Cold Fire [SAMPLE]

[41]

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

A hand on my shoulder, pulling me from sleep. Bright eyes pleading in a sea of darkness. And a face, half cast in a flickering source-less light.

"Five more minutes," I say tiredly, rolling over.

"There's no time," the face says, "you must hurry."

Another hand on my shoulder, pulling me onto my back. I swat at it. "Stop, mum. It's still dark out – let me sleep."

Mum.

"Your time is running out," she says, and I focus on the icy eyes that are so much like my own. "You must hurry before it's too late."

Brown shoulder-length hair growing a shade lighter. Light blue eyes morphing into brown. Pale skin turning tanned. Prominent cheek bones rising from a fleshy valley. In front of my eyes, my fake mother transforms into my real mother, but her message remains the same.

"You must go. Now."

"Go where?"

But the flickering light has winked out of existence and suddenly I'm falling. Down, down, down, time and space collapsing away on either side until there's only the darkness and a steady, slow whoosh...whoosh...whoosh.

Then there's an orb of light shooting through the darkness light a falling star. The sound of something sharp imbedding itself in something soft. And Lauren standing before me, crimson blood dribbling down the side of her mouth.

"It's over," she says, blood bubbling on her tongue as she spits out the words. She falls to her knees, her head crashing into oblivion mere inches from my feet as I scramble backwards.

Then I glimpse the large chunk of metal in her back, still glowing red-hot from where it's been burnt, and the world fades, the glow turning into a red smudge, my friend vanishing from sight, and the darkness thickening and solidifying before everything dissolves.

I'm sweating when I wake, the panic of my dream following me into reality. My heart is beating rapidly in my chest and my breaths are short and loud, screaming in the silent house.

No matter how hard I try, I can't get the images of Lauren's angry bleeding face out of my mind. I can deny it all I want, but the truth remains the same: I feel guilty. Guilty that I came here and allowed her to get close to me. Guilty that I ripped her life out of her hands, even if it wasn't really my doing. That's why she was in my dream. That's why, even as I wake, she continues to haunt my mind.

I roll over and look out the window, fixing my gaze on the dull white world outside, forcing thoughts of my dream and of yesterday into the depths of my mind. Somehow, watching the snow fall helps to calm the panic and erase the nightmarish images, and I let my body sink into the mattress like a dead-weight, feeling as though I'm drifting. Drifting like the soft and quiet snowflakes out my window. Like the breeze fluttering through the trees.

Everything is silent, and the Earth suddenly feels horribly voice of humanity. Not a single sound comes from the house or the world beyond – no car engines, no whistling birds, no hungry cries from a baby woken by the light of day. The world is still. The world is drifting.

And I join the Earth in it's drift.

I don't know what time it is when someone knocks on my door and I don't particularly care. The wind has picked up outside and the faint hum of car engines seeps into the room, reminding me that I'm not alone, even though sometimes it feels like I am.