Dahlia (Blood Crave Series)

by Christina Channelle

  But before she could move, a huge gust of wind suddenly emerged from behind and knocked into her, the cold stunning her on contact as she stumbled on the balls of her feet. Unable to catch herself, it was as if the wind took a hold of her as she was again, roughly shoved forward. She felt herself falling, her feet feeling nothing beneath her but air, only one word on her mind.

  Shit.

  She crashed with a heavy thud as her body contacted with the ground below. The back of her head slammed hard against the cold ground, the impact causing a sharp pain as she saw stars, head spinning. Dahlia still had her backpack on, so she landed in an awkward position, her body in an arch. Stunned, she laid there for a moment and blinked a couple of times as she discovered how far she had fallen, wondered why she wasn’t dead.

  Trying to get herself up, she moaned as her head started to pulsate. Rolling herself over, Dahlia painstakingly took off her backpack as she slipped her arms out of the straps and set the bag aside. She took deep breaths as she forced herself not to throw up as the feeling of nausea took over. Spinning onto her back again, tears formed in her eyes at the intense pain she felt. The pain took over her entire body, like fire ants crawling all over her skin, leaving no doubt in her mind that something was broken.

  Someone had pushed her.

  Dahlia looked back up from the bottom of the hill but saw nothing. Although she didn’t see anyone, she could have sworn that someone had been physically there and had pushed her from behind, the place where a hand contacted her back still cold.

  There was no way that was just the wind.

  Still lying on the hard, cool ground, Dahlia slowly reached for her pocket and groaned at the painful movements. She withdrew her phone, praying it didn’t break from the impact and breathed a sigh of relief as she flipped it open and found light still emanated from it. Punching in the proper numbers, she anxiously awaited as the phone rang four times before he finally picked up.

  “Hello?” Sam’s carefree voice carried into her ear causing some reprieve. The pounding in her head was still there, comparable to a sledgehammer against her skull.

  “Sam?” The strain in her voice was apparent as she spoke, gasping. She took a deep breath and tried again, more steadily. “Are you still at the school?”

  “Yeah, I just finished my test and I’m heading home.” He spoke slowly then paused as he noticed the tone in her voice. “Why, what’s up?”

  “I need you to come and get me.” Dahlia paused and took a deep breath again, her voice stuck in her throat.

  “Come get you? Aren’t you home by now? Where are you?” She could almost see his confused expression in her mind, eyebrows definitely furrowing as he waited for her answer. She’d laugh if she weren’t in so much pain.

  “I took a detour through the woods and…fell.” She didn’t mention her suspicions on her fall.

  “What?” The concern was apparent in his voice. “Are you okay?”

  Dahlia paused then answered slowly. “I’m fine.” She wasn’t completely lying.

  She wasn’t dead or anything.

  “Where are you?”

  She looked up to where she fell from, and then commented, trying to hide the tears in her voice. “I don’t know. There’s this steep hill.” She paused then said rather dryly, “If you look down, you’ll find my helpless body.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  He abruptly hung up, leaving Dahlia staring idly at the phone as it went silent. Closing it, she placed it on top of her backpack next to her, bringing her arms beside her body as she sighed, staring up at the sky above her. Her body ached, the pain pulsating from within as she locked gazes with the bright, full moon. The stars were seen in the periphery as her gaze remained transfixed above.

  Visions started to flow through her mind of wolves, mysterious men and an expressional face with large sunglasses, all disappearing then reappearing into thin air. She even felt like something was licking her delicately on the face, almost in reassurance. The images spun repeatedly in her mind, voices speaking one on top of another until she cried out and heard a reply in return.

  “Dahlia?”

  Sam’s voice fluttered from above and she opened her eyes but couldn’t see him anywhere. She didn’t know how long she had been out but it must have been awhile. She swallowed and cleared her throat, her voice dry as she tried yelling out hoarsely.

  “I’m over here.”

  All of a sudden, Sam’s head peered from above the shadows and Dahlia could clearly see the relief on his face. He carefully made his way down the steep hill until he reached where she lay on the ground.

  “Are you hurt? Are you bleeding anywhere?” He quickly rushed over to her and knelt beside her as he inspected her body, eyes concerned.

  Dahlia focused on her body, realizing the agony felt earlier had subsided drastically. She wiggled her fingers and toes, then the rest of her limbs, not finding anything wrong. Tentatively sitting up, she reached behind her head to detect the pain originally there was also gone.

  Completely.

  “You’re bleeding, Winters!”

  “What?” Dahlia looked over at Sam who stared gaping at her hand, covered in blood.

  “The back of your head is bleeding.” He maneuvered his body so he was behind her, still kneeling. “Let me check.”

  “I feel fine.” Dahlia felt perfectly fine and wondered why he was making such a big deal over a little bit of blood. She was just thankful nothing was broken, as she had first thought. She tried getting on her feet but stumbled on her toes, Sam catching her before she could fall.

  It was probably just a small cut.

  “What?” Dahlia saw the weird expression on Sam’s face as he helped her up to her feet.

