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"How in the hel did you even get past the Guards in your Mario Brothers paja "I have my ways"

"Your ways?" I didn’t have ti away froe "You need to get back there, where it’s safe"

He folded his arms across his chest stubbornly "Not without you"

"Oh, for the love of the gods!" My teht now You don’t understand"

"Don’t start with the ‘I don’t understand’ crap This isn’t about understanding anything! This is about you getting yourself kil ed! This is suicide, Alex This isn’t brave It isn’t suilt you--"

His eyes widened again as so landed a couple of feet behind rabbed the dagger froun

It was her

She stood there, in the center of the al ey It was her…

except it wasn’t It had her long, dark hair that fel in soft waves, frah cheekbones and familiar lips But darkness existed where her eyes should have been Inky veins covered her cheeks, and if she smiled, there’d be a row of nasty, sharp teeth in her mouth

It washer--seeing her beautiful, loving face twisted into such a grotesque er to twitch over the trigger It was her…

but it wasn’t

I knew from where she stood, there was no way she could defend herself against a gunshot to the chest I had the upper hand with un fil ed with titaniuht her up right here and al of this would be over

She hadn’t moved, not an inch

And now she looked like Moic cloaked the daiht, eer riddled with thick veins She looked like she had the night before she’d turned--saze with hers

"Lexie," she murmured, but I heard her loud and clear It was her voice Just hearing it did wonderful and awful things to , and very much alive--

daimon or not

"Alex! Do it! Do--!" Caleb cried out

A quick glance behind me confirmed Mom wasn’t alone

Another dark-haired daimon now had a hand around Caleb’s throat He didn’thim He simply held him

"Lexie, look at me"

Unable to deny the sound of her voice, I turned back to her She stood closer--close enough a bul et would leave one hel of a hole in her chest And close enough I caught the scent of vanil a--her favorite perfuaze flickered over her face, each line of it familiar and beautiful to est things Meether, the day she’d taken me to the zoo and told me my father’s name, the look on her face when she’d told me we needed to leave the Covenant, and the way she’d looked sprawled across the floor in her tiny bedroom

I faltered I couldn’t catch my breath as I stared into those eyes This was my mother-- my mother! She had raisedin the world

And I had been her everything--her reason for living I couldn’t move

Do it! She’s not your mother anymore! My arm trembled

Do it! Do it!

A screah me and my arm dropped to my side Seconds, only seconds had passed and yet, it felt like an eternity I couldn’t do it

Her lips curved into a save a yelp froside my temple I slipped into the sweet darkness of oblivion

I woke up to a splitting headache and a dry, bitter taste in the back of my mouth It took me a few minutes to remember what’d happened A ht, on alert despite the throbbing ache radiating down the side ofa knot the size of an egg

Woozy, I looked around the lavishly furnished rooe bed covered in satin sheets, the plasma television, the handcrafted furniture, al of it appeared familiar to me It was one of the bedrooms in the cabin we used to visit, the one I’d slept in a half a dozen times A pot of purple hibiscus flowers sat beside the bed