The Marradith Ryder Series, Part 58
My dreams sometimes have meaning. I wish that I’d paid better attention to this one:
I ran barefoot through the woods.
Twigs snapped beneath my feet, but I kept going. The hem of my red dress flowed out behind me, and I had to stop twice to pull it free from low hanging branches.
The second time I heard the silk rip, and I wrapped the piece of cloth around my hand. Not like that would help, because my dress was ruined.
I felt him near. Heat ran up my spine.
A claw swiped at my back and I fell down, my face getting scraped against hard earth and dry leaves.
I rolled over onto my back and reach for the silver knife that should have been strapped to my thigh. But it wasn’t there.
The werewolf showed his teeth, its copper eyes shining like new metal.
”Fiona…!” It roared.
***************
The bleating of the alarm clock shook me from my dream.
“Marradith,” Justin whispered and reached past me to silence the alarm.
I squinted and looked up at the clock, the big red symbols screaming like capital letters in an email: 4:30AM.
I did the math, as well as I could with my fuzzy, sleep deprived brain. Between the party and everything else, I’d gotten about three hours of sleep.
Justin spoke softly in my ear, saying that he had to leave town on an assignment, but that he’d be back by nightfall.
“I’m jealous. You get to go kill things without me?”
This made him laugh. He kissed me and said some other things, but I didn’t really hear him. I remember telling him that I loved him and yeah, eventually I would get up. I was still holding my pillow when I heard the door close behind him.
The dream was still in the back of my mind, receding away.
Why had the Wolf called me Fiona?
I lapsed into sleep again, this time without nightmares.
The doorbell rang at 6:30AM.
I answered the door in my nightgown with a little silver knife in my left hand.
Daria smiled at me behind her sunglasses. “Who’s getting stabbed today?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “Come on in.”
Daria giggled dryly. Her hair was different again. It was in braids, but this time they swept from the crown of her head and ended in a loose ponytail over her shoulder.
She sat down on my couch and crossed her legs, looking at me patiently.
“Justin called me. He said you’d still be sleeping.”
“Oh, I forgot,” I said, noticing her exercise clothes. “Our morning run.”
“Yes girl, go get dressed. Unless you want to run down the street in that,” she gestured at my gown. “Which will make you really popular .”
********************
Running was part of my new regimen. I used to run track in junior high, but I gave it up when Mama suggested there was a reason I beat the school record the first year out, and that we didn’t need any questions.
I got to know a little bit about Daria. She told me that she was a hairdresser, as she said, back in the day, in her human life. We talked about regular girl things. Hair and clothes and which pop star was dating who.
“Did I ever tell you that Justin was one of my trainers when I first came on board?” Daria asked.
“He mentioned it.” Justin told me that he trained Daria how to fight, and that she was one of the fiercest fighters he’d ever known.
“How long ago was that?” I asked.
“About six years. I am a newborn for my kind, ” she said.
I wanted to ask her more about that, but decided to wait until I knew her a little better.
We ran for five miles before we turned around and started back towards home.
“What do you think about William Keyes?” Daria asked.
“Huh?”
“Oh, come on, Marradith. I know you’re all tied up and committed….”
“That makes me sound like I’m in an asylum,” I interrupted.
“But you can’t tell me you have not noticed him,” she continued as if I’d never spoken. “So, as another female, what do you think of him?”
I could feel myself blushing. “Um, okay. I’ll admit that he is, um, physically attractive. He has a nice body and a cute face, all of which got major marks down when he tried to help Bruce get hold of me.”
“Well, that’s understandable,” she replied. “He deserved that burn you gave him. But if you’d met him under normal circumstances, would you have said he was cute?”
My mind went blank. I didn’t know what to say, other than to think that this was headed to a bad, dark place. “Yeah, I would think he was cute.”
She smiled. This answer seemed to please her.
“So…You like him?”
“Yes, I think I do,” Daria smiled cunningly. “But this is the thing, about being what I am,” she said, avoiding the word vampire. “Sometimes you think you like someone, but it’s really…other needs that are turning your head. So, if you told me that he was a hideous blow pig, then I’d know that was what was wrong with me.”
We fell into silence for a little while, keeping rhythm with our strides.
Suddenly, I felt heat rising along my spine. I felt it when we passed in front of one house in particular.
The Winslow residence.
I remembered then I’d seen a suspicious news item about the Winslows before Justin and I left to get married. The couple had dissapeared, and the police were trying to find out what happened to them.
The scent that struck me was so familiar, there was no denying it.
Syd had been inside that house.
I didn’t say anything to Daria.
I would come back later, and take a look at the house for myself.
©2009 Lori Titus
Green Water Lullaby, Lori’s collection of short stories, is available for pre-order: http://www.sonar4publications.com/green.html
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Tags: Daria, Fiona, The Marradith Ryder Series
June 16th, 2010 at 6:02 pm
Silly Marradith really should bring backup.