Creature (CENTURIES series: Book #7)

7

Pain throbbed in my head. Some muffled, almost incoherent sounds in my dulled ears woke me up, but it wasn't until a voice broke through to me that I groggily opened my eyes.

"Ms Bloom? Ms Bloom, are you with us?"

Moaning quietly, I blinked my heavy eyelids and tried to get my sight to focus.

What was happening? I couldn't remember... there was something about a... a bang?

My blurry eyes tried to blink again to gain clear vision, and with some effort, I managed to make out a shape above me, a man with brown eyes and a helmet on, wearing some sort of suit...

"Ms Bloom?" I saw his lips move again, but then he turned his head. "She's disoriented. How are her vitals looking?"

"Pulse and heart rate are both stable," Another male voice now spoke. "No abnormalities."

"Alright. Ms Bloom, can you hear me? I need you to look at me."

Before I had the chance to try, a bright flashlight lit into my eyes and blinded me, made me squeeze my eyelids shut and had the pounding in my head growing worse.

"Pupils are a little slow, I think we're looking at a mild concussion. Is the Creature immobilized?"

Creature...

My eyes flipped open again, and this time I willed my mind to focus. Finally, I managed to settle on a somewhat sharp, if not slightly dizzying image, and found myself looking up at a man dressed in a tactical suit, wearing full body armor and weapons strapped to his kevlar vest. What the hell?

"Where's Charlie?" I hoarsely got out, trying to pull myself up, but had to hiss and give up when my head wouldn't allow me.

"Take it easy, Ms Bloom," The SWAT guy calmly advised me, his tone professional, almost clinical. "You might have endured a light concussion from the blow to your head. I need you to try and tell me what you remember before you blacked out."

What I remembered? My head spun as I tried to recollect my thoughts.

I remembered being in my living room, writing on my laptop, when the lights suddenly flickered. I remembered all the electronics suddenly messing up, and then I was running upstairs...

From there, there was a big blank in my mind. I blinked as I tried to recall it, but nothing came. "I... I'm not sure. I ran upstairs to..." Why did I run upstairs? What was I running t— "Charlie!"

"Don't worry, Ms," The SWAT guy said again as I tried to sit up once more, grinding my teeth when my head hurt. Man, I'd made sure to break the fall with my cranium. "We responded the second our scanners picked up on the electrical abnormality. We found you lying against the railing of your stairs, thankfully unharmed."

My throbbing head slightly disagreed with him. "Where's... where's Charlie?" I asked with difficulty as I looked around, my eyes searching for him. SWAT men were walking around on my first floor, all of them carrying heavy weaponry, but there was no sign of Charlie. The SWAT's were all cataloguing the damages, fixing up what mess had been made.

The mess... the furniture... Charlie's dreaming... it all came back to me in a flash as I looked into his bedroom where his bedsheets were rumpled, but utterly void of the Creature I was in charge of.