Growing Wildflowers | WLW

Lily

It doesn't work.

We're still standing in the extravagant living room, my hand wrapped around Parker's throat, the stubble on his neck itching my palm, his gun pressed to my head. His lips pull into a slow grin, exposing his yellowing teeth.

"What's the plan now, sweetheart?" His breath is hot against my face, but I force myself to stand still. I won't give him what he wants. I won't flinch.

A second voice cuts in. A voice I don't recognize and when I spin around to see who's joined us, Jamie, John and Sophie are gone. It's only me, Parker, and...

"Andrew?"

Parker sounds like a different person. Gone from angry and demanding to trembling at the snap of one's fingers. At the snap of my fingers.

I take a step back and let him move towards the vision of Andrew, knowing that if... when he tries to embrace the hallucination, his arms will go through his body, and he'll know what I've done. He'll know I'm creating the world he's seeing. It's like I'm not here at all as he takes another hesitant step forward. Before he can get close enough, my legs go heavy. I can hardly hold my shoulders back. My body wants to collapse into a ball on the floor. The vision is draining me. Fast. And I can only hope that John and Sophie have things under control in the real world as things start to pop back to normal.

Everything shifts around us. The ground trembles like a faultline in a bad earthquake. If Parker notices, he doesn't care. Instead, he reaches out to touch Andrew but as his fingers reach for his cheek, we're spit back to reality.

Apparently, it was all the time John and Sophie needed to turn the tables. The newborn vampires are slumped against each other on the ground, blood trickling from their noses. I tell myself they're knocked out, but the sharp angle of their necks says otherwise.

Parker takes the scene in, his eyes wide and bloodshot. His moment of grief turns into unrivaled rage. Red creeps up his neck as he turns to me, his knuckles going white around the handle of his gun.

"Think this through, Parker," Sophie warns. "You can't run from us." John is blocking the front door with his body and Sophie is closing the space between her and Parker.

His lip curls over his teeth. "I have."

He lifts the gun.

I close my eyes tight and step in front of Jamie.

The gunshot claps loud. My brain hurts from the sudden noise. My eardrums ring and it's not until I clamp my hands over my ears that I feel it. Searing pain under my collarbone. Abnormal tightness in my skin.

Parker swings the gun toward Sophie and John, fires again, and runs somewhere deeper in the house but I can't chase him. Between the vision draining the life from my body and the gunshot wound pulsing in my shoulder, I can't keep myself up right. My knees buckle. My body hits the ground hard. Jamie's kneeling over me first, her face speckled with my dark blood but before she can say anything, Sophie's pushing her to the side.

"Get back. You've done enough already."

I shoot Sophie a look, or at least, I think I do but everything is fuzzy, a rim of darkness framing everywhere I look.

"Move," John shouts and I'm floating. I'm not sure how or what's going on and I'm too tired to care. My head is a bad case of vertigo, like I'm on a boat in a violent storm. I'm going to throw up. Sophie and Jamie are talking, arguing, until John tells them to relax and lowers me into the backseat of Sophie's car.

My head's in Jamie's lap and she's running her fingers through my hair but she's still arguing with Sophie. "Sorry I don't trust your rebel group nurse to perform surgery on Gwen's shoulder."