The room was large and empty, completely dark, but not to Corbin who was in the beastly form of the Protector. His glowing purple eyes cut through the darkness, enabling him to see the rot of the wooden floor that creaked under his clawed feet as he wandered through the room. He was looking for someone, he knew she was there somewhere, but the more he wandered the more the room grew.

    A whisper that carried his name entered his raised ears from behind. He twisted the hulking torso of his black-pelted body around to see someone tied to a chair. It was Shade. Even though she was drooping forward so that her long brown hair had fallen to shroud her face, he knew it was her. He started toward her.

    From out of the darkness an ogre of a man jumped between them, wearing a crude smile as he glared up at Corbin. Derek, Shade's captor. Corbin snarled angrily at the man, who put his hands on his hips and laughed at Corbin's threat.

    Corbin grabbed Derek and swung him around, away from Shade with a serious growl, but Derek continued to laugh in Corbin's clawed grasp. Another whisper caught Corbin's attention. He turned his head back to Shade who had raised her head to look at him with her battered and bloodied face. Corbin swung his head back around to Derek with an enraged growl through rows of exposed fangs. Derek only continued to laugh.

     Corbin rolled his head with a furious roar, then he ripped the man in his grasp in two, letting the gory halves fall to the floor. Looking at his blood soaked, clawed hands he dropped down to his knees before the human carnage that spilled out onto the rotten floor. Full of rage and guilt he began to pummel Derek's grotesque remains into the floor with relentless blows as he snorted heavy breaths through his muzzled face.

    He pounded and pounded until the floor in front of him was no more and Derek's remains were out of sight, swallowed by the collapsed floor. Corbin held his hands up to his angered eyes, looking at his blood-covered palms and the chunks of flesh clinging to his clawed fingers.

    Another voice called out to him from behind;  a calm, loving voice. He turned to find Shade gone and his mother hovering above the floor, inviting him with open arms and a warm smile to come to her. She called out to him softly again and he rose to go to her with his head lowered in shame for what he had done. She wrapped her arms around him and stroked comfort into the thick fur atop his head as he curled into her like a wounded child.

    "There, there. It's alright Corbin, it's alright," she assured lovingly.

    Corbin raised his head at the tender sound of his mother's voice only to see her soothing face decompose rapidly into a skeletal visage.

    Corbin shot up in the bed with a terrified gasp followed by heavy breaths. His eyes looked straight ahead into the surrounding darkness with superb clarity, an advantage granted him in human form by the Gift of the Protector, but it was the gruesome image of his mother from the dream that he saw.

    "Nightmares again babe?" Amanda's concerned voice next to him asked.

    He swallowed in an attempt to steady his breathing as he rolled over to find Amanda propped up on an elbow under the covers, staring at him affectionately with her vampire eyes that shimmered faintly in the darkened bedroom of her penthouse condo.

    "Yeah," he admitted. "The same one, but this time...Mother was there," he confided.

    Amanda furrowed her brow in thought for a moment, pondering the presence of Emma in  Corbin's dream.

    "You knew her, didn't you?" he asked expectantly.

    "Mmm, very well," she answered fondly, smiling at the remembrance.

    "What was she like?" he inquired, hoping for more clues to the person his mother was from Amanda's own perspective.

    Amanda reached over with a delighted smile and gently brushed Corbin's falling bangs away from his forehead. "A lot like you actually, kind, sincere." Her eyes stared off into specific memories for a moment, then she said,"Emma had an intricate appreciation for the small things in life that always reminded me that despite my curse, life is so worth living."

    Corbin absorbed every word and when Amanda's gaze floated wearily back on him he was mindful of her approaching slumber.

    "What time is it?" he asked.

    "Almost dawn," she replied in a sleepy voice that always came close to sunrise.

    "I guess I should go and let you get some rest," he suggested.

     Amanda lowered herself to her pillow and snuggled up in the covers. With an inviting grin she said,"Stay as long as you like, I won't mind."

    Corbin smiled with an enticed arch to his brow, then he slid over close to Amanda and nuzzled her nose with his. "I'd love to, really, but there's someplace I need to go today."

    "Okay babe," she yielded, finding it difficult to keep her eyes open.

    "See you tonight?" Corbin whispered as he kissed her softly.

    "Mmm...," she moaned approvingly during the kiss.

    Corbin left Amanda's bed and got dressed with a new singular purpose for the freedom offered by Saturday morning. His plans with Lydia weren't until later in the afternoon so he wouldn't be expected back at the manor anytime soon. After carefully punching in the code to arm the alarm that watched over Amanda's daytime slumber, he slipped out the door and bolted each of its three heavy duty locks with the keys she had recently entrusted him with.

    A solitary ride in the elevator took him to the parking garage below the building, and moments later his gleaming red sports coupe was rumbling slowly through the waking streets of Bergstad's eastern side, which were freshly plowed, leaving banks of dirty snow on each side. The great city never truly slept, but early Saturday mornings the bustling metropolis was usually somewhat pacified by the drain of long Friday nights.

    Corbin's morning drive ended at the unpaved side road near Allender Manor that led to the family mausoleum. The road was concealed under the fresh blanket of snow that blended it seamlessly with the frosted woodlands around it, but Corbin knew very well the snow's secret. He pulled his car off the salted main road, careful to park it safely away from the highway, but hopefully not far enough to trap it in the undisturbed, slippery entrance of the snowy path. After grabbing his heavy coat from behind his seat, he began a frigid trek in almost knee-high snow toward the not too far mausoleum. 

    When the snow-capped, stone wall enclosed mausoleum came into view he paused for a moment to let the building's presence settle on him with the significance of what it safeguarded inside, then he fumbled around in his pocket for the key to its gate and door. When he entered the mausoleum, the closing door's echo disturbed the reverent silence within for a few seconds, then the calm settled again around the two large marble sarcophagi that resided peacefully in the center of the spacious mausoleum.

    The stone building was just as cold, if not colder, than the snowy winter day outside, so Corbin folded his arms tightly across his chest and buried his hands in the armpits of his heavy coat for warmth as he strolled over between the two opposing tombs of the parents he never really knew. Ignoring the marble bench between them, he sat down on the floor with his knees up and rested his back against the sarcophagus of his Pappa while he gazed heavy-heartedly at the smoothly hewn tomb of his Mother.

     The presence of his Mother in his reoccurring nightmare had felt so real, even though he had no memory of her whatsoever to compare it with. The coddling moment of his nightmare, when she comforted him in her arms, even in his beastly form, called out to the child inside him that grew up longing for the approval and care of a mother and father that the decaying end of his nightmare so harshly reminded him he would never have.

    Gale and Shade each had the treasure of a childhoods worth of memories to conjure at will whenever they suffered the absence of Pappa and Mother, and though Lydia never knew them either, she claimed to be able to feel them at times, their lingering presence that was a great comfort to her. Corbin envied this about his sisters whenever the many photos of him as a young child in parents' arms just wasn't enough.

    After several minutes of lost gazing, the cold floor beneath him and the frigid air all around him was becoming unbearable so he stood up to leave but stepped over to his mother's sarcophagus first. Looking wistfully down at its large overlapping lid he rested a hand on its cold marble, teasing his longing with the thought that maybe her loving presence in his dream could be felt across the barrier of life and death. He lingered there until the cold was once again too much.