Chapter 1

Luna shot awake and convulsed, lungs burning as she gasped for breath. She clutched at her comforter, which she lay atop of, until she managed to blink away the image of flames from her mind as well as the tears from her eyes.

The scene from her dream soon fell away from her and was replaced by the image of her dark bedroom. The September wind flowed through the window and cooled her heated flesh as she took deep, slow breaths and forced her mind to a calmer state.

With her breathing restored and her tears held at bay, Luna sat up in bed with a groan at her sore muscles and the constricting feeling of her scarred skin. The burns had healed so much over the last two years, or so, since the fire that burned down her old family home. However, even with the skin grafts over the worst of them, they would never fully heal.

She took a deep breath to brace for pain and stretched out her muscles while staying seated on her bed, careful not to make any noise that might wake her mom or her stepfather. Without even glancing at the clock, she knew that it was much too early, but she turned her bleary gaze over to the purple LED lights of it to see that the time wasn’t even past 3 AM.

Perfect time to go for a run, I suppose. With a huff, she bent down to retrieve the jeans and hoodie that she wore yesterday, choosing to slip them on in bed to muffle any excess noise before she unplugged her phone and shoved it into her pocket with her headphones.

Picking up her shoes, Luna ducked out of her open window and crab-walked down the slanted roof towards the thickly rooted oak in her new home’s backyard. A light hiss of breath escaped her lips when one bare foot bounced off and over the metal gutter, not only making a muted clang but almost causing her to pitch sideways over the edge. She held as still as she could and focused on listening to the house over the sound of her heartbeat as it pulsed in her ears. The only noise she heard was the slight shuffle of fabric and the echoes of creaking springs before silence reigned once more.

When nothing more came from the house, she turned her attention back to the tree and crept down onto the largest branch overhanging the roof and edged her feet along until they were nearly at the base before lurching upward and throwing herself unceremoniously into the tree.

Cursing under her breath, Luna clung to the tree until it went still under her feet. Wake up the whole fucking neighborhood, why don’t you?

When the tree grew still once more, Luna lowered herself from branch to branch until she ran out of ones strong enough to hold her weight and was forced to drop to the ground, landing in a crouch that both kept her from making too much noise by stumbling and distributed the shock more evenly through her body.

Shoes still held in her grasp, she felt around in her pocket to double check the presence of her electronics then padded to the back fence and stepped around the open gate. Outside the gate, she leaned down to brush off the bottom of her feet and shove them into the soft fabric running shoes.

With that done, she took off like a bullet down the gravel alley behind her block.

Within five minutes, Luna neared the forest that lay a third of a mile from her house. The bushes and other plant life surrounding the forest were dense and tangled. They created a natural wall about two feet high and sharp as knives that kept most of the town’s population at bay, but there were breaks in the thicket.

Luna ducked quickly through the break that hid the path she always used and, only when hidden behind the wall of foliage, walked in a circle with her hands above her head until she could catch her breath, mentally bemoaning her lack of a water bottle and the aching of the scars covering so much of her body.

Bending down, she performed a couple of stretches and exercises that her physical therapist taught her to do at home. Despite the extensive span of her scarring, Luna worked hard to maintain full use of her body. When the nightmares became worse after the fire, she began a ritual of running and soon found that she always felt calmer and safer in the forest than anywhere else. So that was where she ran to on her worst nights, for almost the past two years after healing enough to do so.

Only once her breathing could slow down to a normal pace and the pain in her side and limbs stop pulsing did Luna start making her way down the slightly beaten down path, not bothering to run now that she was out of sight of any of her neighbors. Small towns bred rumors like rabbits and she didn’t need her mother more worried than she already was.

The waning gibbous moon was high in the sky and shed just enough light for her to see her path by. It was still fairly balmy despite being a little past three in the morning but the humidity catching on her skin made her shiver when a gust of wind caught her so she burrowed deeper into the hoodie.

Luna was forced to duck under branches and step widely over thick roots sticking out of the ground until she reached her sanctuary. One thick, gnarled and squatting tree in the middle of a house sized clearing.

The bark was a dark shade of brown, almost black in the barely there moonlight with thick, green patches of moss across the trunk and base. In the summer the leaves grew so thick that there wasn’t a single patch of open space to peak through from the ground and in the winter, even with the leaves already crushed and covered in snow, the dip in the trunk of the tree and the thickly woven branches kept Luna from being visible from the ground. Despite all of that, the interwoven branches created an oculus that allowed her to look up at the sky, negating the claustrophobia she would often feel elsewhere.

With a soft huff, Luna took a running start and leaped up, grabbed the second lowest branch and struggled to walk up the side of the tree until she could drag herself, panting and quivering, into the dip where all of the branches converged. By the time she had settled, her lungs and throat burned and a coughing fit wracked her body and brought tears to her eyes.

It never seemed to get any easier but she still returned, every night for some semblance of peace in the night.

Luna slumped back into the tree as she caught her breath then pulled out her cell to check the time. The bright screen momentarily blinded her but she could just read the time was 3 AM. He should be off by now.

One of Luna’s close friends was six years older and had moved to New York a year ago. He worked at a bar and was eagerly waiting until he would have enough money to buy it from the elderly owner of the bar. Because of this he worked crazy hours.

He rarely judged Luna, anymore, for her nightly excursions but he had always been protective of her and insisted that she text him at least once she got to a stopping place and then again when she was home safe. If she forgot, he wouldn’t get mad because he wouldn’t know that she had even left so sometimes Luna would just leave it be and let him rest but ... last night’s dream had left her emotions in turmoil.

