Chapter 9 - The Silver Sparrow's Flight
In that split second of mortal peril, something inside Meredith snapped.
All the grief of losing her job, all the humiliation of Vanessa Sterling’s cruel slap, all the months of worrying about Eileen in the freezing rain—it all dissolved into a blinding, white-hot fury.
She didn't have a gun. She didn't have an empire of enforcers or armored Escalades.
All she had was the broken, jagged silver sparrow pendant clutched in her right hand.
With a sharp, wordless cry, Meredith lunged forward from the shadows, bypassing Psyian’s outstretched arm with startling speed. Before Arthur could register her movement, she cocked her arm back and hurled the heavy, metal-weighted pendant directly at his face with all her might.
THWACK!
The jagged silver bird caught Arthur squarely across the bridge of his nose with vicious accuracy.
Arthur let out a sharp cry of pain, stumbling backward and dropping his aim by a crucial six inches.
BANG!
The revolver discharged, the bullet screaming past Eileen’s ear and embedding itself harmlessly into the concrete floor with a deafening crack.
Before Arthur could recover his balance or raise the gun again, Psyian crossed the distance between them like a striking panther. He slammed into Arthur with the force of a freight train, driving the older man backward until he collided violently with a stack of wooden crates.
The revolver flew from Arthur’s hand, clattering across the concrete.
Psyian pinned Arthur to the floor with a knee across his chest, his fists descending in a flurry of rapid, brutal strikes until Arthur’s eyes rolled back and he went completely limp, unconscious.
"Clear!" Psyian’s voice barked through the warehouse as his enforcers swarmed the area, securing the perimeter and zip-tying Arthur’s fallen accomplices who tried to flee from the shadows.
Psyian didn't look at Arthur. He stood up immediately, turning around and sprinting across the concrete floor to the wooden chair.
"Eileen! Mom!" Psyian dropped to his knees, his hands shaking as he sliced through the heavy zip-ties with a pocketknife.
Eileen slumped forward into his arms, her eyes fluttering open. She looked up at his face, her gaze foggy for a second before a slow, gentle smile spread across her wrinkled face.
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"Psyian..." she whispered, her voice weak but clear. "My boy... you found me."
"I've got you, Mom," Psyian choked out, wrapping his arms around her frail body, burying his face in her shoulder as tears—the first tears he had shed in twenty years—finally broke free. "I've got you. You're safe now. No one will ever touch you again."
