Page 18 of The Beginning (Covert Moon, #1)

So I wasn't alone in this vision. The priest wasn't alone either. Did he know about the watcher? Were these people working together, or was the man with the green eyes here for some other purpose?

The priest reached out his hand toward me again, more insistently this time, and I found that I couldn't resist. Unable to stop myself, as if my limbs were no longer my own to control, I reached my hand out to meet his.

"I am ready," I heard myself saying, though I was aware that I had no idea what I was ready for.

I hadn't even been aware that I was going to speak.

The words came from my mouth, but they didn't feel like my words.

Whatever this was—this vision, this experience, this nightmare—it was happening to me, but I wasn't in charge here. I was just along for the ride.

From the corner of my eye, I caught sudden movement.

The scrape of claws on stone, sharp and almost metallic, followed immediately by a wild animal roar that seemed to shake the very foundations of the church.

A dark shape launched itself from the shadows, a mass of fur and muscle and rage that moved with terrifying speed.

It landed on me with the force of a small car, pushing me to the ground with such violence that the air was driven from my lungs. I felt the cold stone of the floor slam into my back, felt something in my ribs crack from the impact.

I screamed, the sound tearing from my throat raw and desperate.

As I was pulled from the dream-vision like a fish being yanked from water, I caught one last glimpse of those familiar green eyes. They widened in what looked like surprise or alarm, and then faded away into the dissolving remnants of the vision.

There was noise, as if the owner of those eyes had spoken urgently, but the sound was distorted, warped by the transition between the vision world and waking reality.

I couldn't make out the words, couldn't understand what the person was trying to tell me.

The familiar eyes—those were definitely the eyes of the man I'd been dreaming of for weeks now, the green-eyed stranger who'd been haunting my sleep.

What was so important that he'd tried to communicate even as the vision collapsed?

Panic gripped me. I couldn't hear what he were trying to tell me! What if it was important? What if it was a warning I desperately needed to understand?

I startled awake, my hands gripping the duvet on Calyx's bed so tightly my knuckles had gone white. I was gasping for breath as if I'd actually been running, actually been attacked by whatever that creature had been. My heart hammered against my ribs, and I could taste copper in my mouth.

Blinking away the strange dream-vision, I glanced around the room frantically, getting my bearings, feeling like I'd been transported across dimensions.

I was at my parents' house. In my sister's room.

On my sister's bed, surrounded by her familiar belongings.

She had a silk scarf draped over the lamp on the bedside table, casting everything in soft, colored light.

Two photographs had been shoved into the frame of her mirror—one of us as children, one of her with friends I didn't recognize.

I exhaled shakily and tried to focus on the present, on reality.

The sun still blazed through the window, painting everything in golden afternoon light.

It was still daylight, still the same endless day that had started with Calyx's disappearance.

I'd been napping, but clearly not for long this time—maybe thirty minutes at most.

I sat up slowly, my head spinning as I tried to decipher what the hell that had been.

Was it just a dream, my subconscious mind processing the stress and fear of the day?

Or was it a vision, something more significant and prophetic?

Was Calyx actually in trouble, walking into some kind of trap I'd witnessed through supernatural means?

Was it my subconscious processing some bizarre thoughts, or was that something else entirely? A warning sent by someone or something with the power to reach into my dreams? Was something terrible happening to my sister right now while I lay here safe in her bed?

I inventoried the scene again in my memory, but the fragments were already becoming a jumble, details fading like morning mist. The more I tried to hold onto the specifics, the more they slipped away.

I couldn't tell if it had been me in the vision or if I had been walking in Calyx's footsteps, seeing through her eyes, experiencing what she was experiencing.

Was she being forced into something against her will?

Despite the haunted-house atmosphere of the vision, despite the fear and the sense of impending doom, when I replayed the scene in my mind it almost felt like a wedding.

There had been something ceremonial about it, something formal and ritualistic.

