I wake with a start, trembling and sitting up in bed instantaneously as though jolted with a thousand bolts of electricity all at once. My chest rising and falling, useless breaths which sit only to be expelled again, the air filling my lungs might not serve any purpose, but my senses almost demand it, needing to settle the rest of my shaky frame. I raise my hand only to realize I am sweating red droplets and turn to see the final imprint of my face on the pillow. Crimson streaks cover the pillowcase.

I blink a few times and fight the urge to draw my knees up to my chest.

Clenching my eyes shut, I attempt to remove the mental images from their unending loop within my thoughts, but blinking only brings them back in much more solid clarity. I see it happening all over again, the chilling music being played as imminent doom comes upon the one I recognized the moment the second part of the dream commenced. My eyes open and I sigh. Yes, the first part had been a warning. And yet, I continued to dream.

My hand coasts through the wet locks of brown pasted against the sides of my head. As I pull it away, I look at the fingers stained with red and glance at the man resting beside me, seeing him yet lost within the repose of slumber. I remember dancing with him, laughing with him until our laughter turned to clothing shed and found us spilled on the bed, sharing pleasure and then, sharing rest. We drifted to sleep far earlier than normal, both of us exhausted after being up the better part of the day making wedding plans.

The wedding. Saturday. I was going to have to face Robin and not tell him what I saw within my dream. A shiver ran up my spine from the base of my back to the tip and forced me out of bed before I succumbed to the urge to wake Victor. Not that I thought he would care, in fact, I knew his arms would be around me within seconds, clutching me against him to offer me comfort. I was not ready for comfort yet, though. First, I had to make sense of the maniac circus show I had just witnessed.

My feet led me to the bathroom. I shut the door and switched on the light. The man staring back at me in the mirror looked even paler than usual and the blood sweat shed in the throes of sleep stained the sides of my face with a ghastly contrast of crimson against ashen white. Scared. I had fed recently with my lover, so fear was the only thing which could have made me appear to be so ghastly. “A shower,” I murmured, watching my reflection mime the words I spoke. Even the miracle of seeing myself in the mirror could not help.

I turned from the looking glass and turned on the shower, as hot as I could stand it.

The water stung when it hit my skin, but in time I found myself standing underneath the spray, attempting to get warm again. It was as though a chill had settled in my bones and could not be chased away by the heat of water or the constant attempts to rub my arms which commenced, even after I dried off and walked to the closet to throw on some clothing. I pulled a pair of boxers and a pair of sleeping pants from one of the drawers. When this did not help, I plucked the shirt I wore the night before from the chair it had been tossed on and slid my arms into its sleeves.

Within minutes, I found myself sitting in the study, staring at the laptop open before me.

This time, I did draw my knees up to my chest, watching the operating system load and feeling something like a man lost in time and space. My eyes shut and the images played out again. I saw them with as crystal clarity as I had witnessed them the first time around.

The first portion of the dream, walking around an unfamiliar house, speaking with Victor as he accompanied me through each room. What we spoke of, I could not remember. The mundane, perhaps. It was familiar conversation, revisited roads, spoken between us as though a well worn path and yet, one which brought us comfort to travel down once more. As I entered one of the rooms, however, the sound of my lover’s voice was drowned out by a strange cacophony which ripped me from where I stood at the same time.

Suddenly, I found myself standing in the sunlight, a chilling thought in its own right for a vampire to behold, and yet the sun’s rays did nothing to me as they normally might have. Instead, I looked around to see people gathered around me, all possessing familiar faces which caused my brow to knit as I studied each face of each soul who passed. I saw my deceased mother. My father, my aunt and uncle, all strolling past, looking at me and yet, not reacting to my presence in their midst. People I recognized as being my grandfather and grandmother on my mother’s side.

At once, the sight of Wilhelm Fiedler caused the sound of piano music to play within my thoughts.

I jarred myself away from the image and back into the room with Victor.

He furrowed his brow at me when he saw the expression on my face. “Lover?” he asked. “Is something the matter?”

I shook my head, but not to answer. Rather, I did so to attempt to reacquaint myself with my surroundings. “No… I do not know,” I said. Glancing at him, I looked away again at the unfamiliar room surrounding us. “I went somewhere for a moment there.”

“Where did you go?” When our eyes met once more, I saw confusion written all over his gaze. “You never left here.”

“But I was some place else, I saw it clear as day.” I drew a shaky breath, seeing windows and only darkness on the other side, surrounding us on three sides with the doorway to the rest of the house behind us. “I was with my dead mortal relatives. I could see them and hear them and they saw me.” I shivered and settled close to Victor as he wrapped an arm around me and comforted me. He promised he would hold me for as long as it took for me to feel calm again. Unfortunately, I did not have the chance to relish his solace for very long.

