Chapter 5
Hunter dropped into her sleep, fully aware she’d have questions and possibly more right hooks if she woke up and didn’t find him beside her. But after... whatever it was that had happened, chances were her brain would look for something to help itself settle.
So he braced himself and got into her subconscious.
What he landed in gave him pause.
The place felt and looked real. No surreal dream logic, no bleeding walls or floating staircases.
Just an apartment’s unadorned walls, a half-decorated Christmas tree that slumped on the side in the corner.
A girl no older than nine sat on the floor beneath the tree, her arms wrapped tight around her knees.
Daphne.
So young, so small, and already broken.
He prepared himself to help her move this wherever she needed to, but then... Shit.
This wasn’t a nightmare.
It was a fucking memory.
Memories and dreams played in two different moments of sleep.
They may overlap, but they were not the same event.
Memories played in deep sleep, and they were a fixed terrain.
They had no malleability; he couldn’t twist or guide them.
He couldn’t protect the child from what had already happened.
Nightmares were messy but interactive. Memories played like an unforgiving recording.
His first instinct was to pull her out. His second was to burn the whole thing to the ground.
He could do neither because of fucking Basic Dreamscape protocol. Never interfere with memories.
So he stayed and hovered, a thin vapor just outside her field of vision.
Music drifted through the house. A Christmas song. The same one that had played last night, right before she broke down in pieces. That had to be the trigger. Okay, maybe this was good. Memory surfacing sometimes meant a step toward resolution and healing.
Then came the first crash from somewhere deep in the house.
If he’d had a body, he would’ve flinched.
But Daphne didn’t move. She just curled tighter, like she already knew what was coming.
She sat on the cold floor, the fabric of her pink pajamas thin and too small, her arms clinging to her knees.
One hand searched blindly beside her until it found an old, battered teddy bear, missing one eye, its fur patchy and matted.
She pulled it into her lap and stroked its floppy head.
The scream sounded like something clawed its way out of a pit.
Slurred words echoed. Cruel, venomous. Each one cracked through the walls like a whip.
A soft sob followed, barely audible and choked. Almost like her mother was trying not to make sounds at all.
The song kept playing. Again. And again.
Another crash. Glass, Hunter thought, shattering like a waterfall of knives.
Daphne’s head snapped up.
And those eyes.
He knew those eyes. He’d seen fire in them. Defiance and rage. But now there was nothing but raw, animal terror. Her cheeks were streaked with tears, lips parted in silence.
A door slammed.
Then louder yelling. Her father’s. Her mother’s voice rising in panic. Then faltering.
Daphne stood.
Bare feet on the cold floor. Teddy bear crushed to her chest like a shield.
She tiptoed across the room, quietly, so quietly, until it reached the kitchen door. She opened it.
Hunter wanted to scream at her to stop. To stay put. But it was a memory. It would play no matter what he did.
And what she saw next froze the world.
Her mother. On the floor. Twisted limbs scattered like broken branches. Blood leaked from the back of her head, seeping into the tile.
Her father stood over her. Wobbling. Kicking hard her mother’s side. “You better get up, bitch. Fast.”
But her mother didn’t move. Would never move again.
A sound tore from Daphne’s throat, the tiny noise a soul makes when it breaks.
Her father turned, eyes glassy and unfocused. Spit trailed from his mouth. “You’ll keep your mouth shut, you little fuck,” he slurred.
Daphne didn’t move, staring at the shape that had offered the barest scrap of kindness in a house that fed on fear.
“Do you hear me?” he roared.
He stumbled toward her, rage pouring from every step.
Daphne frantically moved away from his reach.
“You make everything so fucking difficult. Just like that bitch.”
She ran, then. Out of the kitchen and into the hall, but she was frantic, and he was hellbent on using her like a punching bag. He caught up with her in the living room, cornered her by the Christmas tree. He towered over her. Blood still on his hands.
Then he grabbed her.
Lifted her like a toy. Shook her like a rag doll.
“I said,” he spat into her face, “you’ll keep your goddamn mouth shut.”
Then he threw her.
She hit the floor; her head slammed into the tile with a sickening crack.
Hunter’s breath caught. His vision splintered. A violent jolt, and he was back on the couch. His body trembled, his arms wrapped around a gasping, sweat-drenched Daphne. He shut his eyes tight, holding her as close as human bodies allowed to soothe her, protect her.
And also, fuck this, to try and calm himself.
Not only for her, although that alone was enough to make him want to rage, but also because something had been in that memory.
Not just a memory; more than a simple nightmare.
It was something else, something he’d only sensed in her dream before.
Now it was darker. It hadn’t roared to life but had stirred, present and malicious.
And for the first time in his long, nightmare-threaded existence, Hunter knew fear. He was panting like he’d just run a marathon through fire, his heart lodged in his throat.
But all that would have to wait.
He gently brushed sweaty strands of hair from Daphne’s face, his hand trembling more than he liked to admit. “Daphne?” he whispered.
She pressed her face harder against his chest like she wanted to crawl inside him to escape what she’d seen.
“Daphne, sweetheart?” he said again, softer this time. He eased her back enough to see her face. Her eyes were still shut, lashes damp with tears, and skin patched in red.
And something else occurred to him: he had to play this carefully.
