CHAPTER ONE #2
The house was smaller than it looked from outside.
Everything was in its place—the old couches, the faded side tables, the colorful rugs sprawled over the wooden floor.
But there were marks of a place that was lived in.
A place that was loved. The vase of pink hydrangeas on the dining table in the corner, and a flowered blanket that rested in a pool on the floor, as if the person using it had jumped up from where they’d been sitting.
There was no sign of that person now, though.
This was not where the smell was coming from, I thought, forcing myself to keep looking.
We’d deduced that every family had been caught by surprise, because the messes we found were in the spots where they actually died, while the rest of the home was left largely intact. Oliver was good at this. An efficient monster, I thought bitterly, finishing my scan.
This wasn’t the crime scene, but there were still two technicians and two police officers standing in here.
As I turned my attention toward the doorway on the other side of them, I half-listened to their conversation.
They were speculating on what kind of animal could’ve done this.
It was so reminiscent of things I’d heard and read about my own parents’ bodies that my stomach began to churn.
When it became clear the investigators were about to bag the victims up, I turned to Collith, and he nodded.
He walked around the humans and through that wood-framed doorway, the white paint along the top of it peeling.
I dragged my eyes back down and refocused, facing the yawning darkness as we walked deeper into the house.
A moment later, we found ourselves in a narrow hallway.
There were two closed doors on either side, and one at the very end—that door was open.
And that, I knew, was where the source of the smell came from.
With every step, the ringing in my ears got louder and louder.
My heart felt like a wild thing inside my chest. I wanted to turn back.
A scream built in my lungs, and I swore I could feel the physical pressure of it.
I focused on putting one foot in front of the other, bringing myself closer and closer.
The noise inside my skull was so loud it was painful now.
Then, when I reached the doorway of the kitchen, the ringing stopped.
The silence felt swollen, like a body rotting in a grave. I stood in the doorway, rooted in place. I had a vague sense of Collith saying something to me, but I couldn’t make out the words. I scanned the room slowly, and my breathing was loud in my ears.
The female had died screaming. I wondered which had come first—the claw marks across her throat, which had practically beheaded her, or the dead male who lay slumped across from her. My guess was the latter. The female’s face was twisted in a mass of anguish and terror. I’d felt pain like that.
Traces of her fear still lingered in the air, and it smelled like food that had gone bad.
I breathed through my mouth as I turned my attention to the male.
His death had been worse. Messier. His torso was barely more than a rib cage, with bits of torn flesh still clinging to the curved bones.
I couldn’t find his arms and legs amongst all the blood, but his head was on the floor at the other end of the room.
A sour prickle filled my mouth as I examined the male’s features, searching for anything that might seem familiar.
But he was a stranger, though. Like all the others.
Whatever kind of Fallen creatures they’d been, these two hadn’t been fighters. There was no sign of magic, and their body parts appeared human. When Finn died, he must’ve just begun to shift, because his fingers and teeth had been replaced by claws and fangs.
No. I wasn’t thinking about Finn right now. I refocused again, blinking fast and hard. The blurred carnage solidified.
The photographers had finished documenting everything, and dozens of items throughout the room were marked with numbers. I tried to see the scene like they would. To picture how the whole thing had played out. But it was no use—every time I saw Oliver’s latest victims, I remembered the first ones.
I’d protected my mind against the most powerful, ancient beings to walk the Earth, but against my own past, I was as helpless as a child.
I stared down at a pile of intestines on the tiles, and all at once, it felt like I was traveling through time, landing amongst the broken, rusted, sharp-edged memories.
I was eight years old again, kneeling on all fours, careless of the wet sensation seeping through my nightgown.
The memory filled my mind until it was all I could see.
I’d gone back to her.
After I’d found my father, and seen that he was dead, I’d left that awful-smelling room and gone down the hallway.
My mother was still there, slumped against the wall.
