Page 186 of Memories Like Fangs
I had barely shifted the car into park in front of the house and turned the engine off fully before I was out of the car. The metal groaned under my palm as I shoved the door open, the frame still vibrating from the speed. My hand was on the front door before I had fully realized it.
Byrd was going to be my wife.
I stormed inside. Byrd followed astride beside me, her heeled hiking boots hitting the hardwood floor in quick, dull beats that matched my raging pulse. She took my hand just as tightly as when we were in the SUV. It was cool in my heated one, a steady comfort alongside our thrumming connection.
We had not even gotten a chance to really celebrate yet?—
Clarkson padded ahead of us, her nails clicking faintly against the floor. She rounded the corner from the foyer into the living room first. Whatever she saw there sent her long floppy ears back and made her tuck her tail low. She didn’t bark or whimper as she cowered at the sight. It was my first warning. The next one was the smell. Sharp, coppery, and clinging, blood hung thick in the air. It mingled with the tang of sweat and a salty undercurrent of tears. Then, there were the screams and cries. The exact words and who they belonged to were indiscernible, but the voices I knew. The omens were more than enough to make my heart sink with the impending ruin being spelled out before me.
It still didn’t prepare me for what I faced when we turned the corner.
It was the aftermath of a battle lost. Furniture and bodies, broken and wrong, were scattered across the living room. Couches were overturned with cushions strewn everywhere, and the frames sunken and cracked. Lamps and their bulbs were shattered. Tables were reduced to splinters all over. The rugs and hardwood were stained with dark spots. The walls were holey, cracked, dented, or a combination of the three. The living room, which was pristine just a few weeks or so ago, was a disaster now.
Aunt Tess sat on the floor, her back pressed to the far right wall. Her braid was falling apart, full of flyaways and loose strands. Her wrinkles were prominent on her face from all her worry as she cradled a weeping Aunt Carol-Kay in her arms. Even with her face buried in Aunt Tess’s shoulder, Aunt CK’s sobs were raw, unfiltered, wet things broken up with hiccuping gasps and quivering lips. The sound made my chest feel way too tight, like my ribs were collapsing inward.
Cody and Maisie were crumpled near what remained of the coffee table. Cody clutched his ribs, every shallow breath he took contorting his face in agony. Beside him, Maisie sat holding her arm bent at an angle at her elbow that made my stomach twist. Her tears slid silently and unchecked down her cheeks.
Clarkson found my mother before I did, running to cower behind her. Mama was near the windows on the left with Natassa’s head resting in her lap. A nasty, jagged gash sliced through Nat’s hairline, the blood matting her purple hair. A thin trickle of blood trailed from the corner of her mouth. Mama pressed her hands against Nat’s wound, her hands faintly glowing gold over it. Nevertheless, the wound seeped. Nat’s chest rose and fell, too slow for my comfort, as if each breath was an effort her body wasn’t sure it wanted to continue with.Mama’s face remained calm and controlled at her work, but Iknewher. I recognized that intense focus where you had to stare at nothing but the task in front of you; otherwise, you would lose any grip of sanity you had left. The lipstick that had once painted her lips was long-faded and gone from her worrying them so much. The line between her brows was deep and easy to spot. Her once-flawless curls had straightened to sad waves full of flyaways and tangled into knotted snarls from her running her hands through them every minute or so, a habit I had inherited.
Everywhere I looked, my family was in carnage, and the sight broke something within me. Hot rage pulsed through the cracks in time with my pounding heart. Every thud was a warning drum growing louder in my ears?—
Then, Byrd’s whisper chilled me to my core. It was so soft and shattering that I could only guess that this was what a heartbreak sounded like.
“Simone, no…”
I followed her tearful brown eyes.
And, I found thecara de pitowho was determined to make sure I never knew happiness of any kind for longer than a moment of my life.
