Chapter 25
My thoughts stubbornly refused to string together, like they had to wade through a thick fog before amalgamating into something that still wasn't entirely coherent. My eyes found no solace in the relative darkness beneath my arm. Light seared through my closed eyelids regardless, coercing me back into consciousness. Only when it became impossible to ignore did I reluctantly blinked myself awake.
Where was I?
I didn't recognise the place, but I knew I had to be in a hospital. Rows of plain beds crossed from one end of the long room to the other, although, unlike how I'd pictured typical muggle hospitals to be, this one possessed undeniably magical elements. Folded bits of paper zoomed in through the door and out the window into the midnight sky, and one of the many beds was even making itself, sheets folding and pillows fluffing up before my very eyes.
St. Mungo's. There was no other explanation.
Still, it didn't feel right; the room felt too empty, but it was also the only thing that made any sense.
Abruptly, the fog dissipated and everything came back in a flash: Nikolas slumping over in his chair, Frey collapsing beside me while I crawled towards the door for help.
That, I swore, was the last straw. A person could only have their food tampered with so many times before they snapped and started carrying around a flask with their own personal, unpoisoned water supply at all times. As for food, I needed to start paying a lot more attention to herbology class, because I was looking at a plant based diet, a diet of only food sourced and prepared by myself for myself.
Actually, that sounded like too much work.
With a jolt, I broke free from the rolling lull of my thoughts to realise I wasn't as alone as I initially thought. Resting, unconscious on the cot closest to the window lay a boy with soft blond waves obscuring his unconscious face. I could have recognised him anywhere.
Thomas.
I threw back the sheets to my own bed, gratified I was at least fully clothed, even if it was just a plain white hospital garb, and made to hasten to his side when a noise growing down the hall stopped me in my tracks.
Frey burst through the open door, his whole visage brightening when he caught site of me. "I knew I'd find you around here somewhere. Saved all the troublemaking for my arrival, I hope."
"You're here, too? I thought I'd finally get some peace," I replied, turning from my brother to meet him halfway. I slowed to a halt just out of reach, squinting up at him.
"I can't blame you for staring," he said with a lighthearted wink, "but really? You might make me blush."
I'd been so focused on his face, trying to deduce what about it seemed off, that his words didn't register. "You don't happen to have the time, do you?"
"Sorry, I left the time in my other set of robes."
"Ha. Ha." I waited, expectant, until he relented.
"Not one to be easily satisfied. I can respect that," he said, brushing his hair back with a hand. "I'm not actually sure. Maybe noon?"
My heart sank and I nodded absently, my eyes drifting back out the window into the darkness beyond. As expected.
Believing me distracted, Frey reached for something tucked in the waistband of his own blindingly white clothes, but I was faster. I closed the distance between us in one long stride, my hand shooting forth to pull the object free, and then thrust it deep into his gut again and again, until the scalpel he'd smuggled into the room was slick with blood. His blood. It poured over my fingers, warm and sticky, dying my white gown red.
As I stabbed him one final time, driving the tiny blade up behind his ribcage, I leaned forward to whisper in his ear, "You almost had me this time."
I didn't wait to watch him fall. I ducked around his outstretched arm and sprinted for the hall, wiping the scalpel clean on my clothes as I went. I rounded the corner out the doorway, running headlong into someone's chest. The scalpel slid like butter into their stomach where we connected. I fell back into the room, the tiny blade skittering away across the floor, just out of reach.
Above me, Cassius swayed heavily on his feet, shocked. Blood dribbling in a thin stream from his lips, garbling his words, he uttered, "Why?" before collapsing over me.
"You aren't real," I hissed, more to myself than to him, only for nothing came out. I tried again, but not the faintest gust of wind passed my lips.
I knew this dream. This nightmare. I'd lived it a hundred times, I'd seen the same trends far too often to mistake it for reality. Though the cast and setting varied, the plot never deviated. The first nightmare over the summer almost left me catatonic. I soon learned the quickest way to wake up was to see them through to their bitter end my own way, grisly as it was. Now, after living this dozens of times over, I felt no sting anymore. No moments hesitation before killing. And why should I? It was only a dream. Dreams ended eventually, even nightmares.
At least, that's what I had to keep telling myself.
I wasn't a psychologist or a psychiatrist or therapist or a seer or any other type of holier-than-though dream interpreter, and I didn't need to be to deduce what was the source of these nightmares. Obviously I had abandonment issues and trauma from that muggle trying to kill me months ago. I didn't need a dream to tell me that much.
Ice pricked at the tips of my fingers. I shoved Cass—the fake one— off me and pulled my arm away from the encroaching cold. My hand came back black, completely coated in a sticky, oil-like substance that had begun to pool behind me and spread to most of the room. The black faded to crimson at its unmoving source: Frey.
I sighed, more annoyed than traumatized at the obvious implication that the room was filling up with blood— far more blood than one human body could hope to host. The chill stretched to my thigh, where the same dark ooze mingled with a separate stream leaking from Cassius.
Before I could so much as regain my footing, Professor Aragon flew around the corner, wand in hand. "What have you done?" he gasped, surveying the two corpses in horror. I mouthed the words with him as he said, "Even I cannot love a murderer, not even you."
It wasn't always him who said it, sometimes it was Lyra, other times Cass or Damon. At one point, even Abiel.
The professor aimed the tip of his wand to my forehead reminding me I was unarmed. I padded around in the viscous black blood now rising up past my wrist, blindly feeling for the lost scalpel.
Only the arrival of yet another of my potential killers saved me. As Altair burst in, as dark and glowering as ever, Aragon's attention wavered shifted for a fraction of a second, giving me enough time to swat his wand away and tackle him. We wrestled for the wand, and although he was undoubtedly stronger, the element of surprise emboldened me.
