The Haunted Memories (Forgotten Series, #4)

Memory II

Images flashed in and out, sounds and lights, blurring into a grey haze as the lethargy and shock held my body captive. I would have been afraid but fear couldn't penetrate my mind, I felt numb. Cold and numb to everything around me. There was an emptiness in me that resided over my heart and it was polarized by the cramped feeling I had in my head.

I was dimly aware I was in a car with my hands tied behind my back so tightly they were numb. I was thankful for it because my broken wrist would have been unbearable. I couldn't think, the dizzy haze covered everything and the lethargy made me so confused. I felt cold but the faintly painful wound on my neck seeped out hot blood. So slow and languid as it trailed across my skin.

My hearing felt muffled and my head lolled as I was yanked upwards. Voices murmured around me but I couldn't pinpoint it. I couldn't think with my life leaving my body through the wound. I could almost feel the sky underneath my wings.

Fly, little maggie bird, fly.

It would be so easy, to slip into that abyss, to join my family in the moon's embrace. I wanted that so badly. I wanted my dad and my muma. I wanted my uncle and everyone else that was lost. They were my pack, my family and I wanted to be with them.

"She's bleeding out!" The voice was frantic, cutting through the fog slightly as a bunched up cloth was pressed hard against the wound. I gave a small whine at the pain, my eyes fluttering, the lights and images swirling together.

"Doesn't matter. She will heal." Dark and dangerous. I wanted to inhale sharply. Teeth and broken bones. I should have flown away when I had the chance. My memories were fuzzy, so fuzzy. They were broken and disjointed, hazed and blurred. Emotions seemed to be the only real thing that seeped through, that made the entire feel like reality instead of a dream. How I wished it was a dream.

"Not if she loses too much blood." Someone wrenched my chin up. "She is fucking out of it." I was, even though I was in enough that I could hear their voices, no matter how distorted they somewhat sounded.

"So?" So unconcerned. There was a wrenching from deep inside of me. Something tethered to my soul twisted and ached at his tone.

"You do understand that if she dies, you will weaken, right? You took off on a half-cocked idea and you returned with this-this thing that you stupidly bound to you! Under the moon's eye at that." The other voice rose, an angry pitch that I would have cowered from if I had the strength. This was why Sorrel was to be the leader. I wasn't strong enough. Someone raised their voice and I instantly wanted to go belly up. Sorrel was the tough one, the strong one. She would have figured everything out already but I was still stuck. I was weak and useless. No one ever had the heart to tell me but I knew it. I always knew it. I missed her so much that I wanted to cry. My heart and soul wept for her.

"Show me the moon's eye and I will rip it out. You and your stupid superstitions, Nexus." His tone was mocking and there was something deeper in me that drowned out the painful twisting of my soul. A cold feeling at the challenge he had given. The moon's light was cold and she would show us just how sharp she could be. "I know what I am doing." He truly didn't. I knew the moon, I loved her. I worshipped her as I grew. She was the one thing I had growing up that wouldn't judge me. Our goddess viewed us all as equals and I had even expressed my want to go to Altia and serve her but my loyalty to my family was stronger.

"She's cold." The voice was soft, an almost timid statement as a hand touched my face gently. He was right. I was so cold. I felt it in my very bones. It was a deep freeze that left me aching but unable to rub it away. It was the very life leaving my body. There was nothing that could ever take that feeling away, that could erase it from my memory.