Fifty-Six
Fifty-Six
HIM
As soon as the dome falls, Aleric phases me inside the house. I barely got a second to look at the war zone outside, but that was long enough to sear it into my brain. Over a hundred bodies littered our property. Werewolves torn to pieces by grotesque monsters before they themselves were eventually ripped apart. Dead plants lay all around them – so much death where it used to be picturesque. So much violation where there used to be peace. How could Micha have possibly survived?
Intense agony rips through me when Aleric lands inside Mother’s bedroom. I’ve phased half a dozen times in the last hour. My body’s screaming in pain, and I drop to the ground like a fucking stone. All my muscles are on fire. My bones feel like they’re constantly fracturing until they mimic the cracks in a window.
Aleric’s presence is that of a predator above me. You can’t be weak in this life. You can’t do anything that even seems weak.
You can’t cry. Can’t go to therapy. Can’t crawl on your hands and knees. But I don’t have the strength to get to my feet. So I crawl towards the heartbeat I can barely detect.
I do it without caring another Boss sees me.
I don’t care about his judgment. The embarrassment. I don”t even care that this moment of weakness might mean he turns on our Family later, thinking it is there for the taking. I don’t care about the future casualties.
All I care about is getting to my wife as fast as I can.
I don’t have time to wait for the pain to subside.
So I dig my fingertips into the carpet and drag my spasming body across the room. I pull the door open and crawl through the hall. I push out my senses, trying to detect her heartbeat or just smell her blood.
I detect the latter. A lot of it. She’s near the basement stairs. There’s a heartbeat there too, but it isn’t hers.
Screaming in utter agony, I drag myself towards her presence. I can imagine her lifeless eyes as she lies in a stagnant pool of blood. I can imagine her eyes aren’t even there anymore, ripped out by the harsh rake of a claw across her face. I see her so broken and beaten, she isn’t recognizable to anyone but me. She’s been torn apart. Her chest plate ripped open. Her face gnawed off.
Those images curb stomp me in the back of the head. I drop my face to the ground and scream.
The pain in my muscles and limbs has been replaced with a terrible ache, an exhaustion that’s begging me to give up, to not force myself to see her body. Because deep down, I already know that’s what I’ll find.
Just a body.
Not my stubborn, sarcastic wife.
“Noooo!”
I push myself up. My muscles and bones protest, but I bite through the pain. A hand grabs my shoulder and pulls me the rest of the way to my feet. Ducking under my arm, Rudy helps me stagger down the hall.
More heartbeats flood around the house. One kneels down by the faint pulse that isn’t hers. Two more race down the stairs to the basement – Khalid and Leno no doubt, checking on their girl and dog who should hopefully be there. I can’t sense them through the magic of the ward.
Tears burning my eyes, I suck in a breath before we turn the corner. Rudy squeezes me with the arm he has around my waist. My heart in my throat, I take that final step. And then I can see.
Mother is kneeling over Dayne, her hands glowing over a fist-sized wound in his stomach. The hole is just like the one Micha had when I found her in the basement. Antonio was here. And he came for her.
Shoving away from Rudy, I lunge for our mother. “You were supposed to protect her!” I yell. I grab her by her hair and pull her to her feet. I don’t care that she’s in the middle of saving Dayne. He might be family, but he isn’t my wife.
“Where is she?” I roar as I shake her. “Where is my wife?”
“She’s alive!” she says, and my grip loosens as my chest is hit with too heavy of a blow. “Antonio took her. I tried to stop them –”
I backhand her across the face hard enough her hair rips out of her skull and stays in my fingers. She stumbles away from me. “If you tried, you wouldn’t be here!” I shout.
I go to lunge for her again, but my body can’t move. I’m trapped by the power of Ezriel’s telekinesis. I struggle against him, gnashing my teeth and spitting in fury. I feel like an animal. A basic beast who only wants one thing.
“Where is she?” I scream.
“I don’t know,” Mother says as she turns back to me. She doesn’t heal her swollen cheek from where I hit her. “I only got here after they already cast the transportation spell.”
I scream as I strain against my invisible binds. Ezriel is holding every atom in my fucking body. My eyes turn to him. He still has strength to stand, but I can detect the harsh beat of his pulse. He’s worn out from his fight with the hybrid and werewolves. If I keep pushing, he’ll break. Then I can kill the bitch in front of me for not having been by my wife the entire time.
“You should’ve made sure they got to the basement!”
“I know!” she says. “I’m sorry. I thought I stopped them all before they got to the house. If I’d known they had a transporter –”
“Look at the plants!” Even the ones inside the house are all dead. “They obviously had a fucking witch!”
Not many witches know how to work a transportation spell, but I don’t care. She should’ve known Antonio would have something up his sleeve.
