Blood Rose

by Jacquelynn Gagne

  realized I wouldn’t be able to get up if I tried.

  “Sweetheart?” Damien sounded amused and perplexed.

  My head popped up from the other side of the bed. “Wha?”

  “You okay?” His brow twitched while he was suppressing a smile.

  “Uh. I uhm.” I was having trouble standing up because my knee was killing me. This hadn’t been my best idea. Damien was by my side in a matter of seconds.

  With his arms around me, he scooped me up and laid me gently to the bed. “If you need something just ask, honey.” His cool lips brushed my good cheek.

  Once standing back with Neesa by the window, Damien watched me closely. Almost as if he were oblivious to Neesa.

  At long last, he gave a sigh and a single nod. “Fine. You can go but come straight back here with no other stops. If you do see someone, you had better come up with a lie on the way there. However first, will you get her something to eat? She has less food in this place than my house has.”

  My arm shot up pointing at the ceiling. “That’s not true! There is chocolate in my freezer!” We all laughed, though even as a collective it was feeble.

  “Yeah, sure thing. I can go get that now while we wait for the store to close. I’m pretty hungry too.” Neesa turned to look at me with a slight smile. Obviously, she was trying to contain a victorious grin.

  “What will it be? And don’t bother saying you’re not hungry.”

  Shrugging, not really hungry but knowing I was going to be forced one way or another. “Surprise me then. Make it soft.” With a slight nod of her head, she picked up her purse on the floor next to the bed, kissed the top of my head and left.

  Damien came over to the bed once she’d pulled out of the drive way. “You know I must say, I don’t know which is more appealing. You in my shirt, or this. Mm.” He enjoyed making my cheeks burn. Kissing my temple as he pulled me into him, Damien reached into his pocket pulling out the pill bottle. “Here, take one more of these. It will help for now.” Reaching to my nightstand, he handed me the Red Bull.

  Doooown the hatch. “You like me dopey don’t you? Where did you really get these anyways? And what’s up with the first aid kit?”

  He snickered. “It’s not that. I hate seeing you in pain. Your main line of thought is, owe owe owe owe owe. And I didn’t lie. I just didn’t tell you the whole story. An acquaintance broke his leg snowboarding last year. I gave him a ride one day because he couldn’t drive and he left them in the Jeep.”

  His arms slid around me and urged me to lie back against him. “And the first aid kit? Well my sister said I would need it when I left to go to California. She just hadn’t known why. I have to say it has been handy.” Bitter amusement.

  It was easy to be comfortable when so secure in his arms. “California?” His body was firmer than any ones I had ever known and cooler too but it didn’t matter. As I had told Neesa, we fit.

  “The snowboarding acquaintance. I’d gone up to Northern California to help him with something.” No details. Figures.

  I sighed over his answer. “Your sister. She’s

  psychic too, like Neesa?”

  “Sort of. Clair cognizance is the better term, I believe. Neesa is Clairvoyant. She touches things and gets images. The cards for example. In the field of parapsychology, Clair cognizance is a form of extra-sensory perception wherein a person acquires psychic knowledge primarily by means of intrinsic information. It is the ability to know something without a physical explanation as to why you know it.”

  “Wow. Do you read the dictionary in your spare time or what?” I couldn’t help but laugh. Fortunately so did he. Even if just a little.

  “Actually I have, thank you very much. Every edition in fact. I’ve always greatly enjoyed reading.”

  “I love reading. What do you like to read?”

  “Mmm. Modern books usually, to keep me up to date on this ever progressing planet. I mostly read newspapers. The Times. National Geographic, etcetera. Book wise anything intelligent. Genre doesn’t matter. Fiction, non. If the writing is sound and the author can intrigue me, I usually find enjoyment in it. Dan Brown’s a current favorite. What about you?” Damien’s fingers ran up and down my right arm light and slow.

  I giggled. I couldn’t help it. “That’s me. Well, I don’t care for nonfiction unless it’s really spectacular. And Dan Brown-” I lay over Damien with his support, reaching for the drawer of my nightstand. His most recent book lay on top of four others. All Brown’s. I don’t have shelves.

