In a Nightmare, Awakening a Dream

     Jezebel clapped her hands when the ice cracked and opened, allowing the hulking Tzimisce to step out of the diorama. She kicked a handful of bloody pearls out of the way, making sure Arbalest Vlar wouldn’t slip, and almost skipped around him. Dona Elena Atima Justinicus Cavalcanti de Medici Machiavelli Borges Vlaches lay quietly in his arms, the gaping wounds from the ten swords which had pierced her seeping crimson fluid.
     "Should we put her heart back in?" Jezebel looked at Elena’s unblinking, unseeing midnight-blue eyes and frowned.
     "I already did," Arbalest said, shifting her a bit in his arms as Jezebel pulled off part of her skirt and wrapped it over the Lasombra’s nude body. "Something’s not right. We need to leave," he muttered, looking down at the still form. Jezebel nodded, clutching her butcher knife tightly. She kicked a few of the items they’d dropped in front of the scene away, and picked up the limp, blood-stained wings. Frowning, she walked over and tossed them into the diaorama, knocking one of the vampires over. She hastened after Arbalest, their footsteps echoing in the vast hall.

     Neither vampire nor werewolf saw the tears that fell from the angel’s eyes.

     Iris Foster was in pain.

     As long as she could remember, or so it seemed, she had been in pain. Exquisite pain. Agony that lit the nerves afire and sent sparkles of anguish along her spine. Her mind was a reddish haze, and she couldn’t think straight. Of course, she didn’t know where she was, or why she couldn’t move either.
Point in fact, the last *clear* memory she had was of opening her eyes and realizing she was in either a coffin or a box. Claustrophobia had taken over, and she’d nearly broken her wing attempting to get out. Then blissful darkness, and now…this. Iris couldn’t figure out where she was, what was going on, or even…*who* she was. Memories flashed through her head like a flipbook, memories with familiar elements, but they seemed entirely out of place.

     She saw her father. The only problem was that he wasn’t her father. It was Jonas’s face, Jonas’s voice…but it was calling a name she didn’t know. Who was ‘Dia’ anyway? Why was he sounding so cold? Why could she see her father’s terrified, stricken face over hers, and feel his hand clutching so hard it hurt? Why could she see him laughing, with cold, dark eyes, and imagine him carrying a pan of seedlings? Her father never gardened. She and Ax did all the work on the plants on the patio.
     She saw a man she’d never met: handsome, with regal eyes and long, dark blonde hair. He looked at her almost hungrily, and seemed greedy to touch her. His hands, when she felt them, were clammy and soft, and the muted sound of his voice, speaking again to this ‘Dia,’ made her stomach twist.
     She saw so much she didn’t understand: people, herds of them, all coming at her with groping hands, grimy fingers and sorrowful eyes. There were people she had never met, talking to her, asking her for help, trying to drag her away with them. Memories that Iris had no recall of experiencing were flooding her mind, and she couldn’t move. It was the worst part: she couldn’t *move.* Iris had always been terrified of immobility. She was claustrophobic, and this sensation of being blind, being stuck… It was frightening. Very, very frightening.

     If she had been able to *see* where she was, it might have made a difference. Her eyes, however, could only see darkness, except when she was flashing through memories. (…not hers, another’s… someone else’s memories…) Her body was…disconnected from her. Iris felt pain, yes. A lot of pain, especially along her back. She couldn’t sense her wings which, had she been more herself, would have sent her into a panic. There were other concerns which had her more locked into the past than her present. 
    

     And it wasn’t even *her* past.

     Who was this Dia? Why were her memories, why was her past so vivid? Iris’s mind couldn’t form much in the way of coherent thoughts, and she found it exhausting to try. It was easier to sleep in the painful dark, to let her worry about where she was, or even *who* she was, slide away into agonizing darkness.
    

     Jonas… He was calling her name. Was he? He was calling for Dia. She was Dia. Of course, it all made sense now. Jonas was calling her. How she loved him. Yes… When she could, she would come back to him. Nothing could go wrong now, could it? No. Of course not.

     In the silence of the nightmare house, the angel waxwork smiled with celestial happiness, and Diamanta Rothwell, Gift of Dreams, opened her eyes.