Free A Wizard of the White Council by Jonathan Moeller

dreams. 

    ###

    Again she lay on the courtyard floor of cold stone, red-lit smoke billowing over the dark sky.
    Ally gasped for breath, blood welling in her throat. Her side and back burned with agony. She tried to stand, but her trembling muscles refused to obey. 
    Terror flooded her. 
    She remembered what happened next.
    The dark shadow dropped from the sky, its vast wings blotting out the light. An iron-clawed hand plunged towards her chest. She shrieked as the iron claws ripped through her skin, plunged into her chest, and curled around her heart…
    The world shattered with her unending scream.

    ###

    “Wake up,” murmured a deep, sonorous voice. “You must wake up.”
    Ally stood in a vast corridor of dark marble, a green glow illuminating the black stone. A half-buried part of her mind remembered what would happen next. The black things would boil from the walls and overwhelm the old man with two swords. She would flee for the rune-carved doors, Lithon in her arms…
    But instead a younger man trudged down the corridor, his face weathered and grim, his dark clothes worn and dusty. Tangled hair and an unkempt beard masked half his face, and a sword and a pair of automatic pistols hung from his belt. He moved like a hunting cat, despite his obvious weariness. The weathered man stopped in a domed chamber. His eyes widened, his hand flying to his sword…

    ###

    “You must remember,” whispered the deep voice. “You must.”
    Ally floated in a dark space. “No.” 
    “You must. Else he will find you before you are ready.”
    “No!” She tugged harder, trying to escape. “I don’t want this, I’m tired of the dreams, just let me sleep, let me sleep…”
    Something shattered. 
    Ally flew backwards. For a moment she glimpsed all of Chicago spread out beneath her, lights glittering and shining in the night. Then she plunged down, soaring over a park not far from the campus. She saw the old man with the camouflage jacket and the cane, a stern expression his face. A hideous thing with leathery gray skin crouched behind a bush, its red eyes burning with madness. 
    She turned and fled, the city blurring around her. 
    Something pulled on her, drawing her over the crumbling brick warehouses in the South Side. Winged monstrosities, iron claws dangling from their fingers, circled in the night. Ally’s terror rose to a fever pitch. She tried to flee, but something pulled her down. A vast warehouse complex loomed before her, lights burning in the night. Slouching thugs with bushy beards guarded the entrance. Ally swooped before a large warehouse, marked 13A in red paint. She fell through the floor and found herself in a large library, books resting in handsome dark wood shelves.
    A man in a black robe sat in an overstuffed chair, his head bowed. A dreadful cold seemed to radiate from him, like the blast of a blizzard wind. The man lifted his head, his face pale. 
    His eyes were bottomless black pits into the void.
    Ally shrieked and fled, speeding through the city. “No, no, it’s not real, it’s not real, it’s a dream, it’s a dream…”

    ###

    She woke up, her legs thrashing in the blanket. 
    “It’s just a dream!” Her last word rose to an angry shriek. 
    She blinked, cold sweat dripping down her jaw. Ally groaned and looked at her iPhone. It was six-thirty. She sighed and huddled back into her blankets. Her test wasn’t until two-thirty. She could sleep through her morning class and study some more in the afternoon. 
    Someone knocked at the door. Ally rolled out of bed, shuffled across the carpet, and pulled the door open. “Yeah?”
    Kelly McBrian stood in the hallway, still wearing her sweatshirt and yoga pants from her morning run. “Hey, Ally. Sorry if I woke you up. Some of your neighbors said they heard you screaming. You okay?”
    Ally pushed her hair out of her face. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. Just some bad dreams, that’s all.” 
    “You want to talk about it?” said