Blood Rose (22 page)

It couldn’t be called a kiss. It hurt so bad that it made me want to cry. His hands spread over each side of my face clutching me against him so I couldn’t pull back. My hands fought to push him off me but it only seemed to encourage him.

Paul groaned my name into the kiss but it sounded wrong, twisted somehow. He crawled forward, pushing me back down onto the bed. My fingers dug and clawed at his arms, shoving with everything I had to get him off me.

Broken wrist be damned. The adrenalin took over.

I could see it all in my head now. Me, struggling on the side of a steep muddy hill beneath a crazed man ready to rip me apart in every horrible way there was.

Paul’s breathing was so ragged it came out as more of a guttural grunting. The smell and taste of alcohol invaded my senses.

“Paul!” I managed to scream as he pulled his mouth off mine and sat up on top of me. To hold me still his hand braced around my throat as his other hand reached for his belt buckle. I could still manage to breathe but his grip was snug enough I couldn’t talk anymore. My blood flow suffered.

My knee and ankle meant nothing to me. I kicked with everything I had. Twisting and jerking wildly. As he fumbled with his belt buckle, my right fist balled and slammed hard into his nose. He didn’t even flinch as blood poured out his nose and down his mouth dripping into mine. I’m a chick not a child. I know how to hit someone.

“Little Anna, you’re still not strong enough,” his rough voice and taunting words struck something in my memory. At the time I never could have placed it. With his pants undone his legs slid between mine forcing them to part. Without pause, his hand found the hem of my jeans and jerked so forcefully the button popped off and the zipper tore.

The veins in my head throbbed painfully as my blood flow was choked off. In moments, my eyesight began to phase through red and black tunnel vision. Futilely my fingers clawed and dug at his hand. Desperate to release his hold on my throat.

It felt as if my head was about to pop. Black spots danced in front of my eyes. His hand on my neck grew tighter as he adjusted his weight onto the hand on my throat so his other could pull my jeans down my hips. My body was giving up quickly. Too fatigued and abused already to hold up the fight much longer. All I could do was stare up at the man I thought I knew as my fingers feebly clawed at his. His pitch black eyes were empty of emotion.

Seconds before I knew I was going to black out my door exploded off the hinges and Paul flew off me. His body flew across the room and busted against the kitchen cabinets breaking two of them. He landed on the floor in an unmoving lump.

I gasped so hard I choked on the air. As I lay there panting and paralyzed with shock, the full realization hit me. The night of the first attack replayed in my head. Paul’s eyes were coal black. His voice sounded strange.

Damien had his back to me. Standing between me and Paul waiting for him to react. “Anna, are you hurt?” Damien’s question came out in a snarl.

“‘S not Paul,” my voice cracked as I choked it out. Damien turned to look at me. Disbelief clearly marking his features. “That thing, the thing that attacked me. The docks!” I couldn’t fully put into words what I was intending but Damien got it loud and clear. “Look at his eyes!”

A strange throttled snarl ripped out of Damien’s lips as Paul stirred on the floor. “Oh man...” Paul held his nose with both hands as he lay on the ground groaning. “What the hell happened? Anna?” Paul looked around in confusion.

“Paul, you need to leave. Just go!” I lay on the bed in a heap. My body too tortured to move further.

“Anna? Did we- did I just? Oh shit. Anna, what did I do?” Paul ran his hand through his hair, wiping blood through it as he did. Slowly he pulled himself to his feet. “Damn. Did you break my nose?” he grumbled as his feet stumbled drunkenly beneath him.

“Get out! Just get the hell out!” I screamed at Paul. Stupidly I chucked a pillow at him, which didn’t come close but fell to the floor without any of the desired oomph I had been aiming for.

Damien stood still as stone. His entire body structure was so tensed you could feel the rage radiating from him. I wasn’t stupid. Just because Damien didn’t want to kill me didn’t mean he never killed.

Paul nodded. Drunk and confused but aware enough to know not only something horrible just happened, even if he didn’t know what but something much worse was going to happen if he didn’t leave very quickly. Strangely, he never seemed to notice Damien.

