Chapter 2

Cassandra woke with a start, her heart racing and body drenched in sweat, as if she had been running a marathon. She looked over to the bed on the other side of the room where her roommate Lori was still snoring peacefully. Kicking off her sticky sheets, she sat up rubbing her eyes. She tried to remember the nightmare that she had been having. She remembered running, running, running for her life…. And something closing in behind her: a dark figure, a shadow.

And there was something else...A huge, black hellhound. Cassandra didn't know if it had been chasing her or protecting her, or just running beside her. All she could remember was it eyes. Huge pools of blackness that pierced you soul, turned it inside out, had a good rummage around before throwing it back again.

Yet they had seemed so familiar...

Her hand brushed against something furry on her bed and for a split second she thought it was the hound, but then she laughed at herself. It was just her stuffed toy dog Snuffles. Cassandra shook her head, she was being stupid. It was just a silly nightmare; she had never seen the dog before.

She squeezed Snuffles to her chest, burying her face in his worn, patchy black fur. He was the one of the only things she really owned that wasn't second hand or charity. She had had him for as long as she could remember: he had been there when Shannon Dawson had framed her for the graffiti in the girl's toilets, he had been there when some of the other girls had thought it would be funny to cut off her hair while she slept, he had been there when she had got expelled from her first school and her second and third. He had even been there on the night she was dumped outside this sad excuse for a care home, wrapped in a black blanket, clutching Snuffles to her chest.

Cassandra got up and walked over to her window - she needed some fresh air. Forcing the window she managed to get it to open an inch or two. She sighed. All the windows at St Augusta's Home for Distressed Girls were sealed, probably to stop the 'distressed girls' escaping. Cassandra leaned her feverish head against the cool glass. 'Then again' thought Cassandra 'it could be worse, some of the other girls had bars on the windows.'

Distressed girls. Cassandra smirked. That didn't cover half of it: at St Augusta's they had arsonists, punks, chavs, kleptomaniacs, psychopaths, addicts, neurotics, and just plain loons, girls who delight in bullying and picking on the weakest and the weirdest. Unfortunately Cassandra fitted into that description perfectly. With her long, wild, black hair, her large, piercing jade-green eyes, her 'odd' dress sense and hot temper, the young girl stood out a mile.

She stared down into the street below. Most of the houses were decrepit and boarded up; the only source of light came from a dim amber streetlight. Suddenly she heard a commotion in one of the side alleys, loud crashing, banging and...Growling? Cassandra immediately thought of the big, black dog. Her heart started hammering so hard she was surprised it didn't burst out her chest. Her hand gripped the windowsill so hard her knuckles turned bone white.

After a minute, a hissing, spitting, feline figure shot out of the alley. Cassandra breathed a sigh of relief, it was only a cat. Why was she being so paranoid? It wasn't just the dog; she'd been having this feeling for a while, jumping at the slightest thing, as if she knew something big was coming...but what?

She wiped her sweaty forehead. The hot, stuffy summer nights they had been having hadn't been helping her nightmares. Her nightmares. Cassandra had been having them for as long as she could remember: nightmares so vivid and frightening. Full of half-formed beings, cloaked figures and bloodcurdling screams.And the worst thing was...sometimes they became real.

Because Cassandra had talents. Not ordinary talents like acting or knitting or sport. Strange talents. She could move things without touching them, she could change the colour of objects by thought, she sensed what animals were thinking and feeling, and she could even occasionally control people. Stuff happened around her that she couldn't explain. This had been happening since she was young, and her powers were growing stronger as she got older. Barely a day went by without an incident happening. And it scared her so much.

Cassandra stood up from her crouching position and went back to bed. Sleep, that's what she needed, a good night's sleep. She pulled her sheets around her, till she was wrapped up in a dark, quiet cocoon, her own little world where no one could hurt her. Praying for a dreamless, dogless sleep, she closed her eyes and laid her head on the pillow.

...

Below her window, a shadow stepped out of the alley. It looked up at the window; it might have stayed there for a minute or maybe an hour, before walking away, blending into the darkness of the night...