Embraced (The Eternal Balance #2)(34)

He stood and climbed onto the table, taking one last look at the window of my bedroom before glancing down at the turtle crawling across the surface. It had ventured close to the edge again, so I assumed he’d pick it up and place it back in the middle of the table as he had before. Instead, he lifted his leg high. “I’m bad and I don’t have a choice,” he repeated, bringing his foot down hard onto the turtle. The scene was sickening. Crushing bits and a wet, wrong sound mingled with his crying.

I gasped, surprised by the sudden brutality of it. A second later, it all vanished.





Chapter Thirteen


Jax


“Sammy?” I tried again. No answer. If anything had happened to her, I would rip that bastard’s wings out feather by feather, then cram them up his ass one at a time.

Everything had gone dark, and when I was able to see again, I was in an unfamiliar living room. There were bright red flowers on all the tables and pictures on the mantel. I picked up the one closest to the edge. A blond woman and bald man, both smiling. I’d never seen them before. I set it down and moved to the next. The same couple, still smiling, only in addition there was a small dark-haired girl. Like them she was smiling, but there was a haunted look in her large brown eyes. I would have known it anywhere.

I would have known her anywhere.

In the picture, Sam was several years younger than when I met her. Four, maybe five years old. I didn’t know much about her parents, but seeing them together in the picture, I was struck by the lack of resemblance. From the color of her hair to the shape of her face, there was nothing similar.

“What are we supposed to do, Toni?” a man’s voice said.

I turned toward the sound and found that I was no longer alone. The same couple from the pictures now sat side by side on the couch behind me.

“Nothing, Paul,” the woman said. Her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen. “I had the lawyer double check the paper work. It’s ironclad. There’s nothing they can do to take her.”

The man wasn’t placated. He stood and began pacing, fingers knotted and fists shaking. “I’ll kill them, Toni. If they come and try to take her back, I’ll—”

“Samantha is ours,” the woman insisted with conviction. The ferocity in her voice was unmistakable. “No court is going to take her away from us and give her back to those—those horrible people.”

Sam had been adopted? Not that it mattered. Chase and I had been adopted. It never meant anything more than someone out there had cared enough to want us. To want me. Our own parents, the little I remembered about them, had been hard on me. My father, especially. I never blamed him. Somehow he’d known what I was from the start, exactly what I would become. He’d taught me to hate myself before I even truly understood what that meant.

Sam would feel the same way I did. The Merricks had wanted her. Even if I’d known nothing about them from Sam’s perspective, I could see it in their eyes now. The man spoke the truth. He’d kill anyone who tried to take his child. And the woman, Toni, would defend her with the last breath in her body.

The scene changed. It was the same house, but the couple was nowhere in sight. The furniture was different, too. Newer. It was still night, and by the door, two tall figures crept toward the stairs.

I moved to follow, but something came out of the shadows—a man swinging a long, thin weapon that whooshed as it sliced through the air toward the intruders. One of the two men caught it and, with a laugh, ripped it effortlessly from the assailant’s—Sam’s father—hand. There was a scant beam of moonlight filtering through the window, and when one of the invaders stepped into it, I realized what they were. What this was.

Demons. This was it. The home invasion that took the life of Sam’s parents and ultimately landed her in my life.

The taller of the two demons grabbed Sam’s father by the throat and spun him toward the wall. “Where is the girl?” It gave a guttural snarl. “Tell me and I will let you live.”

Not thinking, I rushed forward and tried to pull the demon off him. My hand went straight through it.

“What girl?” Mr. Merrick’s voice was raspy as the demon’s hand closed tighter around his throat. “There’s no girl here.”

The demon took a deep breath, then laughed. “I can smell her,” it drawled. “So much energy. So pure…”

“How?” Sam’s father stuttered. He winced as the demon pulled him back, then slammed him into the wall again. “How did you find her?”

The demon leaned closer, lips parting with a cruel smile. “The biological parents told us where to find the child, in exchange for their lives. You are being given the same opportunity. Choose wisely.”

The man leveled his gaze at the demon. There was no fear in his eyes. No regret. Still trapped in the demon’s grip, he drew himself up as straight as possible and said, “Do what you have to. There is no child here.”

The movement was fast. A quick snap of the demon’s hand and Sam’s father’s head rolled to the side, his eyes wide and unseeing.

“The child is upstairs. With the woman,” the shorter demon said. It led the way and I followed, wishing to hell I could do something more than simply watch this play out. What was the point of this? To show me Sam had been adopted? To tell me that her real parents were monsters for having given away her location—which, going by what I knew, seemed impossible. A Pure was undetectable until death. That’s what Heckle told us.