, holding her close with a gentle and easy expression of her own in a gray suit. The three of them stood before me, but above us, I saw countless others with different shades of beautiful brown and black skin in dresses and suits that matched their wings and tails as they flew in front of the sapphires. The magical light from the stones streamed through them like dust dancing in the afternoon sun. But they all looked so peaceful.
The Pierce Family…Myfamily…
H-how? H-how are you—?I stuttered, even in my own head. I almost questioned if this was even real, but my necklace’s sharp, scorching burn answered that before I could even think it.
Mom laughed, the sound just as deep and contagious as I remembered. I never wanted to forget it again.No one ever leaves you, Byrdie. I’m so proud of you. We all are, but you have one more thing to do.
I shook my head.I can’t, Mama. I’m too weak?—
No such thing in a Pierce woman, baby,my grandmother said, so sure and loving that it felt like a hug with just her tone.You may think you’re tired, but you still have some fire left.
You are stronger than you think, little Byrd,Sire Kaya nodded toward me.
And, you are not alone, my love. You never were and never will be, Mom beamed, reaching out to touch my cheek. Hertouch was weightless but warm, like sunshine on my skin.I love you always, Byrdie.
Before I could say how much I loved and missed her, a sudden, gasping cry thundered through everything.
“Mom!”
