Blood Is Thicker

Prologue: But A Shadow

“Jack, I’m so sorry…”

“Emily, now!Before it’s too late!”

“Goodbye, my little darling… g-goodbye J-Jack…”

“EMILY!”

“Emily!”I screamed, reaching out into the blackness for… what?

“Jack?What’s going on?”

I blinked.What was going on?My hands were stretched straight out in front of me, and the darkness my fingers had been clawing their way through melted slowly into the familiar interior of my dorm room.I let my arms drop onto the bed covers, then turned to my room-mate’s bed across the room.“I…”I hesitated, trying to gather a coherent thought from the streams of jumbled sense data racing across my consciousness.It was all dark a second ago, I couldn’t see anything, all I heard were some voices… what did they say? As the memories scuttled back to the cave of my unconscious mind, details dispersed and I was left with only the name Emily and the faintest smell of blood.“I think I just had a nightmare…”

“Oh.”

“Sorry to wake you, KJ.”I muttered.I didn’t know how to say this to my room-mate, but the dream had felt like something much heavier, infinitely more important, than the term “nightmare” could possibly convey.

“It’s fine.I had to get up soon any –” The furious beeping of an alarm clock interrupted him.“See?”He laughed, hitting the off button and kicking his way out of the covers.

“Oh yeah, you’ve got lab early today.”I sighed.My first class wasn’t for a few hours yet, but there was no way I could return to sleeping with the adrenaline flying through my veins.

“Yeah, though I doubt we’ll be doing anything, since it’s the first week of class.”I nodded, then got out of bed.“Wait, you remembered I had lab?”

“Not everyone is as bad at details as you are, man.”I joked.

“Alright, if you’re so good at details, where is this lab at?”

“Aver Hall, which is weird, ‘cuz the class is in Winchester.”I walked over to the window and glanced down to the sidewalks below.Even though it was only 7:30, there were already a few students out, their breath rising in puffs to mingle with the steam from their coffee cups.It’ll probably be hot in a few hours, but it’s still chilly out now… “Another normal day at AU.”I muttered.

“How do you remember my schedule?”

“You told me a few days ago, when you moved back in.”

“I hardly remember my schedule, let alone yours, so why –” He was interrupted by a knock on our door.We glanced at each other.

“Sharon and Rose.”We said simultaneously, and I grabbed a pair of pants from a dresser.“Hang on a sec!”I called.

“They’re up early.”KJ said, reaching for the doorknob as I buckled my pants.“Hey.”

“Good morning, KJ!Good morning Jack!”

“Not so loud, Rose, you’re gonna wake everyone up.”A pair of twin girls stepped into our room, one obviously much more awake than anyone else in the building.The loud one, Rose, set a covered dish on KJ’s desk and waved to me.I waved back, once again stunned that two girls could be so completely alike and so distinctly separate at the same time.Sharon and Rose were completely identical, except for the differences in their hair lengths – Rose’s hair had been cropped short, while Sharon kept hers long and carefully braided out of the way – but their demeanors were such a direct and sharp contrast, it was a wonder they didn’t kill one another.Guessing from the dark circles under her eyes, Rose hadn’t slept more than an hour or two last night, but she was awake, even at this ungodly hour, to an almost obscene degree, while Sharon, who had probably been in bed promptly by ten last night, was clutching her cup of coffee like a life preserver that would save her from drowning in the ocean of early morning.