The Red Nights

Lina went to Natasha's house to call Matteo. It was early at the morning but she knew that his boyfriend and Natasha were at that time watching the barrier , so there was no danger . She didn't need to knock at the door since she already had the key or rather the double , she unlocked the door, opened it and entered in . [ I should just call him out ] she thought however as her usual that was not what she did.

Lina had never be able to waste an occasion to have fun . As her habitual behavior, she loved teasing people whoever they were , whether they were old or young she didn't care . That was one the reasons people in Stainfall loved her so much, they liked the way she always so cheerful. But her principals victims were Natasha and Jamal and even though she knew some times she went too far , she could not help it .

She went up , found Matteo's room and quietly sneaked in . Since the light was off she couldn't see correctly however judging by the lump under the sheet , Lina concluded that he was still sleeping . She smiled mischievously and sneaked under the sheet, she whispered " Hi Matteo boy , time to wake up. It said that young men have a lot of energy from the morning , can you show me " .

The light was suddenly turned on. " No need , I'm entirely up and already ready . If you okay as well we shall leave the house at once " . Lina got rid of the sheet and discovered that she thought being Matteo was just a heap of pillows. " How did you know it ? " she asked immediately. Matteo leaned on the side of the door " yesterday night, Natasha warned me that you were a kind of crazy girl. So I took some precautions ".

" Natasha, always on the way to mess up my fun " she muttered .

" Anyway as you can see I'm full of morning energy. So let's go " Matteo said.

She moved out from the bed , they both left the room , they went down to the living room, reached the main door and left the house . They headed for the city hall , Lina's work place .

" What kind of work have I to do? You didn't explain to me clearly? " Matteo asked when they finally arrived .

Lina sat on her chair and laid her hands on her desk " as I told you, before thinking about a plan I would need the exact moment they would come. "

" But I already said that I'm working on it " Matteo replied.

" I know that and I also know that you will face too much difficulties to figure it out since you don't even know how to use your power. Don't try to deny it , Jamal already explained it to me. " Lina said rudely.

Matteo bowed his head down ashamed " It is true that at that time in the factory , he was the one who guided me "

" Yes and today I will do the same thing, so you must listen to me carefully "

" How do you proceed ? previously, we had to use the body of one the undeads but we don't have anything " He asked .

Lina stood up and reached a sofa which was on the left side of the office " we don't need any body or anything else . Your mind will be enough " without taking time to explain to Matteo as he was a bit confused , she directly order him to lie on the sofa .

For a moment Matteo didn't know how to react , his brain was working on a high speed to try to figure out what she will make him do . Despite the side of her personality which was a bit too provocative, the image of Lina he had was quite laudatory . In fact he knew that she was not only smarter than he was but it looked that could do all what he could do even better , all the advantages he had on her was his powers and his talent to observe people.

And even though he couldn't feel abnormal sensations spreading from her , he could sense that she had something special but he didn't know what.

The boy didn't discuss, as he was not able to guess what she was about to do, instead he just obeyed quietly. After that Lina knelt down next to the sofa , on the side was laying Matteo's head.

" Close your eyes " she calmly ordered, as he obeyed, she laid her hands on the two sides of his head. She started to squeeze with her thumbs his temples , with a very low voice she repeated on his ear " relax ... calm down and relax " until she was sure he was entirely relaxed, then she ordered " now you will concentrate with your maximum on what I tell . I want you to go deep on your mind and looking for the souvenir of the feeling you sensed from the undead of yesterday ".

From there he started to get a global idea about what she was trying to do , [ I see , it looks like a kind of hypnosis ] he thought [ it is not acknowledged as proper scientific method but I read that sometimes it gives some results, is she really trying to hypnotize me ? ] .

He conceded that they didn't have no other alternatives, so he made up his mind and decided to give it a try. As Matteo focused , she was whispering on his ear some cheer words . Then after few seconds she asked him " Did you find it ? ".

