Over and over I stabbed him, blood and tears and mucus covering me like a second skin. Someone was screaming. Me.

Douglas let go of my hair and slid to the floor, but I didn’t stop my assault. He kicked out, catching my leg. My knee buckled, and I stumbled back, grabbing the edge of the cash register for support. My shoulder burned with pain, just like my palms had when the Fire elemental who’d murdered my family had tortured me by making me hold onto my own spider rune medallion. The giant vampire flopped on his stomach and crawled around the counter. Some small part of my mind realized that he wasn’t fighting me anymore, that he was actually trying to get away from me.

But I still went after him.

I threw myself onto his back and plunged the knife in between his shoulder blades. With my weight behind it, the weapon sank up to the hilt in his flesh. This time, Douglas didn’t scream. Something seemed to give in his body, and he stilled. I raised the knife and stabbed him again—

Rough hands settled on my shoulders. I flailed against them, but they were stronger, pinning my arms to my sides.

He pulled me close to his chest, and the smell of chicory coffee washed over me, penetrating the coppery stench of fresh blood.

“It’s over, Gin,” Fletcher said in my ear. “It’s over. He’s dead. You can quit stabbing him.”

Fletcher crooned soft words into my ear, still cradling me in his arms. The knife slipped from my cramping hand and clattered onto the floor—

The sound might have only been in my dream, but its sharp echo woke me. So suddenly, that I was standing in the middle of my bedroom headed for the door before I realized it was only a dream, another one of my ugly memories manifesting itself. For a moment, I felt that hysterical rage burning through me, that gut-deep, primal need to survive no matter what the cost or consequences.

The instinct that had dictated so much of my life.

I sighed and rubbed the gritty crud out of the corners of my eyes. My psych professor at the community college would have said the dreams, the flashes of my past, were my psyche’s way of dealing with the trauma. Of healing.

Quack. To me, the dreams, the memories, were tiring trials, like Marley’s ghost rattling his heavy chains at Scrooge. I’d lived through the events once already. I didn’t need the Technicolor replay at night.

And I certainly didn’t need to dwell on them now.