When Darkness Calls

POV: Lucien Someone was shaking me by the shoulders."Lucien, wake up!" I couldn't move because my chest felt like something was sitting on it. I was standing in a forest, dark trees were all around me, and a woman stood a few feet away in a white gown soaked in blood. "Who are you?" I asked. She didn't answer. Her hair covered her face. I stepped closer. Then she stepped back. "Wait, don't run from me." She lifted her hand. “There was a symbol on her palm. It glowed red. I've never seen it in any of the others.” Then something about it made my stomach drop, as if I'd seen it before somewhere I couldn't remember. She lifted her head just enough for me to see her mouth. "Lucien," she whispered. "How do you know my name?" She opened her mouth to answer, and something hit me from behind hard enough to knock me to my knees. "Wake up!" The forest ripped apart around me. "Boss!" Hands grabbed my arms and my eyes snapped open. I shoved them off before I even knew whose hands they were. "Don't touch me," I said, looking angry and confused at the same time. Everyone backed off at once. I sat there breathing hard, looking around my own room. Damon stood closest to the bed, his jaw tight. Kael was near the door, arms folded, watching me the way he watched everything, like he was already three steps ahead trying to work out what it meant. Mira sat on the edge of the mattress, closer than the other two, her hand still hovering like she wasn't sure it was safe to touch me again. “They were my three trusted friends and the closest thing I had to family. We had been together since childhood.” I'd had this dream for centuries. Ever since the night I killed the woman I loved, the same dream had followed me. The same forest, the same woman in white, the same blood, and the same red symbol in her palm. Every time I woke, the headache came with it. No demon had ever been able to explain why. "You weren't waking up," Mira said quietly. "How long?" "Ten minutes," Damon said. "Maybe more. You were talking and growling. I had to hold the door so the staff wouldn't hear." "Is it the dream again?" Kael asked, though it wasn't really a question. I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes."There was a woman," I said. "I couldn't see her face. She said my name before something hit me." Nobody spoke for a second. "This one felt different," I said. "There was a symbol. It is red in colour and carved somewhere behind her. I've never seen it in any of the others." Mira and Damon exchanged a look. "We'll go through the old texts again," Damon said. "Every one of them this time, not just the ones we've already checked." "You said that last week." "Then we'll say it again until it's true," Kael said, and for once his voice didn't have any edge in it. I got up, and my legs felt unsteady for a second before I forced them still. "Find a solution," I said. "I don't care what it costs. I can't keep doing this." Damon nodded. "We'll find something." Mira didn't say anything, she just watched me with that same worried look she always had after these nights, like she was waiting for the day I didn't wake up at all. By the time I showered and dressed, the pounding behind my eyes had dulled into something I could manage, and Mira knocked on my door to remind me I had work. "You have the shareholder call this morning," she said. "And you look like something dragged you through hell and back." "That's accurate." "Try not to snap at anyone today." "No promises." --- I took the car myself. I needed something to focus on besides the fog still sitting behind my eyes, and the streets were already busy, people rushing to wherever they were rushing to, none of them aware of what walked among them. I was stopped at a light near the school when a car two lanes over swerved without signaling, cutting sharply toward the curb. A girl on a bicycle jerked hard to the side to avoid it, tires skidding against the pavement, her school bag nearly flying off her shoulder. But she didn't fall. She planted both feet down, marched right up to the car window before the driver could even roll it up, and slammed her palm flat against the hood. "Are you blind?" she shouted. "You almost killed me!" The driver, some man in a suit who looked like he had somewhere important to be, waved her off without even rolling down the window. She wasn't done. "Yeah, keep driving, coward!" A few people on the sidewalk laughed. She didn't seem embarrassed at all, just furious, straightening her bag on her shoulder and getting back on her bicycle as if nothing had happened. I found myself watching her longer than I should have. She pedaled past my car a moment later, still muttering something under her breath, school uniform a size too big, hair falling loose from where it had come undone in the scramble. For half a second, her eyes flicked toward my window. Then something in my chest shifted. Not all at once. A loosening, slow, like a knot untying itself one thread at a time. I didn't understand it until she'd already ridden another block, and only then did it hit me. The headache was gone. I checked, actually checked, waiting for it to come crawling back the way it always did. But it didn't. The light turned green, then someone honked behind me, and I still hadn't moved, watching her disappear through the school gates like my body had forgotten how to do anything else. There was nothing supernatural about what I'd just seen. Just a poor girl, with an ordinary uniform and a temper that could probably start a fire. So why did looking at her feel like something I'd been waiting centuries for? Another horn blared behind me, and I finally pulled forward, gripping the wheel harder than necessary. At the office, I called Kael instead of dialing into the shareholder meeting. "I need you to find out everything about a girl," I said. "Boss, we just talked about your dreams two hours ago, and now you want me chasing a girl?" "Just do it, Kael." A pause. "Fine. Give me a description." “I gave him everything I knew: her school uniform, where I'd seen her, and the little I could remember about her.” --- By evening, he was standing in my office holding a folder he didn't look impressed with himself for finding. "Her name's Elena Carter. Eighteen. Go to the school two streets from where you saw her. Her father works in construction, while her mother cleans houses. “Nothing supernatural about her. At least, nothing I could find. Her bloodline looks completely ordinary.” She's just a normal girl with a temper, apparently." I stared at the folder without opening it. "Then why?" I said slowly, "Did the pain in my head disappear the moment I saw her face?" Kael didn't have an answer, and neither did I. I was about to tell him to dig deeper when Damon walked in, and one look at his face told me something was wrong. "We got the summons," he said. My stomach dropped. "When?" "Now. They want you back immediately." He hesitated, and that hesitation scared me more than anything he'd said so far. "Lucien, they used the old name for you. The one they only use when someone's been accused of something." "Accused of what?" "They didn't say. They never say, not before you're already standing in front of them." I looked down at the folder still sitting closed on my desk, at a name I hadn't even read for myself yet, a girl I'd never spoken to and already couldn't stop thinking about. I had no idea what I was walking into, or when I'd be able to come back for her.