Chapter 136

I woke up with the scent of dry earth and rotting leaves in my nose. It felt… all too familiar and all too distant too. I felt like I had been here or somewhere like here before. The sky was dark above me, twinkling with stars. Everything seemed to be spinning and out of focus.

Where was I? How did I get here? What happened to me?

I sat up, blinking. My head spun. I felt ill and cold. My arms trembled trying to push me into sitting. The world turned dark and seemed to slide this way and that as I tried to focus. Things blurred and grew almost painfully clear around me.

What was happening to me?

My hand slipped from under, slick with something and sending me back into the pile of leaves I’d woken up in. I turned onto my side with a soft groan and lifted my hand to see what was there. My stomach lurched as the scent of blood, raw and metallic hit my nose. It was… fresh. I hissed as I tried to move my fingers. Pain shot up my arm. I bit back a whimper of pain and tried to relax, exhausted just from that.

The world was still spinning.

There was a name I wanted to say. Someone I wanted to call.

I felt the syllables, the feeling of it, but I couldn’t say it. Images flashed, faint impression of something or someone. I smelled food, something sweet and delicious. Decadent.

Chocolate was what I was thinking of. Chocolate and the faintest bitter scent of coffee. It was comforting, but it wasn’t what I was trying to say. Something cawed nearby then, the world went silent. I heard something as if I was submerged in water.

My body felt so heavy that I couldn’t move.

My eyes pricked with tears as they streamed down my face.

Where was I?

Wasn’t someone looking for me?

Didn’t anyone care about me?

The thought made me stiffen. Someone had to be looking for me. Someone who… someone who loved me. Who cared for me. Someone cared for me. I knew that. I felt that in a way that I couldn’t explain. I couldn’t picture the person. I couldn’t even pull the name out of the darkness of my mind, but I knew, whoever they were, they existed.

My life came to me in brief flashes of images. Poison. A room with no windows. No light. Cold.

I pushed those thoughts away. I wasn’t that teenager in the Wolf Fang Pack running from my stepmother and half-sister. I wasn’t starving and half-poisoned, either. My life now was full of light. I knew that.

I didn’t feel… great, but I knew I had felt so much worse. Things had been darker than they were right now, I knew that.

I saw Steven, Bella, and Lilian’s faces flash through my mind but I pushed them away. The fear that I had lived in then seemed to be swarming around me, trying to keep me from remembering, to keep me from thinking about who it was that I was supposed to be calling for.

Whoever it was, I was supposed to be waiting for them to find me.

Him. I thought. I was sure that it was a man I was waiting for. Familiar. Warm. Comforting. Whiskey. Whiskey and black coffee. Books and something bright like citrus—bergamot? It was more of a scent than a taste, so I didn’t think it was lemon or lime. Those felt too young, too… immature. I didn’t know how to describe it.

My nose twitched. The memory of these scents, the way they were altogether set a deep sense of peace and comfort in me.

But none of that was what I was supposed to be remembering right now either. None of that would help me when he came. I tilted my head up, dragging my face across the patch of dry leaves beneath my cheek. I couldn’t see far, but I could see far enough to know that I was deep in a forest that I didn’t recognize.

I didn’t recognize a single type of tree. It smelled like no one had been in this area for a very long time. I turned again until I lay on my stomach. The agony of that movement almost made me throw up, but I clenched my jaw. There was somewhere I had to go. Something I had to do.

Someone I was supposed to be with. He was waiting for me. Even if he were coming for me, even if he were looking for me, I didn’t want to just be lying here when he found me.

I wanted to see him.

I dug my hands into the dry earth and tried to pull as I dug the toes of my shoes into the ground and pushed. I yelped as pain shot up my leg, but I kept pushing. I don’t know how long it took for me to get from where I was towards the little gathering of rocks and a fallen tree, but the light had begun to lighten.

I panted, pulling myself into a sitting position against one of the rocks. I looked down at my feet and realized there were holes in my shoes, huge holes through which I could see blood. My hands were much the same way. The wounds on the front and back of my hands matched, but I wasn’t bleeding heavily.

Maybe I had already been bleeding heavily, and by some grace I was healing.

Maybe it was because of the person that I was supposed to be with.

Why weren’t they here?

“Why aren’t you here?” I asked no one, staring up at the sky. I shivered as a breeze swept over me, and I started to shiver. I was so cold and feverish all at once. “Where are you now?”

I let my eyes drift closed. My body felt so heavy, and I felt myself slipping back into sleep.

Then, the darkness cleared with a bright flash of lightning. I could feel the wind on my face as I looked up from where I was on the ground. There was a giant golden wolf standing at the top of a cliff. People—vampires—darted towards the cliff, weaving in and out of the strikes of lightning.

Someone was pulling me away, trying to get me to higher ground as the ground started to shake. The ground split open, devouring a group of vampires in a flash. Another part of the ground cracked open and out spewed molten, bright silver. Vampires shrieked and skidded to a halt, trying to evade the geyser of silver.

I turned and saw someone with a familiar face, the face of my mother—my sister, I remembered. Her eyes were burning red. Beside her were three others. They were all men. I recognized two of them, but I didn’t recognize the last one. He seemed older than the other two, but somehow, I knew he was so much older than her looked.

All of their eyes were glowing with bloody light. I felt power surging and swelling. A bright wall appeared and rushed around the area, containing the vampires that were trying to get away. Molten silver gushed up and sloshed against the walls. Lightning struck.

Vampires fell into the chasm and screeched as they were turned to ash. There was one vampire in the middle, dressed in armor like something from an old story book. He turned and stood his ground. He said something but I couldn’t make out the words before the ground split and swallowed him.

The silver stopped flowing. The glowing wall vanished, and I heard a cheer of victory echoing over the battlefield as the silver began to cool and level out the cracks in the ground.

I turned my gaze to the golden wolf on the cliff just as he wavered and collapsed.

“Candido!” I cried, waking from the dream. My heart hammered against my chest. It was Candido I had been thinking of.

Was that happening now?

I struggled to get onto my knees, pushing through the pain. I couldn’t let that happen. I crawled as far as I could, but I felt the ground shifting beneath me. I pulled myself onto my feet. Pain shot up my legs as I staggered around, but I kept going.

The forest floor shifted sharply, tumbling me to the ground. I felt myself rolling down a steep hill through mud and dirt. Then, I was falling again. I landed in a pile of leaves. They shifted around me and tumbled me over.

When the ground stopped moving, I lay on my back as a shriek of terror cut through the air. In the distance, I saw the cliff from my vision. I had to get there.

I rolled over and crawled towards a nearby building to get to my feet.

Then, something in the distance exploded and the shockwave blew me back.