I floated in a sea of grey fog, unable to make out anything. My feet met a hard surface, my weight settling on my legs as I stood as the mist dissipated. I recognized the balcony immediately by the floating moon and night dark roses. Scanning my surroundings, I saw Selene just inside the cover of the building. The moonlight made a stark line between us.
“Selene? Why aren’t you outside?” I asked.
Instead of answering that question, she uttered, “She’s endangered by he who believes this curse a blessing.”
“Dani?” She was my first thought. But Selene had only used pronouns. What if she meant Syla? Or someone we didn’t know?
Selene looked down. “The broken-hearted often mistake hunger for understanding.”
A frown found my face. I think she’s talking about Dani, but I can’t be sure.
Selene began to pace inside the space that I could only barely see into. It didn’t make sense for the room beyond to be that dark, especially with the moon shining so brightly right behind me. Yet the space was totally cavernous; I couldn’t even make out if there was anything beyond. It was almost like a void.
“The unseen does not always hide,” Selene went on, one of her hands coming out into the moonlight. Her pale skin reflected it as she reached toward the roses growing up the side of the doorway. The severe contrast between her skin and the black-red of the roses felt like a warning.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
She pulled a rose closer to her, but her face did not come into the light. “A thing can stand in the light and remain undiscovered.” A flash of metal and suddenly the rose no longer held to the vine. I hadn’t even seen the shears in the shadow, and for some reason that made me uneasy. What else hadn’t I been noticing?
“Keep your loved ones close, Drew,” she urged.
That seemed somewhat disconnected from everything else she’d said. “Why?”
She reached out her hand to me, and I grasped it. “A smiling hand may reach for more than friendship,” was her only warning before she pulled me into the black.
I began tumbling in the dark, like I was in the vacuum of space with nothing close to stop the motion. A scream tore from me. Wake up, wake up, wake up! But I kept falling. Just as I began to wonder if this was to be my eternity, a symbol began to glow red in the dark. A circle with the bottom half of a cross piercing it.
I know that symbol. That’s the same one that was at the crime scene with the bloodless corpse. Still, I asked, “What is that?”
“A wound that dreams of becoming permanent,” Selene’s voice echoed around me quietly.
My stomach tightened and I swallowed. “What are you talking about?” I asked, hoping that maybe she’d say something I’d understand.
I saw Selene walking toward me in the darkness, which I didn’t understand because I was still tumbling in the dark. How could she be so clear in front of me if my body is moving around so much? How could she be walking on nothing while I flailed in the air? Her expression was sad when she only said, “Trust what people do when they believe no one sees them.” The symbol faded from view, and her own visage began to grow dimmer as she spoke one final time. “And remember: success leaves marks.”
As she disappeared, a floor came rushing up to meet me and I gasped, hands flying in front of my face to try and avoid the coming impact.
I jerked awake, elbowing Michael in the process. He grunted and grumbled something that I didn’t understand. My eyes darted around, taking in my surroundings. The couch-bed beneath me, the end table beside my head to the left, light golden through the windows as the final light of day gave its final farewell.
“Hey,” Michael’s sleep-graveled voice found me, and I turned to look at his face. His evergreen eyes were cloudy with sleep as he blinked at me. “Bad dream?” he asked.
I sat up. “Selene,” was all I needed to say before he was sitting up too, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
“What happened?” he asked, voice clearer.
I told him what happened in my dream – the weird warnings, the tumbling in the dark, all of it.
“We need to tell the others,” he said with some urgency. “I don’t know who she was talking about in that dream, but I’m not willing to take chances when it comes to your safety.”
As we came down the stairs, Syla looked up from where she was reading on the couch. Dani sat next to her, staring at the box holding Jared’s ashes on the coffee table in front of her. “Where’s Antun?” Michael asked.
“He had a meeting with some sponsor or other about a product they wanted him to promote on his channel I think,” Syla supplied. “Why?”
As soon as Michael mentioned Selene, Syla put her book face down on the coffee table, her face turning cautiously curious. After explaining to Dani that I sometimes received these visions, I proceeded to tell the dream to my friends.
“Wish I had recorded that to send to Antun, he needs to know too,” Syla worried.
“I’m planning on texting him on our way back into the city. Speaking of which: Syla, you’ll be home alone unless you want to come with and stay in the car with Michael. I’m thinking we need to stick together as much as possible,” I suggested.
As everyone else became aware of the time, they each went to get ready to go. I glanced at my reflection in the window, seeing my hair was still mussed from sleep. I went to the bathroom to brush it, calming the strands into place. I wished that I could just as easily brush my feelings to get them to chill out too.
After we all got into the car, I texted Antun in the most concise words I could think of to tell him about the dream. Apparently, I needed to work on wordiness because I had only just hit send when I noticed we were already back in the city. Only a few minutes later, Michael parked down the street from The Bean café.
I reached for my door handle when Michael’s hand on my shoulder stopped me. “I wish I could go in there with you, but I don’t want to overwhelm Dani while she tries to talk about everything.”
