Growing Up – Part Two
Dreams and Nightmares

There was nothing but darkness at first; then it was as if the heavens themselves had opened up to her; and her mind filled with fields and rivers and animals and most importantly; the three people in this world she loved more than she loved herself.

She was wearing a white dress; a pretty white dress which wasn’t too fancy and more like something one would sleep in than an actual dress, but she still loved it. The three men standing in a semi-circle before her were white silk pants and white silk t-shirts, the male version of what she wore, and all three of them smiled more than happily at her.

Kuro stood in the middle of them, facing her directly, and she ran to embrace him when the ground between them split and the grass began to die slowly. She screamed, and heard nothing, and he reached for her for a moment, and then pulled his hand back and watched her with eyes full of pain. She turned to see Eric on his knees next to her, blood pooling in the grass around him, and turned against to see Chris on the other side of her, on his knees with blood pooling around him as well.

She was horrified at the sight, and turned back to Kuro who was being forced even further from her by the opening earth. She screamed again, and the world was coated in darkness, but not darkness you couldn’t see anything; more like everything was bleached of color except for her blue eyes and Kuro’s pale blue eyes.

Kuro now turned to her, and he bent over, as if in pain. His back began to stretch before her, and Chris and Eric threw their heads back as they began to scream in pain their hands held out to their sides, their wrists tearing slowly as the blood dripped from their skin. The blood and their eyes were the only thing with color in this world, and the rest was in stark contrast to the colorless everything else.

She turned back to look at Kuro, when her mind seemed to snap from her body and she could see everything, herself standing there in front of the split ground and Chris and Eric on either side of her on their knees, the blood dripping down their bodies from their wrists and now their necks; staining and soaking into their white outfits.

Kuro was still hunched over, and soon he too had his head back and was screaming, his back ripping over as a pair of feathery black wings tore from his flesh. He stood straight up, and his entire body shook as he stretched, his screaming silent as the wings spread from his back and flapped once to shake the blood off of them, the blood splattering across the barren landscape, leaving splats of red in the colorless world. He shock his shoulders, rolled his arms in the air, and stretched again before turning to stare at Flick again; this time his eyes were a deep crimson red, and when he grinned the sharp canines were the first thing she noticed.

He held his left hand out towards her, and she heard Chris and Eric’s bodies crush next to her, as they did she could see the strength in Kuro’s new body grow, and he grinned even more before spreading his black wings and taking off in the air to land squarely in front of her on the ground.

Each step he took left some of the grass dead, and left a trail of blood. He got closer to her, until their bodies were almost touching and he took hold of her neck tightly, she felt herself gasp for air but heard nothing.

He pulled her closer, and took in the scent of her lips carefully before moving to her neck, and whispered almost silently to her; his voice dark and yet still that of Kuro.

“You have no idea…do you? What you do to creatures like me…how you make our blood boil and the lust build beneath our flesh before it tears us apart.” He flexed his wings as if they had been some metaphor for this. “How you taunt us with something we can never have.” He let out a slow breath against her neck, and she couldn’t hold back a shiver. He seemed to enjoy this because he pulled her closer to him, until their bodies touched.

“Do you really think to control you is all we want?”

Her body shivered in knowledge and he let his lips slip softly across her flesh before moving to the other side of her neck, taking in another large breath. Her scent was driving him mad, and she could feel it as his hand flexed around her neck.

“I’ve watched you grow, I’ve waited until I could have you as my own, and this is how you repay me, by falling for a man like him!” His voice was out-raged now, and from somewhere behind her she could hear that voice again…that deep male voice with the accent she couldn’t name.

“He’ll just betray you, you know Felicia, all he wants is to get to me…and he’ll do it anyway he can…” He spoke softly now, the tone of Kuro returning, and she felt a sharp pain in her back, a pain that spread through her body until she felt her entire body burning. She wanted to scream, but couldn’t.

Kuro drew back from her, his hand still on her neck, and he smiled once before locking lips with her. She felt the kiss, and the burning grew more intense, even as she found herself clinging back to him, deepening the kiss herself. In the back of her head she could hear that accent telling her to stop, to wake up, to run. She ignored it, and felt Kuro’s body begin to fade in her embrace until she fell into the spot he was once in and was on her knees.

The pain in her body grew until she couldn’t take it anymore and she screamed, breaking through the silence. Her back screamed at her, and she felt her flesh splinter and boil until a set of white feathery wings burst from her spine. The pain didn’t stop there, and she dug her fingers into the ground around her as she felt her eyes boil, she could see the pupils disappear and her blue fade to a crimson red, she rubbed endlessly at her eyes; the pain gone for now but a new desire in her blood.

