"Tess... you have to trust me."
She moved closer to the archway, leading with her hand as she sidled along the wall. And then she was standing in front of the opening, nothing but pitch blackness behind her and a thin, chill breeze at her back. She turned her head to glance into the dark--
"Tess."
Dante must have sensed her movement, because when she looked back at him, he lifted his head and met her gaze. The warm color of his eyes had changed to a fierce glow, his pupils narrowing down to bare slits as she watched his transformation in stunned horror.
"Don't go," he rasped thickly, his words tangling on the lengthening sharpness of a spectacular set of fangs. "I won't hurt you."
"It's too late, Dante. You already have," she whispered, moving farther away from him, stepping back into the arched doorway. In the darkness, she saw that a flight of stone steps climbed steeply upward, toward the source of the cool air that drifted down around her. Wherever they led, she had to go. She put her foot on the first step--
"Tess!"
She didn't look back at him. She knew she couldn't or she might not find the courage to leave him. She climbed the first few steps tentatively, then began running, taking the flight as quickly as she could.
Down below, Dante's anguished roar echoed off the stone walls of the cathedral and the darkened stairwell, straight into the marrow of her bones. Tess didn't stop. She ran faster up what seemed like hundreds of steps, until she reached a solid steel door at the top. She slapped her palms against it and pushed it open.
Blinding daylight poured over her. A cool November breeze sent dried leaves spiraling up from the grass outside. Tess let the door close behind her with a bang. Then she wrapped her arms around herself and took off, running into the crisp, bright morning.
Dante thrashed on the floor, caught in the grip of his persistent, debilitating nightmare. The death vision had come on suddenly, intensifying as he and Tess argued.
It only worsened now that she was gone. Dante heard the topside door slam closed above and knew from the brief flash of daylight that shot down the long stairwell that even if he was able to break away from the invisible chains that held him, the sun's brutal rays would prohibit him from going after her.
He sank deeper into the abyss of his premonition, where vines of thick black smoke curled around his limbs and throat, choking off precious air. The shattered remains of a smoke alarm hung from the ceiling by its mangled wire guts, silent as the smoke collected around it.
From elsewhere came the angry crash of objects falling, as if fixtures and furniture were being overturned and thrown to the floor by a marauding army. All around him in the small white cell that held him, Dante saw upended cabinet drawers and files, their contents spilled everywhere, rifled through in haste.
In the vision, he was moving now, stepping through the debris and making his way to the closed door on the other side of the room. Oh, Jesus. He knew this place, he realized now.
He was in Tess's clinic.
But where was she?
Dante registered that he ached everywhere, his body feeling battered and tired, each step sluggish. Before he could reach the door and try to get out, it opened from the other side. A familiar face leered at him through the smoke.
"Look who's up and about," Ben Sullivan said, coming inside and holding a length of telephone cord in his hands. "Death by fire is such a nasty way to go. Of course, if you breathe in enough smoke, the flames will be just an afterthought."
Dante knew he shouldn't be afraid, but terror clawed at him as his would-be executioner entered the room and took hold of him in a surprisingly strong grasp. Dante tried to fight, but his limbs didn't seem his own to command. His struggles only slowed Sullivan down. Then the human cocked his arm back and nailed Dante with a blow to the jaw.
His vision swam crazily. When he next opened his eyes, he was on his stomach, lying on a raised slab of cold polished steel while Ben Sullivan pulled his hands behind his back, then bound him at the wrists with the cable he was holding. Dante should have been able to snap his bonds loose, but they held tight. The human moved down to his feet, hog-tying him.
"You know, I thought killing you was going to be difficult," the Crimson dealer whispered near his ear, the same words Dante had heard the last time he'd endured this glimpse of death. "You've made it very easy for me."
As he'd done before, Ben Sullivan went around to the front of the platform and bent down in front of Dante. He grabbed Dante by the hair and lifted his face up off the cold metal. Past Sullivan's head, Dante saw a clock on the wall above the door, the time reading 11:39. He struggled to collect more detail, knowing he would need all he could gather in order to confront this eventuality and maybe turn it around in his favor. He didn't even know if it might be possible to cheat fate, but he was damn well going to give it a shot.
"It didn't have to be like this," Sullivan was saying now. The human leaned in close--close enough that Dante saw the vacant gaze of a Minion staring back at him. "Just know that you brought this on yourself. Be grateful I didn't turn you over to my Master instead."
With that, Ben Sullivan released him, letting Dante's head fall back down. As the Minion strode out of the room and locked the door, Dante opened his eyes and saw his reflection in the polished steel surface of the table on which he lay.
No, not his reflection.
Tess's.
Not his body bound on the examination table while the clinic was being consumed in smoke and flames, but hers.
Oh, mother of Christ.
It wasn't his horrific death he'd been experiencing in his nightmares all these years. It was the death of his Breedmate, the woman he loved.