Bliss.
His body immediately relaxed, putty to her command. Her words spiralled him down deep into that guarded memory and the nursery painted itself in his mind.
‘It’s just a memory,’ Callum said softly from the other side of the room. And for a moment, Dylan’s pulse slowed.
But as the darkness faded, the nursery came into view.
Pale wallpaper, a lovely soft colour. The sloped roof like an attic room with a single window that he knew somehow was open. A dresser to the left, white. A cot across from him, empty. And a rocking chair to the right where the two figures were, the chair knocked back in the fight. Rocking back and forth.
He could see it through the slats in the wardrobe door. Their mother had put them in here when she’d heard the noise downstairs, then fought until their attacker was out of the room and down the stairs.
Dylan followed.
His mother must have thrown herself down them because she had the huge intruder in a sleeper hold but he careened backwards to slam her into the dresser.
Dylan couldn’t see the details still – it blurred and reformed as they tore apart the cosy bottom floor of the cottage. He tried to see the assassin’s face, focusing on that and not the emotion he usually felt, each strike or block nearly unblurring it.
Then, his mother spotted him. He didn’t know when, but a shimmer of her Influence went up between them like a shield.
The figure of the Empyreal was now behind her. Tall, heavily muscled. The face nearly cleared, sharpened—
Until a crack cut through it.
His mother slumped.
Her neck.
Gods above, that must have been the sound of his mother’s neck snapping. He’d never heard that before.
The memory began to shudder. He could hear baby Bells crying in the nursery and Nicole’s distressed shushing, her whispering for him to come back.
He could feel himself shaking in both lifetimes, his body rebelling—
‘Pull him out,’ he heard someone order.
Callum.
Then the Empyreal in the vision threw his mother over his shoulder and went to carry her away.
‘No! Mummy!Mummy!’ Dylan screamed, scampering for the stairs, getting on his belly to reach his foot down the step, gripping the spindles of the balustrade to see the intruder stalking to the open door and taking her away—
The shaking made him cry out, stole his breath. He couldn’t breathe—
‘Dylan—’ he heard his father shout.
‘I said, pull himout,’ snarled Callum.
A flash of white and a sharp pain in his temple had Dylan sucking in a breath and ripping from the memory.
There was something here.
Something that pushed and dug its talons into his mind.
Until it stopped, and air stopped, and hisworldstopped.
Dylan barely restrained himself from diving away until he knew Bells was detached, but it cost him his fraying emotions, and he found himself out on the street before he could process it.
He wasn’t sure how he was moving, he couldn’t quite feel his legs, yet the world was rushing past. He distantly realised people were moving out of his way, including supernaturals, the unfamiliar brush of their scents stuffing up his nose.