A joining of some kind, an opening of doors to new possibilities.

But that didn't make sense. How could it be a wedding when I'd been so scared, so completely not in control? What kind of ceremony involved altars and priests and mysterious watchers and wild animals?

What the hell was up with that priest anyway? And who was the owner of those green eyes that had seemed so familiar, so important? Why had they tried to speak to me as the vision dissolved?

The edges of the vision started to fray in my memory, falling away like mist touched by sunlight.

I tried desperately to cling to the details, to hold onto them and refuse to let them go.

Was it a warning I needed to heed? Was it just a meaningless dream brought on by stress and fear?

It felt important, significant in ways I couldn't articulate, but what did any of it mean?

If nothing else, the vision had shifted my awareness of the possibilities surrounding Calyx's disappearance.

She had run off, of that I was still sure.

There was no way she'd been abducted in the dramatic fashion Mother was selling to the media.

But the vision suggested that maybe—just maybe—Calyx was walking into trouble she didn't see coming.

Maybe she was in danger and didn't know it yet.

If the vision was indeed prophetic, if I had been seeing events that were yet to unfold, had I been experiencing them through Calyx's eyes? Was she heading toward that ruined church, toward whatever ceremony or ritual the pale-eyed priest had planned?

But I knew that church. I'd been there before, had driven past it hundreds of times over the years.

It was a remnant from another era, from when the area around our city had been rolling meadows and small rural towns instead of suburbs and shopping centers.

The world had grown up around it, swallowing the countryside, but that church had remained, protected as a historic site even though it was really just a picturesque ruin on the edge of a state park.

We'd often passed it on family trips to see Aunt Beatrice, who'd lived about an hour past the church in a small town that time had forgotten. I remembered pressing my face to the car window as a child, fascinated by the crumbling walls and the way ivy had claimed most of the structure.

When I was younger, maybe ten or eleven, we'd gone there on a school trip focused on local history.

It wasn't even particularly important historically—just an old church that had been abandoned when the congregation dwindled and moved to town.

It had fallen into disrepair over the decades, its roof caving in, its windows long since shattered by weather and vandals.

There was nothing really left except the things that were too heavy to move—the stone walls, the foundation, the altar that had been carved from a single massive block of granite.

But in my vision, it had been furnished with wooden pews, had felt alive and purposeful rather than abandoned. What did that mean?

Someone tapped on the door, the sound sharp and sudden in the quiet room. "Miss Marigold? Are you in there?" It was Karissa, my mother's head maid, her voice muffled by the heavy wood of the door.

"Come in," I said, sliding off the bed and trying to shake off the lingering effects of the vision. My legs felt unsteady, and there was still a metallic taste in my mouth.

Karissa opened the door and peeked inside with the kind of smile that didn't quite reach her eyes—the expression all the staff wore when they had to deliver news they knew wouldn't be welcome.

"The police are ready to take another statement from you.

Your mother has asked me to bring you downstairs. "

Of course she had. Another performance, another chance for me to play my assigned role in Mother's carefully orchestrated drama.

I nodded and yawned, the lingering exhaustion from the vision making me feel drugged. "I fell asleep. I'll be down in a minute, Karissa. Thanks."

"Of course. Thank you for your patience. It's good to see you, Miss Marigold." Karissa's smile became more genuine for just a moment before she pulled the door shut and left, her footsteps fading down the hallway.

Screw this. I was done. Completely, utterly done.

I would no longer be part of this ridiculous charade, this theater production masquerading as a family crisis.

Calyx had not been kidnapped by some mysterious stranger looking for ransom or revenge.

She'd packed her bags and left of her own free will, probably with that boyfriend of hers, probably thinking she was embarking on some grand romantic adventure.

And I wouldn't play my assigned part in Mother's political production any longer. I wouldn't stand there and lie to the police again, wouldn't pretend to be the grieving sister when what I really felt was abandoned and angry and scared for reasons I couldn't fully articulate.