Page 163 of Feed Your Fiends

The screech of furniture scraping back, followed by the loudPING!of a golden tray hitting the hardwood on its axis, halts Hale’s words. I watch sleepily as it spins before clattering onto Bart’s outstretched hand. He’s sprawled on his back, having missed the settee a few paces away.

Zedd’s, whose tray Bart tried clinging to, eyesboreinto mine desperately as he shakes his head imperceptibly.

FUCK!

“BART!” Delphine’s cry is followed by a dozen others.

The crowd rushes forward, and I rush to hold onto Hale, to my confused brother, who tries to catch me, but he can’t. I’m too heavy, dead weight. I don’t want to be held; I need guidance to the floor.

Hale seems to understand this as he drops to his knees beside me. My Dove does, too.

“Gant?” she whispers, her heated voice from a second ago cooled into dire concern.

I can’t look at her. I’ll get distracted, lost in those emeralds. I need…Zedd.

“Someone call the ambulance!” Delphine cries, cradling Bart’s head in her lap.

She didn’t shed a single tear for her husband when we took him. The man she loved so much, she just had to marry him, despite his past with her sister.

Zedd. Where’s Zedd?

Bart looks at me despite his heavy eyelids. Despite his sluggish hands moving toward his chest, toward the inner pocket of his jacket. But I beat him to it, or I try to. The little glass vial slips through my lead-like fingers like water, and I swear the whole world is slipping through them, too.

That’s what Zedd was communicating to me. It was gone, but I knew Bart would have taken it as backup because he didn’t trust me, and he needed control over everything.

“Hale,” I rasp as Delphine’s fingers, polished in ballet pink, my mother’s favourite, shoot out to retrieve the vial that’s now rolling across the floor.”

His hands leave me, replaced by softer ones that climb from my chest to my face.

“Gant?!” Dove’s thrown herself on top of me, and for the first time, I can’t support her. I collapse halfway onto Bart’s chest, with her on my back.

Footsteps, scuffling footsteps. I see Zedd’s heel, hear Hale’s loafers and the click-clack of rushing stilettos. Glass shatters, glimmering shards and sparkling jewellery flying across the tile and grazing my cheek as a heap of tangled bodies plough into a display.

Glass…shattering glass.

No. Stay in the present.

Stay out of that car and in the penthouse.

Your life depends on it.

Our life depends on it.

My soul tie. My little dove.

Voices. So many voices are shouting. Fighting. Scrapping across the floor like animals.

“Give it to me!” Delphine’s screech sounds like it’s underwater as I listen to Bart’s heart slowing.

I force my head, that’s like a bowling ball on a toothpick, back and look up at him, my chin digging into his chest. He’s turning blue before my eyes, unable to speak or move. But his black eyes are sinking into mine, and nothing can break my concentration on him, not even Dove’s frantic words, as I slowly match his bluish hue.

I can hear the question on his parted lips, though no sound comes out.

‘Why?’

I struggle to reach behind me, to sink my fingers into Dove’s hair and gently tug her down to my side so that her chin is digging into my shoulder, her tear-stained, panicked face just centimetres over Bart’s.

“Gant!” She’s fighting to pull away from me, fighting with something in her hands. A glint of shiny plastic flashes between her fingers. A syringe.

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