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The winged vampire throws her head back and laughs. “A daughter for a daughter, Arria?”
“Angelica, I’m begging you!”
“Beg better…” Angelica purrs, watching Mother from the corner of her eye as she stares at me and licks her lips.
I take one step back, two, and trip. Mud splashes around me, grass sticking to my hands. Fear fills me so entirely I can’t breathe. I don’t know who these people are, but more and more are coming out of the trees surrounding us. Some have wings, some look like they’ve been long dead, but they all have one thing in common. They’re coming toward me.
“Take her!” Angelica screams.
Winged men rush forward so fast I can’t even summon a scream before their hard hands are on me. I don’t look away from Mother as a rough, bloody palm covers my mouth and an arm like steel wraps around my stomach and picks me up. Tears burn my face when I realize I can’t move.
Still, I keep my eyes on Mother.
“I’ll do anything!” she begs.
“Die for me?” Angelica asks, crouching over Mother and making her lay down in the mud as the skies churn and boil overhead.
I shake my head vigorously. No, no, she can’t die!
My mother stops struggling. “Leave her, leave this place, and you can have my life.”
“Your life?” Angelica scoffs. “Do you have any idea how much I’ve wanted your life? Sweetheart, I’ve already killed you once before. Yet, here you are. Reincarnated. I want you to have never existed, to never ruin my plans. Never corrupt my future!”
Something flashes in Mother’s eyes, realization, remembrance, and then her lips peel back from her teeth and she roars in fury.
“I see you’re beginning to remember…” Angelica laughs, her voice shrill and menacing. She steps crouches over Mother’s body, cocking her head to the side as her vicious eyes sparkle with glee. “The first time we met, I killed you, and left your son without a mother. I watched him suffer without you, enjoyed every minute of the torture Zarius went through trying to find your reincarnated self, but you never came.”
Son? Mother had a son?
“Now that you’re back, it’s your turn to suffer. I’ll take your daughter like Zarius took mine, you will live to feel my pain. If you ever see her again, Arria, she will be my child. Forged by my blood and hatred. I will make her your undoing, and relish every single moment of it.”
Mother is shaking her head in the mud, denial on her lips as the lightning flashes closer. Thunder shakes the ground, the twisting clouds getting so near that the roar of trees being pulled from the ground begins to drown out their words as they scream at each other. Lightning strikes the trees behind them, a roaring inferno blazing on contact. A shadow appears in the flames, stepping through them as if they wouldn’t dare burn him. Father braces his hands on two trees and pushes them out of the ground. Even over all the destruction and mayhem, I hear him roar.
“Angelica!”
His voice seems to stretch out the syllables of the winged woman’s name and bounce off the house behind me in a bone chilling echo. Her head whips to face him and she pulls Mother up and uses her as a shield. As soon as the enemy sees Father, they close in around me, blocking me from his view. The last thing I see before wings surround me like a cocoon is Angelica covering my Mother’s mouth.
“Nice to see you again, Zarius.” Angelica practically sings his name, her voice more sensual and sultrier than when Mother and Father are on their way to bed.
“Release my Forever Bound!” he screams.
Angelica laughs. I’m being pulled away, farther and farther from everything I’ve ever known, in the arms of a man I’ve never met. He runs around the house and the conversation is too far away for me to hear.
“You’ll never see your family again…” the man holding me says, his voice dripping with malice as he takes wing into the night sky.
My body is blocked by his wings, Father won't see me. He doesn’t know they have me! He’s just trying to save Mother! He doesn’t know!
I flail against my attacker, trying desperately to get loose even if it means I’ll fall to my death. His arm tightens around my neck, cutting off the blood supply, squeezing so hard I can’t breathe. My vision goes dark, darker than the raging storm or the night around me.
Then everything stops.
* * *
I’m barely conscious, hardly awake. All I know is that I’m cold, terrified, and alone. I’ll never see them again, the winged vampire told me as much. Father doesn’t know I’m gone, and Mother’s mouth is covered so she can’t tell him. By the time he knows, where will I be? How will he find me? Will I ever see Mother and Father again? June and Maya?
Hot tears burn my face, the only warmth in the freezing cold, and I open my eyes for the first time. I’m surrounded by darkness, laying on a damp stone floor. The smell of mold and wet earth is strong, closing in and suffocating me.
I’m alone.
