The Heart of a Warrior

Chapter 8

Callan

            Something is wrong, I feel it as my eyes peel open, I rub the sleep from them. Grabbing my dagger and colt I stand from the bed in an instant. 

            I can feel her pain and am at her back door in the blink of an eye. The door has a small window that looks into the dining room and part of the kitchen. The rooms are separated by a marble topped island. The stench permeates the air, a demon. A demon has been here.

            My heart is on the verge of beating out of my chest. On the black tile floor, lays a hand. She is on the kitchen floor. Her pale fingers a striking contrast to the onyx tiles. All thoughts of rationale evade my consciousness, the only thing my eyes seek and find is a red hot rage.

            With a flick of my wrist the lock crumbles with little effort and the door barely squeaks as it turns on the hinges. A security system has been triggered and the alarm is shrieking. With a wave of my hand it immediately ceases.

            I drop to my knees beside her, tackling my rage is incredibly difficult, the dagger that had been in my hand now lays on the floor beside my leg, cradling her head in my lap. Her face is bruised and her eye swollen shut. She has what looks like a strangulation mark around her delicate throat. A grisly red impression on her otherwise perfect skin. There is a beast inside me trying to tear through my chest to get to her. I fight to keep a roar from ripping its way from my throat.

            She is breathing and with that my anxiety begins to ebb. I never would have forgiven myself if she died when I was less than 100 yards away and neither would Ava.

            Ava can read people very well and she really seems to like Adelaide, which anyone who knows Ava that really means something. I tap the side of her face that isn’t enveloped by the ugly bruise marring her it.

            “Adelaide,” I coo. “Adelaide, you have to wake up. What happened?”

            Her eyes slowly flutter open. “Callan?” and just like that warmth blossoms in my chest. Hearing her say my name makes me feel a pleasantness that I shouldn’t feel. Especially not for a human.

            “Callan, what happened?” She tries to scramble away from me. Fear in her eyes is apparent. Did she think I did this to her? I could never. Just the thought of my touch causing her this kind of pain brings me to want to spill the contents of my stomach all over the floor.

            I don’t know how to explain to her how I knew something was wrong. The stench of the demon fills my lungs and I do my best not to let her see the revulsion on my face. The emotions rushing through her blue orbs crash like a hurricane.

            Finally, there is recognition, as the nights events fill her mind. “It doesn’t make any sense. I must be going crazy. How ironic. The psychiatrist is losing her mind.” She laughs with not a hint of humor, completely forgetting the question she had asked me.

            She must have realized I’m not a threat to her and relief floods over me, she inches closer before she goes to stand, her legs wobbling as she does. I reach down and scoop her up into my arms. Her living room is off to the right, she doesn’t protest when I scoop her into my arms and carry her into the cozy space.

            Warmth floods my chest at our close proximity. Her scent relieving me of the demon stench. My c**k starts to lengthen and it’s difficult to conceal my physical attraction to her. This is not the time for my body to react to hers in such a way. Get it together Callan, you are no longer a prepubescent boy anymore.

            I walk her into her living room, placing her gently on the bright red sectional that almost matches the color of her hair. My fury at the fact that she’d had a demon in her home and my body’s inappropriate reaction to her was giving me emotional whiplash. She leans her head back into the cushion and runs her fingers through her thick hair before settling her eyes on me.

            “Do you remember what happened?” calmly sitting beside her at a safe distance, angling my body towards her and leaning forward with my elbows on my knees.

            “I must’ve fallen and hit my head, that’s the only thing that makes sense. I had to have imagine” she trails off speaking more to herself than me.

            “Imagined what?” Whatever she is remembering I’m positive she hadn’t just imagined it.

            “I’ll sound crazy, I’m sure I just hit my head.”

            “What do you think you imagined? I can guarantee I will not think you sound crazy.” My breath comes out steadier than my emotions feel. Whatever demon was in here I am going to tear to shreds.

            “Um, well, I went to sleep, and I had a” she paused the blood draining from her face. “nightmare.” She speaks slowly, barely above a whisper. “I was being attacked in my dream but before the nightmare was over I woke up in a cold sweat, I touched my face and it hurt, I felt an intense pain in my head, so I went to the bathroom to see if I could figure out why there was so much pain and my face looked like this.”

            The reality of the demon that attacked her hits me full force, the demon is literally called a Nightmare. They can easily slip into a person’s room undetected. They then sit on their victims chest and feed off of nightmares. Usually there is no physical damage done unless the nightmare is a memory. People are fed off of by Nightmares frequently and the person just remembers a bad dream. Memories of traumas are much more powerful than nightmares the mind creates. The demon can actually force your body and your mind back to that place and time.

            Though it doesn’t make any sense. When a Nightmare feeds off a human memory the trauma runs so deep mentally that they are nothing more than a shell. A Nightmare didn’t even occur to me because she should be catatonic if it fed off one of her memories. The physical trauma would be the last thing to worry about, the body can heal rather quickly, the mind usually does not.

            I don’t know what fuels my rage more, the fact that a Nightmare had slipped into her room or that the nightmare she had been having had actually occurred in the past.