BLOOD LEGACIES

I flashed my eyes open. The clock ticking sealed my ears, dousing out the rest of the world. I tried to ground myself from my temporal frozen state until my body flinched, with enough deep concentration, my body gained response and I could suddenly breathe properly.

The memories of my dream suddenly swamped me and it got me in deep thought if that was just a dream or a memory—It was too real to be called a dream and too unnatural to be real. I didn’t know how to explain it but the memory of staring into that creature’s soulless eyes was unsettling to the point it felt like those nightmares you had as a child.

Where creatures form in your head and make you think you’re trapped with them with no escape.

It felt exactly like that.

And I’m not even sure I was out of it yet. I’m still mentally there and it took everything to move my body from that one position to curve into a ball and silently pray I don’t start seeing things.

I felt chills in my body, my teeth rattling together from an unknown ghostly chill. Storming me from the inside out and putting me back in that position—when I saw Tessa covered in blood.

I squeezed my eyes shut and buried myself more into the covers, hoping to forget about it even if just for a moment, and be sane enough to collect myself and think of the next action to take. But the strong smell of smoke distracted me.

Smoke?

"Did you have a bad dream baby girl?"

I pulled the covers away and sat up with wide eyes. Just at the corner of the room, there was a trail of smoke and a burnt red dot. The shadow it came from was massive, able to take half of the room into his aura. My room was suddenly too small and my breath shortened momentarily.

I opened my mouth but I was rendered speechless not until I closed them and opened them back again to get the word out. "Dace,"