  He glanced from her hands and then back up to her face again, gesturing with his own hands. “Your head. There’s blood all over your hair but I don’t see a wound anywhere. Where did all the blood come from?”

  Where did all the blood come from?

  Dahlia paused at his words, slowly staring down at her red-stained hands. She remembered a time long ago when she heard those exact words from the people at the orphanage. No one had believed her then and looking up at Sam, she knew he would be the same. Realizing this, she did the only thing she could think of.

  She didn’t say anything.

  Chapter 10

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to take you to the hospital?”

  Sam looked at Dahlia out of the corner of his eyes as he voiced the question. He slowly pulled up to the driveway of their home and, putting the car in park, turned off the ignition.

  “I’m positive.” She unclipped her seatbelt and opened the door, making her way out of the car. Slamming the door shut, she looked over at Sam who stared warily from above the car roof, carrying their bags in his arms. She smiled in reassurance.

  “Don’t worry about it, Sam. I’m fine.” She started to walk toward the doorway to the house.

  He followed her from behind. “What about the blood?”

  She turned around and made a face at him. “I was a klutz and fell. I hit my head and got a small cut. You probably just couldn’t find it in the dark.”

  “But it’s a lot of blood, Winters.”

  “Head wounds bleed like crazy. It’s fine—I’m fine. False alarm.” She nodded toward the door. “Let’s just head in and call it a night.”

  “Okay, fine.” He stayed quiet as Dahlia unlocked and opened the door as they both stepped inside. She turned around as she watched Sam close the door. Walking over to him, she clutched his jacket tightly with her fists, staring deeply into his worried eyes. Her own eyes were anxious.

  “Don’t tell your parents, okay? I don’t want them to freak out for no reason.” She abruptly released him then stepped back as she too
k off her shoes and grabbed her bag from his hand. Giving him a quick peck on the cheek, she quickly rushed upstairs to her room, leaving Sam alone in the foyer staring after her with a deep frown on his face.

  As Dahlia closed the door to her room, she rested her head against the wooden surface as she tried to slow her beating heart. Dropping her things to the ground, she rushed to her connecting bathroom, startling herself by what she saw in the mirror.

  A disheveled mess, her large doe eyes looked even larger than normal as blood stained her hands. Blinking a couple of times, she frantically stripped out of her dirty clothes and entered the shower. She turned on the pipe and shut her eyes away from the blood that washed down the drain.

  She refused to admit that there was in fact a lot of blood.

  She stayed under the warm shower until she finally felt clean and the water began to cool. Turning the tap off, she opened the curtain and stepped out of the tub while grabbing a towel. Wrapping herself tightly, Dahlia walked into her room and sat on her bed, thinking about earlier.

  She hated to admit it to herself but what Sam said was true. There had been a lot of blood—too much blood for her to be feeling fine after such an accident. Although no one was there with her, she swore she felt an actual hand thrust her roughly down the hill. Dahlia shook herself as she buried her head in her hands. None of this made any sense. She shouldn’t be alive right now.

  Her thoughts immediately went to Green Eyes and his comment about being different from others.

  What did he really know?

  She knew it was outrageous but she needed to prove to herself that she wasn’t going crazy. It had been so long ago and she had told herself time and time again that it was nothing but a dream. But what if it wasn’t? It couldn’t be true.

  Could it?

  Reaching for the drawer in her nightstand, she opened it up and pulled out a sharp object. It was a letter opener. Deb had gotten it for her as a gift but she had no use for it. It wasn’t as if she received any mail. Holding the cold metal in her hand, Dahlia lightly stroked the ends, testing its sharpness.

  It was sharp.

  She stretched out her arm in front of her and brought the tip of the letter opener against her forearm. She sunk the tip deep, but not as deep to break the skin. Bracing herself, Dahlia closed her eyes and finally sank the sharp edge into her skin, feeling a sting along her arm as she bit the bottom of her lip in discomfort. She lifted the letter opener away and slowly opened one eye, then the other. A bright, red line of blood oozed out from her wound and she sat on her bed, wordlessly watching.

  Only seconds later, she saw again what she had seen years ago when she was a little girl. It wasn’t a dream at all but a real, true memory. Her wound quickly healed right before her eyes, as if the healing process sped up a thousand times faster.

  “Holy crap,” she whispered to herself as she continued to look at her arm, the wound completely healed, just blood left over her previously marred skin. She reached out with her other arm for some tissue paper that was on her desk and slowly wiped the blood away, even though she had the strangest notion to lick it off.

  Disregarding the thought, she dropped the tissue paper in her garbage basket and lightly grazed her finger against her forearm, amazed that there was no cut and nothing but smooth skin. She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them once more to look from her arm, to the bloody tissue in the garbage. Although she had wanted to forget it for all these years and just blamed it on her wild imagination, she couldn’t deny what she had just seen.

  She was some sort of self-healer, her cut healed perfectly as if it had never been there in the first place.

  She closed her eyes as she slowly inhaled then exhaled, trying to tame the feeling of alarm that seemed to want to burst from her body. She looked back down at herself, truly believing, for the first time, what was right in front of her.