  “These are the only books I own. I have a library card for everything else I wanna read. Heh, usually I spend a lot of my time there. Either studying or browsing or even just reading. All the librarians even know me by

  name. Yeah, I’m a nerd.” He smiled at that.

  “May I?” I shrugged. Leaving the drawer open assuming he wanted to look. Instead, he shut the drawer and picked up the worn black leather book without title, which lay beside a short, sharpened pencil on the tabletop.

  Gently he moved me to lie between his legs, letting me curl up against his chest. “That’s nothing. Just my sketch book.”

  “I wouldn’t call it nothing. Sure you don’t mind?” I shrugged. My left hand lay on his chest by my head as my right maneuvered behind the small of his back.

  He opened the book to page one. A thorn stem rose. A park with an old man and small child on a bench feeding the gulls. He studied every page at length. Dragons. Demons. Fairies. An ancient old woman, face riddled with deep wrinkles. Butterflies and dragonflies. Wolves. An owl. A cherry blossom tree.

  A woman clothed in sheer torn rags, covered in exotic tattoos. Her body was covered in piercings. She lay on a stone floor, wrapped in chains in a way that seemed far from one of a prisoner. Her eyes were filled with lust. The pose was one of a seductress. Erotic. The title was “Dark Desire”

  The last was a woman covered in elegant tattoos of ivy and roses. She hung by chains from a bare white tree by her wrists, as well her feet were bound in chains that hung to the ground. Her throat had been torn into viciously and her chest had a gruesome gaping hole though the fabric where her heart had been ripped out. Whip marks slashed her bare body. “Who is she?” His voice was ice.

  “That’s how she died. The girl in my dreams. The

  girl who I become each night. I’ve relived her death more than any of the others.”

  “You lived through her death,” his words were as cold as they were dark.

  “I lived through her life. Understand that it wasn’t all bad. As a child and young girl, her life was utter bliss. Until the demons came. Then we became cursed to live through their deaths, no matter what she did to protect them. I felt their physical pain, as they were tortured. Felt their fear. Carried their grief and hers. The dreams when she dies are very painful. They prolonged her torture. She weeps with anger and as she does with relief. She knows the suffering will soon end. The end… it’s-”

  What my spoken words missed my thoughts filled in the rest. It hadn’t been my intention. The Vicodin had brought down my defenses and weakened my mind. Just thinking about her and that dream lead to explicit detailed thoughts of her life. Though we lay in silence, my memories played out the girl’s death in my own mental narrative. I knew Damien could hear it clearly for how tense he was.

  He’d laid the book on the table and held me. His hand pressed gently to my cheek holding me against his chest. His lips held against the top of my head. During the truly horrific parts when my body trembled, he would hold me tighter. The memories played rapidly.

  The memories took me over so completely that I relived them as if I were dreaming. As her torture was ending and her death was imminent I buckled. Tears flowed freely with hers. I flinched for every lash of the whip and every brutal savage beating.

  Demons had raped her. A nameless lover chained to a wall sat forced to watch. They tortured her. Then finally her death after she watched them kill her nameless

  lover.

&n
bsp; At least I forced his name away from my mind. That part wasn’t real. I wouldn’t let it be real.

  “Anna. It’s okay. I’m right here, sweetheart. Let them go. It’s alright. I understand now. Just let it go.” He pulled me up to sit in his lap. Soft kisses caught every tear gently.

  “Look at me, Anna.” Careful of my cheek his hands cupped my face. “I will not rest until I find a way to make them stop. We will find a way. I won’t let them haunt you forever. I swear.”

  His lips brushed mine softly. “Where ever these dreams come from, we will find out. If they’re a message, or whatever they are- we will find out. I will make them stop.”

  I nodded, unable to speak. Afraid the knot in my throat would send me into hysterical sobs. He held me until I calmed. His hand stroking my back turned into a soft kneading massage.

  I couldn’t help the low moan that escaped my parted lips. It felt soooo incredibly good. I couldn’t recall anyone ever actually giving me a massage before. Not that this really counted but it still felt great to my battered body.

