Blood flows down one side of her head, making her hair stick to her scalp, running down her arms, to the floor.
I’m dumbfounded. I know I just said I never get scared but this…this is something. This isn’t right.
This is death.
I push that thought out of my head and clear my throat.
“Hello?” I ask. “Are you lost?”
Stupid fucking thing to say.
“Are you okay?” I go on.
Also stupid. Clearly she’s not. She’s bleeding from a massive head injury.
“Are you a ghost?” I add, as if I’ll get an answer.
But in a way I do.
She starts to walk toward the doors to the house, her hair obscuring her face so I can’t see it properly. There’s something so familiar about it though, whether it’s the person themselves, or just this overall feeling of dread and déjà vu, like I’ve been through this before.
And she’s heading into the house.
I run out of the cigar lounge but somehow in the second it takes me to move, she’s disappeared, and the doors are swinging.
For a moment I think it must all be in my head, but when I look down at the floor, her bloody footprints are in the carpet and wood, clear as day. The even weirder thing is, there’s a lot of blood. I’ve been hungry lately. As long as it’s fresh, the sight and smell of blood should be doing something to me, whether I find it appetizing or not. But this blood has no smell. Like it’s real and not real all at once.
A ghost. This has to be a motherfucking ghost.
And it’s going upstairs.
I run through the doors and up to the main floor. The house is quiet except for the grandfather clock ticking away in the library.
But then I hear something else.
Something new.
A flurry of wings.
I go to the staircase and look up as it leads to the levels above, each one illuminated by flickering candles throwing shadows on the walls.
But the shadows are moving. Becoming something. Flying up between the floors of the house are ravens. At least seven of them, all flapping their wings and going higher and higher until they seem to disappear into the ceiling, becoming shadows again.
The sight of them sends a literal shudder through me, stirring up something deep and dark in my gut.
And then I see a flash of blue.
The ravens disappear and the woman in the hospital walks down one of the upper hallways.
Heading toward Amethyst’s room.
Fuck no.
I take the stairs two at a time, and at my speed I’m at her floor in three seconds flat.
The door to her room is open.
I hurry on over and stop in the doorway.
Amethyst is in bed, on her back, her covers down and bunched around her feet. She’s wearing a pink pajama top, no bottoms, just black underwear, which makes her look both ridiculously sexy and yet also extremely vulnerable.
The urge to protect her is overpowering, and I have to hold myself back so I don’t run to her side, scoop her up in my arms.
Especially since she’s moving in her sleep, a whimpering sound escaping her lips.
“Amethyst?” I whisper. The light from the candles in the hall barely illuminates her, but with my eyes I can see the rest of the dark room clear as day. It’s empty, no sign of the woman in the hospital gown, no ravens either, nor bloody footprints.
Amethyst turns in bed again, her black hair wrapped around her face, giving her an unsettling appearance. “No, no,” she says, her words getting louder. “No, don’t leave, don’t leave me.”
“Amethyst?” I say again. “Are you awake?”
“Don’t leave me,” she cries out, turning over on her side again, her hands gripping the sheets for dear life.
She’s having a nightmare.
I go over to her, dropping to my knees beside her bed, reaching up with my hands to brush her hair off her face. “Shhhh,” I say softly. “You’re having a bad dream. It’s okay.”
Suddenly she gasps and her eyes fly open, staring at me in fright. All the blood in her body rises to the surface, her heart pounding hard against her chest. I can practically see it, practically smell it. Reason one hundred and five why vampires and humans shouldn’t be together. It’s hard to be intimate when you’re aware of how much you’d like to make them bleed.
“Wolf?” she asks, her voice ragged, the whites of her eyes shining.
“It’s okay,” I tell her, slowly brushing a strand of hair off her forehead. The blood under her skin leaps to the surface, as if trying to make contact with my fingers, and the feel of her is so warm and full of energy, as if our skin is trying to communicate with each other. “I’m here. It was just a nightmare.”
She blinks and slowly tries to sit up. My hand falls away, my fingertips vibrating without the feel of her.