Dreamcatching

Chapter 26

The Lenne Lenape have many beliefs. Dreaming of an owl means the dreamer will be protected by him. This is why, when Nora first opened her swollen eyes, and tried to focus on her surroundings, she was able to hold a small slither of hope in her heart.

When she was a child, Nora's father and a local tribe's Mesingw, once explained that at the time of her birth he'd seen an owl nearby.

Many Native American tribes have negative beliefs about owls. The Lenape, though, are a little different. Seeing an owl in one's dreams is a good thing. He becomes the seer's guardian. As a dream-traveler, Nora's father had taken the bird as a good omen, despite him being awake at the time he'd noticed the bird.

Nora needed a good omen now.

The smell of sewer greeted her as she sat up and glanced around. She put her scraped hands behind her and pushed up at the elbows. When she felt something small and smooth move across her fingers, however, Nora jerked her hand away and lost her balance.

"Son of a bitch!" She shreiked at a waterbug quickly heading southbound from her.

Her heart raced from the encounter and she fell into the curbside of a street she didn't remember. A discarded condom wrapper was sitting open by her feet and she turned to scramble from it, banging her chin on the curb's metal frame in the process. "Fuck!" She cried. Her ribs ached from the grate she'd woken up upon. She managed to sit on the curb and tried to pull herself together.

Nora'd been laying in the street alone at the mouth of an alleyway. To her left, dumpsters lined the building exits. The smell of vomit and rotted pork meat made Nora want to hurl. Across the street, however, was a tree-lined park.

That's where she saw the owl. He was perched on an old tree silently waiting for Nora to wake up. He was the same bird she'd been dreaming about only moments before.

As Nora took stock she began to worry. Her last memory was of standing in the road at the nature center between Kaden and Wemategunis.

"How'd I get here?" She asked herself aloud in a hoarse voice. She rubbed her throat to alleviate the dull ache behind her skin. It had to be bruised. The pain was intensifying as she grew more alert and her skin was warm to the touch. "Why do I feel like I've been beaten to within an inch of my life?"

"Because you have," a vampire laughed. "I didn't want to kill you yet, Mein Engel, not before you suffer some more."

"You!" Nora said.

"And me," Utz chimed in. He stepped in front of Drexel, moving out from behind a storefront sign that stood near the entranceway. "Don't forget about me. Drexel doesn't get to have all the fun, baby. We like to s-h-a-r-e."

Utz drug out the word 'share' in a way that had the hair on the back of Nora's neck stand up.

She got to her feet and tried not to heave forward. Steadying herself, Nora pulled it together for battle. Before she could do so, though, a dark, evil shadow fell across her profile.

"Hello, Nora," he whispered seductively. "You should prepare to die. You will never be strong enough to overcome the strength of these vampires. When they destroy you, I will be here to carry you home. To hell."

Nora began to shake, for she had never seen Matanto herself until this night.

The owl across the street took flight and Nora could have wept at the abandonment, had she the time.

So much for her guardian.

The devil himself had come to watch her die and her last hope had deserted her.