Later that night, Wren’s fever spiked and he felt far more ill than he’d did earlier in the day. He knew the cause was due to the dunking he took in the fountain’s frigid waters. Wandering about in the cold afterward couldn’t have help matters either.

He lay awake for a long time, restless and yet exhausted. He sniffled and coughed until his nose was red and his throat sore. Just trying to set upright left him feeling light-headed and dizzy. In short, he felt awful. He’d didn’t remember the last time he’d been this sick. Ah, yeah he did…

It was during tenth grade after he’d faked having the flu so he wouldn’t have to go and face the ridicule of the whole school finding out about his unrequited and utterly hopeless crush on the soccer team’s vice captain.

School had begun with Wren entering the classroom to find himself standing before a room full of his peers with his “secret” scrawled out on the whiteboard in front of him.

It wasn’t long after that that the “secret” migrated out of his homeroom. In fact, the whole school had known before lunchtime and Wren became the subject of ridicule, his first innocent crush turned into a source of embarrassment and bullying by his peers.

The joke had been on him in the end because he’d eventually had to man up and go back. It had been as horrible as he’d expected it would be. Then, he’d gotten sick with the flu for real.

Cosmic justice, perhaps.

When Wren finally fell asleep, it was to feverish dreams of multicolored letters on whiteboards. This time, however, it wasn’t the name of the soccer team’s vice captain scrawled alongside his own in sloppy lettering and surrounded by lop-sided hearts shot through with crooked arrows. Instead, he was tortured by his classmate’s laughter as the words “You are hereby invited to the wedding of Ashley Blackthorn and Wren Whitman” was written out onto the whiteboard in elegant, cursive lettering by some invisible hand.

Wren ran to the whiteboard and tried to erase the lettering, but a hand suddenly seized his wrist and forcibly shook it, making him drop the eraser. Wren turned to see the hunchbacked priest grinning at him manically. The hunchback suddenly spun Wren about and pushed him away from the whiteboard.

Wren’s descent started in a sort of slow-motion, giving him plenty of time to see the laughing faces of his classmates. It was a scene burned into his memory, but this time, there were some new faces as well. Ash’s parents and the yellowed-eyed blond from the brunch, all three watching him with a bored disinterest. There were also faces that he didn’t recognize, most twisted and inhuman and all were laughing at him with a deranged sort of glee.

His descent suddenly sped up and Wren thrust his hands out in front of him to try and catch himself before he hit the floor, but he found himself falling instead into the same fountain from the garden. He held his breath and braced himself, but instead of falling into the frigid water, he fell into a pair of strong arms.

The arms pulled him tight against a warm body and held him there. He looked up to find himself staring into a pair of amber eyes that glowed with a burning potency, scorching him to the very bone.

Wren opened his mouth, but anything he might have said was cut off by warm lips settling against his own in a searing kiss that was frightening in its intensity. A kiss that burned, threatening to consume Wren and leave him in ashes.

                                                            * * * *

Standing by the young man’s bed, Ash stepped out of the shadows. He said and did nothing for a moment, curious as to the dreams that tortured this seemingly innocent soul.

Ash knew he could relieve some of the boy’s pain, but it didn’t serve him any purpose to do so. He didn’t particularly care for the boy nor did he really like him all that much.

Wren moaned again and Ash stepped closer. The boy was obviously feverish. Sweat had dampened his bangs, leaving them stuck to his forehead. He was shivering and his teeth chattered far more loudly than they had earlier in the day after he’d fallen into the fountain.

Ash frowned. No, Wren had claimed he’d been pushed and Ash really had no reason to disbelieve his claim…

Ash reached out and placed a hand on Wren’s hot forehead. He focused his power and watched as his palm glowed a warm yellow-gold. His hand and forearm turned a dark shade of purple that became steadily darker as he slowly drew the sickness out of the young man.

Ash watched as black, leech-like tendrils slithered over his wrist and up his arm before they disappeared into the skin above his elbow. He knew this to be the sickness that Wren had contracted, a cold or perhaps the flu. It had taken hold of him when his system had been weakened, compromised by the wet and cold.

Ash held no concern for himself as he took in the sickness. Human ailments could not affect him.

After he was finished, Ash let his hand linger on Wren’s forehead. The touch seemed to sooth the young man. With a quiet moan, Wren settled against his pillows, slipping into a more restful slumber, and Ash began to straighten the covers the young man had kicked aside during those fitful moments he fought whatever plagued his dreams. The redhead pulled the covers up to Wren’s chin and then “tsked” at his own actions.

Look at him! Tucking him into bed!

Ash placed both hands on either side of Wren’s shoulders and glowered down at him. The boy’s cheeks were flushed a rosy color, a side-effect of the fever that stood out against his pale skin. His lips were the same flushed pink and Ash was tempted to have a taste, just because his father had forbidden it.

He pushed away from the bed and the boy on it with a frustrated huff.

Raking the hair that had fallen over one eye out of his face, Ash watched Wren’s breath rise and fall steadily. He seemed to be sleeping more peacefully now.

He momentarily considered looking into young man’s dreams, just to satisfy his own curiosity, but he quickly disregarded that idea, telling himself he wasn’t so concerned with the boy that he’d need to know what sort of demons hounded him in his dreams. It was of no consequence to Ash.

He’d be rid of him soon enough, after all.