The year is 1879. When thirteen-year-old Ruth Merritt Holbrook emerges from her family's burning estate, bloody and charred, but entirely numb--She makes headlines. Reporters believe she is deranged. They accuse her of having set the fire. All the h...
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I dreamt I was thirteen years old again. I stood across from Leviathan, just as we had in my other dreams. This time he stood opposite me, his face upturned to the sky. Just as with before, his hands were palm up, open and waiting. I knew what he was expecting—the sword, the very one that I held in my own hands. I wanted to speak to him, to tell him not to worry that I would not hurt him—I loved him. A world in which he did not exist was not a world in which I could bare living. And yet, my mouth seemed stitched shut.
As we stood facing one another, the world around us seemed to fade and spin. In an instant, we were in my house. I knew we were standing in the dining room of my family's Manchester home, but the furniture was missing. The room was empty, the paintings and tapestries that use to decorate the high walls where missing, in their place thick black stains.
Scorch marks.
The air surrounding us sparkled as the sun broke in through the gaping holes in the roofing, breaking through layers of dust, grime, and cinders. It was as if this new revelation brought on yet another wave of sense. Harsh memories, abrasive and aching.
The nauseating stench of smoke, the feel of flames as they licked against my skin—not painful, but ever-present—overwhelmed me. I remembered the way my hands had slipped against damp, sweat covered skin. The way my nightgown at caught and burnt, blackening the soft white fabric like a marshmallow over the hearth on Christmas Eve.
There is no smell quite like that of burning flesh—especially that of your own. To know, full well, that I should be in agony but have no way to access that pain, the memory was enough to steal my breath.
Suddenly, as things happen in dreams, I was there again and I was feeling those emotions. I was once again mentally telling myself that I was fine—one foot in front of the other, Merritt. Get out of the house and then you can cry. One more step. One more step. Please God, one more step.
But I was not there again and I was not thirteen.
Leviathan stood looking at me, his sober gaze tracking the tears as they fell from my eyes. It was as if he was saying it—One more step, Merritt, one foot after the other. But he was not coaxing me from the flames, instead, we stood together in them, separated by time and space and the weight of this sword in my hands.
Gabriel shook me awake, his strong fingers digging into the flesh of my arms, the pressure of it grounding me. I was here, in a church, with Gabe—not in my burning house. I looked down at my hands, half expecting to find the sword still cradled there, but this was reality and it still lay in my bag at the foot of the cot. I had to squint to see it in the dark, but I knew it was there.
"You were screaming in your sleep." Gabriel's voice was next to my ear; my face was pressed to his chest, listening to the thump thump thump of his fake human heart. It was racing, just like my real one. "I thought..." He trailed off for a second before he tried again, "I thought maybe Lucifer had gotten in after all."