My father, Diego ‘Safari’ Garcia, was far more stacked than when I last saw him. His 6’6” frame was now dense with solid muscles carved from training for war every day without pause for years. His skin was a darker, burnished olive, and his curly black hair had grown long enough to brush his jawline instead of the cropped cut I’d known. A shadow of stubble dusted his jaw and upper lip, giving his face a harsh, rugged look. But, I knew that dark, manic, wild expression. It was the same one he wore when everything fell apart. His eyes, a rich dark brown under normal circumstances, now bled an almost-burgundy. They glowed faintly with a heat that wasn’t just anger but something more feral and consuming. He looked like a man on the edge ofburning the whole world down just to feel the warmth of it. His presence had always been a physical thing that you could feel, like a looming dark omen. Tonight, it was overwhelming and suffocating, pressing on the room, the back of my neck, my ribs, and my lungs.
One of his massive hands was wrapped around poor Simone’s throat, holding her high off the ground like she weighed nothing. His fingers, thick and corded with powerful tendons, dug into the delicate column of her neck. They tightened slowly, his fingertips wanting to meet like planets in a gravitational pull. Simone’s manicured hands clawed at his hand, wrist, and arm. Her nails scratched uselessly at his skin, her angry red marks healing before blood could drip from them. She kicked the open air to find something—anything—to stay alive. Her stormy gray eyes were wide and panicked and unfocused. Her mouth worked for air she couldn’t pull in past his grip. I wondered for a second why Simone didn’t try to use her water powers to fight back before I noticed the puddle of water at their feet, telling me that shehadtried to fight already to no avail.
As my father watched Simone struggle, his eyes reminded me of rust when it began to rot metal. He didn’t want to simply kill. He wanted to slowly weaken his adversary, to torturously hollow someone out piece by piece until there was nothing left and they could be rendered useless. That was his way. Whereas most hunters, including myself, performed clean kills, my father believed in drawing things out. He liked watching his targets decay, the light growing in his eyes as the life left his assignments’ eyes. When I was young and had first seen it in the field, I had thought he just enjoyed dishing out karma and justice.
I had been so naive.
I learned from those mistakes.
“Uncle Diego, please let her go!” From the far wall, Cole begged, his voice cracking with tears streaming down his face. Bones in his legs jutted out and twisted in ways that churned my stomach. I had never seen him so devastated.
“Diego! Enough! Please stop this!” Mama echoed Cole’s pleas.
My father ignored them completely.
“I don’t know what’s more pathetic,sobrino,” My father started, his voice deep, sharp, and quaking like a blade dragging across stone. It cut through their screams with a harsh severity that sent shivers down my spine. “You dating a siren, or you dating one that doesn’t even know how to fight. Either way, it’s time we rid this family of this plague?—”
That voice…Byrd’s inner voice was small and strangled. Then, shock rippled in waves through our bond before realization and chilled fear rolled in with it.
“NO!DON’T—!” Cole’s scream tore from him with a sharpness that made me bleed before I could process Byrd’s feelings and thoughts.
My father squeezed Simone’s neck more. Her dark sepia skin ventured toward a shade dangerously close to her eye color. Her lips were turning blue, and her eyes rolled back into her head.
The fucker never saw me move.
I slammed my fist into his jaw with all the rage and power I could muster into one blow. The impact rattled my arm, the shocks traveling from my fist all the way up my shoulder. The satisfying crack of bone against bone rang in my ears, and I thought it was the first time that I actually took delight in the sound. His head snapped sideways, his body flying. Gasps echoed in front of me, including Mama’s sharp inhale and a soft, startled sound from Aunt Tess.
Father’s grip broke immediately, allowing Simone to fall. Just before she hit the floor, Byrd was a blur, catching Simone,darting to Cole, and setting Simone carefully in his lap. Simone’s coughing racked her short, plus-size frame, each one a rasp with no sound behind it. Her neck was dark with bruises and indented clearly with the shape of my father’s fingers against her skin. But her healing had already started, her throat filling and returning to its usual color and shape. Shaken up as she was, she would be okay, especially with Cole’s arms around her. He bent his head low to speak to her in hushed tones that I couldn’t hear, but it left her smiling as she continued to catch her breath. Byrd lingered close to her best friend but gave them the space they needed.
