Split
Page 7
Seven
The nightmares started almost immediately. An endless procession of people she didn't know walked up to her in a line and asked, "Why?" Each time she met them with a blank stare, unable to offer an answer. After a moment, they would take on the look of someone who was lost and confused, and simply walk away, only to have the next person in line come up to repeat the process. It wasn't so much the question or the look that made the dream a nightmare, it was the sheer size of the line. So many people looking for an answer that she couldn't provide. To her it was truly frightening.
On top of that was the internal turmoil she was feeling toward her ability. As the days dragged on, she was presented with half a dozen more "victims" to test the limits of her ability. To split the demon from its host. It wasn't hard to admit that she was getting better at it. The last one Adonis had provided for her had died while she was standing a good twenty feet away. It had been a little more taxing than any of the other times, which Adonis said was likely the result of the attempt being at extent of her range.
But beyond that discovery was the guilt that arrived each time she had to look at the leftover body. It had been a vampire, true, but before that it had been a person. Someone's son or daughter, maybe a wife or a brother, a girlfriend or a roommate. A person. Even though she knew killing the demon, and them, was the right thing to do, the fact that they returned to simply being a person in the end ate at her. Erika was almost certain they were at least part of the cause for her nightmares.
And she didn't know what to do about it.
Throughout it all, Adonis was supportive, and her negative feelings toward him started to disappear. After her fourth "kill", when she couldn't take the feeling she had committed murder anymore, he had been there to calm the hysterics and talk her down off the figurative ledge. She knew he wasn't being completely honest with her, but actions spoke louder than words to her, and he acted like someone who cared about her. He had always acted as if they had her best interests at heart. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't push him away. It had been easy to move on from her parents, they had never acted like they cared one way or another. She couldn't, wouldn't, say the same about Adonis.
Once she accepted this, the nightmares all but stopped.