Rachel Vincent - Before I Wake

Tina laughed as the mara faced off against her, feet spread wide, double-bladed dagger held ready. “One down,” the imposter said, glancing at my dad. “One to go.” Her gaze flicked up to focus on Harmony, who’d almost reached us. “I find the adults just get in the way, don’t you?”

“Nash!” Tod tossed his head toward his mother as we pulled my dad toward the nearest car, in spite of his protests. Nash rolled onto his feet and ran to intercept Harmony.

“How did you know?” Tina asked as Tod joined Sabine and they herded the hellion away from me and my father, who was still bleeding on the ground.

Sabine shrugged. “You knew stuff Tina would never know. Like my name and whereabouts. Also, FYI, very few twenty-first-century foster parents use the word forbade. ”

The demon nodded, like she was actually interested. “I shall keep that in mind.”

“Tod!” Harmony shouted, and I twisted to see Nash physically holding his mother back from the action, while she watched her other son help confront a hellion who’d already stabbed my dad.

My father pushed me back and started to get to his feet, knife and all. I could see where this was headed—more blood loss and heroics—so I grabbed his hand and blinked us both to the other side of the pavilion, then blinked myself back to Tod and Sabine before my dad could even wrap his head around what had happened.

“Kaylee!” he shouted, but we all ignored him.

Sabine rushed the imposter, and fake Tina kicked her in the chest, with more strength and speed than any normal foster mother would have. Sabine flew backward—her feet actually left the ground—and crashed to the earth several feet away. A grunt of pain exploded from her throat with the impact and the dagger fell from her hand.

“Bitch broke my arm!” she shouted.

I grabbed the dagger and blinked onto the grass at Tina’s back while Tod held her attention in the other direction. On my periphery, Harmony knelt next to Sabine to examine her arm and Nash raced to a halt at my side, irises twisting with fear and fury. Before I realized what he meant to do, he took the knife from me and grabbed Tina’s left shoulder from behind. Then he shoved my dagger into her right side.

Tina collapsed to the ground and rolled awkwardly onto her back, her eyes wide with shock, one hand hovering uselessly over the knife still protruding from her side. Nash dropped onto her legs and shoved the heel of his palm against the hilt of the dagger, driving it deeper, and I realized that with the hellion-forged steel still inside her, she couldn’t just disappear. She was trapped with us, until her borrowed form died. “Who are you?” he demanded through clenched teeth, while I watched in shock.

Tod pulled him off Tina and the imposter’s mouth widened in a cruel smile when Sabine stopped at her side. The mara clutched her left arm to her chest as foggy wisps of her foster mother’s soul curled around the hilt of the knife still in the monster’s side. “You’re a clever one…” the demon said. Then her body melted into nothing, leaving my bloody dagger on the ground.

On the grass where Tina’s head had been a moment earlier lay the eighties’ vintage banana clip that had secured her thick hair on one side of her skull.

“What the hell just happened?” Harmony demanded, one arm around my dad, who was limping toward us from the pavilion, a stack of paper napkins pressed to the wound in his leg.

“Hellion sneak attack,” Tod said.

“Who do you think it was?” Nash asked, studying Sabine’s injured arm, and she shrugged, her jaw clenched in pain.

“Has to be someone who knows a little about me. Avari or Invidia.”

“Or anyone they’re working with,” Tod said.

My father limped to a stop next to me, one arm around Harmony’s shoulders. “I assume you all know what this means.”

“Other than the fact that my foster mother is dead and I’m homeless?” Sabine handed me the bloody dagger, and I took it between my thumb and forefinger, reluctant to get yet more blood on my hands.

“She was trying to get rid of the adults,” I said, staring at the place where the demon had died on the ground. “That means Avari’s finally finished setting up whatever game this has all been leading to. Now he’s ready to play.”

“OKAY.” I TOOK a deep breath, trying to gather my thoughts, and sank onto a picnic bench beneath the pavilion. “Whoever that was impersonating Tina, he’s down now, but not out. He’ll be back, and there’s no telling what he’ll look like.” Or she. The hellion could have been female.

“So, what’s the plan?” Sabine asked, her face lined in pain as she laid her injured arm on the picnic table in front of her.

“Well…” my father said from the opposite side of the table. He was naked from the waist up, his leg stretched out straight on the bench beneath him, pressing his shirt to the wound, like Harmony had shown him. “I’m sorry about your birthday party, Kaylee, but I think we all need to go. Now.”

“Agreed.” I scanned the shoreline, looking for Em and Jayson, and Sophie and Luca. They’d paired up on opposite sides of the lake—no doubt for privacy—and were out of earshot. Fortunately, they’d missed the demon slaying. “Harmony, can you drive Sabine and my dad to the hospital? We’ll get the others and follow you.”

“No…” my dad started to object. But I cut him off.

“You’re bleeding all over the place. We’ll be right behind you, I swear. I’m not looking for any more hellion interaction today, of all days.”

“You are still losing blood…” Harmony said, and my father sighed.

“You swear you’ll be right behind us?”

I nodded. “You’ll probably be able to see us in the rearview mirror.” When my father finally gave in, Tod and I helped Harmony get him into her car while Nash helped Sabine buckle her seat belt beneath her broken—and now swollen—arm. Then Nash headed to the pavilion to pack up the lunch stuff. Tod and I were about to blink to opposite sides of the lake to gather the rest of the troops when Luca came running toward us from the shore.

“Kaylee!” he shouted, and all three of us turned. An instant later, and Tod and I would have been gone.

“What’s wrong?”

“Dead guy. Or dead girl,” Luca said. “Either way, someone here is deader than either of you.”

A jolt of fear shot up my spine, followed by an echoing bolt of anger. Not again…

“It’s probably Tina’s body,” Tod said, while Nash filled Luca in on what had happened, and I was almost ashamed by how relieved that thought made me. As awful as it was to think that Sabine’s foster mother had been hauled around in her own car by the demon who’d killed her and stolen her soul, that was better than the alternative—yet another death. “Where?” I asked.

“Over there somewhere.” Luca nodded toward the parking lot, and my relief swelled. If Tina’s body had arrived with her car, that would explain why Luca hadn’t sensed it before.

“Show us,” I said, and we followed him away from the covered eating area toward the parking lot, with spaces for just six vehicles. Four of the spaces were occupied by cars we’d driven: mine, my dad’s, Tina’s, and Jayson’s.

Luca stopped in front of our row of cars, then veered to the right, past my car, like he was being physically tugged that way. “Here.” He started down the aisle between Tina’s car and Jayson’s, and my heart pounded so hard my chest ached. I didn’t want to think about Sabine’s foster mother lying dead in her own car. I didn’t want to think about anything. I wanted this moment to be over, before it had even begun.