A/N:
Released on July 18, 2018

Sorry about this chapter...

Have fun reading :)

Word Count: 2315

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Chapter 23: Ignoring a Series of Tragic Events

When Zane and I went back inside the house and down the musty old stairs, we saw Ash lying on the couch with his eyes closed.

It had been at least thirty minutes since our fight, but it seemed like it just happened. And yet, I still didn't get the swirl of guilt in my stomach.

Ash had to be faking sleep. The only sign of that was that he wasn't breathing.

He didn't technically need to breathe, but it's a reflex for vampires to breathe when they're awake and when they're asleep because their bodies are used to that.

I didn't bother Ash's fake sleep, rather wanting to opt out of another argument and some of the blood that he had left out for us.

Zane took hold of my hand, almost making it feel like I was on a leash because he thought I might attack Ash again, but I didn't mind because I was still feeling indifferent about everything.

After fighting with vampire hunters, a stray vampire, my sister Lucy, and Ash all in one day, I didn't have the energy to fight anymore. I just wanted to sleep.

I told Zane that I wanted to go to bed, so he followed my lead.

I grabbed my bag of extra clothes and changed in the bathroom, putting on a soft shirt and yoga shorts.

Zane stripped down to his boxers and a tank top styled shirt, already in bed when I got out of the bathroom.

I settled on my side of the bed, but couldn't get comfortable.

I glanced at my boyfriend, wondering if I should close the distance between us. His arm was behind his head, acting as his pillow, and his eyes were closed.

Maybe being closer to him would help me sleep. Before meeting Zane, I hadn't slept in a bed with somebody else since I was young and Lucy would come to my room when she had nightmares.

I certainly hadn't ever had someone to hold me at night. But things change.

Zane must have felt my gaze on him because his head turned, his cheek brushing against the pillow and his dark eyes meeting mine as he moved his arm to rest it on the covers.

"Can't sleep?" He guessed, shifting slightly to face me better.

I shook my head no in answer, just staring at him and marveling at the fact that Zane had always been there for me.

"Come here." Zane offered softly, gesturing with his hand to usher me closer.

I couldn't help the grin that spread across my face at how he knew what I needed.

I scooted over until Zane wrapped his right arm around me, pulling me in so I could rest my head on his chest.

He stroked my hair as my breathing slowed, the calming sensations sending me to sleep faster than would've happened if I had stayed on my side of the bed.

~*~

The woods flashed before my eyes, too blurred to tell exactly where I was at. The sun was low in the sky, the setting sun blinding me.

I sensed other people were with me, but I didn't see who. I only started to really see things when we stopped.

We were in a small open area dotted with trees, so it couldn't really be called a field. I paid our surroundings no attention, only impatiently listening to the voice beside me.

"That way." A hand pointed in front of us and slightly to the right, going along with the familiar voice.

I adjusted the strap of my bag on my shoulder, readying myself for a long run.

A yell made my head spin, now standing in the middle of the same area we were in.

My head automatically snapped over to find the cause of the sound, seeing Ash on the ground with his face scrunched up in pain.

The smell of fresh blood made me dizzy, and suddenly Zane was saying something.

"How did you not see a bear trap?" That entailed an argument between the two, but I couldn't hear anything but a strange buzzing in my ears as a headache ensued.

I stumbled back a step and the world seemed to shift.

Ash was still on the ground but with a hunter standing over him. In fact, there were hunters coming at us from all sides.

Where did they come from?

I threw out a mental punch to the one standing over my friend so that Ash could get away.

An image of the hunter slumped against a tree flashed before my eyes, but my gaze stayed on Ash.

"I'm good!" He yelled as he began to stand.

Something poked at my back uncomfortably, but I was too busy digging through my bag for a weapon.

I grabbed the only thing I could, a blood packet, and jumped away from the tree I was hiding behind.

The blood bag was suddenly flying through the air and hitting a hunter.

A gun flew from his hand as blood exploded all of him and the others near him.

But it wasn't going to stop them.

A sharp pain in my shoulder spun me around. Another in my back sent me falling face first to the ground.

Then I was somehow on my knees screaming at someone to run. My eyes were blurred over so badly that I couldn't tell who it was.

I caught a glimpse of my hand reaching forward and felt myself use telepathic force to hurt a hunter.

"Thanks, Alicia!" Zane spouted out. He had lost his backpack at some point, but so had I.

My eyes finally adjusted so that I could see him, face bloodied and shirt ripped, turning to fight another hunter.

"Zane!" I yelled to warn him about the hunter sneaking up behind him.

He spun to fight the guy, so fast that he had to have already known the hunter was coming.

I knocked out the two guys he was previously fighting, using my typical telepathic sleeping spell.

I swore I heard bone cracking as Zane fought off a hunter, but I didn't see him, and I shouldn't have been paying so much attention to him because he was taking care of himself.

"Ash!" Zane yelled in a panic. I spun around to help, the world seeming to spin with me, only to see the end of everything.

I was too far away to physically help and not fast enough to use telepathy. I couldn't think straight anyway.

A silver blade sliced through the air, through flesh like it was nothing, through Ash like it was nothing.

Even from fifty feet away I could tell that it was in his heart.

A scream filled the air as I tried to run forward. I felt sluggish, too empty to do a single thing.

