Chapter 30

THIRTY

Angelo

Ihave no recollection of how I got there. All I know is that I'm half-falling, half-sliding down the bottom of the cliff and clawing my way over rocks to the car wreck. The voice screaming my mother's and sister's names belongs to a mad man, a wild person, not to me.

Sirens sound somewhere above me. I have no idea who called an ambulance. My only notion is getting them out of there.

I reach the driver's side first.

"Maman!"

I yank on the door. It's smashed in, the metal bent. The window exploded. The airbag too. It's already deflated. My mother hangs upside down, strapped in by her safety belt. Her hair falls down like a neat curtain, hiding her face. It's still smooth and brushed out from how she styled it this morning. Not disheveled and unkept. Not full of blood.

"Maman. I've got you." I reach inside and feel for the clasp of her belt next to the door. "You're going to be all right. Hold on, Adeline. I'm coming. Hold on."

I brace my mother with an arm as I free the clip. Her weight sags against me, her mere forty-five kilos weighing me down.

She could've injured her neck or her spine. The logical human in me knows I should wait for the paramedics, but the being inside me that's ruled by instinct only knows how to break her fall to not hit her head on the roof. It only knows how to drag her, shoulders first, through the narrow space of the condensed window.

My father's car is sturdy. It has a strong framework. It was made to withstand any impact. It could've been worse. The car hasn't been flattened.

It's not that bad.

It's not that bad.

Her pelvis gets stuck. Someone grips my biceps and pulls me away. I'm swinging my arms, letting my fists go feral. I land a sucker punch on a man's jaw.

More hands hold me back as others spread my mother out on the rocks. She's whole and clean except for the trickle of blood running from a cut on her forehead, but I don't need the medic to tell me she's broken. I see it in her eyes, the brown eyes I inherited, in how the light has gone out of them.

Christ.

She's not even forty.

"Adeline."

I shove off the people holding me, faking calm.

It works. They let me go.

I climb over the rocks. Fall. Carry on.

But I already feel it, the hollowness under my breastbone, as if a part of me has been torn out.

"Adeline."

She's covered with a space blanket that hides her face.

A man shakes his head when I grab the corner, but I push him off too.

I have to see.

My sister is blood and devastation, her beautiful features crushed into the hole where her face used to be, pulped by the rock that penetrated the windshield on the passenger side.

Death burns cold in me, but life burns hotter.

A part of me dies.

Another part wakens.

The devil born from the flames inside me is nothing compared to the monster who rises from the cold ashes.

Whoever did this will pay.

They're about to suffer the wrath of hell.

TO BE CONTINUED