Page 127

There is nothing I can do.

Ice creeps up my back, licking its way around my flesh.

Dark is cold. Death is cold.

“Wake up, Sumner. Bring us back.”

Shadows of black smoke crawl over her, surrounding her tiny body like a blanket of the damned come to steal her away.

My eyes fall closed, bringing her closer to my chest. She’s starting to go cold now, too, the life literally being drained out of her. Each beat in her chest is slower than the last. Each one taking her farther and farther away from me.

I couldn’t do it. After all this time, I couldn’t save her. And instead of nurturing the friendship we were always so close to having, I tortured her, made her life here a living hell. And for what? Because I blamed her for something she had no knowledge of? Because I didn’t want to be around her, even though I couldn’t bear to be away?

I hate my Vixen and my Vixen hates me.

But who am I without her?

There was none better suited to take my bullshit and throw it back at me. No one else who could handle her smart-ass mouth and need for constant chaos like I could.

Sumner wasn’t just some fragile creature I felt accountable for. She was a force to be reckoned with. A fucking storm on the horizon. She was color and light. Insanity and perfection all in one. My nightmare that I kept going back to. The one I want to keep going back to.

“Please…”

The darkness falls into her, disappearing beneath her flesh, seeping its way into her organs. Eating up her life.

How twistedly poetic that Sumner should meet the same fate as her mother, and I, the same as my father. How desperately cruel that the Reaper would watch his own flesh and blood suffer, all for a hate of things impure.

What he could never understand is that she was the purest thing this world had ever seen. She wasn’t destruction like I’d so strongly wanted to believe. She wasn’t a stray who no one wanted. I made her those things. I had this preconceived image in my mind of the girl who took everything, and this isn’t it.

I stare down at her, watching in horror as black webs streak across her face and neck, branching out like veins on the back of a leaf.

A piercing scream tears through the air—a sound that doesn’t quite belong to this land, echoing like it’s slipped through a crack between worlds

Midnight eyes spring open. In place of multi-colored irises lies two orbs of the darkest ink.

They have her now.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

SUMNER

I’m young again. Everything around me is so big, so tall. I walk through the house. It’s almost familiar to me. A memory from long ago. Humming circles at my ears, a sound I could never forget. I follow it, stepping into the kitchen.

I know this place. I lived here once.

The humming is louder now, coming from the other side of the wooden table. My heart races with a knowing so strong it almost hurts. And when I round the large table, there she is, exactly as I remembered.

“Mommy!” I run up to her, noticing the beaded bracelet I’d made for her. She still has it. Just like she said, she never took it off.

Her long, silky hair sways across her back when she turns around, and my chest has never felt so full. She’s beautiful, smiling like we were never apart. I want to cry I’m so happy. It must have all been a bad dream. My mommy would never leave me.

“There’s my baby girl.” She holds her arms out to me, and I can’t get to her fast enough. “Come to Mommy.” Her voice deepens, mouth opening wide. In place of her normally soft smile is a row of sharp teeth. Her body contorts, twisting and bending at horrible angles. “Come to Mommy,” she says again, voice skipping like a broken record.

No. It isn’t right. This isn’t right.

My feet stop so fast I fall to the floor.

“You were a horrible child, Sumner. Why do you think Mommy left you?” she asks, moving toward me with uneven steps. “I had to get away from you, and now look at what you’ve done to me.”