Elevation

"Watcher!" The word was spoken just above a whisper. Quiet, but dangerous on a level she hadn't even begun to comprehend.

The speaker, though she remembered instantly how he had looked when she'd stared up at him from the sidewalk after running into him, was nowhere to be found. It was, to everyone else in the room, as if he hadn't been there and hadn't said it at all.

But he must have. She'd heard it.

Why had he been standing so close to her when she turned around, anyway? She hadn't thought about it at the time. Was he trying to scare her?

It was working.

She looked at her friends; Zack, Amber, and Maxwell assembled around the circular table. They were chatting and laughing with each other, yet she was somehow uninvolved.

In fact, she could barely hear them at all.

It was as if the world around her was on mute or a really, really low volume that made everything sound like an indecipherable murmur.

She wanted to ask what the hell was going on, but the words wouldn't leave her lips. She couldn't form them.

"Watcher!"

It sounded exactly how it had moments before and when she'd bumped into him, he had to be nearby. The temperature dropping strangely fast, she could practically feel him there.

The low, dull murmur that had been the cafeteria's noise level before became an obnoxiously loud humming sound, still completely indecipherable to her ears.

What the hell was going on? Why could she hear him so clearly when everyone else sounded like static electricity? And where the hell was he?

"Watcher!" This time, it was her own voice that finally broke through the static.

For a long moment, everything was silent and seemed to drift away from her focus. She was somehow no longer at the cafeteria with her friends enjoying lunch, but in a much darker, scary part of the city.

Barely there at all, her entire body felt flooded with a cold and damp misery.

Unfocused and blurry, she saw a man with impossibly angled copper hair kissing the neck of a beautiful woman while holding her tightly against a stone wall in the heat of passion.

Harlyn's eyes widened as the realization of what was actually happening began to dawn on her.

The woman wasn't holding onto his shirt to pull him closer, but in attempt to push him away. Soon she wasn't struggling at all anymore.

The familiar man picked her limp, lifeless body up into his arms effortlessly and carried her over to the dumpster at the edge of the alley.

For the entire time that he'd been with the woman and making his exit with her body, Harlyn had managed to stay silent. That is, until the body hit the bottom of the otherwise empty dumpster.

The sickening thud of dead weight made her jerk so violently that she hit her spine against the damp stone wall and groan almost silently in registration of the pain.

Before he'd even turned his head to look at her with those penetrating silver eyes, she knew that he knew she was there, watching him.

When his head finally did turn in her direction, a scream of terror escaped her lips at the sight of the blood covering his jagged, pointy teeth and mouth. She quickly clamped a hand over her mouth and backed herself as tightly against the wall as possible, terrified and unable to think properly enough to make an escape plan.

His bloody mouth twitched into what could only be described as the most sinister smirk she'd ever seen in her life and he began walking towards her, taking slow, meaningful steps.

"Oh God, oh God, oh God, please let me wake up!" Harlyn begged, clenching and unclenching her fists nervously while inching further along the wall away from him. "Let this be a nightmare, let me wake up and forget it and never think of it again," she cried.

She met a corner and couldn't move any further away from him without getting closer first and that was something she just wasn't going to even attempt. "Please, oh please, oh please." she whimpered, crumpling into the corner, pulling her knees up to her chest. "I don't want to die."

If her eyes had been opened and not hidden behind her hands, she would have seen him lean down beside her, bringing his blood-stained lips close to her ear. As she could not see him, it shocked her all the more when he whispered in a different, amused-sounding manner, "Watcher!"

Everything disappeared.

She was back in her bed, warm and safe under her blankets.

It had all been a horrible nightmare with no just cause.

Where the hell did she come up with vampires, anyway? Last she heard, vampires didn't turn into huge figures that cast off enormous shadows in the night. In fact, that sounded a bit more like something a werewolf would do if they existed. Why did she dream about him as a vampire?

Something warm and wet slid down the length of her neck and she immediately bolted out of her bed and ran into the adjoining bathroom, turning on the light and staring into the mirror intently, trying to find out what was on her.

A single line of blood had rolled from her ear down her neck when she'd sat up.

Although it was still very wet and fresh, she could find no point on her ear, face, or neck where she'd been cut or scraped. It made clear the undeniable fact that the blood was not her own and had somehow gotten into her room and onto her body without her even knowing it was happening.

Tears welled up behind her dark, knowing eyes and she heaved once or twice rather violently, but willed herself not to cry. There was no point in crying now, she was alive, the nightmare was over, and she had somehow gotten through it.

The blood was the most terrifying thing she'd ever experienced.

She wondered if somehow it could have been connected to her dream and knew, though she wouldn't admit it to herself, that it had to be. Somehow she had been staring into his real, honest to God, life and he had turned and looked right back at hers, toying with her on top of it all.

It was a ridiculous thought, but how else could the blood have gotten there?

With a frown, she turned on the hot tap, moistening a washcloth, and began scrubbing vigorously at the trail of unexplainable blood.

She felt dirty and like the world she had known and manipulated so very well was suddenly as far as possible out of her hands.

She had no control over what was happening to and around her, the nightmares, the stranger, the funny weather, that horrible walk in general.

Climbing into the tub, she sat in the middle of it, allowing the shower to wash over her, content with just sitting there until the water turned cold. Only then did she start washing her hair and getting ready for the day.