Blood Rose (33 page)

He muttered under his breath as he followed after me. I looked down at his jeans with a smirk and shook my head. “Trust me when I say it’s for the best.” He chuckled, shaking his head as his hands slid up and down my arms.

“Your best or my own?” I let the water rain down on me as I closed my eyes and lift my chin.

“Neither. Only for the best due to the time, and lack thereof.” Without further comment on the matter, he took up a familiar bottle of cherry blossom body wash. He’d brought some of my things up. Thoughtful.

Pouring a dollop of gel into his palm his arms slid around behind me, washing my back slowly. “I have blood on my back as well?”

With a heavy sigh he paused a moment. “You have blood everywhere, Lianna.” We didn’t speak again as my fingers worked through my hair, using the gel to wash out the blood.

Damien washed the dried blood away from my body carefully. It turned the water pink as it ran down the drain. There was so much of it. He even made sure he got the blood out from under my nails. He was incredibly tender with every touch.

His eyes never lingered inappropriately. Though nor did his eyes lock with mine. His fingers in my hair and running over my slick flesh made my entire body tingle.

Damien swept me off my feet and up to his chest tight against him. Carrying me out into the bedroom, we dripped every step of the way. It would have been patronizing if I didn’t have a great urge to attack him in a most primal way. The way he stared back at me, I could only hope he felt the same. I couldn’t tell.

The urge didn’t last long enough. There in the middle of the room, soaked in the blood of my death, was the bed. That image I knew then would forever be imprinted in my mind.

Staring entranced, my head tilted to the side. How does one process their own death? He stood me to my feet. The brush of his lips crossed the hollow of my neck before he vanished from my side.

Within a few moments, Damien handed me a set of my clothes he had waiting on a chair. Slowly I stepped into a black cotton thong and then slipped the straps of a black bra up my shoulders. I was startled when Damien materialized behind me to clasp it. Brushing my hair back from my neck, his lips pressed against the nape firmly. His lips drug around to the soft flesh under my ear. “Do you still doubt my want for you?” He chuckled as I shivered when his tongue flicked my flesh. “No? Good. Don’t ever doubt that again.” He nipped softly before pulling away.

I redressed in a daze into a worn pair of jeans torn in all the right places and plain dark green tank top. Olive drab. Love it.

Damien quickly moved to his closet. Seconds later, he came out in a pair of his designer jeans hung low on his hips and an open black button up long sleeved shirt, the sleeves rolled to his elbows. Some things don’t change. Some things shouldn’t.

Staring at his chest, my lips parted slightly. He smirked. Embarrassed I turned away and then lost all touch with reality. Unable to move unable to speak, I became completely detached. Frozen.

He stepped in front of me, pulling my vision away from the blood once more. “Anna, don’t do that to yourself. I know this is hard but I can’t lose you right now. I need you to focus on me, okay. Just me and nothing else. This will get easier, love. I promise.”

With a tight nod, I looked away from him and the bed both and stared down at my feet. “Why do I feel so funny?” At a loss for coherent words, I mumbled as I slid on my old pair of leather flip-flops.

“Hunger” I shook my head no.

“Like I’m spinning but not me. The whole room. But it’s not. I’m not.” Shaking my head I tried to rid myself of the insanity. I sounded like a loon, felt one too.

Damien chuckled slightly. “That will pass very soon, don’t worry. Basically, you’re feeling the rotation of the earth. You’re very sensitive right now. It doesn’t really go away but you just quit noticing so much I suppose.”

Damien’s shoulders shook just slightly as he contained his laughter. He placed a gentle kiss on my forehead, then each cheek before finally finding his way to my lips. Before he pulled away he kissed gently onto my neck, over the place he’d bitten me once.

He kept me very close as he guided me out of the room. Damien tensed, stopping at the door. “If I carry you, will you promise to keep your eyes shut?”

Did he really think so little of me? “I’m fine. Really, I can handle it.” He smiled and found my hand, squeezing it softly. Damien led me down the stairs. My eyes were wide but I tried to hide the shock as I replayed the night in my head, as if I was watching a movie.

No one survives that. Blood had been thrown from one end of the room, all the way up the stairs, and I knew the bed had been saturated. The smell of course told me that most of it was mine.

With each step, I walked through pools of thick dry blood. It was sticky. The sickest part was that it smelled good. Too good. My body was trembling.

New Blood is the term used for a new Vampire. New Blood or not, I still couldn’t imagine myself sucking on the carpet to absorb my own dead blood. No matter how it smelled. “It’s okay. Just stay calm.” He did his best too sooth me.

I did my best not to lose my temper.

“Damien, do not be patronizing. I’m not sucking the carpets clean yet.” Grinning, he shrugged his shoulders as if to say he couldn’t help it.

We made it to the bottom of the staircase when I saw Liahm. My body froze, tensing in a silent panic.

Specific images of Liahm torturing me came flooding back so fast it took a moment to realize it was only a memory. I could feel his teeth tear through my breasts across my chest slowly.

But now, now he was just strung about pieces of rotting Liahm. A whispered regret told me that it should have been me to do this to him. I would have enjoyed it. A lot.

Damien tugged my hand, pulling me out the door. The sun didn’t kill me as he had promised. However, it was as if I had been in the dark for a million years and then decided to look directly into the sun. It felt warmer than I was used to.