  He picked up on the thought as for my mind was so focused on his wonderful touch. “Really? Never?” He chuckled lowly in a conspiratorial fashion. “Ohhh, when we leave here I have something in store for you, my dear.”

  “Heh. No you don’t.” I shook my head, repositioning slightly to straighten my sore knee. “You’ve already done way too much.”

  Unfathomable when I really thought about it. He’d put a hold on his entire life for over four months now. According to him, every bit of that was for me. My cheeks burned.

  “Lianna.” He sighed. “You don’t get it yet, do you?”

  “Get what?” I looked down at my hand, picking at the wrap on my wrist.

  His hands cupped my neck gently lifting my chin so that his eyes could meet mine. Perhaps it was the look in his eyes. Maybe it was the fact that his voice wasn’t soft but very serious.

  “I am in love with you, Lianna.” No further exaggerative proclamations on what he would do for me. No unrealistic vows to swoon me. He didn’t need to do any of that.

  “You are.” I smiled slowly, shyly almost. It wasn’t a question. Of all the times he’d implied it. All the things he’d done to show it. He was right, I hadn’t gotten it. Love can be a very difficult thing to trust in or to believe in if it is something that has not been freely given before.

  Damien’s smile was light as his forehead pressed to mine lightly. “Yes. I am.” My head lay down onto his shoulder. His hand returned to gently kneading my back.

  His other hand ran the pattern of my rose, as he so liked to do. “What’s with the tattoo anyway? You don’t seem the type.”

  “Oh but I am. I wanted a lot more actually. Always thought they were really beautiful. When done right of course. I guess it’s from the dreams. The girl in the dreams has them all over her and they’re really pretty. She has ivy covering her just perfectly from the corner of one eye and winding to her toes with all sizes of roses budding throughout the vines. She’d had them since she was a child. It grew with her as she grew. It was magic.”

  “Is that why rose and the dragonfly then?”

  “Sort of. It’s strange really. Like everything else, I guess when it comes to me. Heh. The girl in the dreams, she can grow flowers. Just by touching the sand, she would say something and this amazing red rose would grow. It was her mark. I always felt like she had marked me too. It seemed fitting.”

  Damien turned me so that I would be more comfortable on the bed rather than his hard body but that didn’t change our closeness in the slightest. His lips pressed over the small mark he had left from the bite.

  I wonder if he realized Neesa knew. He gave that little Mhmm sound. He knew. Didn’t care. “I see. That’s not really strange though. At least your reasoning is not.”

  “Well there is just a little more to it than that actually. When I was younger, I would try to copy the things she did in the dreams. Because they were just really cool and I thought maybe, it would help me understand her. Well there was one time it sort of worked. Just once though,” my voice was barely a whisper as I thought on the memory.

  “Tell me about it,” he mumbled into my neck, just under my ear.

  “I was sitting in my back yard, behind this big tree. All I remember is thinking about the dreams while playing in the dirt. I was really little. Around seven I think. I don’t remember what I was doing exactly but before long I was surrounded by dragonflies. Hundreds of them. Since then dark roses grew there all over that tree and still do to this day… Even in winter. The yards been filled with dragonflies by the hundreds every spring since.”

  “Hm.” Damien’s only comment to the story. “Neesa’s back..,” he sounded so excited. That’s a touch of an exaggeration perhaps.

  It was just a few moments later, she knocked on the wall outside the door quietly before stepping inside with a brown sack stuffed to the brim. “I got Chinese.” Neesa walked to my open kitchen and set the bag down on the counter.

  Damien pulled me up with him to stand and swept my feet out from under me completely. He carried me over to the small island and set me on the counter top.

  I couldn’t help but smile at the fact he knew I liked sitting there. He winked playfully, lips turned up into a small smirk.

  Neesa ordered everything on the menu. Well, almost. It could have fed an army. Of course it was only her and I who ate anything. I went with noodles. They both threatened until I finished one whole box.