He wasn’t supposed to know what happened in her sleep, let alone have been in that room. Seen the blood and the child-sized terror. Dreamverse rules bound him to secrecy about himself.
Fuck the rules all the way to hell.
He swallowed the truth down hard, buried the rage clawing its way up his throat, and forced his voice into something lighter and familiar.
“You’re totally awake. That was a conscious person’s sigh.
” He drew a long breath in and pulled her back into his arms. “You don’t have to open your eyes. I’ll keep watch until you’re ready.”
Still nothing.
So he stroked her back, her hair, placed an occasional kiss on her head, or cheek, or anywhere he could reach.
And waited.
Until, in the dead of the night, her voice came out.
“He killed her,” she said. “And I had forgotten.” Her voice was laced with frustration. “How stupid is that?”
Hunter bit his tongue hard enough to taste blood. She needed to say all of it. To think it, feel it, get it out, and he wasn’t about to stand in the way with useless platitudes.
“I went to therapy, Hunter. Years.”
“You should totally change your shrink, sweetheart.”
She chuckled, but it twisted into a sob that she smothered immediately. “I stopped seeing her because I was fine. Just fine.”
“Were you, though?”
That made her twitch, the flicker of temper, and Hunter mentally exhaled. She was coming back. “I was as fine as I thought I’d ever be. And I’d made peace with that.”
“Had you?”
She narrowed her eyes. “Are you going to keep repeating everything?”
“I will until you’re honest. All the way. Not to me. To yourself.”
She pushed on his stomach and sat up, eyes downcast, a frown pulling at her eyebrows. She opened her lips. Closed them. Shook her head slightly. “No,” she said. Then again, with more strength. “No.”
“There you go,” he murmured, bringing her hand to his lips for a soft kiss.
“It was like... I don’t know. A blind spot?
Somewhere in my brain? It was so hidden and small, it was easier to think it was just me being screwed up.
” She dragged her fingers through her hair, pulling it all back.
“It wasn’t. It was my stupid brain forgetting the most important thing that ever happened to me. ”
“Your brain was trying to protect you. And if you call yourself stupid one more time, sweetheart, I’m going to get upset. And I really don’t want to do that.”
She tilted her head, staring at him. “Are you seriously threatening me right after I relived the worst trauma of my life, which is linked to violence?”
“Yes,” he said without flinching. “Because I care about you enough to get mad when you talk about yourself like that. Because I’m stable enough not to make my anger your problem.
And because you’re smart enough to know I’ll never use it to hurt you.
” He reached out and gently brushed a strand of hair from her face.
“You piss me off? I’ll call you out. You frustrate the hell out of me?
I’ll take a walk, come back, and we’ll deal with it like grownups.
But I won’t punish you. That’s not what caring for someone looks like.
That’s not what I do.” His dark blue eyes bore into her, serous, no hint of the mischief that always sparked underneath.
“You’re safe with me, even when I’m mad. Especially then.”
She huffed, but then plopped back down against him and nestled close. He was only too happy to wrap his arms around her again.
“I remember waking up at the hospital,” she said, voice low but steady.
“My aunt–my dad’s sister–was there. She only said my mom had passed.
Said that my father was in jail, likely for good, and I was going to stay with her.
” She paused, sighed, and wiped a tear from her face.
“I was so... happy, Hunter. I wasn’t surprised he killed her.
I think I always knew it was going to happen.
It still broke my heart, but I was relieved, too.
” She wiped at another tear. “What does that make me?”
“Human.”
She sighed. “The last thing I remembered was taking my teddy bear and walking to the kitchen. Everything else goes black from there. They told me I probably got scared because of the fight, ran, and fell–and I was satisfied with the explanation. They never realized I saw it all. I never did. Or that he tried to end me, too.”
What was he supposed to say to that?
While this didn’t change where she was today, who she was, it changed things nonetheless.
For once, he–a demon who had spent millennia guiding people through their worst nightmares, literally–was short on words.
If he could just take a peek into her mind, it would make things easier, but no, he had to go and promise he wouldn’t do that.
So now what? Now he had to do the horrifying, uncomfortable, emotionally mature thing: he had to ask. “How are you feeling?”
“It’s very odd,” she said after a pause. “Because this doesn’t really change anything. I mean, I knew he’d killed her. I knew I had reasons to be afraid of him.”
It was exactly what he’d expected, so it made sense she’d keep walking through that reasoning. “But?” he pushed, because of course there was going to be a but.
“Everything has changed. Not about what happened or how it shaped me. But now I can look at that blind spot and see it for what it is.”
“It’s a good thing. Right?”
“Yes. I think. It fills that part of me that was unresolved. It wasn’t me being screwed up. It was a piece of memory, lost.” She rested her head on his chest. “So, yes. It’s a good thing. I’ll need professional help to figure out what to do with it, but it’s good.”
They stayed in that hushed moment for a while, then her voice came out sleepy when she murmured, “Thank you.”
“No need for that.”
“Maybe. I want to tell you, though. I would’ve been okay by myself. I’m better because you were with me.”
“Always.”
And with the weight of her on his chest, the lullaby of her even breathing, he let himself close his eyes and drift to sleep.
No nightmares would touch her tonight.