She spread the winds, soaked in so much blood they felt heavy, and she grinned to herself as the voice grew closer to her mind, in front of her now. She looked up just in time to see an older man walk slowly towards her, he was larger than Kuro had been, far more built and manly, and he wasn’t pretty in the slightest…but he was handsome beyond belief, his features sharp and perfect but in a human way.

He smiled slightly at her, and held his right hand out towards her, as if beckoning her to him. She watched him carefully, and stood slowly to her feet, her wings now simply an extension of her body, as if they had been there the entire time. She didn’t smile back, and his smile faded as he saw the color of his eyes. He dropped his hand, and nodded towards her, and she felt just how powerful she had become at that moment…when even a man who used to slaughter for a living would bow to her without a second thought.

“Your kingdom waits…” He was the man with an accent, and she found herself staring for a moment, his hair was cut short, and unlike Kuro he wasn’t pretty…so why did she find him so…amazing? Her heart even grew faster as she walked towards him to see over the opening in the earth.

She stood right next to him, her wings folded over her back, and she felt her heart stop and she shot her eyes towards him; his body bursting in front of her before she even had to spend time to think of what she wanted it to do. The blood splattered against the dead ground as well as her, but she never fazed. She never blinked; she never gave it a second thought. She just killed the man she knew she loved, and walked on to see over the end of the earth.


“How is she today?” She knew that voice, that was Kuro’s voice…and she felt her heart skip a beat as she realized who is was, after she had started to walk towards the end of the earth everything had gone black, and now she heard a voice for the first time in what felt like a lifetime. It was also the only voice she ever wanted to actually hear again. It was Kuro’s voice.

She felt a pressure towards her right side and her feet, and assumed she must be in bed and that someone, please be Kuro, had just sat down next to her. She also heard a door close, and heard two more people sit down in various places to listen to who she guessed was the doctor.

“She is amazing today, we finally have everything stable…and we think she might wake up soon… she made an amazing recovery, after something like that we’re surprised it’s only been a year and a half.” It was a female doctor, and her voice was soft and kind…but something she said left Flick wanting to scream out.

A year and a half that was eighteen months; she had been out for a year and a half. Out, she had been passed out in a hospital for a year and a half. She couldn’t wrap her mind around it. The thought left her nearly shacking in the bed; and whoever had sat next to her saw this change to her and took hold of her right hand, and held onto it tightly.

Whoever it was didn’t speak, and didn’t move besides taking hold of her hand. His flesh was also nothing like either Eric’s or Kuro’s. It was too warm and too soft; she could feel the blood pulsing under it; and it pulled at her stomach in an odd way that made her want to scream. She desired that pulsing under his flesh and that scared her.

She heard the doctor walk away after answering a few questions, the person holding her hand never speaking. She then heard the door open and close again, and let her mind drift again; her hand losing on the other but never letting go, and never able to push away the painful knowledge that she could feel the pulsing underneath his flesh.

“She’s awake.” That was Kuro’s voice, dark and harder than normal, and he was also standing somewhere next to her head, so that wasn’t his hand; it didn’t surprise her, his flesh was much harder than this and his blood wasn’t so obviously alive.

“It’s about time…how does she feel?” That was Eric’s voice, and he was standing next to Kuro; which meant that there was only one person who could be sitting on the bed holding her hand. It must have been Chris; he was the only other person who could be here right now.

“She feels cold.” She felt her skin recoil at the touch as the accent rang clearly in her mind, the vowels of his words heavy with it. His voice was deep and handsome, and she felt her hand tense against his as she listened to the words; not comprehending but absorbing that accent. She had never heard anything quite like it before, but she did hear it that last night she remembered being awake and again in her dream. It seemed to just enjoy haunting her now. It wasn’t Chris.

She heard Kuro scoff at his comment, and it was an oddly amusing sound.

“She’ll be cold for awhile, that was a hell of a thing she went though, and until her body gets used to the changes… We’ll have to keep an eye on her.” His voice was oddly cold still, and she wanted to sit up and ask him what he was talking about, what they all were talking about. It was then that she realized her body was too heavy, or at least too weak to sit up, and she gave up, happy to just lie there.

“I thought you were the one who was sent to protect her, hell of a job you did back there.” That was the accented voice again, and she found herself once again unable to push her mind past the accent and absorb the words and their meanings.