She decided at last to just text him. If he doesn’t see the text until he wakes up then it’s no biggie.

‘Hey Riel. Bad night so I’m at the sanctuary.’ Luna debated a bit before hitting send. She had never actually told Gabriel, or anybody for that matter, where the sanctuary was but he was one of only three people who knew that it existed at all.

Just as she had slumped back against one of the tree’s limbs, her ringtone went off loud and clear, which almost caused her to drop it out of the tree in her frantic attempt to silence the sudden cacophony but she caught it just in time. With a deep breath, she answered the call and whispered past her disused and scratchy throat.

“Hello?”

“Luna go back home.” The voice was deep and roughened with sleep and Luna instantly pictured the disgruntled look that he probably wore right then. She smiled gently as she pictured him.

They had always made an odd pair and not just because of the age difference. Luna had always been fairly tall but was also very skinny, even falling into dangerously underweight after the fire and all of her surgeries and the resulting depression and lack of appetite. Next to that was the fact that Luna’s skin, where the fire hadn’t left it with shiny red scarring, was pale to the point that her blue veins would show through and her hair was a deep black that was always in jarring juxtaposition to it.

Gabriel, or ‘Riel’ as she called him, was essentially her exact opposite, even with Luna being tall for her age. He stood at 6’5” and where she was pale and slender, he was bronzed and muscled. He had dark honey colored skin stretched taut over broad shoulders and thickly corded muscles across his whole body. His eyes were an intense whiskey color and last time she had seen him, his dark chocolate brown hair was a couple of inches past his ears and full of thick waves.

Where he was naturally the center of attention with his booming voice and easy going smile, Luna had always been the quiet one that sat in the back. Not that that really mattered when they hadn’t ever attended the same school.

She had actually become friends with his younger brother first but had grown close to Gabriel while both were out of school and spending most of their time on his father’s farm, him because he had graduated and was working on the farm to save money for New York and her because she was doing homebound schooling after the fire. Day after day they grew to be thick as thieves and it no longer mattered what their age or how they looked.

Even when he moved, they texted and talked daily, still looking out for each other despite the distance and flip to each other’s schedules due to her going back to school and his night job.

“I couldn’t sleep. The nightmares are just” Luna bit her lip and took a slow breath to force back the shudder in her already rough voice. “they’re getting worse. I know it’s just in my head, but I keep waking up smelling smoke.” The other line fell silent and Luna froze in place. She hadn’t meant to mention that.

“Well fuck.” her breath whooshed out of her at the emotion that had entered Gabriel’s voice. He didn’t sound angry, just frustrated but Luna couldn’t help feeling like she had just burdened him more with worry for her. When she spoke next she had to struggle even harder against the lump forming in her throat.

“Look, I wasn’t trying to worry you. I”

“Luna don’t think for a second that you can’t worry me. I’m a grown ass man. I can handle my best friend needing to talk. Although I do wish you would do so more, yah know, NOT in the middle of a goddamn forest full of w ... who knows what, frankly.” Luna couldn’t help but snort as a smile broke across her face.

“Oh yeah? Well why don’t you come back down here and make me. Na na nah boo boo.” She fought to keep her voice monotone throughout the sentence but the smile spreading across her face came out in the end anyway. Gabriel’s deep chuckle vibrated through the phone and soon Luna felt herself relaxing and laughing right along with him until her voice broke and another coughing fit erupted from her chest.

Luna held the phone away from her face as she coughed and hacked until she could catch her breath. When she settled and put the phone back up to her face, Gabriel’s voice had taken on a gentler tone. “Forgot your inhaler again didn’t you?”

She had, in fact. In preparation for the start of the school year, which would begin in three and a half hours, she had put her inhaler in her bag. This would be the first time she would ever spend a full year at an actual high school with her friends. Since the fire happened at the beginning of her freshmen year, she had spent the next year and a half on homebound schooling at Gabriel’s family home while her mom worked. She tried going back to school for the last half of her sophomore year but she had felt so uncomfortable that it mostly just went by in a blur of catch-up work and hiding behind her friends ... that was until she met Malissa.

Luna almost physically reared back when her mind touched on that spot, as if someone had come up to her and shoved their hand into a large bruise spanning the length of her heart. ‘Can’t think about that right now’

“Don’t lecture me. I’m already suffering for my stupidity.”

Luna heard him hum in agreement on the other side of the line then it went silent. In so many books Luna read in middle school there would be a line that reads “and she (because it was generally from a girl’s perspective) just sat there, the only sound coming through the phone was his breathing” and it was supposed to show how close the two characters were to sit in silence.

Even from a young age, Luna knew that was utter crap. She and Gabriel were as close as two friends could be without sleeping together (she assumed) and yet she could never hear him breathing during the silences and they always seemed to feel awkward because she would be afraid that he had fallen asleep. Besides, what was even the point of calling someone if you weren’t going to talk?

Despite this, Luna didn’t interrupt the silence. If he truly had fallen asleep then he deserved to. He had been working his ass off day in and day out for years to save up for his dreams. First he worked to have enough to rent an apartment above a dive bar in New York and then he started working his ass off to own said bar. There were few people who Luna admired more than Gabriel and even fewer who inspired her to be better like he did.

She had settled down in the silence but it was soon interrupted by his voice, gentler than his earlier sentences which clued Luna into what he was about to ask before the sentence even left his lips.

“So which nightmare was it this time? The fire or ... the Woman?” Even though Luna had known what he was going to ask, the memory it brought up had her shivering and burrowing deeper into the tree, trying to hide from those piercing red and black eyes.

“The fire ... this time.” She was quick to reply in attempt to move the conversation along.