Paul stumbled to the door one hand holding up his pants as he turned back to look at me. His eyes were still ebony pits. “I’m sorry.” With that, he left.

Before I could even collapse, Damien was scooping me up and holding me to him. We didn’t talk for a little while. Nor could I bring myself to cling back to him. I did not shake, nor did I cry. Blood drizzled down my chin from a torn stitch. Damien didn’t show a single sign of unease.

Once the chaos was over my adrenaline rush crashed and the pain was overwhelming. My breathing was strained and heavy trying to focus on anything else I could. After a while, Damien laid me down. My lip was still bleeding steadily.

Damien spent a long time playing doctor. First my lip. Gently and tenderly as possible, he stripped my jeans off and threw them in the trash. He made a careful process of straightening my leg. He never said a word during any of this. He wrapped my ankle stiffly. Unwrapping my wrist was a trial for us both. If it was fractured before it was now completely broken. He handed me three Vicodin and a Red Bull with a straw he hunted down in my bare bones kitchen.

Waiting for the Vicodin to kick in he paced an anxious road map around the loft. Funny I never imagined Vampires paced at all.

Eventually he straightened my wrist. Splint it with a few chopsticks from a vast take out collection and wrapped it stiff and snug. For the next three hours, I lay on my bed watching him. He’d roamed from picture to picture. Stared out the window. Sat beside me running his hand through my hair. Pace. Roam. Examine something. Pace.

Finally, after Damien had settled into standing by the window and watching the rest of the world partake in a normal day he spoke but it was more to himself than to me. “Maybe I should take you to the hospital. You should be safe there for a time. They can take care of you.”

“I won’t go.” I mumbled from the mound on the bed that I had become.

“Why is that?” He turned to look at me. His face looked as pained as I felt.

“Tell me why the pacing and I will.” I groaned faintly as I pushed myself up to sit with my right arm supporting me.

“I just keep wondering why I am not able to keep these things from happening to you.” Damien stood with his back to me while he spoke.

“Your blood keyed me into you. Your pain was so strong it nearly laid me out. I could barely move for the first minute. I’m sorry for not getting here sooner I just wasn’t prepared for the shock of feeling it. I fed from you because I wanted to be closer to you. So don’t think I’m sorry for it.”

He shook his head looking down to the floor. “So why is it you get nervous when I mention taking you to the hospital?”

“He’s not just a Doctor. My father’s the chief of medicine. I don’t want him to know,” my voice quaked. All my demons were being laid out for him in short order. “My entire family has disowned me. Not only that but my father has also black listed me at every doctor’s office in Vermont. Trust me I’ve checked. He’s done this so that no one other than him treats me. Black sheep or not, it’s good to keep tabs I guess. We don’t acknowledge one another as family but as Doctor and patient.” I took a deep breath so I could go on.

“Every time I’ve had to go for stitches or a cast or something at the ER he finds out. He thinks I do this to myself on purpose. So every time I go in, he forces the psycho drugs on me and puts me through every nutso test there is. He kept me there for a month solid once restricted to bed rest. Anytime they caught me out of bed, they doped me up until I couldn’t stand without help. All I had done was cut myself making dinner. That’s why I don’t cook anymore.”

Laughing weakly, I turned my face away from him and quickly wiped my eyes. I couldn’t approach the topic of my brother. Did Damien know I had a brother? Oh, I had mentioned it once. Sort of.

Damien looked at me expectantly. Sighed. Continued. “He’s older than me.” I looked now at the floor. Damien came to stand over me. I could feel him watching me as I counted scuffmarks. “Marcus James Von. The divorce took place during the time they had me seeing all the doctors. My mother left one night while I was in the hospital. I have not seen her since, though we spoke over the phone a couple of times. Maybe three times.” Deep breath. Twelve scuffs so far.

