Page 165 of Hunters and Prey

The male grunted again, slightly more mollified.

The woman wasn’t letting her husband’s editorializing distract her, however.

“What happened, Miriam?” she said, her voice soft. “Did you have the meeting? Did this vampire do something to you there? Scare you? Was it like the earthquake, before? Or did something serious happen?”

I frowned, fighting to remember.

I remembered a smile then, behind my eyes. Flickering, cut-crystal, vampire eyes, a wide smile so familiar it broke my heart, dark hair, white skin––

I remembered vampires, inside a glass palace with lit walls.

I remembered jungle plants, an indoor, tropical garden with a pond covered in lilies, with overgrown ferns growing out of tree stumps, giant plants that looked prehistoric.

I remembered Brick, the vampire king, with me there, leading me by the arm.

I remembered him saying he had something to show me.

I remembered him telling me it wasn’t his fault––

I don’t know when I started to fade.

The women and man in front of me froze like a painting.

That painting began to dissolve.

I saw them gradually recede away, rent apart like a curtain of smoke in wind.

A blur of memory washed away from me as their images faded. I fought to hold onto it, grasping at it with both hands, reaching out my fingers…

It was like trying to capture smoke.

I knew I’d been there before.

I knew I’d been in that place, with those people.

I knew them.

I fought to hold onto what I knew, what I remembered.

But like some kind of cruel nightmare, or worse, a beautiful dream that disappears as soon as you woke up, I lost them every time I left them, every time their faces disappeared from my sight. I felt their presences ripped out of me, separated from my light.

I screamed at the separation.

I screamed, knowing I’d lost something important… something I desperately needed to bring back to my world.

I had no idea what that something was.

Feeling it recede further from me, the further down the rabbit hole I fell, I cried out, screaming again, trying to find their faces in all that light.

I may have told them I’d be back.

I may have told them I’d come back again.

I may have said nothing at all.

I honestly couldn’t remember that part of things, either.

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