What Sleeps in Shadows

Chapter Seven

The dream was different this time.

Less lust, more hellfire.

Raven forced herself up from her bed, feeling her hair stick to the sweat on her neck. There was a sharp pain behind her eyes, gnawing at the spaces inside her as if reminding her once again that she was not human, no matter how hard she tried to be. Her heart racing, Raven leaned back against the headboard and tipped her face to the ceiling as she tried to calm down. She swallowed air in huge gulps, and her hands shook as she tried to bury them under the covers. Even if she was alone, she didn't want anyone to possibly guess that she was finally losing control.

Raven closed her eyes as she tried to recall details of the dream, but every image was just out of reach, and all she could catch were hazy memories and dull shapes.

And the feeling of fire.

Raven shivered even though her body felt hot, wrapping her arms around herself as she pulled her knees to her chest. The fire. It burned her deeper than any normal fire, licked along her skin, found cracks in her body and consumed her. There was a rumble of words in the back of her head - a memory that she had never experienced before, but she somehow knew all the same. It was a growling incantation, and the words felt etched into her skin like a brand she would always wear.

She looked down at her palm, as if expecting to see a rune there, and swallowed another breath, trying to still her heart. It was just a dream, and that's what she had to remember. Even if it seemed prophetic, at the end of it all, it was just a dream. Raven was here at the Academy, she was safe, she had instructors to protect her, and if anything went horribly awry, she could always go back to Azarath. They always knew what to do to protect her and keep her safe. Or, at the very least, keep this dimension safe from herself.

Raven tossed the covers off her body and snagged an oversized sweatshirt from a chair. She threw it on, not bothering to put on anything over her shorts, and padded barefoot into the hallway. She needed to move, or do something. If she just sat in her bed and stared at the walls, she would just stew in her own thoughts, and she could already feel her control start to slip through her grasp.

Maybe Damian was right. Maybe she really was a magical nuclear bomb, meant to go off at any moment. Raven ran her hands through her hair and felt her feet wander as she turned over thoughts in her head. Should she tell the headmaster what she was dreaming? Or was it her mind playing tricks on her? She had spent the better part of the day researching with Damian, and her mind was filled with all of the things she had seen in the books. It could have been nothing more than her brain just trying to sort through the information and make sense of it. It would have been the logical explanation at the very least.

But then again, things around her weren't exactly logical.

Raven twisted a loose thread around her finger, and she stared at the floor as she walked, thought after thought filling her head until it felt like her brain was chattering away and didn't know how to shut up. It wanted to tell her everything all at once, to link things together that shouldn't have been linked, and she couldn't make it stop. She shoved her hair out of her eyes and finally picked up her head, seeing a brass room number staring back at her.

Damian.

She had wandered through the halls straight to Damian's room.

She was an idiot.

Raven turned to walk back to anywhere else, but the door opened before she could even take a step. Frozen in place, Raven turned to see Damian standing in the doorway staring at her, his face unreadable. His mouth tilted-down in a half-frown, and his eyes slipped down to her feet before looking back at her again.