As though sweeping me from one portal to the next, the entire scene around me transformed. Victor no longer accompanied me and even I felt somewhat disconnected from the scene playing out before me, left only to observe and nothing more. My eyes settled on a man, standing next to a woman as they conversed in light hearted banter. He looked familiar, but I knew I had never seen her before and listened intently the moment she spoke her name aloud.

“It’s Celtic,” she said, flashing a smile, the words following the declaration of her name. She repeated the pronunciation of her surname and chuckled when the man parroted it back in such a flawless manner.

Robin. My stomach sank when I realized the man I found myself staring at was none other than my brother himself. He wore a striped dress shirt and a suit vest with a pair of linen pants and the way he smiled at the girl suggested interest, but no desire to pursue her much beyond some friendly banter. She was mortal and he, obviously a vampire, and yet the disconnect and lack of flirtation did not deter the girl from producing a pen and scribbling on a card. She presented it to him and winked, then walked away without a second glance.

I watched him turn the card around in hand and sigh, shaking his head. Her name, her phone number, written out in flawless caligraphy with such speed given over to the task of penning the words, I was forced to wonder what manner of writing instrument would produce such craftsmanship as quickly as I saw her write it. For some reason, this prompted me to glance around and survey my surroundings. The resulting scene prompted me to furrow my brow as I beheld a startling contrast.

The large rooms all wood paneled and bearing the resemblance of a place time forgot, I could also sense the future touching its seams and radiating through its windows. When I gazed at the windows themselves, I nearly jumped backward in shock as sunlight greeted me for the second time in so many minutes. Yet, I sensed no alarm when I gazed at the patrons of this place, from human or vampire alike. Glancing around at the beings before me, I saw nothing but relaxed faces and jovial discussions being exchanged by people who might have been strangers, but hardly acted as such.

The question remained… what was this place? And how was the sunlight failing to burn the vampires I sensed around the room?

The answer to the second question was not entirely apparent, although something whispered in my thoughts that we were several centuries in the future, and the answer might have had everything to do with the windows. The answer to the first question came more readily. I stood in the midst of a library, or an archives of sorts, for while the barest touches of future technology were apparent, there yet remained books on shelves and archiac trappings of olden forms of recording information. I studied it for a while until the scene changed once again.

I found myself yet in the archives, standing by Robin as he glanced up from a book in time to hear somebody screaming. Darkness reigned on the other side of the windows this time, indicating some hours had passed, and the chill of foreboding settled heavy on my bones while I looked with him and realized we both heard more than the shrill terror of a woman in trouble resonating around us. I watched my brother place his book down slowly and caught him taking a deep breath as though aware of what was about to transpire.

The body of the girl he spoke to earlier flew through the room, landing only feet away from Robin, broken, bloodied, and violated. Robin’s eyes turned wide and he yelled out before reacting further. “Everybody, to the basement!” he shouted. “Right now, if you want to live.”

The patrons scrambled to their feet. They rushed toward the back of the large room, some tripping over desks and chairs and others avoiding them deftly if not hurdling them altogether. The small congregation of people ran to the stairs and started to descend, led by Robin, who glanced around en route to the basement and stopped the procession dead in its tracks. The eeriest music I had ever heard in my life emanated from the floors below and my brother’s face turned white at hearing the macabre symphony before him. “Upstairs. Now,” he whispered, issuing the contradictory order.

“Defend yourselves as best as possible.”

I shivered with his final words and watched the brave entourage of two dozen or so people turn back and dash up the stairs with more speed than they had descended. Immediately, the vampires of the midst collected books and cards, throwing everything they could at a crowd of creatures I could not place, but knew were evil the moment I laid eyes on them. They possessed human form, but whether or not this was an illusion remained to be seen. They could have even been immortal for all I knew. I was far too focused on what transpired to question the matter in much depth.

Chaos broke out amongst the lot of them. Some enemies fell, but some patrons fell beside them and Robin rushed to find whatever might be used as some form of weaponry. Before he could lay hands on a single weapon, though, I watched him turn and freeze in place. He whispered something in his native tongue and braced himself as though for impact.

I had startled myself from the vision by this point, but the damage was already done.

Dead. Gone. I was certain of it. I had just witnessed my older, regal brother’s demise.

The chill settled in my bones caused me to clutch my knees that much tighter while my mind returned to the present, my eyes focused on the computer before me through the haze of unshed tears. I needed Victor, I knew this much. I needed my lover to wrap his arms around me and help me make sense of this all. But first, I needed to record just what I had seen, lest one detail of the dream be lost to faulty memory.

Shaky and uncertain, I finish my composition now. Fates be damned, it has been years since such a dream has plagued my subconscious. Have I visited this demon upon us by using my powers more often? Or will I need my powers for the days which seem ahead of us; tumultuous days which might claim the people Victor and I care about the most? I did not see the death blow, this much is certain. But I swear I felt its sting before I woke for good.

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