Dead by Morning (Rituals of the Night Book 1) (30 page)

She was crying again as she made the long, painful, and solemn journey back home. She couldn’t believe the source of her pain had been a nightmare. Who knew it could’ve turned out to be more than just broken up sleep and night sweats?

She frowned again as she thought of Chance. She had never liked him, and she guessed that had been because her Teardrop of Knowledge had sensed that there was something wrong with him. Chance had always been so popular and so seemingly naïve his entire life, yet no one had guessed his dark and twisted secret.

No one had known he was a cold-blooded monster.

Luna felt bad for his amnesia, but she knew it was for the best.

As Luna kept walking down the road alone, she thought of Amy. Where had she gone? Luna had tried so hard to keep her away from Chance’s clutches, but he had managed to find her anyways. She had nearly been another victim of his ‘game’.

The part that worried Luna was that she might not even realize that what had happened to her was real. What happened had a high potential to traumatize her. Luna shook her head; maybe Amy would be lucky if she didn’t think any of it had truly happened. She could easily begin to confuse reality with DreamWorld, and she’d end up in the same place Luna had been.

Luna felt curious to see what her wrists looked like. She pulled up the sleeve of the dress and realized the ugly marks were completely gone. She turned her wrist over to examine the sunlight on her skin.

As she looked at her unmarked wrists in amazement, she realized for the first time that Chance’s reign of terror was truly over.

                                                                      Epilogue

It was odd seeing Violet in her coffin. Her face was cleaned of blood and the hole in her forehead had been sealed. If Luna wanted to believe, she could pretend that Violet was sleeping. She wanted the peaceful image to be in her mind, but it couldn’t displace the memory of her death.

Luna stayed beside her coffin, staring down at her friend throughout the ceremony. She stayed in place as Violet’s coffin was lowered into the ground. Even after many of Violet’s relatives left, she stayed in the same place watching as gravediggers slowly hid Violet’s final resting place from view. It was hard for her to believe that the entire town had believed that Violet’s death had been the result of a hunting accident.

Reading Violet’s name on the tombstone wasn’t enough to make her realize that she was truly gone.

As Luna stayed in place, she felt a strong longing to see Max. The last time she had talked to him, he had been recovering well. He was shipped frequently between hospitals making it impossible to stay in touch with him. She could feel them drifting apart again, like they had been before DreamWorld had brought them together.

“Hey, are you gonna be alright?” one of the gravediggers called to her.

She blinked to bring her mind back to focus as she turned to look at him. “Yeah, I’ll be fine.”

“You should get some rest,” he said and offered her a gentle smile before he went back to work filling in the grave.

Luna nodded and turned to cross the cemetery. The gentle fall breeze blew lightly, chilling her mildly. She noticed the vibrant orange and yellow leaves that dotted the trees. When she bowed her head, she caught sight of a red leaf that had drifted free from one of the nearby trees.

She swallowed and looked away from it instantly- it reminded her too much of blood.

Walking made her stomach ache with the memory of her wounds. Over the three weeks since that important day in the woods, her wound had sealed over, thankfully without anyone ever noticing that she had been hurt.

The wound brought unwelcome thoughts of Chance to her mind. He lurked in the shadows of her thoughts almost daily. The last she had heard of him, he was deep in a coma at the local hospital. It was unknown if he’d ever recover from it.

Luna felt as if that would be the best option for everyone.

She sighed sadly as she walked slowly towards the edge of the cemetery. Beyond the gate, she could see a road- the one Amy had picked her up from. Sadness gripped her again at the thought of Amy. Since the day she had left the woods, she hadn’t spoken a word to anybody.

Luna guessed she was deeply traumatized by what Chance had done.

She shook the thought away. She couldn’t even fix herself, let alone attempting to help others. She needed to get away from thoughts. She walked gently across the dirt pathway. When she reached the entrance of the gate, she stopped to catch her breath and give her stomach a moment to rest.

When she did, she noticed a glint in the grass a few yards away. She crept over to it carefully and stared at it in horror. It was Chance’s snake-handled dagger, stuck into the ground like someone had driven it deep into the soil. She felt like her heart was about to stop.

If Chance was in the hospital, how had it gotten there?

She pulled it out of the ground and held the cold metal in her shaking hands. A tiny piece of white paper had been wrapped around the blade. When Luna picked up the knife, it fluttered to the ground.

It’s not over, Luna,
it read.

Luna dropped the knife to the ground and walked away. Some things were better left unsaid.