" Yes " he responded. [ great , first part completed . So what should we do now ? ] she asked to herself [ OK I got it ] . She took again her low and sweet voice " you will focused on this sensation until you feel it in whole your body , and while you are doing that you will at the same time try to remember about your dream, OK? " .

He nodded and started the process. Conforming to what she told him, he focused on the odd sensation which, in the beginning was located within his c.h.e.s.t , and tried to spread it along his whole body. As he sensed it flowing slowly and continuously, he turned to his next task. In fact he noticed that it was not as difficult as he had been thinking to focus on the two tasks at the same time, for the reason that the first one didn't need too much attention, he would say that it was like turning a valve on and controlling the flow, after that he could work on the other part without no worry .

On the second part , when he tried to remember his dream , a lot of images overwhelmed his mind, there were so much that it was too difficult to even focus on a single one . As he was struggling to contain the flow of his memory he started to sweat and frown . Lina noticed through his face that was wrong " What is it? " she asked .

As he was taking long to respond, she firstly thought that he was in a trance, seconds passed before he stuttered an answer " images... memories... too much " . [ the informations were too much for him when he tried to remember ] she thought a little worried [ I have to find an idea . He surely already tried to focus on just one thing but he couldn't due to the overflow of pictures, so what can he do now ? ] .

Suddenly his body started shaking on the sofa and he was even nose bleeding , from that moment Lina was panicking " no no no ... what the hell did I make him do " . She tried her best to calm him, by holding his arms to retain his shakings and by talking to him . She tried again and again to convince him to relax but it was like he couldn't listen to her , " I have to find something. I cannot let him die . Come on Lina , come on " she told to herself.

However Matteo did not give her the time for that as his shakings became more violent, Lina was sure that if she couldn't find out a way to calm him , his mind would explode and he would die in the two following minutes. Although she knew that, she could do nothing to stop it . Tears started coming out from her eyes, then something came in her mind , a song , the one Jamal's sister used to sing when someone got hurt.

Without thinking any more, she began singing. In her memories , with this song Jamal's sister could make the pain disappearing regardless how serious were the wounds or whoever was the wounded. Lina didn't expect being as good singer as she was however she had the hope could have an effect on him. She closed her eyes and sang loudly and desperately the song which was talking about kids who were forced to go to war , they didn't even reach 13 years but they were forced to hold guns and go fighting.

It was a very sad song , Lina could not know how a song with such horrible lyrics could make someone feel better by erasing the pain . However she was really happy to notice that it made its effect, slowly Matteo stopped shaking as she was keeping singing. When she finished the song, he was already fully calm and quiet . " Thank God " she said while she was wiping out her tears as she was feeling relief.

She put back her hands on his temples and began to slowly squeeze them, she took her sweet and low voice and told " Good, let the images flow, I would want to link them with the odd sensation which are actually circulating along your body , can you do it? " . Matteo didn't respond however he did not nose bleed so Lina supposed that there was no problem and he was just focused on the task. After three minutes she continued by telling him to try, from the mixing of the memories and the abnormal feeling, to find or rather determined when the army of undeads would come .

So she stayed there for a while kneading his head and waiting for Matteo to wake up . She was so stressed out that she checked three times if he was actually breathing. When he finally opened his eyes, he didn't have the time to even recover from all his unconsciousness that Lina jumped to his neck and hugged him tightly . Matteo didn't know how to react , he thought that at least he should respond to it but when he was about to hug her in return, she suddenly stopped, she sat up straight and looked at him with her famous mischievous smile.

" I have just turned you on, haven't I ? "

" We should not drop our guard with you even for a second, right? " Matteo sighed.

Lina laughed and few seconds later she took a serious face " So how was it ? Did you find out when they would come? " .

Matteo became serious as well and responded " Yes " he paused " They must come to us the next week " .

Lina remained silent for a while, " honestly I was expecting more, it would be really tough to settle my plan " , she looked at him and smiled " for this time we will have to surpass ourselves "