  But if I were really a self-healer then why…

  Dahlia’s thought trailed off as she briskly got up from her bed and marched toward her bathroom to gaze at herself in the mirror. Lowering the towel off her skin, she moved her long, damp hair out of the way and turned her body to face away from her reflection as she twisted her head to get a good look at her back.

  There, on her back, were two diagonal scars mirror images to each other. They ran from the outer edges of both shoulder blades and spanned all the way down to end at the center of her low back. They were ugly and jagged, screaming at her in anger. She frowned at herself in the mirror, not taking her eyes away from her scars. Because if she could heal herself then why...

  ...why were these scars here?

  Chapter 11

  I didn’t know where I was.

  For some reason I heard the sound of laughing children. Then suddenly enveloped in small hands, I spun around in circles. I saw my hands were even smaller than the person’s I clutched as I realized I was no longer a teenager, but a little child, maybe four or five, my heart glowing in happiness.

  Then all the laughter stopped and I looked up to see him. And of course there he was, looking down at me with an unsmiling face and daunting eyes, his shadow covering me up in darkness.

  Gazing timidly up at him, I knew that whatever happened next would not be a good thing.

  ***

  Dahlia woke up with a sudden jolt.

  Heart hammering in her chest, a sheen of sweat coated her skin. She felt nothing but apprehension as she looked up at the clock on her nightstand. Red numbers gleaming showed that it was four in the morning.

  I must have slept through dinner.

  Slowly taking deep breaths in and out, she blinked a few times to clear her eyes, not remembering falling asleep. Her mind flashed back to the image of the long-haired man she kept seeing in her dreams.

  He was so different from anybody she had ever seen, even more so than Green Eyes and Maddox. He looked young and yet old at the same time, like he had seen everything that life had to offer and still wasn’t impressed by it.

  He also looked like he could snap someone’s neck quite easily.

  There was something about him in her dreams that Dahlia found quite odd. The dream just seemed too real, but she had never felt such immense happiness as a child and didn’t recall anything at all about this man from her past.

  Could it possibly be a memory from her past, the ones that had long ago disappeared? Or nothing more than anxiety she was feeling after the fall? After all, her dream of the wolf turned out to be real, so anything was possible.

  Perhaps Green Eyes would know something about this. Correction, she knew Green Eyes was somehow involved in all this, his appearance coinciding with the strange events occurring in her life.

  Why was he here?

  Dahlia felt a pang in her stomach, her body alerting her of her hunger. She turned as she opened her nightstand drawer, where she kept her stash of food. Taking out a bag of trail mix, she quickly chowed down until she was satisfied. Then, reaching for a bottle of water, she gulped it down and placed it back on the nightstand. She tossed the empty plastic baggie in her garbage bin.

  Slowly removing the rest of the covers from her body, she placed her bare feet on the cold hardwood floors and got up from the bed. Freezing, she realized she still wore her towel so she quickly grabbed a nightgown as she slipped it over her head and put her hair into a high ponytail using a tie. As she set the towel over her bathroom door, she eyed the dirt-stained and bloodied clothes from earlier that lay in a heap on the floor. Walking over to her closet, Dahlia opened it to find a garbage bag and then quickly stuffed the clothes inside, tying the bag tightly. She didn’t want any reminders from the previous night so she decided to throw it out into the garbage downstairs. She had this sudden urge to get out of the house so she quickly moved across the room to her door, her mind racing a mile a minute.

&nb
sp; She needed some fresh air.

  Discreetly opening her door, Dahlia paused when it suddenly squeaked, praying no one heard her. Listening carefully, all she heard was the usual stillness of the house. She opened the door all the way and shut it quickly, tip toeing her way down the curved staircase, staying as silent as possible. Reaching the kitchen, she tossed her bag of clothes into the garbage bin then stared out into the backyard before her.

  The Cahill’s house was vast with many rooms and sometimes Dahlia felt a little undeserving of all they had to offer her. It was modernly upgraded to have all the new bells and whistles with shiny stainless steel appliances and dark, mahogany floors. But there was still this old-fashion flair to it with all of its finishings.

  The backyard itself was like an amusement park. There was a patio with chairs and a table with a canopy to cover the harsh sunlight that Cedar Oaks was often privy to.

  That wasn’t what caught Dahlia’s attention. It was the vastly spaced swimming pool, whose water seemed to stretch on forever in the rectangular-shaped pool, beckoning her. The clear water rippled as the wind blew, the only disturbance at present. Impulsively, Dahlia strolled over to the glass sliding doors and unlocked it as she walked out onto the patio, barefoot. Going down the steps, Dahlia’s feet then sunk into soft grass that tickled the underside of her feet. She made her way to the pool and just stood out on the edge. She watched as the water pulsated against the wind, her white nightgown fluttering in the cool breeze, like a caress.

  Her restlessness due to her dreams was becoming more and more frequent. They were trying to tell her something but she didn’t know what. She smirked to herself. Well, they did remind her of the abilities she possessed.