Once we were done swimming I took a quick shower to wash the smell of chlorine out of my hair and skin. I pulled on a pair of shorts and a tanktop before carelessly braiding my hair and crawling into bed. I pulled my quilt up to my chin and settled down amongst my pillows, closing my eyes. My radio was playing softly in the background as I started to drift off to sleep.
A knock on my door pulled me away from the shores of sleep. "Who is it?" I groaned, half sitting up. If it was one of those vampires, I'd kill them. If it was Mark or Ryan, I'd kill them. If it was....
"It's me, Sera."
Jaydon. He had better have a good reason for waking me up. "What do you want?" I grumbled as he opened the door.
"Can I sleep here again?"
"Haven't we made your sister supsicious enough already?" I asked even as I threw a pillow at him. "You saw the look on her face this morning. I swear, if you tell anyone that you're doing anything besides sleeping in here, I will slit your throat, cut you open, tear out your entrails, feed them to some cats, and then cut you up into itty bitty little pieces and use you as shark bait!"
"Calm down, Sera," he said as he settled himself down on the floor. "I won't say a word. And thanks for letting me sleep here. I'm afraid of what I'll do if I have a nightmare about them suddenly killing Lanie or something."
"They seem nice enough," I commented slowly. "And Peter sure seems attracted to Ariana."
"Don't even talk to me about that," Jay said, making a gagging sound. "She's all he seems to talk about."
"Well maybe he sees something that we are too predujiced to see," I replied. "Now go to sleep, would you, Jaydon? I don't care if it's Saturday tomorrow, I still would like to get some sleep." He mumbled something that sounded a bit like a complaint. "Good night, Jay."
"Sweet dreams, Sera."
~~~
I woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. I had just had the most horrendous nightmare of my life. Everyone was dead except me, even the vampires. And I was the one who had killed them. "Jay?" I whispered, not surprised to hear my voice trembling like a three year old's. When there was no answer I started to panic even though I knew it was irrational. "Jay?" The worry made my voice shrill.
"Ugh, what, Sera? I was sleeping!"
"Oh thank God," I whispered, which of course instantly caught Jaydon's attention.
"Sera, what's wrong?" he asked. I could hear concern in his voice.
"Nothing," I said, and it sounded weak even to me. "I just had a bad dream. A really bad dream, but a bad dream nonetheless." I heard him moving around and the next thing I knew he was sitting on the edge of my bed.
"What type of bad dream?" he asked, his voice surprisingly gentle.
"It's not important," I said, rather ashamed that I was so scared. It wasn't like I would really be stupid enough to do something that would upset the vampires enough to make them want to kill us all. Of course, they were vampires....
"Obviously it is important," Jaydon said. "At least, it had better be for you to wake me up in the middle of the night. Now tell me, Sera, before I get really mad." I sighed. I really didn't want to tell him. Complaining about bad dreams was childish, something that a cub would do.
But I told him anyways. "Well in my dream I did something stupid, I'm not sure what. And it totally ticked you, Mark, and Ryan off. So you guys went after the vampires, but they ended up to be really good fighters. And so they killed you guys, and then Jenni too before Peter killed the boy. Then Ariana killed Peter, and Samuel and Lanie tried to kill her and all three of them died. Somehow Steve and Patricia were dead too."
"Well I'm alive, Sera," he said softly. "So everybody else must be too." Then he did something completely out of character for him; he gave me a hug. It wasn't the best hug I'd ever gotten, but it comforted me all the same. "Now go to sleep, all right?" I nodded and watched as he slid back down onto the floor. Within minutes we were asleep once more.