I put my hand on top of his and gave what I hoped was a reassuring smile. “We’ll be back before you know it.” Dani and I got out of the car and started heading toward the café. Dani had her phone out for a moment before placing it back in her pocket, and I wondered who she might’ve been messaging.
The bell above the door jingled as it opened. The warm scent of coffee and sugar hung in the air. As my eyes landed on Razvan, he gave a small grin and lifted his hand in greeting. “Danielle. Drew. I didn’t expect anyone else to come along, but if Dani is alright with you being here, I am too.”
A foamy latte sat undrunk in front of him, the steam coming off it in tempting swirls that he ignored. “For starters, I am sorry for your loss, Ms. Sorenson. I apologize for not saying as much earlier.”
Dani gave an uncomfortable grin. “It’s okay.”
“I know I had asked for us to be able to do this interview here at the café, but do you mind terribly if we walk and talk? I was called back to my main office in Astoria, they need me on the road by tomorrow morning,” he explained.
I was not a fan of the idea, but this wasn’t my meeting. I looked at Dani as she looked at me uncertainly. She looked back at him and nodded.
He smiled and stood from the table, extending his arm. “After you ladies.” He followed us onto the street, and it took everything in me not to look back at the car. “Why don’t you tell me your perspective of Jared, as someone who knew him so well?”
It took Dani a moment before she answered in her quiet voice. “Most people saw his size before they saw him. They’d make assumptions on that alone.” She looked down at the sidewalk. “He wasn’t… gentle, exactly. Not in the way people mean when they say it. But he tried.”
“Tried how?” the doctor pressed.
She shrugged. “He’d notice things. Like, if I hadn’t eaten, he’d go find cheap food. When I wasn’t sleeping, he went and picked up Z-quil to try to help me. Anytime something upset me and I thought I hid it…” She smiled sadly. “He always acted like he wasn’t paying attention, but he was.”
“Fascinating. So, he was protective, almost nurturing,” Razvan said.
She bobbed her head side to side. “In his own way. Jared liked having rules.”
“Rules?”
“For himself, I mean,” she clarified
“Can you give me an example of one of these self-imposed rules?” he asked.
I worried she’d talk about vampirism out in the open, but she surprised me when she instead said, “Don’t hurt people who don’t deserve it.”
“That’s pretty harsh, considering what he did to so many people. But perhaps that’s how you were able to see him,” the doctor said.
Dani looked down, as if she’d just been told that she’d condoned the deaths Jared dealt.
“Do you mind if we cut through here? I’ve found it’s the shortest way to the hotel from that particular café,” Razvan interrupted. He pointed down an alley that cut off in a brick wall and continued onto the left and right around the wall.
Dani looked at me, and I just looked right back at her. Did she have more to say about Jared? I shrugged, making the decision hers. She glanced back at the doctor before agreeing in a small voice.
This is her interview. I’m just here for moral support. As much as I wanted to just be done now, I knew I wouldn’t want to be rushed if I were in the same situation. At the same time, everything in me screamed no. Selene’s warnings were still fresh in my mind, but I followed them into the alley. The light quickly grew dim the further we went in.
Keep your loved ones close… A smiling hand may reach for more than friendship… Trust what people do when they believe no one sees them.
Dani started, “I know this sounds stupid, but…”
The doctor lifted his brows, “Go on.”
“I never felt unsafe with him,” she admitted.
“Really, never? Even when he was angry?” he pressed.
“Especially then.”
Razvan turned to face her, as if waiting for her to elaborate.
“He’d leave.”
“Leave?” he asked.
“If he thought he’d say something he’d regret. If he thought he’d scare me.” She shook her head. “People think self-control means never being angry. But Jared was angry all of the time. He just spent all his energy trying not to become the kind of person he hated.”
Razvan had been lifting a hand to his chin when her words gave him pause.
She looked up at him. “Everyone keeps asking me what he did.” Looking back down at the cement, she whispered, “Nobody asks me who he was.”
The doctor stopped walking entirely for a moment. “I imagine very few people ever asked who Jared was,” he finally said. “Thank you for the reminder.” He paused, then continued, “People are often more complicated than the stories told about them.” Something about the way he said it felt oddly genuine for him, but then his brows furrowed and he pointed behind me. “What’s that?”
I looked but didn’t see anything. Then, I heard an awful cracking noise. The distinct sound of bone snapping… behind me.
I spun around and was met with a fist to my face. My vision blackened as my head reeled to the side. What the hell? What’s going on?
My feet took as big a step back as I could, trying to distance myself from my attacker but met with a wall right behind me. As my eyes cleared, the first thing I saw was Dani’s limp body on the ground, her head facing almost all the way backward. Impossible…Dani can’t be—
The distraction cost me and I took a hit to the other side of my face, forcing the opposite side of my head into the brick wall. This time when my vision darkened, it didn’t clear, and I went down. Selene’s voice echoed in my mind: a thing can stand in the light and remain undiscovered.
