31. Celina

THIRTY-ONE

CELINA

The gunshot sounded like a canon. A thunderclap of death and destruction. I'd been staring down the black barrel of the pistol only a second before it went off. Dead. I knew I was dead. I clenched my eyes shut, waiting for the bullet to slam into me. In that single instant before I heard the gunshot, I imagined what it would do to my body. The lead slug ripping into my chest, expanding, shredding my lungs and heart, blowing a four-inch hole out my back as it exited, the blood, all of it.

It never happened. The gun went off, and instead of feeling a searing pain blister through me, I felt a puff of wind less than an inch from my cheek. My hair fluttered, and I heard a sizzling bzzz as the bullet flew past my head. My eyes snapped open, and I saw Miles on the ground wrestling with Mariana, both their hands on the pistol. Tate ran forward to help, but the gun went off again, a furrow of dirt blowing up at his feet.

"Fuck," he shouted as he jumped back.

"Get…back," Miles grunted, still fighting Mariana.

He was stronger than she was by tenfold, but it looked like he was attempting to get her finger off the trigger without letting the gun go off again—a difficult task even for a shifter like Miles. Finally, with a slap of his hand, the pistol went flying. It skidded to a stop only a few feet from me. I ran for the gun. Mariana lifted her hips into Miles, like she was humping him. It was enough to throw him off balance for a second, and she scrambled for the pistol.

Miles recovered and clamped his hands on her ankles, yanking her back just as I scooped up the gun. I shuffled back as fast as I could, getting the gun as far out of reach as possible. Mariana let out a scream so anguished and full of rage that it barely sounded human. She slammed her fists on the ground as tears started leaking from her eyes.

"I hate you! I hate you all. It's your fault I lost my mom, your fault Dad is so crazy, your fault. All. Your. Fault." She punctuated each of the last three words with another fist to the ground. "You ruined my life," she said, her voice dying in volume as she devolved into sobs.

Jared ran forward. "I've got her," he said to Miles.

He knelt and tried to console Mariana. Except that when he tried to wrap his arms around her, she squealed in anger and swatted at him. "Get the fuck away from me. You're a monster. I don't want your filthy hands on me."

Jared's face fell. He looked heartbroken. I barely knew the man. Ten minutes ago, he'd been trying to choke the life out of me, but all I could do was sympathize with him. The only family he knew had turned their back on him. It was how I'd felt my entire life, at least up until I met Miles and found a true family. I knew precisely how much pain Jared was going through at that moment.

Mariana scrambled up to her feet and walked backward toward the car we'd arrived in. She stumbled twice as she went, but seemed scared to turn her back on us—on the monsters she was so afraid of. She pointed at Jared as she opened the door. "You better not show your face back home. Ever again. I'm telling Dad you're a traitor, that you're one of these things. Then you'll be sorry."

Jared stood. He looked weary and beaten, but still gave Mariana a sad smile. "Dad already knows what I am."

We all fell silent, even Mariana, who looked even more confused than ever. Jared sighed. "You think Antonio only found out about shifters when you lost your mom? He'd known for years. Used his fortune to hunt us for sport. It wasn't until your mom left for a shifter that he lost his fucking mind and made it some kind of religious crusade." Jared glanced at Tate. "I was the lone survivor of my clan. I was only, like, ten or eleven. Hadn't even shifted yet. One of the hunters didn't have the heart to kill a kid. So, he took me and thought it would earn him brownie points if he took me to Antonio.

"Once he saw me, he got the great idea to use me to fight shifters. He gave me to his team of doctors and scientists. They tested me, took my blood, and tried to come up with drugs or chemicals they could use. They found one that suppressed my shifting ability. Once he had that and knew he could make me safe, he came up with the story about me being an illegitimate kid from an affair. Your mom knew the story was a lie, but didn't know more than that. She wouldn't know about shifters for years. Not until she met that dragon. Did you ever wonder why your mother didn't make a big deal about a kid showing up out of the blue? Or the story about your dad fucking someone else? That never clicked with you?" he asked Mariana. "They brainwashed me for years. Made me think I was evil, dirty. Suppressed my shifting and trained me to be bodyguard-slash-special agent. Antonio thought I'd be his secret weapon. A dragon on a leash. Whenever he had a big enough group to go after, he'd stop giving me the drug, and I'd kill whatever clan was giving him trouble. He never viewed me as a son, only a weapon to be used."

