Chapter 8
CHAPTER 8
DAMIEN
I knew I was dreaming the moment I saw her again, but everything felt different. Wrong.
We weren’t in the forest anymore—we were in a house. A house that made my skin crawl and my heart race. A house that felt alive and evil. Something bad had happened there. A man …
My head throbbed, and my ribs ached, and a few of my knuckles felt broken. The intensity of the pain confused me. I normally couldn’t feel pain in my dreams.
Even the girl seemed different. She was younger now, but every bit as beautiful. She stood in the middle of a tobacco-stained kitchen, staring at me with big, worried eyes—eyes that I could now tell were as green as the forest where I’d first met her—before she glanced down at a lock of black hair in her tiny, trembling fist.
Reaching up, I touched the side of my head and immediately hissed in pain. Not only was my hair completely gone, but the wound I found there was laid open and oozing blood.
Taking a slow step toward me, the girl’s eyes glistened with unshed tears, and her full lips quivered as they pulled into a frown. I wanted to kiss them, to make them curve the other way … until she reached up to touch my butchered head.
I jerked away immediately. Embarrassed. Ashamed. I didn’t want her to pity me. I didn’t want her to know what had happened. I couldn’t exactly remember myself, but I knew it was shameful. I knew it would make her look at me differently. So, I glared at her and watched as her sad, stunning face crumpled in response. Throwing the lock of hair on the floor, the girl turned and sprinted toward the front door.
She yelled something at me, a few things, but all I could process was that final look on her face and the hurt in her voice just before she slammed the door shut behind her.
I couldn’t let her leave like that. I’d just gotten her back. If I didn’t catch her, didn’t make things right, I might never see her again.
Bolting out the door, I found myself free from the grimy grayscale of the evil house and plunged into a Technicolor dream world. The girl’s hair glimmered in the sun like spun cooper as she sprinted across a green cemetery under a cloudless blue sky. Birds sang, and church bells rang, and my blood thrummed in my veins as I pushed myself to run faster. The closer I got to her, the more my pain faded until we were just a tangle of arms and legs rolling in the soft grass.
Turning onto my back, I pulled her against my chest and—after a few seconds of struggle—felt her tense body surrender and melt into mine. It was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. Like warm water being poured over a block of ice. I would have held her like that forever if I could have, but the edges of my awareness were already starting to blur.
There was so much I wanted to say before I woke up. So many questions I wanted to ask. Who was she? When would I see her again? How did I know her? Why did she make me feel this way? But just like the last time I’d seen her, the words seemed to slam against a steel door in my throat. So, I fought harder to push them out. When the colors began to fade, I held her tighter, refusing to let go. When I could no longer feel the weight of her on my chest, I coiled her hair around my fist and pressed my lips to the top of her head.
And when the girl in my arms finally vanished, along with the bolts and locks around my throat, I whispered into the darkness between our two worlds, “Remember me. Please … please come back.”
Everything hurt. Inside. Outside. My lungs, my throat. My head, my side. My injuries were the same as the ones from my dream, only amplified. Excruciating. And instead of warm summer grass, it felt as though I were lying in a bed of cold broken glass.
I didn’t know where I was, but I knew that I would die there. Soon. My brain was too foggy to think, my body too broken to move. I tried to remember what had happened, but nothing surfaced. My mind was a void. A vast black tunnel with no light at the end, only the wide-open gates of hell, ready and waiting.
Just then, a small sound and a slight twitch caused my labored breathing to stop altogether. Something was on me. Something heavy and alive.
Lifting my head slowly, I gritted my teeth as a sharp pain tore through my temple and lifted one eyelid just enough to see the creature sleeping on my chest.
I didn’t understand what I was looking at. I blinked down at the angel sprawled across my body, waiting for a thought to form, for some logical explanation to surface, but my brain was an oxygen-deprived wasteland. It wasn’t capable of anything more than basic observation, but my heart didn’t care. It had her . It didn’t need an explanation.
Lifting my hand to her head, I ran my scabbed knuckles over the long, soft waves cascading down her back. Her hair was damp and cold. Her eyelids fluttered at my touch. And the early morning sun bouncing off the water next to us illuminated every freckle on her beautiful face. This was no dream. She was really here, in the flesh, and for a moment, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.
But I was in too much pain to be in heaven. Perhaps I’d pulled her out of the dream world after all, and now, we were stuck in some kind of purgatory, some in-between place. I didn’t know, but the more I tried to process it, the more my skull throbbed and my vision blurred.
Dropping my head back onto the rocky ground, I stared up at the stone ceiling overhead and marveled at the rise and fall of her back under my splayed hand. I had no memories of the past and no capacity to think about the future. All I could do was try to stay conscious long enough to appreciate the sensation of her warm body draped over mine.
As I stroked her hair, she shifted sleepily, nuzzling my chest with a soft moan as her hand slid across my stomach. My abs flexed violently beneath her featherlight touch, causing pain to shoot out in all directions from my side, but it was a dull roar compared to the sensation of her lazy fingertips drifting over to my hip. My heart stopped, and my cock swelled as she unfastened something on my belt—the anticipation of her next move almost more excruciating than my injuries. But then, with a quiet snap and a flick of her wrist, she was gone.
The sound of crunching pebbles echoed off the stone walls as I winced and lifted my head again. The girl ran to the farthest corner of the cave and plastered her back against it. Then, she lifted a gun— my gun—and aimed it directly at my face. I couldn’t remember what I’d done to upset her. I didn’t even know where I was. But when I opened my mouth to apologize, to reassure her, the words wouldn’t come out. I cleared my throat and coughed and groaned, but all that accomplished was making my injuries hurt infinitely worse. Glancing down at my side, which felt like it had been run through with a rusty bayonet, I saw that half of my uniform was soaked with blood.
Glancing back at the girl, I reached for her in desperation, tried again to speak, to call to her, but the words were just beyond my grasp, lingering at the edges of my consciousness where the darkness was closing in.
The last thing I saw before I surrendered to the void was her perfect face contorting into a silent sob as her knees buckled and her back slid down the wall.
I was wrong, I thought as the nothingness cracked open and swallowed me whole.
I’m not on my way to hell.
I’m already there.