Page 140 of Memories Like Fangs
Quinn moved first. She charged me with terrifying speed, her boots slamming into the floor hard enough to crack it. Her bloody magicked eyes were lasered into me as if they could cut me into pieces with just one look. Her lips were curled back in a snarl that didn’t belong on her face.
Not the same face that could hold that smolder that could melt me into a puddle.
Not those same eyes that lit my way home.
Not those same lips that always spoke just the right words and kissed me so beautifully it hurt.
NotmyQuinn.
I barely had time to react. My wings snapped open with a sharp crack in the air, and I moved them with all the strength I could muster and then some. I lifted Cody and Cole off the ground. I spun around to disorient them. The moment I felt their grips loosen, I timed my attack perfectly, flinging them in the direction that I wanted with an extra blow from my tail to push them further. Cody crashed into Quinn. Cole came next, colliding with Maisie. The impact sent her sprawling hard to the floor. Her magical dome cracked before collapsing to the ground like shattered glass.
“Fuck! I hope that wasn’t too hard!” I cringed, landing and looking between the two crumpled piles. Teddy, Everett, Rhois, Journee, Izzy, Simone, and Nat emerged from the purple and red wreckage. We all watched Cody, Cole, Maisie, and Quinn for any sign of movement. For the briefest moment, I worried that I had been too rough with them and hurt them beyond repair.
Then, Cody jerked and rose in a blur to his feet.
“I don’t think that was hard enough!” Nat said as Cody lunged for her with a splintered piece of hardwood. Everettintervened in the nick of time, grabbing the sharp stake and punching Cody in his jaw. Cody bounced back quickly. He shoved against Everett, knocking him into Nat.
Nearby, Cole and Simone were locked in their own dance of death. Simone had summoned water to fight him off, but she was very clearly on the defense. She sobbed, crying out for Cole to fight and come back to her. He responded with fists for her to weave around.
Journee flew into a far wall with a house-shaking crash as Maisie took on them, Izzy, Rhois, and Teddy. Somehow, taking on all four of the most powerful magic wielders I knew wasn’t enough to make Maisie feel underpowered. She held her own, ducking a flaming punch from Rhois and retaliating with an arcing wave of violet and crimson flames that forced Izzy and Teddy to separate. All of the possessed were clearly on the warpath.
Suddenly, my scales rippled, and I felt the air shift. I caught her scent about a half-second before she struck: chocolate, bonfire, and citrus all tainted and ruined by the tang of copper. I turned on my heels just as she rushed me again. I barely twisted out of the way in time, throwing myself backward with a pulse of my wings and pure instinct driving me. One of Quinn’s daggers whistled past my cheek, close enough to steal a bit of air from my lungs.
She’s not holding back.
She’s not evenin there.
She’s completely unreachable to me.
“Quinn!” I screamed both at her and through our bond.
Still nothing.
The silence from her side of the bond stretched almost as far as her rage. Both clogged the connection between us. I sensed her, buried deep under the layers of fury that weren’t hers. Or, maybe they were. Quinn and her family had always mentionedthat she had a temper. Was this it? Could someone have so much wrath in them that you couldn’t even find them in the fog of it, that it consumed them, leaving just ashes of who they once were in their wake? Was that what happened to Cooper? Had all the pain, suffering, loss, fear, and anxiety fractured something critical in Quinn, releasing a flame that Lilah had only poured gasoline on to?
“Quinn, please!” I breathed, her blades whistling past my ribs, close enough to make my scales cascade from the energy. “Iknowyou’re in there. Fight it! Come back to me! Say something! Do something!Anything! Just let me know you’re still with me, please!”
She didn’t respond.
Quinn only snarled and kept pushing.
“This is just like before when Quinn went berserk, but times at least four,” Teddy shouted from somewhere behind me, his voice strained.
“You mean when Byrd almost died, and ol’ girl tore my countertop in two?” Everett confirmed.
“What?!” I yelped, almost getting sliced open for turning my head in Everett’s direction in shock. I dodged another of Quinn’s blows by diving low to the ground before I snapped back up. “That’swhat happened to the counter and why there was a crack in it? I thought you and Teddy had just gotten a bit too rough one night!”
“In Quinn’s defense,” Nat interjected, punching Cody in the stomach and pushing him off of her and toward Everett. “Everett did pick a fight with Quinn by being a shithead, and Quinn almost punched him again.”
“You didwhat?! Also,what do you mean again?!”
“I should let your brother keep kicking your ass,” Everett shouted while he fought Cody. “That’s so nothelpfulright now!”
“It’s calledcontext!” Nat argued.
Gods. Fucking. Help. Me.
What was I going to do?
