"ARRGH!"
With a shriek Raven sat straight up in her bed, bathed in sweat. Her heart beat loudly, as if it would crash right through her ribcage any minute, and her chest was moving up and down at a worrying high pace. Terrified she looked around her sinister room, only to find that there was no one in there, but her.
Just a dream... Nothing but a dream...
She desperately tried to calm herself, as she felt stinging tears of shock forming under her eyelids. A rattling tearful gasp escaped her throat and with trembling hands she rubbed her temples lightly in a weak attempt to find peace. When she didn't succeed, the first tear of horror rolled down her cheek.
She almost got angry at herself for being so shocked over something as trivial as a nightmare. She, a half-demon born to live in the shadow of evil; the murky depths of hell, had been freaked out by a phantasm? And not just any phantasm, oh no, she, a half-demon had been scared out of her wits by a nightmare about a vampire.
Raven was overwhelmed with self-pity, confusion and anger and more diamond tears followed as she tried to suppress the images from her dream... after all, she told herself, it was nothing but a nightmare.
Though she was shaking like a leaf, and her hands barely could be kept still, the small massage of her temples eventually calmed her down. Just when her breathing was becoming steadier, fragments of images from her nightmare flooded her mind.
Hands seizing her shoulders...
Nails digging into her flesh, leaving marks and bruises which burned like acid seeping through her muscles...
Her fruitless struggle as he, that... that thing, pinned her to the ground and her terrified cries of help.
The needle-sharp teeth boring down into her throat, devouring her flesh, cutting through veins and tendons...
The mage gave a small sob. She had read horror-stories about vampires that now seemed like fairytales in comparison with what her mind had just let her experience.
Now with slightly calmer breathing, but still tense she tried to suppress the images of herself lying screaming in a pool of her own blood. The vampire had caught her. He had pinned her to the ground, straddled her stomach and bit her. Like using a scissor he had bored his teeth into the upper part of her throat. He had kept his teeth there for a moment, allowing Ravens blood to flow into his mouth. Then he without lifting his teeth had ripped downwards her throat, so that her very flesh had been torn apart. He had done it slowly, letting Raven feel each inch of agony, as her ignorant heart kept pumping blood through her veins, believing it helped her survive, when it only made her death so much more painful. Her torn carotid artery was overflowing like a fountain of crimson shining blood, choking her, blinding her...
Driving her to the edge of insanity.
As the memories welled up in her Raven buried her face in her cupped hands and cried silently.
A nightmare wasn't that real. In a nightmare there was always something that made it clear it was an illusion. Like only having a white background or giving the persons involved the wrong voices. Or the fact that you rarely could smell or taste a nightmare.
Raven moved her hands from her eyes and instead clutched at her hair, biting her lip, frustrated.
The illusion had been perfect this time.
She still remembered the paralyzing, yet gentle, almost seducing hands that had caught her. The way he had pulled her into his arms to stop her from struggling and trying to wriggle free and the dizziness she had felt when her head had hit the concrete floor. The smell of light perfume as the elegantly clad man straddled her stomach, gently stroked a few strands of hair away from her neck, leaned in over her, and with the sound of someone biting through a boiled potato had forced his teeth through her skin making her wail in agony. The iron-like taste of blood in her mouth as he had left her to die, choking on her own blood. And choked on it, she had.
After screaming herself insane, that is.
Raven uttered an "ugh!" as she recalled how she had rolled over to the right, letting the blood form a red pillow under her right cheek. Her right eye had been able see nothing but darkness and shiny red. Her lashes had been filled with the sticky cream-like substance. And then out of the corner of her left eye, his malicious smile as he had slowly retracted to the shadows, turning the light off, leaving her to die, drowning in a sea of her own blood, alone in the darkness, where no one heard her screams of agony or her cries of help...
With an angry, tearful gasp Raven shook her head, the tears spilling from her face, dripping all over her.
It was just a nightmare... a very life-like nightmare, but only a nightmare nonetheless.
Raven whispered this to herself a few times and then closed her eyes. She folded her legs so she sat cross-legged and was silent for a while, hearing only the soft night breeze, coming from her half opened windows, and her own beating heart. When the silence had filled her and she had managed to suppress the nightmare a little, she heaved a sigh before running her fingers through her dark violet hair. Her cold sweat evaporated eventually, and along with the gentle breeze, it cooled her down. The areas around her neck and throat still felt warm though, but Raven assumed it was because it was where she had felt the most "pain". Forcing a nervous laugh at the absurdity of it all, she ran her fingers through her hair one more time and then down the sides of her neck, down her shoulders.
Or – she would have, but on the right side of her neck, closest to her chin, her fingers touched something... sticky. Raven froze. As in slow-motion she brought her right hand down in her lap and looked at it with eyes wide with anxiety. A scream got stuck in her throat like she had taken a big bite of an apple and attempted to swallow it whole, without chewing it first. Her right hand was covered in blood.
Her blood.