  The next few hours were awkward with the two of them. Mostly Damien stood starring out the window while I got things ready for me to go with Neesa. She packed the rest of the things I needed and some of my art stuff too. The kit she’d bought for my birthday and the sketch book Damien had looked through. By then the huge duffle bag was busting at the seams.

  “Okay here’s the key. The rest is yours.” She was more emotional than I was at this point.

  I’d miss her. I regretted the strain this would put on Mike but I was ready to move on in my life. Whatever that meant. I was ready for a new life. I didn’t care what that meant at this point.

  “For now. It’s your stuff, Anna. When you do come back-” She stopped to glare at Damien, as if this was his fault. “When you do come back, it’s all yours. I’ll hold onto it but it’s yours.”

  “Well in the meantime it’s yours. Use what you will, do with it what you will. If you don’t want the furniture or anything just sell it. If I come back, you can pay me for it later. At least then you don’t have to deal with it.”

  “I won’t sell anything. Sides, I could use a new bed. Ryce and I are still in the full I had as a kid. Yours is a king, he’ll be thrilled.” Her cheeks went pink as she spoke and nervously glanced at Damien.

  She mouthed ‘Did you tell him?’ I shook my head. There wouldn’t have been much point in telling him. I was certain that he already knew, anyways. She nodded thankfully and looked around. “He’ll know if I lie to him. He always does but he usually doesn’t question me. Don’t worry. I promise to leave him out of this.”

  Damien turned to glance at Neesa as she spoke of Ryce. One brow rose as if he questioned the truth in her words.

  My hand took hers and pulled her to sit on the bed beside me. Turning to face her, I held her hand tight.

  “I’m gonna miss you, Neesa. I know everything lately has been really hard on you too and I’m so very sorry for that. Please don’t blame Damien. He’s done nothing but take care of me and he’s been there for me. Protected me. He saved my life, Neesa. Never once has he been the one that put me in harm’s way. You need to believe that. I’m happy with him. I’ll be safe with him. You talked about trust but you forgot that it goes both ways.”

  Neesa choked up and could only nod. Tears seeped from her eyes as she brushed them away quickly with the back of her other hand. “I know.” She took a deep breath. We talked like that for a while, mostly reminiscing.

  “Okay, store’s closing now. I should get going I
guess.” Neesa looked down at the key in her hand and sniffled a bit before looking back up to me.

  “I’ll be back soon. You better not take off on me!” With one last look at Damien, Neesa’s eyes narrowed suspiciously as if he very well might.

  “I promise we’ll be here.” Damien had been giving us some space and knowing how upset she was he kept his back to her.

  There are very few people in the world who don’t mind being seen crying. Neesa was one of them. I on the other hand despised it. It made me feel weak. Pathetic. I really hated how much I’d cried around Damien. But in my defense before that it had been quite a few years.

  Once she left, Damien made his way back to the bed to sit with me again. “Do you two hate each other?” There was so much tension between them that it was the only conclusion I could come to.

  “No, not at all. Just neither of us trusts the other when it comes to you. Oh and if you were wondering, Ryce is a shifter. I have known about him since the first night I stopped in at Riads.” His lips curled into a smirk as my eyes widened.

  “I thought you said they were loners. That’s really weird because Neesa said supernaturals and Descendants hardly ever got along.”

  Damien just shrugged. “There is an exception for everybody.”

  “Uhu. So what about what she said earlier, how most supes hate humans and think we’re garbage?” My brow rose as I turned to look at him accusingly.

  “Yes, much like that. However, I don’t really consider you entirely human. You’re just in a league of your own.” He seemed to like the sound of it. I was unsure what to think of the remark.

  “So you do hate humans then?” My shoulders slumped as I thought about it. Being called inhuman annoyed me I was coming to learn.

  “I think more or less, humans tend to hate anything abnormal.” Well that’s true. “And we’re usually quick to dislike things that would prefer we didn’t exist. Thousands of years ago, we were not myths, Anna. Humans hated us as well as feared us because in every way we were more powerful. Eventually we turned truth into legend and here we are today- Hiding in the shadows behind fairy tales and scary stories because for everyone involved it’s safer this way.”