Hellfire

Chapter Forty-Nine

I slept but not dreamless, not like usual. Normally I couldn't dream, but something was lacing into my head. Something deadly. There was darkness so thick I couldn't see through it, but I knew something was out there. I heard the wingbeats, those heavy rush of wings that I knew, and an old, pungent air clung to me. My feet slapped in a thick layer of congealing blood. It curled over my ankles, lapping at my skin with razor sharp droplets that sliced away at my feet. I forced myself forward through, wincing as the slashes flourishing over my legs.

Then I froze, looking behind me as an ill wind whispered.

She was coming.

Morrigan.

I felt her hatred, her malice, and her hunger like a tidal wave behind me. It threatened to consume me, to snuff me out. She wanted me gone. Dead. It was a looming threat so powerful I knew I stood no chance. Phantom claws scraped over my skin, burying into my throat to flower it open like Lucius' teeth had once before, breaking my ribs as their fists thrust into my chest, gripped my heart and ripping it free. Flaying me. Breaking me. Snuffing out my ferocity with the sheer power and malicious cruelty.

Then my hand flailed, snatching at a door that brought peace. I shoved myself through without hesitation, desperate to get away from the pain, and tumbled into Lucius' office, slamming the door behind me and shoving my back against it. It rattled viciously beneath claws and fists, a vicious screech scraping at my ears and blood pushing its way beneath the cracks. I just dug my heels in and shut my eyes, refusing to let her in. I was safe here. I was safe.

Eventually, it just stopped.

I breathed frantically, my body covered in blood and pulling itself together again, and slowly opened my eyes. I glanced behind myself, spying no blood and no shredded wood, just Lucius' door. When I looked to the office, I found it that strange mix of times - modern all the way back to the 1800's. It then dawned on me that I was in Lucius' dreamscape yet, when I tried to reach for him I found no consciousness, just his cold and protective strength. He wasn't here.

'Hello.'

I looked sharply to the old coffee table planted between the black leather sofas. There was Little One grinning at me with joy as she scrabbled to her feet and pottered over to me.

'You came in this time.'

I stared at the girl, at the piercing blue eyes that once again made me wonder who's child she was, and forced myself to shift gear from fighting to my life to being perfectly safe. 'What do you mean?'

'You always knock, but you never come in. I don't know why.' She pouted softly. 'Daddy doesn't mind, you know. Daddy likes you being safe from nightmares or from grandmummy.'

I remembered then that I'd find a door in the middle of my nightmares of being parasite - just a single door. I felt that rush of safety from it, Lucius' scent and the laughing of a child, but I always rejected it - always fled deeper into the nightmare and slapping away his help.

I shifted my weight, glancing down at my healed hands. Already I had forgotten what I'd just experienced, what the pain had been like, but I could still feel Morrigan prowling around. She was still dreaming with a vicious desire to rip me apart. I didn't know why she suddenly was doing this. She'd been fine for weeks.

'I'll stay a little while.'

I wasn't safe sleeping alone. I hadn't felt Morrigan that malicious before.

'You can come draw with me.' Little One announced, snatching at my hand and hauling me towards the coffee table cluttered in pens, pencils and scraps of paper.

She offered me a pen and rapidly returned back to scrawling great dragons and rainbow fairies to her heart's content. I stared down at my blank paper. I hadn't drawn in years; art was never something I could easily do. If it went wrong, which it often did, the pen and paper would be up in flames, along with whatever I was in contact with. It was crosswords I found soothing, puzzles and meditation.