Chapter Sixteen – Faith

 

Sam’s lips were soft against mine, but somehow insistent and hard. And, God, his hands felt just as good on my body as I’d imagined they would, the way the calluses of his palms clashed so exquisitely with the softness of my skin as they ran across my stomach beneath the front of my blouse. His tongue was hot on mine as they danced together, both of us groaning into each other’s mouths with want and need.

His teeth nipped at my lower lip, sending a thrill through me.

Somehow, at the back of my mind, I knew this was all just a dream. That I’d had this dream before, and I was having it again. But this time, it just seemed so real. So solid, like a cloud that had drifted down to earth and become concrete. I knew it wasn’t possible, but the hands on my body, and the lips on mine, awoke some need within me for it to be true, for it to be reality.

Sam pulled back for a moment. “Oh Faith,” he whispered in a husky voice full of lust and want, “you’re such a peach.”

My eyes traveled up, locked with those of the man of my dreams.

I screamed as I stepped back from his arms, covering my mouth with a trembling hand. I tried to speak, but my words seemed to have evaporated from my lips.

Where I’d expected Sam’s cool blue eyes with their intense depths to be, were instead the shining black orbs of the crow at my window earlier in the night. Sam opened his mouth, but instead of his smooth, deep voice emanating, a tuft of oily black feathers exploded into the air.

I stumbled backwards, tripping and twisting over my own dream feet. I tumbled backwards onto the ground as, over me, the feathers began to shift and change, began to grow wings and claws and beaks of their own. More feathers sprouted from them as they became crows themselves, their wings blending and becoming one with the darkness as they flapped madly all around me.

I crabwalked back from Crow Sam, my arms and legs trembling with fear as a cold sweat broke out over me.

Sam lurched at me, feathers molting from his body, fluttering to the ground as strips of his skin began to peel away from his arms and chest. Fingers hooked into claws, he reached out for me. As he did, his face began to shimmer and change, like a mirage passing over his features. Gone were his handsome features, his strong jaw. Instead, there were thick sideburns and a mustache, heavy features and a furrowed brow.

All thoughts but ones of survival were shoved aside as I screamed again in terror. But, this time, nothing came. Instead, I began to gag, began to choke, as feathers erupted from my mouth in an explosion of inky black. I continued my backwards scramble, even as I turned my head to the side and continued to cough out feathers.

“No!” I shouted between retches as more and more of the feathers exploded from my mouth and began to fill the air in front of my eyes.

“Faith!” shouted Sam’s voice, coming to me as if from another world.

“Faith!” screamed Veronica. “Wake the fuck up, girl!”

And then I was back in the world, being shaken like a baby’s rattle by Sam and Veronica both, the covers and sheets of my bed twisted around my arms and legs.

“What the hell’s going on?” I gasped as I frantically looked around the room, half expecting to see crows and their black feathers filling the room. “What happened? What are you two doing in here?”

“It was just a dream, girl,” Veronica said as she stroked my damp hair. “Just a dream.”

No, no it wasn’t. I knew it wasn’t. There was something else underlying it all, some kind of horrible intent behind it. An intelligence.

“You’re okay now, though,” Sam said, his perfectly clear blue eyes staring down into mine, his eyebrows furrowed in concern. “You’re all right.”

I smiled up at him as I reached out to touch his arm. I’d never been so happy to see someone in all my life as I was to see Sam at that moment. Just his presence seemed to bring a lightness to my being, allowing me to breathe a little more fully and deeply than I ever had before. Despite the fact that the horror of the dream continued to linger at the back of my mind.

Because, whatever had appeared to me as Sam in my dream, I somehow knew it wasn’t really him.

As I touched his hard, muscled arm, though, I realized he was holding something in his hand. I glanced down.

“Is that an ax?”

He winced a little and glanced away, breaking our moment. “Uh…”

“We can explain,” Veronica said, herself cringing.

And then I looked over at my broken door they’d chopped through, at the way it had swung lamely against my bedroom wall. It looked like a beast of some sort had chewed through it, like a mama bear had decided it was threatening her children. I looked at the splinters of wood that covered the floor of my bedroom in a half-circle around the doorway.

“Landlord’s gonna be pissed,” I said, not bothering to look at either of them.