The sight wasn't pretty. It was grisly and disgusting and brutal and I didn't care, even as the black blood steadily rising around us splashed across my cheek and into my mouth, tasteless in this dreamscape. I didn't care as I slammed my mentor into the ground again and again until he stopped moving and added to the bodies dying the chamber black.
I let the wand fall away. I'd made the mistake of trying to use magic in another of these dreams and it never worked out, possibly because I could never speak out the words for a spell.
"You're unlov—" Altair began, before I punched him clear in the nose, cutting him off.
He crashed backwards into Lyra, Nikolas, and Damon, who were pressing in behind him. I wrung out my hand, attempting unsuccessfully to wave the pain away. Not nearly enough force to knock them all over, unfortunately.
I whipped around for something— anything— I could use as a weapon. Theoretically, I could have just let them all kill me and hope I'd wake up, but I wasn't confident in that option. What if I didn't wake up? What if dying in a dream translated into life, or what if I just suffered until I finally awoke hours later? I didn't want to take the chance. I'd never lost before, and I wasn't about to start now.
I splashed through the blood, now past my knee and rising at accelerated speed, intent on using the wrought iron candlestick on one of the bedside tables as a blunt force weapon, but a tug on my ankle had me crashing beneath the rising tide. Liquid filled my nostrils, my mouth. My vision flooded black before I managed to catch myself on my knees.
I searched for whatever may have tripped me, but it was impossible to see beneath the rising tide. Only when the grip tightened did I realise what it had to be: a hand. Cass's hand, if I properly recalled where I'd left each of their bodies. Dead, but not quite. Not here, where nothing had to make sense and bodies didn't need to stay dead.
Just as I kicked myself free with my other foot, sharp nails pressed into my scalp— Lyra's, if I had to take a guess— fisting through my hair, and shoving my head back under.
They intended to drown me.
I dug my own nails into her wrist, trying to pressure her into releasing, to no avail. I wasn't strong enough.
If this was reality, I would have tried playing dead in the hopes she'd call it a done deal, but how could I trick my own brain into buying it? My own brain, that had constructed this exquisite torture, would call bullshit on me in a second.
A crushing force pressed on my back until my legs collapsed further, laying me flat on my stomach. I couldn't see. I couldn't hear or breathe or even hold myself up in the freezing chamber of oil-thick blood.
My thoughts fogged over without air, my limbs growing heavy and weak.
And then, as I attempted one last time to push myself up against the weight of Damon holding me down, my fingers pricked upon something sharp.
Hardly a moment later it was in my hand, both hand and blade flying up to drive through Lyra's arm. Predictably, she released, and I managed to contort myself just enough to stab Damon in the clavicle where his shoulder met his neck.
I burst into fresh air, sputtering, purging the liquid from my system. Alongside Nikolas and Lyra, Abiel and one of my roommates, Pranavi, surged forward. They weren't important, though. Behind them, that man, the one I'd been waiting for, the muggle who'd nearly killed me because he thought I was witch, moved past. Granted, he'd been correct in that assumption, but that didn't excuse murder.
And so I'd gotten him murdered, instead.
Our situations were entirely different. I hadn't sought his death.
I speared Pranavi through the neck, and Nikolas in the chest, but somehow the scalpel caught on his ribs and refused to break out. The last I saw of him before he went under was him struggling fruitlessly to pull the thin blade free, and then he— and my only weapon— were gone below the nearly shoulder deep pool.
I decided to repay Lyra her favor, grabbing a fist full of her hair and dragging her under. She thrashed, but with only one usable arm she didn't stand a chance.
Abiel wasn't even worth the trouble, not with that muggle around, currently wading his way to Thomas.
My gut told me I needed to get there first, as it did every night. I knew what would happen if I didn't, I could see it in mind's eye. His thickly calloused hands trailing up my brothers neck, squeezing the life away, like he'd attempted to do to me.
The black liquid seeped up past my neck, forcing me to tread water just to remain breathing. Abiel taught me how to swim in the lake our first year when he'd been my only friend, before we'd drifted apart, me to my band of hooligans and him to his books. Given his stern, perfectionistic nature, even at eleven, I'd say I was actually pretty good. He never would have allowed me out of the ice-cold water otherwise. That didn't matter here, though, because the harder I pressed forward, the harder the current seemed to push back. There shouldn't have been a current at all, yet I couldn't get enough traction to go forward and all I could do was watch as the muggle reached my brother, who floated serenely atop an inky blanket of blood.
Desperation mounting, I kicked harder, moving only what felt like a a mere handspan a minute. I pushed past body after body drifting up to the top, as well as sheets and pillows and tiny bits of paper dyed black, past Abiel, clawing at my back, past the professor's discarded wand—
Actually, on second thought, not past the wand. I lunged for it as it drifted away, elbowing Abiel in the face in the process.
I felt like I existed in a place outside of time, like I was only going half as fast as the world around me
The muggle wrapped his fingers around Thomas's neck.
I wrapped mine around the wand.
Staring deep into my eyes from across the room, he said, "Witch," and tightened his grip.
Staring right back at his, a stark ocean blue, I levelled the wand on him, struggling past my muteness, past my silence until I thought the words would cleave my vocal cords in two, and said, "Avada Kadava."
The words echoed two-fold, once in the dream, and once out of it, whispered from my actual mouth, jerking me into a bizarre state betwixt sleep and awakeness.
I reached them, an expression of immortal surprise on the man's face, one that would never leave it, as he drifted away. A slight pinkness adorned Thomas's throat where the man's hands had been, but that wasn't all. Frowning, because this wasn't a part of the usual "routine", I tugged at the chain tucked under his shirt. My clue from the first class, the egg, dropped into my hands and—
And I woke up.