Chapter 17: A Living Nightmare

When Lily awoke sometime later, she was surprised and confused to find herself sleeping in her own bed. She tried to sit up, but moving was still excruciatingly painful. Gently pulling up her pajama top, she cringed at the sight of her heavily bruised belly.

Searching the room for her silk dress, she found it, singed and torn, draped over a chair. Through a painful fog, she wondered who had dressed her. And how had she gotten home? "Hello?" she croaked, her voice barely audible. But no one answered, and, spent from the effort, she passed out again.

Her dreams were violent and forbidding. In dark woods, she tracked a stranger through the trees, pouncing on him with the speed of a tiger. As she exposed his neck to tear at his flesh, a man in a dark suit swooped in and grabbed her, preventing her from ravaging her prey. Images of a child's black patent leather shoes running through the grass haunted her.