Waking the Fae [BOOK ONE]

Chapter 15

The idea for this was stuck in my head all day and I wanted to write it so bad but I actually had a life today. Here it is, unedited as usual, but I like the chapter.

Hope you do to!

And shout out to @hindering, once again, for an awesome cover!

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Horror started to sink in, as everything in her just seemed to . . . freeze. Like she was water turning to ice. Slowly, she was just freezing up, heart constricting. She tried to move. To stand. Back away. She couldn't. She couldn't move—it was like her legs were frozen in place. There was no pulse. There was no pulse. He wasn't breathing.

She wasn't even aware she was screaming, until the sound started to echo in her eyes, ringing loudly and painfully. Rebecca wanted to turn away. Run. Her eyes were glued to the body in front of her, unmoving and not breathing. The blood still dripped down his forehead, from where she couldn't tell. A gun? A bullet to the head? She shuddered at the thought, looking around frantically. It was the only explanation for his state. For the blood. Which meant they were still around and she was a target.

Willing her legs to move, she stared at the door of the school. They seemed so far away all of a sudden—unreachable. She hissed under her breath, eyes glued to the body. How had it escalated so quickly? She'd closed her eyes . . . and then he'd been against the wall. Not breathing. Why hadn't they hurt her?

She was panicking, she realised. A panic attack she'd hadn't had since she was five and she'd found one of orphanage sisters lying on the bed next to her, eyes wide and unmoving. A then seven-year-old version of her had just cried, staring at the body in horror, bile rising.

 God, she could remember it so vividly. The night before the girl had tried to drown Rebecca in the orphanage pool, pushing her in when they all knew she couldn't swim. The only reason she'd escaped the water was because someone had jumped in and pulled her out—Rebecca hadn't even been close to getting above the surface of the water to breathe any air. The next morning Rebecca had woken up to find the girl without a pulse, like she'd been sleeping and had just stopped breathing. Guilt, so heavy she had felt it resonate in every part of body, had sunk it. But she hadn't been to blame. She'd been mad at the girl because she'd tried to drown her but she hadn't been the cause of her death.

The guilt was the same thing she was feeling now. He'd said things to her that had made her mad and now he wasn't moving. Wasn't breathing. Not even the single, miracle, gasp of him coming to life. Rebecca hung onto the hope that it would happen and she could let go of the guilt that was starting to numb her. She forced herself to take a deep breath and calm her panic, even if her efforts were futile. There was a body in front.

 . . . Maybe he was still breathing.

Rebecca clung onto the thought. It had to be. She'd just assumed. In an effort to make it seem more pliable, she knelt down in the dirt, her jeans staining. Ignoring the pain she felt, she blinked away panicked tears and reached her hand out. It was shaking so badly she was surprised she even managed to place her fingers against his next. With silence exploding around her, just as loudly as her screams from before, she stopped moving, waiting on baited breath for something—anything—to calm her panic. To tell her that she was just overreacting.

Tears blurred her vision when there was no movement against her fingers. "Open your eyes. Talk. Come on. It's not a funny joke," she croaked out, desperately. Unsurprisingly, he didn't move still. There was no extravagant ha, I'm awake! because it had all been a joke. A stupid attempt at a joke that wasn't funny in the slightest.

Rebecca stared at him body, trying to find where the blood was coming from. She couldn't find any on his legs, nothing over his clothes. It was just from the one spot. Even though Rebecca wanted to back away, she couldn't move. Was this what people described when they witnessed something so horrifying it was impossible to look away?