Daniel Warren usually slept lightly. Unlike Elayne, who could rarely be raised by anything less than a 10.0 earthquake once she fell asleep (assisted, as always, by a pill or three), Daniel roused easily. And he never dreamed.
Which was why he was so startled when he suddenly became aware that he was dreaming of a ghostly hand clamped tightly over his mouth and nose, suffocating him.
Eyes wild and staring, he struggled to sit up and wrench himself from the grip of the nightmare. Then the nightmare took on entirely new orders of terror for Daniel Warren, when he understood that it was not a dream at all. And that he hadn’t wakened when the bedroom door had opened, in spite of the slight squeal that always always awakened him. His mind spun for a second, then his eyes flew even more widely open and his breath caught in a painful, ragged gasp that left him reeling. Even in the near darkness of the bedroom, he knew at once what he was seeing. He just couldn’t believe it.
He saw the hot blood streaming from wounds all over his stepson’s naked body-arms, shoulders, chest, gut, thighs. He saw with a shudder that threatened to twist his spine the hideous light in Miles’ staring eyes, the flicker of hideous light on black-stained blade, and the single eye of brilliant white that was the tip of the knife as it slid into his belly as easily and as wetly as a red-hot branding iron would slide into a block of ice, consuming as it destroyed.