Supernatural (Tom Holland x Reader)

7. Death and Destruction?

I woke up in a cold sweat, most likely from my nightmare. It had been so vivid that I was sure it had been real, but if it had been, I was sure I would've woken up dead. Dazed and confused, I swung my feet out of bed and set them on the chilly stone floor. The sunlight was already peeking through the autumn leaves in the still-lush courtyard below my window and I'd decided I was going to spend the day outside with Paddy.

I began to stand myself up, when a nasty pain seized my ankle and I fell backwards onto the bed. I yelled out as my vision went spotty. I realized then that it hadn't been a dream. I had been...er...bitten. Bitten by a witch. When my vision cleared, I peered at my ankle. It was covered in my own blood, as was the spot it had been in the sheets, and had gone septic, even overnight.

Wincing, I hopped on my good foot to the ancient armoire in front of my bed and grabbed an old white t-shirt. I tore it into strips and wrapped them around the bite to stop the bleeding until I could clean it properly, then limped down the hallway to my guest bathroom to get ready.

Once I'd showered and pinned up my hair, I dressed in a sweater and some long pants to cover my wound, which I was in the midst of cleaning. I'd rinsed it out gently with water, but every time I touched it with the hydrogen-peroxide-covered cottonball I was using, I got a sharp pain in my head.

I made myself a cup of tea for breakfast and headed down to the courtyard, where I'd told Paddy to meet me the previous night. He was waiting on a little plaid picnic blanket in the soft grass when I limped up to him. He raised an eyebrow at me. "Are you okay, Y/N? You're limping." He pointed to my leg. I knew I had to think fast, so I said the first thing that came to my mind.

"Sure! I just...erm...I cut my leg shaving this morning. It's nothing too terrible." I gave Paddy a smile that may have been a bit too big. I could tell he didn't believe me, but at least he didn't know what really happened. We were midway through our breakfast picnic when Tom popped into view between us on the blanket.

"Hi, Tom!" I tried to sound cheerful, but seeing him reminded me of the promise I'd made the night previous. Tom, however, looked at me with his mouth gaping open. For a second, I thought I saw his eyes fill up with tears, but I wasn't sure.

"Erm...can I talk to you for a minute, Y/N?" Tom's voice was wobbly. I could tell he was nervous, which was disconcerting, so I followed him a little ways away and out of Paddy's earshot. "I-I thought you were dead," he breathed. Okay, now I was confused.

"What? What do you mean? You knew about this?" I asked, pulling up the left leg of my pants and revealing the witch's bite wound, which I'd wrapped in some gauze I'd gotten from a handmaid after I'd cleaned it. Tom's already saucer-like eyes widened even further and his gaze shifted from the bite to my face and back again.

"How are you...she said she...that's impossible!"

"What? Tom! Tell me what's going on this instant!" My voice wavered unintentionally. But who could blame me? In the past week, I'd seen a ghost for the first time and found out that witches were real. If only I knew what was to come.

"Are you okay?" Tom asked. I didn't have the patience.

"Yes, I'm fine! But please just tell me what's happening! Did you have something to do with this?"

"NO! No, of course not. It's Apathy. She knows about our plan to stop her and she doesn't like it. She came to me last night and locked me up. She said you're a hitch in her regime. That she was going to kill you. She gave you a Deathbite...a witch's most deadly weapon...don't look at me like that, I've done my research after I got murdered by one. I just don't understand how you survived. There's no record in history of a Deathbite survivor."

"I'm really not sure," I replied, rubbing my chin in thought. Wasn't it enough that a witch had attempted to murder me with a magic chomp? How much more information did I have to take in? "But I do know one thing."

"What's that?"

"We have a fighting chance. Hardstrune wouldn't be worried about me if I weren't something to worry about. I don't know why I would be just yet, I mean, she's a powerful witch and I'm just a girl. But I know she's worried about something. And I think that together, we could defeat her."