Chapter 1

Blood. There was so much blood. It ran like a river all around me. Warm, thick, crimson liquid ran torrents around my legs until all I could see was red. The irony scent clotted in my nostrils and made me feel sick.

Yet, I couldn’t take my eyes off the woman who stood before me. She was devastatingly beautiful with pale white skin that seemed to radiate silver light from within. Her silver-white hair blew all around her, framing her face so that she looked like she was standing in a wind tunnel.

The sight of her made me tremble, but I wasn’t scared. At least not until I really looked at her face.

She was crying. But instead of tears, blood oozed from her eyes. It spread in a thick stream down her cheeks connecting with the streams of blood that oozed from the corners of her mouth. Every time her hair whipped away from her face, I could see similar streams cascading from her ears.

The blood dropped like teardrops onto her flowing white dress, turning it crimson before continuing onwards to join the river around our feet.

I weep for my children. Her ethereal voice sounded in my head just as it always did when the Moon Goddess came to me. I weep for the lives lost and the lives still to be lost.

“What is happening?” I asked the same question that I always asked, “What am I supposed to do?”

My children are dying. Selene continued as though she had not heard me and her eyes continued to weep blood. I could feel the stream rising against my calves, growing thicker and going cold until it came to my knees.

“Why have you come to me?” I asked, “What do you want me to do? Why have you chosen me?”

All questions that I continually asked myself.

You are chosen, Brianna Winterwood. You have always been the chosen one.

What kind of answer was that? Why couldn’t the Goddess just tell me what she wanted from me? Why couldn’t she just make this easy for me?

“Please, tell me what I am supposed to do?” I pleaded, but still, she did not seem to have an answer for me.

Trust yourself, Brianna Winterwood, daughter of my daughter.

I could see her now, beginning to fade. Her body beginning to melt into the blood that seemed to consume her.

“No! Wait! Don’t leave me!” I screamed.

That’s when I heard the second voice, calling out to me from a great distance. “Bri! Bri! Brianna! Wake up!”

My shoulders trembled then, and I suddenly realised that I was being shaken awake.

I blinked, and when my eyes opened, I was staring up at the familiar white ceiling of my room at the Winterwood Academy.

My roommate, Zoe Johnson, had her hands clamped down on my shoulders, almost as if she was pinning me to the bed, trying to anchor me down to stop me from hurting myself.

“Bri? It’s alright. You’re okay. You are in your room.” Zoe spoke softly now as if she was a mother talking to her child, and when I blinked up at her, it took me a few moments for me to really register her face.

She was beautiful—just like everyone else at the Academy—with black hair cut into a short pixie cut and almond-shaped brown eyes that were huge and round with concern.

“Were you having another bad dream?” Zoe sighed, finally taking her hands off me as though she realised I was no longer going insane.

Or was I? I couldn’t be sure.

I nodded, although I didn’t tell her what I had seen. I’d had the same dream every night for the last week. Ever since I had opened the Winterwood Book of Shadows - a book that could only be opened by someone with Winterwood blood - I had been having horrible nightmares of blood and pain and the Goddess crying.

But still, I was no closer to having any idea what the hell any of it meant.

“You really should go and see Lecturer Merrin.” Zoe sighed and sat back on the bed to look at me. Her eyes were still round with concern, “You look like you’ve barely slept all week.”

That was probably because I’d woken sweating and in tears, every night. But, even though I knew I could trust my roommate, I had no idea how to tell her that the Goddess had been coming to me in my dreams.

How the hell was I supposed to tell a lecturer if I couldn’t even tell her?

“It’s nothing. I’m sure it’ll pass.” I shook my head. I tried to remind myself of the conversation I’d had on the phone with my adopted mother shortly after the first time I’d had the nightmare. She’d told me that it was probably nothing to worry about. I’d had bad dreams as a kid. She’d told me that it only ever seemed to happen when I was stressed about something. Of course, she’d questioned me on what was stressing me out, but how was I supposed to tell her that since coming to the Winterwood Academy so much had happened, it would make her head spin?

The stress of keeping everything to myself probably wasn’t helping, but I didn’t want to worry her.

“That’s what you’ve said every morning this week.” Zoe pointed out. She was right. I was in denial. What else was there to do? I was still trying my hardest to fit into school.

“Well, if you are going to continue acting like everything is normal, we should probably get dressed and head down for breakfast.” Zoe shrugged and jumped up from the bed. I realised that she was already dressed in a pair of skinny red jeans and a white vest top.

It dawned on me then that I’d made it through my first week of classes. It was the weekend. At least I didn’t have to sit through another class with all the third years staring at me like I didn’t belong. All except for James Booth, who seemed to have accepted me from the moment I stepped into the school.

Even though I was a freak, I could at least pretend to be normal around him. He seemed to ignore everything else and just enjoy my company. It was a little relief compared to everything else.

I pushed back my bedsheets and clambered off the mattress to grab some fresh underwear and a purple maxi dress from my closet.

Hurrying into the bathroom so that I could hide my new marks (another thing I wasn’t ready to talk about) from my roommate, I changed as quickly as possible. Being late for breakfast meant that all the good food would be gone. I just hoped that the other students had taken advantage of the fact it was the weekend and had chosen to stay in bed.

I’d just brushed my teeth and washed my face when I heard the sound of loud banging coming from the main room.

I’d quickly come to learn that whenever that happened, something big was going on. And it turned out that I was right.

I pulled open the bathroom door just in time to find Keeya and Luci bursting into the bedroom

“It happened again.” Keeya gasped. Her thick African hair that had been straightened to within an inch of its life was sticking out at odds and ends all over her head as though she hadn’t bothered to run a brush through it.

Luci was looking just as frantic. Her blue eyes were frantic even behind her thick-rimmed glasses.

“What’s happened?” Zoe asked quickly, “What’s going on?”

“Another student died last night.”

I dropped down onto the end of my bed, unable to believe what I had just heard coming from Keeya’s lips.

The images from my dream danced in my mind, and I cringed, wondering whether the two might be connected. My stomach was suddenly aching so badly that I had to place my hands over my abdomen in an attempt to stop it.