The Art of Blood and Power (Book 2 in The Gifted Trilogy)

13- An Eye for an Eye

I am standing in the middle of a field surrounded by tall blades of grass. When I spin around myself, I can see Porter's barn at the edge of the field. I was in the Collins' field. I was back in my old village.

It didn't surprise me when Nox suddenly appeared beside me, donning his signature suit of all black, the black veins still scarring his face. He wasn't looking at me, rather he was looking onwards towards the rest of my village with a satisfied smirk. "So these are the slums you come from?" he hummed, almost to himself.

I shook my head, trying to close off his voice. "You're not real" I whispered to myself, reminding myself over and over that this was just another nightmare.

Suddenly Nox began to hum the melody of a song. My ears perked at the tune. It was the song I had once sung during the Garner when me and the other girls were having a memorial for the girls that had previously died. It was an old song, practically a nursery rhyme, but when Nox began to sing the words, I quickly realized that he'd made his own rendition of a verse. In a deep and raspy voice, he sung:

Little wolf, better start running ahead

Your village is in shambles and your kind is all dead

Does it hurt to know they suffered for your price?

Maybe this will remind you next time to think twice

    "What?" I whispered, my chest constricting at the looming threat in his song. Nox simply looked over at me and smiled. At the tilt of his head, I watched the village before me as a sudden mist of shadows engulfed everything to the point where I couldn't see five feet in front of me.

    "No, no, no, this isn't real," I muttered to myself. Suddenly, the looming silence was broken by a child's scream. Other screams and cries followed closely behind, each coming from a different direction. I tried to move forward, to find the source of the pleas and torturous cries, but every time I took a few steps in one direction, another scream would sound as if it was coming from right behind me.

    "Nox!" I screamed, and immediately he appeared beside me. I shook my head, muttering to myself. "This is just a dream, tell me this is just a dream."

    "Oh, Wren" he sighed, stepping closer. I was frozen in fear and shock as he wrapped his arms around me in a cold embrace that sent shivers down my skin. I felt his lips brush my ear and strained to hear him over the sounds of the hundreds of people around me screaming.

    "Why do you think I made a point to come visit you tonight?" He asked, a wicked grin on his lips. "You took something from me. I wanted to return the gesture."

    My body snapped forward and was stopped from crashing onto the floor of the carriage at the last second by a pair of hands. I gasped through heavy breaths as I clutched Cicero tightly. "Oh, stars. He didn't. He couldn't have."

    "Shh, it's okay. Wren, it was just a bad dream. Calm down."

    I shook my head, gulping down breaths. "No, no it wasn't a dream. It was a warning."

    In the flash of a moment I had poked my head through the window of the carriage along with half of my body as I clutched the carriage's frame to steady myself. "Kess!" I screamed into the mass of dark figures traveling in front of the carriage.

    Immediately, the rider at the very front of the line stopped, turning his horse around and galloping towards me. My shaky hands fumbled with the carriage lock as Cicero tried to pull me back inside. "Wren," he tried to soothe me. "You need to calm down, it was just a dream."