Hunting Shadows (Shadows 3)

Chapter Fifteen

I woke up abruptly and sat up. Something was wrong. I checked the time on the alarm clock by the bed and saw that it was almost two o’clock in the morning.

I swung my legs out of bed and braced my feet on the cold floor, rising slowly as I tried to control the growing trepidation that was seeping throughout my body.

I opened my bedroom door and stepped out into the hallway. It was hard to see anything in the dim light as I made my way to Sarah’s bedroom. Her bed was empty when I opened the door and I frowned, wondering where she was.

I walked down the hallway into the living room and my heart dropped. Ryan was lying on the floor, a pool of blood rapidly growing beneath him.

“Ryan!” I ran over and kneeled beside him, terror gripping me as his eyes fluttered open. His eyes looked glazed and bewildered, full of pain and confusion.

“What happened? Who did this to you?” I sobbed as I frantically tried to determine the source of the blood. It seemed to be coming from the back of his head and I made a movement to jump up so that I could run to my bedroom and get my phone to call an ambulance. I gasped when Ryan grabbed my arm, his grip much stronger than I thought he could manage in his condition.

“Wait,” he rasped, his voice barely audible.

“I have to call 9-1-1!” I exclaimed, trying to wriggle my arm free. “You need to go to the hospital!”

Ryan winced as he tried to lift his head, and to my horror I saw the pool of blood growing quickly, almost unnaturally so, and it soon surrounded me, soaking my pajama bottoms where I was kneeling. I had to swallow a surge of nausea and suppress the instinct to scuttle back to avoid his blood. Now wasn’t the time to be squeamish.

“I have to tell you before it’s too late,” he persisted. He took a breath and I heard an ominous rattling sound from his airways. “It’s not where you think it is.”

“What are you talking about?” I frantically searched the room, praying that whoever had attacked him wasn’t lying in wait. Ryan’s hand was still around my arm in a manacle grip.

“The answers you need. It’s not where you think it is. It’s not with who you think it is. Don’t trust the untrustworthy, even if it’s you.”

“Ryan, I don’t know what you’re talking about!” He suddenly reached up with his other hand and pressed something into my palm. I pulled away and stared at the object now in my hand. His mother’s medallion glinted wildly even though it was dark and the medallion was covered in blood. It was unnatural.

&nb

sp; “Wait,” I said, shaking my head as something teased the edges of my mind, like I had just forgotten something important. I strained to remember what it was, but my mind wouldn’t cooperate.

I started to stand so that I could get help, but Ryan’s strangled voice stopped me.

“You’re dreaming, Caitlin. The problem is you don’t know the difference between waking dreams and reality. Don’t believe everything you see.”

I woke up abruptly with Ryan’s words still reverberating in my head. It was still hours before morning and Simon was sound asleep next to me. I replayed the dream over and over again, trying to analyze the differences from the previous dream of Ryan. Simon, Sarah and Grant weren’t in the second dream; only Ryan. And the medallion he had given me was now a part of the dream. I ended up giving myself a headache trying to figure out the significance of everything and after a while I drifted back to sleep, although it was far from restful.

I told Simon about the dream in the morning, but I didn’t tell Ryan. He wouldn’t be able to help me with its meaning since he hadn’t been able to shed too much light on the first dream. I was beginning to think that it wasn’t a good idea to share such intimate things with him unless it was directly related to him helping me destroy vardogers and my father. I wasn’t sure this fell into that category. Besides, the dream had warned me not to trust so easily. It made me doubt my immediate acceptance of Ryan and my initial willingness to trust him because he was a seer. I was beginning to doubt my own instincts, but I told myself the one person I knew I could trust was Simon.

The days seemed to go by slowly since there was a lull in the frequency of my visions. New Year’s came and went, but everything still felt the same. We were stuck in a waiting game. I spoke to Marie once and was severely disappointed that she hadn’t been able to find a seer she thought we could trust to help put me under hypnosis. I was relieved when school started up again and the campus was once more abuzz with activity. I had missed Sarah and was glad to have her back. She helped to dispel some of the tension in the apartment and I was eager to tell her about what had happened between me and Simon. I wasted no time as I knocked on her open door the first day she was back. She looked up from unpacking her suitcase with a smile.

“What’s up?”

I closed the door behind me and sat on her bed. “Not much. How was Christmas?” We had spoken on the phone multiple times during the break and I had already heard about her holiday in full detail, so she gave me a funny look.

“No different from when I told you about it in an hour long conversation on the phone.” She looked at me more closely and then raised her eyebrows. “Okay, spill it. I know you’re dying to tell me something.”

I couldn’t help laughing at her astute assessment. “I didn’t want to talk about it over the phone, but Simon and I finally had sex.”

Sarah squealed as if I had just told her I had won the lottery. Her unpacking was abandoned as she sat next to me on the bed. “Tell me every detail,” she demanded.

I rolled my eyes. “One thing I’m not going to do is give you a detailed account. Some things are meant to be private!”

Sarah pouted in disappointment but didn’t push it. “Just tell me if it was good.”

I couldn’t help the wide smile that grew on my face. “It was amazing.”

“Did you orgasm?”