While I had only ever seen the sword one time at my cousins' coming-of-age ceremony, there was no mistaking it. Not with the family crest on the pommel of the sword or the intricate carvings on the ft of the bde.

  What got me was the fact that it was glowing. Suddenly, I realized that neither of the women could look at it directly. If they had, then they would likely have seen the crest. I knew that I had shown it to Victoria a few times as we researched it for a history css. Not that any of the research had yielded any information.

  Oddly enough, the sword seemed to call to me. Begging me to pick it up. My hand was nearly to the handle when a steel grip grabbed my wrist, stopping the forward movement. My eyes meeting hers, I found her pleading for me to save her mother.

  Quickly thinking, I asked, “Where are your towels? Also, is there any way we can get her to a hospital or something to deal with the wound?”

  Her face gnced to the side as she said, “I don’t think going to a hospital is a viable option.” I ignored whatever she was looking at. Not wanting to become distracted as her mother y between us. A hand pointed to the door next to her room. “There should be some towels in my bathroom.”

  Racing up the stairs, I grabbed every towel I could. Hoping that it would be enough to stem the bleeding. Then again, I knew it was futile. The lung had been stabbed clean through. Even if I did manage to stop the external bleeding, she would either die from internal blood loss or drown as the blood filled her lungs.

  Practically sliding to a stop, I dropped the pile of towels on the ground between us. “Lift her up.” Victoria strained as she followed my order. Lifting her mother up enough for me to shove two towels under her and around the sword that stuck into the floor. The move caused her mother to cry out in pain as her cws dug into the wood flooring.

  In an obviously painful and wet voice, her mother managed to get a few words out. “Kitchen. Above Fridge. Cabinet. Emergency potion.” I had no clue what she meant, but clearly Victoria did. Racing off, she returned with a small potion with a swirl of red and blue that seemed to be constantly moving around each other but never mixing.

  Showing it to her mother, she asked, “Is this it?”

  Her mother nodded before looking at me. “Pull the sword out.”

  Reaching forward, I grasped the hilt of the sword. The silver light of the room brightened for a moment before suddenly winking out. Plunging the room into retive darkness. The only illumination coming from the door and windows leading outside. Pulling steadily straight up, the sword came out of the ground with agonizing slowness. Only when the part in the floor was starting to thin, did pulling it speed up.

  As I dropped the bde to the ground behind me, I grabbed the towels lying there. Pressing them against the wound as Victoria shoved the open bottle into her mother's mouth. I watched in horrid fascination as her mother mothers body shivered and bucked with a sudden series of coughs and wet breaths.

  After a good while, her breathing eased. Blood no longer lightly misting the air as she coughed it up in a desperate bid to clear her airways. Color slowly returned to her face finally as she opened her eyes and locked them on me. Eyes that were no longer the brown they had been every other time I had seen them.

  Staring me down were a pair of golden yellow eyes with slits like that of a cat, and they looked pissed. Not that you could tell by the tone of her voice. No, that was sickly sweet. “So, just who the fuck are your parents, and why did you really come visit us tonight?”

  I stood there frozen. Unable to answer while under that gre. It was Victoria that saved me. “He ran from his parents. I told you how bad they were.”

  Her mother’s gaze moved from me to her daughter as she sat up. “You told me what he told you. Likely, he was lying to gain your trust to get close enough to kill you.”

  Shaking my head, I went to deny it when Victoria again spoke up before I could. “I have seen the bruises and even some of their ‘training’ fights. If anything, he tried to tone his parents' torture of him down.”

  “My parents have never even talked about doing something like this before. I don’t even know why they did it.”

  “They tried to kill a dragon is what they tried to do. There are very few creatures strong enough, or stupid enough to try just a thing. On top of that, they even had that cursed bde.” Her hand gestured at the sword.

  I looked at the bde as well. Trying to figure out just what they had been doing with it. Trying to come up with a reason that would even make some sense of the situation. A second ter, I remembered the number of texts I had received after I ran from them. Pulling out my phone, I found that I had dozens of texts from my father. Some of which were just repeats of others, but a few caught my eye.

  ‘Come home.’

  ‘We can talk about you going to school this week.’

  ‘We are going out to do some field training. Come home or stay at a friend's house.’

  ‘Stay away from the forest to the north of town. There is a dangerous creature there that your mother and I need to deal with.’

  The forest at the north end of town. The same forest that Victoria’s house sat in. Before I had a chance to ask anything, she snatched my phone from me. Two of her cws lightly scratching my hand as they pulled away. While there had been no real force behind them, the long thin scratches on the back of my hands told me just how sharp they were.

  It was only then that the changes registered in my mind. She had cws and scales to go with her eyes. Slowly, I backed up. Moving toward the door in an attempt to get away. Leaving the sword where it y because I highly doubted I could have managed to pick it up without making too much noise.

  The instant I passed the threshold, I took off in a sprint. Racing off the deck and into the woods. Victoria’s cries calling for me to stop. To come back. I ignored her as I kept running. Over tree roots, under branches blocking the path, and jumping small streams.

  Without much warning, a dense fog set in. Blinding me to anything further than arms reach. Promptly, I smmed into a tree that I had no hope of avoiding. The st thing I thought as my skull smmed into the ground was “Oh, I am so going to die.”