Dad whirls on Mom as she begins to slice through the hunters drawing near on foot with guns raised, his words saturated with panic and fury. “You better get your ass through this portal with our daughter, Alina!”
The portal light flares brighter, wind whipping through the field as though the magic itself senses the danger.
“Worry about yourself!” Mom shouts back as she seems to glide on top of the fallen hunters beneath her, taking out wave after wave with practiced ease.
She’s never looked more glorious to me. Not in her expensive dresses, not with the gleaming crown on her head, and not in her chair at the end of the table during council meetings as she commands the room.
The sight of her snarling and smirking with each life she takes has my own bloodlust rising up.
Beneath the fear I feel at the thought of being taken back, an overwhelming anger surges. Fury and desperation to claw back the pieces of myself this organization took from me, one slice of my daggers at a time, fills me.
Maybe if I take them all out, I’ll chase away the nightmares.
Maybe I’ll finally be safe from the memories that suffocate me.
“Don’t play hero, Briar!” Elias growls out, eyes pinning me as he’s shoved forward, seeming to sense the bloodlust within me. “And don’t think of yourself as invincible. This isn’t the time for revenge.”
My nostrils flare with a sharp inhale, agitated by his easy way of reading me but also trying to tell me what to do. I’m over it. This is my life to live and my decision to make.
No one seems to get that.
Dad drags a snarling Elias into the portal, with a tight hand on the back of his shirt.
As soon as the last glimpse of Elias’s frame vanishes into the portal, the white light swallowing him as Dad pulls him through behind him, I feel a lightness in my chest.
They’re safe from Terrance…My promise was kept.
Then, the night truly erupts.
Mechanical shrieks of guns unloading from the sky above begin, bullets shredding the night with a metallic hail that strikes the ground around me.
“Mom!” I shout, hardly able to track her movements despite my own enhanced vision. She’s had to have taken out over fifty hunters already, pushing them back toward the entrance to the ranch. “They’re all through. Let’s go!”
I dodge and roll, trying to stay ahead of the chopper’s guns as they track me, but then the thundering sound overhead deepens into a roar as I watch the helicopters tip their noses down. Cannons flare to life in twin bursts that streak across the sky toward my mother.
My head whips toward her as she emerges from the shadowed area near the gate and I scream, “Mom!”
A heartbeat later they slam into the earth and detonate, exploding with a green mist.
The chemical mist.
My gut churns, threatening to hurl up my stomach contents as the memories rise.
The same chemical that flayed the skin from my bones, that burned my throat raw and drowned me in agony until the world went black for a week.
“No!” The scream tears out of me as I lurch toward my mother, the portal blazing at my back, but the cloud has already consumed her and she staggers.
The red blaze of Devere flies around through the vapor, streaking arcs of light with every swing as if she can cut it away. The scream that comes next is a sound I will never forget.
It’s hardly a scream, but a howl of agony, vibrating through my chest as it tears my heart apart.
My feet want to carry me forward and to drag her from the mist, but I know that the second it touches me, I’ll be just as helpless. I need to be strong enough to get us to the portal. I just need her to clear it.
Desperation claws at my throat as the mist slowly creeps toward me, and I have to take agonizing steps back.
Tears spill down my cheeks as I shout, “Mom! Please just get through the mist. I will carry you through the portal.”
The pounding of more boots on the ground spills from the new vehicles screeching through the gates. They enter the mist in a flood, but they aren’t bare-faced this time. They’re sealed inside protective suits that sheath them head to toe, as if built to withstand the chemical storm swirling across the field. They move fast and unflinching, prepared for the poison they unleashed, rifles raised as they surge through the haze.