I sank to my knees, staring at her horrified, blood-spattered face.
Her skin was whiter than I’d ever seen it, like paper speckled with red ink.
“Mommy?” I said.
My voice was hoarse—I had stopped screaming a while ago, but my throat still hurt. Mom didn’t move. I put my little hands on the holes, trying to make the flow stop. Like a Band-Aid. Bleeding was bad. I knew that much.
But no matter how hard I pushed down, the blood didn’t stop. It squelched through my fingers. Help. I needed help. I raised my head, whimpering, and looked back at my mom’s still face. “Mommy, tell me what to do,” I pleaded.
Still, she said nothing. I knew she was dead, of course I knew that.
But I had grown up with the knowledge that magic was real.
I knew it could do incredible things, and so could the creatures my mother had told me about.
Witches existed. Angels, too. I remembered Mom’s stories about them, and how they’d once been guardians in another world.
With a rush of painful hope, I decided to pray.
My mind launched into a desperate, silent appeal to anyone who would listen.
Soon the cold began to creep into my bones, and exhaustion weighed down my eyelids.
Never breaking in my string of promises and pleas to the one that could save Mom, I rested my full weight on the floor.
Wetness had soaked through the entire bottom half of my nightgown, but I didn’t care.
I looked down and watched a dark stain bloom across the white fabric.
I kept my hands on my mother as it spread.
Pressure, I thought. I had to keep pressure on her.
My lips kept moving as I prayed on, and on, and on.
Time went by. Eventually, a man appeared in the hall.
I was so focused on my job that I barely noticed.
I only registered the faint tang of cologne, and my nostrils flared, desperate to replace that coppery smell wafting up from my mother.
The man had something pressed against his ear, and he was saying something like, “Oh God, oh God, oh God.”
There was a snap, and he put something in his pocket. He walked slowly over to us and spoke again. When I felt the man’s hand on my arm, I jerked away and lowered myself down so my cheek touched the wall. I stared at my mother and touched her with the tip of my finger. She was still warm.
“Are you there?” I whispered.
When she didn’t answer, I edged even closer, so close I could have kissed her if I’d wanted. The words to her favorite song popped into my head. Haltingly I sang, “Y-you may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one …”
I couldn’t remember the rest. Mommy was so quiet now. Why didn’t she help me remember the rest?
Suddenly a new sound shattered the night.
This one I recognized—I had asked my mother what it was, once.
A siren. It meant that someone needed help.
Not us. We didn’t need help. We were fine.
I huddled against Mommy’s shoulder and pressed my forehead to her temple.
My stomach lurched when she didn’t move.
But she was fine, she would wake up soon.
I just needed to protect her. The man beside me tried to talk again.
His words were as meaningless as before.
I kept singing, and soon, I forgot about him entirely.
I was still repeating that one line from the song in an aching cycle, since it was all I knew, when another man appeared.
This one had a mustache, and his voice was a gentle rumble, like a giant’s.
He knelt beside me and my mother, the buttons on his uniform gleaming from the beam of a flashlight.
There were more people behind him, I realized dimly.
I hadn’t even noticed them come in. Figures moved in and out of my parents’ bedroom.
They spoke quietly, but I heard the horror in their voices.
The confusion. One of them said Damon’s name, but not even that could pull me away.
“I know you’ll miss her, and she’ll miss you, but we have to take her,” the police officer said, bringing my attention back to him.
I finally comprehended what he was saying. Terror overcame me, and suddenly I couldn’t breathe. My grip tightened on Mommy’s hand. “No. You can’t take her. I n-need her,” I hiccupped.
He didn’t relent. “She can’t stay here, honey.”
“No!” I lashed out at him like a wild animal. The burst of adrenaline that hit my veins helped some of my sense return, and I finally remembered that I’d left my little brother in a darkened bedroom. I turned and looked toward the door with wild eyes. “Damon, where is Damon? I need to find Damon!”