“I was sent to keep her out of their hands, I did just that. She is still here with us, is she not?” That was Kuro again, and his voice had risen slightly; he wasn’t yelling, but it was clear he wanted to now.

“Yeah, great job at that, how come she changed like she did? Explain ‘that’ horse-boy.” It was the accented voice again, and she heard Kuro’s instant dislike to his new nickname, his disapproval came up in a harsh growling sound that no one else seemed to hear.

“That was her bodies own natural defense. Whatever she is she isn’t stupid, her natural instincts must have taken over and simply awakened a new side to whatever she is.” Kuro’s voice was harsher now, and she felt the tension in the room spike up a few notches. Eric also shifted somewhere and started to fumble through the pages of a book.

“So she became some vampire thing?” This was the accented voice again, and unlike Kuro he seemed able to keep his calm, even if his voice, and even though his hand was locked tightly around Flick’s now.

“Actually, she’s more like a cat.” That was Eric’s voice, and he choked back a giggle and cleared his throat before going silent; she guessed the other two had glared at him for a moment.

“In all reality she probably just finally saw a reason to expose to us her true self; whatever that may be. I wasn’t sent here to find out, I was sent here to keep everyone else from learning more about her.” That was Kuro’s voice again, and he seemed to have calmed down some thanks to Eric’s intervention.

“So they don’t even know what she is.” The accented voice spoke softly, he must have been thinking to himself. Flick didn’t understand any of this conversation; she felt normal besides the strange pull at her stomach from the pulsing blood she felt in his hand; but that was gone now.

“Your group doesn’t know anything else about her either, so don’t go pointing fingers. I just can’t believe they even sent you!” That was Kuro’s voice again, and instead of sounding angry he sounded obviously confused.

“They didn’t send me after her; I was after the thing that almost got her that night. It was a freak accident that I even got caught up in this mess, and then when I reported back they said I should stick around. This creature in your hands can’t be any safer than her being in anyone else’s hands.” That was the accented voice, and Flick actually felt hurt as he spoke of her like some item of possession that everyone simply wanted for themselves. She didn’t even know what was going on, and this conversation wasn’t helping her in the slightest.

There was silent now, and she could hear the soft dripping of the IV that she knew was in her wrist right now. She wanted to wake up and she had so many questions running through her head, but she was so incredible tired…maybe if she just let herself sleep for a little bit longer…

That was when her world went silent, and she drifted off to sleep. This time her dreams were empty.


It only felt like minutes had passed when she found herself staring up towards the ceiling in the dark room. She found herself blinking for a moment, and found the strength to sit up; which she did slowly, careful not to pull the IV from her arm. She sat on the bed for a moment and looked around the dark empty room. It was quiet, and she was starving. She was also alone, and this angered her beyond reason. They had to be there when she couldn’t move, and now that she was actually awake they were nowhere to be found.

She found the call button on the side of her bed; and clicked it repeatedly until a female nurse responded to the calls, her voice oddly weary.

“Yes?” Her voice was oddly annoyed, yet at the same time aware. Flick wasn’t surprised, she had been out cold for a good year and a half, if she was a nurse and the light of a patient who had been out for that long suddenly went off one night she’d be scared too.

“Where is Kuro?” She was surprised when her voice didn’t crack or struggle when she spoke. She hadn’t heard her own voice in ages; and yet it sounded like she had been speaking perfectly normal the entire time.

There was a silence on the other end, and Flick guessed the poor nurse must have had some sort of heart attack. She knew she would have. That was when the door slammed open, and she found herself staring into the eyes of an extremely sleep deprived young man. His pale blue eyes stared back at her, his pale face blank for a moment of emotion until a smile lit across his lips and he ran gracefully to her in the bed and took her in his arms.

She was stunned silent by the sight of him; his hair was longer and tied back in a ponytail to keep it out of his face, it was also in stark contrast to his pale skin; and it gave him an oddly ghostly appearance. His pale flesh, his white hair, and his pale blue eyes all feeding off each other. He never looked like more of an angel than at that moment; and she didn’t need to hear his voice for that to be confirmed to her. That was her Pegasus.

She could only hug him back with her right hand, her left one tangled up with the IV, but she held him as tightly as her strength would allow; she could feel warm tears building up in her eyes and spilling over her cheeks and she wasn’t bothered by it so long as she could hold him there. His arms were locked tightly around her waist and his body shock ever so slightly; almost as if he too were crying.

Soon Eric came into the room as well; and behind him an older man with dark, almost black short hair and who was darker in skin color than the others while still being white. Eric’s hair was almost to his shoulder and messy from lack of brushing it and he too had the dark rings of no-sleep under his eyes. The older man, on the other hand, had a face clear of any signs of anything. He simply watched Flick with his dark eyes.

