Page 71 of Memories Like Fangs
“No!” Lilah said with as much force as she could muster. “She will die if you shoot her again, and we might need her. We need a better plan.”
“Fine. I have another way.”
Then, he slammed his gun into my head, sending me into the drowning depths of the void.
Death opened her door to me again and asked if I would like tea for my bath.
Firebreak
QUINN
Byrd was dying, and I could feel it.
It started under my skin as soon as I left the gym. Like an itch I couldn’t scratch, something curled its way through my veins. It felt like I was allergic to my own body all of a sudden, as if my very cells were trying to crawl out of me and escape before something worse could catch up to them. The sensation quickly boiled into something sharp, hot, and blistering in my gut. My shoulders tensed. No amount of rolling them or my neck relieved it. My jaw clenched hard enough to make my teeth and gums ache. The air on the way to the hotel felt too thick, too much, too still.
Then came the rage.
It was the kind I couldn’t shove down or push away. When I closed my eyes, all I saw was red. This anger… It was a wildfire: raw, merciless, and scorching through every inch of me with no direction or end in sight. It seared the backs of my eyes and made my muscles tremble. Blazing energy lit me up from my stomach to my fingertips and toes. I was so fucking wired.
I wanted to fight.
Ineededto fight.
Anything.
Anyone.
My fists ached for impact, thirsted for blood, craved the crunch of bones or the destruction of something. I tried to breathe it away. I stretched, but my muscles remained coiled tight. I swore, but the anger still simmered. I turned the water in my shower to the coldest setting possible and tried to wash all of it away. But it didn’t work.
Nothing was working.
“I don’t have fucking time for this right now,” I growled out of frustration as I slammed the water off for the shower.
As I got dressed for us to head to Byrd’s and Everett’s place, I stayed quiet and kept my movements fast. Cole and Nat watched me the entire time, not even exchanging glances with each other. Even Clarkson whined, cowering on the bed in the face of my wrath. I knew my anger was radiating off of me, and my silence was deafening. But there was nothing I could do. Nothing helped.
If anything, it was getting worse.
What the fuck was wrong with me? Why was I feeling so pissed off all of a sudden? Why couldn’t I calm down? Why was there a growing part of me that almost didn’t want to? That wanted to give in and just let it fuel me? The idea of that intimidated the hell out of me.
You’re fucking scared?! You don’t get to be scared. When I ran my hands through my drying curls as we left, I could feel their shaking.
Fear gets people killed.I tried to shake my head as we slipped past the gargoyles up to the elevator up to Byrd’s condo. The thoughts remained and continued to bombard me as we arrived for dinner.
It’s your fault. Just like always. You fuck up and you fail every time.Teddy had madeentomatadas de pollofor dinner tonight. It was a Mexican dish that Mama would make for dinnerall the time at home. He even served mine with slices of lemon and lime, knowing how much I loved citrus. If it were any other day, it would have made me smile. Today, the idea of food made my stomach churn.
You are such a loser. You are such a worthless waste.I couldn’t sit down at dinner, the thought alone made me want to break the table in two. So, instead, I paced the length of the open-concept living room and kitchen while everyone else ate. Dinah and Clarkson ran off to the back, both terrified of my thudding steps. I felt like a caged animal as I wore a trench into the floor. My strides were long and agitated. Every breath I took felt like it caught on something in my throat, like I couldn’t pull enough air in without it choking on fire.
You are the reason we are going to lose Byrd. She would have left you eventually anyway because who would want to be with someone like you?Everyone just sat at the fucking dinner table, talking in circles about plans that led nowhere. Everything anyone threw out was rejected for some reason or another. It was all noise.
Noise and no answers.
We weren’t any closer to finding Byrd than we had been the day before.
Or, when I had gotten to see her as a spirit.
Or, when she was first taken.
It was only a matter of time before you got her killed.
