Nightwolf

And then the doors swing back open and Solon and Lenore come out and I feel Lenore’s arm around me and she’s trying not to cry, but I don’t even hear them. I’m not even here. To get through this, I have to remove myself. I have to grow up, and I have to grow up fast.

“You can see her,” Lenore’s words echo in my head and Wolf’s hand is at my back, his other hand holding my arm, as if I might fall again and I might.

But somewhere I find the strength to walk forward, through the doors before they close.

A nurse steps out from around the station. She’s Korean, young, with a kind face, glasses.

“My name is Lily,” she says to me. “Are you Amethyst DeMille? Yvonne’s daughter?”

I nod and all at once it’s like I’ve slipped into the role of someone else. Someone who has their shit together, who won’t blow away at the slightest hint of a breeze, or fall to their knees outside the ICU doors.

“Yes, I’m Amethyst,” I tell the nurse in a smooth, albeit robotic tone that doesn’t belong to me. “I came here as soon as I could. How is she?”

“Did your friends fill you in?” she says to me, glancing briefly through the doors to the hall where the vampires are standing. I find comfort in watching her face contort slightly, as if she has an issue with Solon and Lenore, but can’t figure out why. It distracts me, watching humans trying to grapple with what they don’t understand.

“I think so,” I say, bringing her attention back to me. “My mom was hit by a car and she’s in a coma but she’s stable. Right, she’s stable?”

The nurse gives me a fixed smile. “She’s stable for now. Come along.”

For now? For now?

She walks toward the curtains and gestures for me to step inside the room.

But I can only stand there, frozen in place.

It’s my mother but it’s not my mother.

She’s in the hospital bed, slightly elevated, with tubes running into her arms from various machines that beep and buzz, and she’s got a ventilator in her throat and her head is bandaged on one side, so much so that only one eye is visible. It’s puffy and swollen and purple and I can’t…I can’t…

“I know it’s a lot,” the nurse says to me, gently patting my arm. “But she’s not in any pain right now. We think from the way the accident happened, that the head injury was sudden. She most likely felt nothing, and she doesn’t feel this.”

How can she even know that?

I have questions. I have so many questions. But I can’t form words, I can’t breathe, my mouth has gone dry like it’s been filled with sand. I press my hand against my lips and try to keep it together.

She looks okay, I tell myself. She looks okay, she’ll be okay.

But how can that be?

How can that be when I’m looking at her, so small and thin, and when did she get so thin? When did she get so small? And I’m looking at her in her blue hospital gown and that bandage across most of her face and head, stemming the blood that must be pooling underneath, and then I’m looking at her hands at her side, her thin, veiny hands, so white right now they’re almost purple, and I realize I saw those hands last night.

I saw her last night.

Her in her blue hospital gown.

I’ve seen her in my dreams and in my room and it was my mother all along, trying to tell me what was going to happen to her.

Tears slide down my cheeks as I burst out crying.

“Oh my god, it was her!”

Chapter 11

Wolf

She’s going to know. She’s going to know.

I watch Amethyst through the doors to the ICU as she’s talking to the nurse, staring at her mother lying there on that hospital bed, and she’s going to know.

“Going to know what?” Solon asks me.

I’m too frayed and exhausted to be annoyed that he read my mind.

I swallow hard, like guilt is caught in my throat, and look over to him.

Solon is watching me intently, Lenore beside him, wondering what’s going on.

“I knew this was going to happen,” I say quietly.

Lenore’s eyes bulge. “What? How?”

“Mara,” I say. She frowns but Solon slowly nods, understanding. He’s most likely seen them too.

“Who is Mara?” Lenore asks.

“Not who, what,” I tell her. “Mara is what eventually became the nightmare to humans. It’s a demon who comes to you when you’re sleeping. Sits on your chest, keeps you from moving, speaking, breathing even. Brings with it death and misfortune. Sometimes it takes you away with it, lures you.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” Lenore says with a shake of her head.

“You’ve seen the Mara?” Solon asks.

“Both of us have,” I say, chagrined. “Amethyst thought it was part of her dreams, it’s why she hasn’t been sleeping well. And I saw it once in the house, when I was downstairs in Dark Eyes alone. Then we both saw it last night.”