(FREE TO READ) Bad Moon

chapter 54; bad moon

She was on fire, Anastasia.

She stood ankle-deep in the crisp white snowbanks, burning like a beacon. Wind broke her flame, but it fought the gale until it was bright and glorious again. A sweltering star in the nexus of a dead and frozen world.

It wasn't his place; there were no fir trees. Instead he was in her dream. He was in her place. He didn't know how, but he could feel it. This world belonged to Anna, in life and after.

It was cold here, but different. An icy tundra, not a snowy mountaintop. Where his world was clustered with canopies of evergreen trees, hers was unboundedly open—so vast and ethereal and endless. An island of nothing beneath the milky way. A twinkling opal sea of celestial lights, ribboning above in the perpetual sky. And just like his world, it was peaceful.

And she looked so happy, standing in front of him and smiling—one deep divot in her pinkish cheeks. So happy while the fire consumed her.

It wasn't reality, what he saw. Maybe that was why Jaylin didn't panic. Because her flesh didn't burn and flake, her hair didn't flare into crisps. The snow didn't even melt around her. Instead she turned to smoke, from her ankles onward. Dark smoke, deluging slowly like ink into water, turning her to nothing one horrible inch at a time.

But she was happy, so happy. And she didn't say anything, Anna. She just reached out for Jaylin's cheeks and he let her hold them—cold in her phantom hands. And then the fire consumed those too, and Jaylin watched her lessen from his world until the last flame burned out and Anna was gone. Gone to the endless sky.

But the sound of a roaring fire still whispered to him. He could feel the heat of it on his face. Jaylin's dream sunk away to darkness and he emerged to a different kind of light, and when he opened his eyes, there was fire again—this time contained in masonry and trapped behind a metal cage.

He traced the mortar between bricks until he could escape his sleepy labyrinth. And when he could truly focus, Jaylin found himself gazing into the photographs that crowded the fireplace mantle. His eyes traveled the frames until he found a face he recognized.

Curly-headed and grinning emphatically, a young Alexander hung from the branch of a pine tree, reaching for the largest cone he could get his hands on. Lisa was in the frame beside him—thirty years younger, slim and bright and somehow so colorful beneath the monochromatics. There were some of Mr. Sigvard, some of family pets that had come to pass, some of grandparents—decrepitly old and looking somewhat begrudging beneath with their Mona Lisa smiles. But none of Quentin and none of Anna, and it felt incomplete without them.

Jaylin could smell old blood before the door had even opened—and once it did, he could recognize the muscle structure of Quentin's body stepping through, even with a towel over his face. His hands were in the cotton, tousling his hair dry, and Jaylin dragged himself away from his abdominal muscles long enough to catch wounds in his arms. Not clean cuts, but serrated lesions that would never heal the same. Instead they would scar the perfect skin beneath. It made him sad, the sight. Such beautiful skin.

When he pulled the towel off, Quentin met his eyes in fleeting surprise. And then that smile broke through like sun through storm clouds. "You're awake. I couldn't feel your heartbeat."

"You couldn't?" Jaylin asked—or tried. Something faulted in his vocal cords and his voice only came out part-way, hoarse and harsh like television static. "What time is it?" Jaylin rasped.

"It's six in the evening," Quentin said, wandering over to a black sack that rested by the fireplace mantel. He pulled the zipper open and dug inside for something. "It's going to start soon, Jaylin."