Eric glared for a moment towards Kuro, who still hadn’t let his embrace around Flick down; but he kept himself from feeling jealous, too happy to know that she was alright. When Kuro finally did release Flick he just stared at her for a moment, his hands still on either side of her waist.

“How do you feel?” He actually sounded concerned, and she took a moment to glance at the other too before responding to him. Eric looked just as concerned as Kuro, but the older man stood in the doorway with his arms over his chest.

“I feel…hungry.” She smiled nervously for a second, thinking about all the emotions running through her. It was too hot in here for one, and that big dark guy in the corner was starting to give her a complex, but besides that she was really only hungry.

Kuro nodded and looked towards the big guy and Eric for a moment before turning back to Flick. “We’ll take you out to eat a huge meal as soon as we get you out of here.” His voice was soft and kind again…the same voice she remembered from her dream and she forgot all about his cold hard voice; she didn’t care anymore, as long as her Pegasus was back.

“Yeah, I could go for some food too, but what about…Cross?” Eric spoke finally, his voice tired and slow, and when he said ‘Cross’ he ‘inconspicuously’ pointed his left thumb towards the big man, who gave a silent scoff at being talked about before speaking up himself.

“If you fear eating in front of me, I’ll get food somewhere else, but I’m not letting ‘that’ out of my sight.” His accented voice was strong, and Flick had to look away from him to hide the blush it forced onto her cheeks. He had no idea how many times that voice had showed up in her mind this past year and a half. She didn’t even seem to notice how he had called her ‘that’ like she was some sort of disgusting animal.

Kuro noticed, on the other hand, and shot him a sharp glare he didn’t seem to notice. “IF you are coming with us then you’ll call her by name, her name is Felicia.”

That, Flick noticed. She wasn’t to be called Felicia, and she instantly felt the air grow thick around them. It had been so long since she used her power of control; it felt good to feel the mental blanket fall over them once again, and she didn’t take much notice of the gray dot that was Cross.

“You will not call me Felicia, my name is Flick.” While she and Eric clearly felt the power in her words; they rang from her throat like bells, an angelic voice with the destiny to control; Cross didn’t shift. His face never twisted, there was nothing in his presence to suggest that he had even heard her, besides the fact his cold dark eyes had locked into her dark blue ones.

She instantly felt the power slip from her fingers when she noticed that he wasn’t affected by her words in even the slightest way, and she drew back into herself some before muttering just loud enough for Kuro to hear.

“I want food now…please…”

While Cross had indeed felt the tension rise in the air, and had felt Eric’s body tense next to his as he waited for his command, he himself felt no desire to serve such a creature as her. He saw how Kuro and Eric bent unwillingly to her every desire; this was noticeable the moment she woke and asked for food, they both mentally jumped at the chance to please her. He, on the other hand, wouldn’t bow to the desire of something that was neither mortal nor immortal, as far as he saw her she was just that…a thing meant to be fought for and controlled. He didn’t care who or what wished to harm and control her; he just knew that she wasn’t going to be captured by anyone so long as he was here. If he had to kill her to keep this a fact, then he would do so without batting an eye.

He would kill that frail, gorgeous woman sitting in that hospital bed before him a thousand times over if that kept the balance between mortals and immortals safe. Her dark blue eyes, pale flesh, and long black hair did nothing to him. He felt no sorrow or care for a creature whose very instinct was to survive and control. He didn’t care how innocent she looked.

He tore his eyes away from hers after a few moments and left the room without batting an eye. The tension in the air instantly dropping the second he left. He would wait in the hallway for them; he hated that mushy stuff; especially when the only reason the two of them cared was because she had her power of control wrapped tightly around them.

The moment he left Eric rolled his shoulders and strode over to Flick’s bed side.

“That’s Cross. He’s sort of a…” Eric played with the different words in his mind for a moment before Kuro cut in.

“He’s a bastard.” His voice was hard and cold again, obviously he and Cross didn’t get along, and it was also clear that he and Eric were on better grounds, since they both smiled at each other as if they had just shared some inside joke at Cross’s expense.

“What does he do? Why is he here?” Flick was truly interested, and this seemed to disgust both Eric and Kuro, who exchanged looks of bewilderment; finally Kuro spoke up.

“We’ll let him tell you, his stories are the bestest.” He said this with a hint of sarcasm, and ignored Flick’s sigh. She’d learn everything eventually.