Midnight Shadows

Chapter 0.6

** Chapter 32 of King of Beasts

There was a girl across the state, past the border, lying in a hospital bed. Her brother had just finished brushing her hair back, and it fell across the white pillow case like spilled ink. He leaned in close, just a few years older than her, and kissed her softly on her forehead with a promise to see her tomorrow.

Alone now, her chest rose on the machine's command and lowered right afterward. There was nothing in that pretty head of hers, no thoughts, no emotions. No soul called her home. No natural life fueled her body. Jane was an empty girl who should have been gone a long, long time ago but who also had an older brother that had just lost both his parents. He couldn't lose his little sister, too, not when their little brother kept asking about her.

It was better to hope for her to breathe on her own when there was no possibility than to pull the plug and know there really, really was no chance. At least, that was what her brother told himself each time he kissed her goodbye.

This was a peculiar night, however. Very peculiar indeed. Tonight, at about a bit past midnight, the flower-like scar on the back of her neck started burning. Not that she could feel it, but the pale pink mark burned a bright red and glowed past her inky black hair.

There wasn't a window open in this hospital—the windows couldn't open—and no way to tell that a gentle breeze was drifting on by. Not until it passed through the open emergency doors and whooshed on by the paramedics rushing a car accident victim in.

You couldn't tell there was a breeze until it hit a wall, rolled over itself and around a corner, and strolled up to an emergency staircase and out on the fourth floor past the nurse's station, where a kind woman wrapped her sweater around herself tighter at the sudden chill. It took a right turn at the end of the hall and just slipped right in through the door cracked open.

And then you would be able to feel it, you would be able to feel that breeze. It was cold, yet astonishingly warm at the same time. It was a breeze that passes over you and makes you feel... astounded, like life was keeping secrets from you and they all just passed straight through you.

It was a breeze that brushed the inky hair off Jane's shoulder, curled up past her collar bone, snaked behind her neck, and made that flower rune burn a hot, searing white. You can't look right at it. You can't even be near it, but oh, god, was it beautiful.

There was no more breeze, no more answers to life's secrets. There was only silence and the steady beeping of the machine.

And then her eyes, burning a hot, vital green that nearly glowed into the dark space, fluttered open. Her machines hadn't roared to life yet. No monitors had picked up anything, but there was a white hot heat soaring through Jane's body now and a soul screaming from its depths.

Then the machines flared awake, a tumultuous sound of ringing bells and screaming technology alerting everyone within ten miles that the dead girl had woken up.

In those few moments, one of the last moments that she was left alone, Jane remembered a beautiful man with blue eyes kissing her, with calloused hands against the side of her face and sadness staining his features.

Then those green eyes melted back to their usual brown, and she was just a girl once more lying in a hospital bed with a tube down her throat.

She would dream of him, though... dream of a beautiful man in a beautiful town, and it would be the only thing she had for a long, long time.

Because Jane wasn't herself anymore, Jane was someone new.

And she needed to go home.

*** END OF KING OF BEASTS (The following chapters will be the sequel)