We all stared at him for several seconds. Tears slipped from my eyes as I thought about a small boy, locked in some laboratory and being poked and prodded. His family and friends all dead, knowing that no one would come to his aid. No wonder he was wound so tight. Antonio had destroyed his mind and turned him into an instrument of war. He'd been told he was a monster, when all along the man who raised him was the true monster.

Mariana shook her head. "That's a lie. Daddy would never let one of you things in our house. He wouldn't experiment on kids, either. You're lying."

"It's not a lie, Mariana," Jared said. "If you ask him, he'll tell you."

"No! He's not cruel. He wouldn't hurt children."

It was Jared's turn to scream. "Think. You lived with that clan. You remember what it was like. They had children. Babies. You blew the whistle on them and led Daddy fucking dearest to their door. He had every one of them killed. Do you remember their faces?"

"Lived with them?" Mariana shook her head. "No, no, that's not right. I never would have lived with those things."

That was an outright lie. Things were coming together now, connections were being made. It wasn't only Antonio whose mind had broken, but Mariana's as well. She knew she was responsible for all those deaths, but her mind wasn't letting her remember. She backed away, still shaking her head. She bumped the door, which seemed to flip a switch, and she burst into action. She slid into the driver's seat and started the car.

Before any of us could react, Mariana gunned the engine and had the car barreling toward Jared. I could see Mariana through the windshield, leaning on the steering wheel, tears in her eyes, a scream of anger blasting out of her open mouth. Tate and Miles were screaming for Jared to get out of the way. I was frozen in place as the car roared toward him.

He was a shifter, and had the same reflexes as Miles and Tate. I blinked in surprise as Jared leaped up and landed on the hood of the car right as it got to him. He stumbled and fell into the windshield. Spiderweb cracks exploded across the glass, and Jared knelt on the hood as the car rocketed toward the forest even faster. The engine screamed.

"Mariana, stop. Stop, please." I could barely hear Jared screaming above the sound of the car.

She was racing toward a massive oak tree at the edge of the woods. Jared glanced ahead and saw the tree looming. He screamed for Mariana to stop one last time, then shifted. His wings caught air and lifted him away from the car an instant before it slammed into the tree. The sedan had to have been going almost a hundred miles an hour by the time she crashed. The entire front end was crushed, and the engine looked like it was shoved into the driver's compartment. Even from this distance, I could see blood on the windshield.

Tate and Miles sprinted to the wreck. I followed behind, walking on numb legs, unable to look away from the red smears dripping down the window. Jared landed and shifted back to his human form. He immediately hit his knees, crying, holding his face in his hands. I stopped twenty feet from the car. Tate and Miles both moved around the car, at first calling Mariana's name, but they both quickly stopped. Tate turned and put a hand on his head. Miles winced and left the car to walk back toward me.

I zoned out, allowing Miles to lead me back to the truck. He helped me get inside and drove me back to the apartment. I sat in the truck the whole way, replaying those final moments in my head. I could still hear Jared yelling for her to stop. I could hear Mariana screaming in rage. Then the other sounds: the engine, the crash of glass and metal against the immovable wood of the tree.

Miles got me inside and into the shower. He washed me, and then got me out and dried my body, wrapping me in a big fluffy towel. I sat on the bed, still staring off into space. My mind didn't fully return until he knelt before me as I sat on the bed.

"Celina? Are you okay?"

I nodded, slowly, and looked into his eyes. "Mariana? Is she…you know? Is she gone?"

Miles looked at me for three full seconds before nodding. "She didn't make it. It…it was quick, though."

I laid my head on his shoulder and let him wrap me in a hug. The contact was exactly what I needed. Mariana—or Felicity as I'd probably always remember her—hadn't been a good person. She'd been warped by her father and her own hatred. That still didn't make it any less tragic. In fact, it made it worse. Without her father's influence and the loss of her mother, she might have become someone kind and compassionate. While she was pretending, she had shown flashes of the person she could have been. I gave myself a few minutes to mourn for the person I'd briefly considered a friend. Mostly, I grieved for the woman she could have been.