Rushing ahead of me, Damien opened the passenger door to the Jeep. One arm lifting me, he nearly threw me in. The windows were so darkly tinted from the outside a human could not see in at all. Relief washed over me like a drug.

“Wait, my book!” My hand came up to open the door when he stopped me.

“Your bag and everything else, including the sketchbook are in the back seat. Body wash can be replaced.” As Damien drove, I twisted around and grabbed the book from the back. He drove like a bat out of a hell down a path too over grown to possibly be a road. Now it didn’t bother me at all.

I curled up in the seat with my legs crossed butterfly, flipping through the book to the second to last page with an image. The art was done in black oil pastel.

A fallen angel viewed from behind. Mercy. Blood had soaked the paper from the page beneath this one. I flipped to the next.

It had been heavily stained in blood. My blood. The hand. Cut. Black blood drops and all could still be seen clearly despite the massive smear. Hm, the irony I thought. Without thinking, I dug a pen from his console and began to sketch…

I think this is a good time to step back and look over some things again. Many of the memories in my time of humanity are like a haze. Thinking of them now is like watching everything through a fog. It’s difficult to explain some things. The details that is. My existence from after I turned, of course, is much clearer.

If I were to describe a leaf to you now, know I would be able to tell you the exact shade in astounding detail. Such as its geometric measurements in size and shape. I could count every pore and every vein running from the stem through the body. All of this from simply driving by.

In my years of humanity, I may be able to tell you the leaf was green. That was only because I knew they were supposed to be. The difference is to explain living in a black and white world and then suddenly living in High Definition Technicolor. Bet you didn’t know there are really sixteen colors in a rainbow.

This was the story of my death and my birth into a new life. This was my demise. I was reborn into a new world. A new life. A world that is dark as dark as it is mystical.

My own personal land of illusion. A land where the statues of the gods walk the earth in all of their glory. Now I am one of them. With skin like living marble and eyes that shine like the stars in the dead of night. Sculpted and beautiful in ways I never would have imagined.

Now I see the world through new eyes. An entirely different world. Not just changed. No, not changed at all. For it has always been this way. It is I that has changed. Now I can see the world for what it truly is.

This is my gift from my dark angel. My prince of darkness. My draconian devil. I will forever be mesmerized by the intensity that I had been missing. My years trapped in mortality. The beauty. The chaotic. The impossible... The magic. The Immortal.

* * * * *

“I don’t feel real,” my voice was no louder than a whisper but to me it sounded as if I was yelling.

“It’s a bit strange I imagine. I don’t remember turning. Actually I don’t remember anything before turning. I just remember existing. And the blood.” He didn’t look at me as he drove though I watched him expectantly. I wanted more. More everything. More knowledge. More of his voice. More sanity. More blood.

“Before I knew what I was, I existed like a parasite. Crazed by the voices of others and obsessed with blood. Only the beat of their hearts as I drank would drown out their voices. I enjoyed the monster I was, relishing in death. It was years before I became anything other. Years before I found enough self-control to exist among others of my kind let alone the human race.”

“Are you telling me this because you know I’ll be the same way?”

“No. I’m telling you this because I won’t let you be that way.” He shook his head. His eyes never once glanced in my direction. “It doesn’t have to be that way for you.” There’s something to be said about a man who tries to reassure himself so strongly. Something that says he isn’t so certain.

The silence that lingered between us was palpable after that. Knowing that dwelling on such a possibility could d
o
little to affect my future either way- I began to think of something else. A question I’d had since before I turned. A question I was too afraid to ask at the time. Now it seemed that there was no longer a choice. Without a doubt, I needed to know.

“Before I turned, in the apartment after Paul attacked me, you said that my blood had keyed me into you. It didn’t allow you to hear my thoughts better but that you had connected with me in other ways.” I needed a moment to think of the best way to phrase this. His eyes cast in my direction but he said nothing. “That sort of thing happens no matter who you feed from? Or was there a specific reason it keyed you into me aside from you drinking my blood?”

“It happens no matter who you feed from. The more a Vampire feeds from a live human, the stronger their connection.” His jaw clinched tightly as he waited for me to respond.

“That doesn’t seem like a good thing to me, for most situations at least.”

His mouth tightened into a hard thin line as he thought on how to respond. “It isn’t. However, it only happens when you feed directly from the person. If you had cut your hand and poured it into a cup instead, that would not have happened. Drinking from blood bags is the easiest way to not have to worry about it.” He sighed heavily letting out a deep gust of breath. “You’re quite right though. In most situations, either option is undesirable for the Vampire. This is the reason Vampire’s generally kill when we feed.”

XXI

“ONCE UPON A TIME”

“Yes, uh huh. - Yes. I’m bringing her now. - Lara couldn’t have known.” Damien’s lips pressed to a hard line. His brow furrowed. “Very. Yes, I as well. - Thank you, Jezabell. - We’ll be alright, no need for all of that now. - Indeed. We will see you soon. - Until then.” The phone call had been brief but the tone alone made me nervous.

“Who was that?” We hadn’t spoken to one another in hours now. I’d sat with my knees against my chest still as stone watching the images pass by my window like a movie. Transfixed on the world around me as if seeing it all for the first time.