Page 139 of Memories Like Fangs
Tsunami
BYRD
“Quinn! Quinn, talk to me!” I screamed for her. I kept calling her over and over again until my throat became irritated from the shouting.
She didn’t look at me.
Instead, she walked in silence.
Then, she handedmy mother’s scaletoLilah.
My heart screamed.
My dragon roared.
My soul wept.
“N-no! No! No! No! Quinn, baby, no! What are you doing?!Stop!” I choked, pleading. Tears flowed like rivers down my face. Calling me inconsolable would be an understatement. “Please! Please don’t do this! Look at me. Fight it! You can fight this. Please, I love you!”
She didn’t flinch. She didn’t blink. She didn’t react. She didn’t seem to see or hear me at all. That was almost as bad as watching her hand a piece of my mother to my enemy.
Lilah’s face lit up like a child who had just been given the gift they had been asking for all year for Christmas. She crooned toward Quinn, “Now, that’s a good huntress princess. I do see what Byrd sees in you and having you around.”
I couldn’t breathe all over again. The mating bond was still there, still pulsing between us, but it was like I was screaming across a canyon whose other side I couldn’t see. My voice couldn’t reach her. Myheartcouldn’t reach her.
My Quinn was in there.
But, something else had taken over her.
My dragon thrashed under my skin, roaring now not out of fear or anger but in panic. My scales rippled. My chrysalis magic popped around me. I gritted my teeth as I fought to maintain control over my own body. Nothing my dragon could do right now would save Quinn and stop Lilah.
This was a living nightmare.
“Lilah, what the fuck did you do to her?!” I roared.
Lilah turned toward me then, smirking like a maniacal supervillain. She tucked the scale away into a pocket in her bloodstained jumpsuit.Fucking bitches like her didn’t deserve pockets in their clothes that deep and functional.I hoped the bloodstains never came out of it. “I just made your dreams come true, Byrdie-pie! Don’t you remember this being one of the memories we made together, making those who mean so much to you attack you? It’s nice little deja vu, isn’t it? I used that and when I made you fight your mate and guncles to come up with this little plan. I’m not usually one for encores, but I figured this would have enough of a twist to keep the show alive and well.”
Then, she tilted her head. “I will say, though, it’s weird that my magic didn’t work on you. Cooper shot you with his little bullets, too, but something is blocking me…” She shrugged then, her face showing that she was already bored by the query. “Oh, well, I guess it doesn’t matter now. I have what I came here for.”
I pulled hard against Cody and Cole’s grips, their fingers only digging and tightening more into the soft skin above my elbows like steel manacles. My lips curled in perfect sync with mydragon’s within me. Her and my voice merged into one vicious command.
“LET. THEM. GO!”
The words rang out, low, savage, and thick with desperation. The guttural snarl was so loud that it made Everett, Teddy, Izzy, and Rhois jerk their heads like they had been struck.
Lilah, however, was completely unfazed. She actually clapped her hands, the sound sharp and smug. “Well, Iwasgoing to kill them, but if you want them so bad, Byrdie-pie, I’m happy to oblige! Without your little fitch-y aunt and with her protégé dancing to my tune now, I don’t think you have a way to cleanse them of my blood magic, now do you? I’m sure your little witchy guncle back there isn’t powerful to do anything, now are you, buddy?”
“Suck a sick fucking dick, bitch!” Teddy growled, his panther fangs dropping.
Lilah ignored him, taking a step back. The tendrils of Talli’s blood hung from her elbows like a shawl. She pouted, the mock sympathy curling around every syllable like smoke from a burning house. “Oh, no! Poor Byrdie is going to have to kill her mate and friends! Or, letthemkillyou. And, even if you try to wait it out…well, judging by how fast they’re bleeding, I’d wager they’ll be dead before you figure something else out. Now, you remember what that’s like now, don’t you, ladybug? The feeling of bleeding out while you stall for time and think a better plan will magically fall into your lap?”
My hands trembled. I couldn’t breathe. My mouth went dry. My stomach twisted into painful knots.
“Anyway, I’m off! I’ve got other places to be! But I’msureI’ll see you again real soon, ladybug. Ta-ta!”
Talli’s magic lifted from her elbows to swirl into a crimson vortex behind her. She stepped back to be swallowed up by it.The only thing left in the space she’d once occupied was her echoing giggles.
The moment Lilah disappeared, all hell broke loose.