“He took my wife! You let him take my fucking wife!”
I pull against the binds of my prison again. All my muscles strain for release.
“Enough,” Khalid says softly but firmly as he moves between us. He faces me, his mien dangerously calm. “Mother, finish healing Dayne,” he orders. “We don”t need another casualty. Then get out of the house.”
She doesn’t say anything as she obeys.
Khalid clasps my shoulder as he looks me in the eyes. “We’re going to find her, Varius. We’re going to tear apart every single one of his compounds if we have to, but we will get her back.”
“He’s going to torture her.” My voice breaks, a cracked and raw insight into the state of my soul.
“I know. But your anger isn’t going to save her.”
I crumble beneath that truth. I’m doing nothing to help my little monster.
Closing my eyes, I force myself to breathe.
Khalid squeezes my shoulder again, and I shudder.
“We’re going to find her, brother, and we’re going to bring her home.”
Latching onto his promise with trembling hands, I nod. I just hope she’s still alive by the time we do.
I’m numb by the time Mother is well gone and Ezriel releases me. Everyone has left me alone in the hall. Dayne has been moved to somewhere more comfortable for him to recover. He hasn’t regained consciousness, but Mother said he was stable and that he had been out by the time she had gotten here, so there’s no point questioning him.
I should’ve let him tattoo a tracking rune back on her. Fuck. I never should have had her burn the first one off out of paranoia that someone could use it to find me through her.
I should’ve –
Cutting that thought off, I force myself to focus rather than despair. I move from the spot where Dayne was to the biggest pool of blood that smells like her. I breathe it in, trying to feel her presence where it no longer is. Then I shift my focus to the other scents in the area, documenting the bastards I need to kill. There’s Antonio, there’s a male I do not know, and then there’s -
My heart stops as I smell a mixture of her and me.
Dropping my head, I frantically scan the floor.
For a moment I convince myself I’m imagining it, that Bambi isn’t here.
But then I realize I’m looking for something too big, and I drop to my knees to search again. My eyes latch onto a tiny, tiny body on the floor. Her head isn’t much bigger than a golf ball, and it’s been caved in, deformed. Like she was dropped from a great height. Bits of her brain has leaked out, and the lower half of her body has been ripped off. No organs remain to tumble free. I want to search for the rest of her, but I can’t tear my eyes away from her little face.
My stomach churns as I reach for her. My body shakes. She needs her mother, but all she has is me.
I cup her small body in both my hands, nearly losing it at the feel of her shattered skull, at the bits of her brain that fall free when I move her. Sobbing without any dignity or care, I cradle her to my chest.
She’s so small. So fragile.
My heart squeezes as I stare at her face. Her head is so big compared to the rest of her. She hasn’t grown into it yet, and now she never will. She will never experience all the life she had ahead of her. Never fall in love. Never see her mother’s radiant smile. She’ll never even feel me holding her. Never know that I love her.
I love her so damn much even though I’ll never get the chance to know her.
Cradling her against me, I rock back and forth and sob.
My chest burns with pure agony. My eyes feel heavily swollen. “I’m sorry…” I sob as I stare down at my little girl. “I’m so sorry I failed you… I love you, Bambi. I love you even though you have a dumbass name. But you can blame your mother…” I break off on uncontrollable tears. My hands shake, making her whole body tremble. “I love you…” I rasp. “Daddy loves you.” I bring her little head up for a kiss. The cold brush of her skin breaks me, but I don’t pull away. She needs to know I love her. “Daddy –”
I cry out as a sudden pulse rips through my chest, like a defibrillator paddle being touched to a dead body. I gasp as I shift Bambi into one hand so I can place the other on the wall. The pulse comes again, and my heart jerks painfully. Like it’s dying from being targeted by some dark spell.
Fuck. Did Antonio leave a trap on my daughter to kill me?
Despite the fact that he clearly must have, I still refuse to let her go though. She is my baby. I can’t.
“Help!” I yell, but the word is more of a croak as another pulse slams into me. I lean against the wall and close my eyes, gasping through the pain. My chest is trapped in a closing vice. I slam my free hand on the wall, trying to breathe. I can’t die before I save Micha. I can’t die!
The pulse hits one more time, multiple times worse than all the others. Pain explodes through every nerve, lighting them up, scraping a hot poker against them.
Micha!
I scream in agony. Others shout around me. I can sense their presence, their heartbeats like grating nails on a chalkboard.
Micha!
My mind reduces into a single pinpoint, a single purpose as the curse on me breaks. It consumes me until I know nothing else.
Micha!
Roaring, I open my eyes and jump to my feet. A deep hunger fills me. A need to kill, to drink the blood of my enemies.
And everyone around me is an enemy because they”ve taken her.
Attacking the nearest one, I scream, “Where is my fucking wife!”