“They told Marcus I had night terrors, which was true. He was over protective of me in the few years we were in school together. He came up to help me move and set this place up. The baseball bat by the closet was his in high school. He was my best friend. My only friend when we were little.” Damien didn’t move or speak. I kept counting. Twenty-three.

“One night I picked up dinner at Riads. Had him come over. Explained things in a bit more explicit detail. I thought he had a right to know. He hadn’t known I was emancipated. Didn’t even know I had been living with our grandmother for the three years before. He thought father had helped me get the place and he never questioned. He wasn’t living with us, he hardly cared what Father did. When I told him though... He realized what spurred the divorce. Me. We had a fight. I haven’t seen or heard from my brother, or mother since. My father I only see at the hospital. Heh, he addresses me as Miss. Von.”

There was nothing he could say. Damien sat to the floor leaning his head back near mine. “So if you’re tuned into me, can you read my mind better?”

“I can feel your emotions better but still only the clear and decisive thoughts same as before.” He shrugged helplessly.

“So now what? I mean that wasn’t Paul but it was.” Shuddering at the possibility of what that meant I slowly lay down to the bed. My head lay near the edge next to Damien.

“And you’re positive of that? I mean to say you’re sure it was not him that carried through those actions?” Damien stared at my busted door. He’d busted out the jam on his way in.

“Paul would never do that drunk or not. He grew up next door to me. We dated and he never pushed. Not even once.” My head shook and I swallowed down the knot in my throat. “That wasn’t Paul. Besides he said things to me, the same things the guy from the docks said. He called me little Anna. Paul has never called me by any other variance than Anna banana when we were kids. He said I still wasn’t strong enough. Just like at the docks. His freaking eyes were black as coal.” I took a slow breath. I wasn’t angry with Damien. I was just angry.

“Why haven’t you told me what you know about him?” I looked up at the ceiling, too worried about the answer to look at him.

“Honestly I did not know how. He is one of the Crossbreeds I told you about. Originally an Immortal, bit and turned by a Vampire. The combination is unstable and dangerously powerful. It’s not that we hate the challenge in our power but quite literally these individuals are very unstable. At least on the average. They have little control. They’re underlings that were created to follow orders and nothing more. The lure of more power they think is worth the possibility of losing their minds.” Damien shook his head in disgust.

“This one is unstable but apparently he hasn’t completely lost himself to the change. He’s still strong. Apparently he can control people like puppets too. Which means any human you come into contact with may be used against you. We need to leave, Lianna. I have to get you away from him as soon as possible.”

I listened to him explain things while staring at my ceiling. The truth of what he said was very plain. We wouldn’t come back unless this thing after me was dead. If it was as dangerous as Damien warned, it may be able to hurt him as well. I couldn’t risk that but there was still something I had to know. “Why is he after me?”

Damien remained quiet a while pondering my question. “I honestly don’t know. There’s a chance someone’s using him to get to you. He may be using you to get to me. There are a lot of possibilities. I don’t know if he followed me here. If he was here before I arrived. Though if that were the case you’d probably already be dead.”

My spine tightened with a cold chill that had nothing to do with the temperature in the room. “What about work? And Neesa?” I didn’t want to leave Neesa and I couldn’t justify totally abandoning Mike without warning. I’d already missed two days of work without notice.

“You can’t be anywhere near a human who knows you, Anna. You’ve survived two attacks in under a week. I won’t risk you a third time.” He shook his head no in thought. “I can’t,” he mumbled more to himself than me.

“Neesa’s not entirely human though... So doesn’t that mean she’s safe?” The idea came to me after thinking about the tarot reading she gave me.

“What? How do you mean?” His brow rose as he turned to look at me.

“Come on mind reader, you don’t know? She has magic, like she’s psychic and stuff. Her mom and her practice all sorts of crafts.” Obviously, I didn’t mean hobbies and decorations.

“I just want someone to know I’m just taking off you know? If people think I just vanished then the cops will start looking into things. Paul’s brother is a cop so they wouldn’t just let it go. What if they link it to what happened at the diner? They will know you were involved.”