The man with the knife shoved Ash, watching him stumble backward a few steps with a cough, blood running from his mouth.

The man leaned down to pick up his gun while Ash continued to cough up blood, legs wobbling, unable to hold his weight much longer.

I was almost there, then I wasn't. I was on the ground with pain shooting through my shoulder, clawing at the ground to get to Ash.

I heard someone call for me, but it was garbled and easily ignored as panic clutched at my undead heart.

A gunshot went off and my vision blurred again, only clearing when someone yanked me up off of the ground.

I could still hear someone screaming, but that time I recognized it as my own broken voice.

"Snap out of it and help me!" Zane screamed at me.

But my vision had zeroed in on Ash unmoving on the ground, his unseeing eyes set on something in the distance.

Another sharp pain ran across the right side of my face. My boyfriend's face was swimming in my unsteady vision, and then it wasn't.

I was screaming his name and falling to the ground beside his unconscious body.

Pain exploded throughout me until I was staring at the sky.

I somehow had the strength to turn over, seeing Zane being carried away. I tried to use my telepathy, but I didn't have anything left.

"Get rid of the dead one. We're only taking these two." A voice came through the darkness that was encircling me, a drug filled haze overtaking me, allowing me to do only one thing.

Mourn the loss of my friend in my fading mind.

Then that became too hard and I couldn't think at all. I was floating in a dark place all alone.

Someone tugging on my arm was the only thing I felt besides my broken heart.

~*~

"Alicia." Ash's voice snapped me out of sleep, scaring me far more than I'd like to admit.

"What? What's happening?" I gasped, fear evident in my tone and the way I jumped out of bed.

Zane shot up as well, eyes wide and arms up, ready for a fight.

"Nothing. I was just coming to wake you up, but you were in a pretty deep sleep." Ash explained calmly.

My eyes scanned him for any sign of injuries, finding no blood in his black hair or on his clothes. I felt so relieved that tears filled up in my eyes.

I glanced away quickly, unable to breathe, hoping he didn't notice my strange behavior.

He died. Or I thought he died. And Zane...

I looked him over and saw nothing out of the ordinary, except that his blonde hair was ruffled from sleep and he seemed too tired to be awake.

"Everything okay?" Zane muttered, scrubbing his face with his hand.

It was all a dream. A nightmare, really. They're both okay. We're all okay.

"Yeah, I just want us to get out of here soon." Ash stated, causing panic to stir in my chest like trouble was ahead.

"We've been here for too long. We need to get packed and leave." He added as I breathed in deeply to steady myself again.

I agreed instantly, afraid that the nightmare might have been a prophetic one.

When Zane first told me about those sort of dreams, that were caused by telepathy, he told me that it was impossible to predict when they would come true.

At first, his dreams came true weeks after having them. After a while, events happened a few days after the dream.

The only prophetic dream I had occurred a few days after I had it.

So if we hurried up and left Topeka, we could avoid the fight altogether.

Which meant I didn't have to tell anyone about the horrible nightmare, because it wouldn't be happening.

"Alicia, are you okay?" Ash asked, a concerned frown on his face.

But he wasn't concerned enough to come closer. I couldn't forget that we were fighting. I almost did because of the dream.

I didn't know what I'd do if Ash died, and having to see all of that messed with my head.

I wouldn't worry about it though because we were avoiding it by leaving early.

"I'm just tired. How long were we asleep?" I questioned, wondering if it was the nightmare that was making me tired.

"About four and a half hours. The sun will be rising soon." Ash answered, causing me to want to fall right back asleep.

"I'm going to get dressed." I said over my shoulder as I ran out of the room.

I just needed a few minutes alone to analyze the dream.

I couldn't ignore it yet because I couldn't get it out of my head. So maybe thinking about it for a few minutes and gathering as much info as I could would help me get over it.

We were in the woods, and we were leaving. Ash was leading the way.

Besides watching him die during the fight, the most disturbing thing was the fact that I was paying more attention to Zane, when Ash was the one who needed my help.

Ash died because I was watching over Zane, who wasn't as injured as Ash and not in as much danger.

I shook my head to clear my thoughts of guilt, resting my hands on the bathroom sink and staring at my reflection.

I get dressed before thinking about the nightmare again.

One thing that stuck out was how there were a bunch of hunters with guns, but they weren't using real bullets.

They were some sort of tranquilizer guns, because I could feel the "bullets" slowing me down more than they were hurting me when I was hit.

And getting hit with enough of them sent me into that crazy darkness where I couldn't move or even think.

They were probably the reason I couldn't use telepathy after a while.

Another thing I noticed was that the dream was skipping around, like I hadn't seen the whole thing. That only worried me further.

I forced myself to remember it from the beginning, just in case I missed something.

There were a bunch of unmemorable trees, which I couldn't really see because of the sun in my eyes.

I had thought it was the sun setting, but my eyes blurred over a lot throughout the dream.

In fact, I couldn't remember most of the the surroundings in the dream.

Then I realized that I didn't need to remember where we were. I knew that we were still in Topeka, and the sun was setting.

So as long as we got out of Kansas far before the sun went down, we would be avoiding the fight.

I smiled at my accomplishment, having figured out how to stop the prophetic dream from coming true.

And that way, I didn't even have to consider telling Zane and Ash about the nightmare.