by Emma Dawn
The growling snarl of a grawk. Of the men who’d been mine for such a short time. They were coming for me. I twisted and sprinted up the stairs, the smell of blood growing stronger with each step. Behind me, I made the stairs impassable, smoothing them out like a slick slide. I reached the top and looked back as the first grawk stared up at me. Kessler. His green eyes were gone in the dark black fury of a grawk and were nothing short of pure hatred.
“Keep going,” I said to myself. “Keep moving, Rose.”
The level I was on was not my destination. No . . .Vincent would want to watch the show we put on. He’d want to see Ivan taken down. He’d want to see if I failed.
I found a narrow second set of stairs going up and followed it, slower this time. Because the walls seemed to push in around me. I stopped about halfway up. Reaching out, I put my hands on the walls on either side of me.
A flicker of emotion caught me off guard. Trapped, someone was trapped here in the house. That gave off the sensations I picked up on. I snatched my hands back. “Well, I guess I’ll get you out too.”
The house seemed to sigh and the oppression on me lifted completely away. I hurried up the last few steps to the door. The room at the top of the castle tower was the only thought that kept replaying through my mind.
Under the door, light shined through. I stared at it, lifted my hand and put it on the knob. I turned the handle and pushed the door open. I tried to take it all in at once.
Vincent sat in a large chair next to a roaring fireplace. He was in profile to me and I moved so he could see me. His eyes flicked over me once.
“Do you think because you are here, you know what is required of you?” He snorted. “You, like all the others, are a fool. Do you know that no one has ever found their way back to the land of the living? They get here, to this place or one like it, and they fail at the finish line. Do you know why?”
“Because you’re a dirty old man and you trip them?” I smiled as I spoke even though my heart hammered with fear.
Vincent shook his head. “No. I do not trip them. You see, I am the caretaker here of the Chalice.” He pointed to a space behind me and I slowly turned to see her there. The woman from my vision. Blood and all.
She was blindfolded, and bleeding from a mark on her neck as before but otherwise she was the same. “Maybe if you let her go—”
“Letting her go would ruin this world,” Vincent snapped. “I have brought the dead into line by giving them something to fear!” He stood, glaring at me as he stalked around the room. Impressive for a man I thought was near a thousand.
I didn’t even look at the Chalice. I just thought about her blindfold being removed and it fell away, fluttering in the corner of my eyes.
Vincent snarled and lunged for me. I held up a hand, stopping him midair. “How do I turn the grawks back to the people they were before?”
He struggled against the invisible bands that held him, but I didn’t loosen them and he did nothing but curse me. “Daughter of a whore! Daughter of a demon! You will not cast me out!”
“Lovely,” I muttered.
“He will never tell you,” the Chalice said softly, her voice melodic.
I half-turned toward her. “Do you know? Can you tell me?”
“The answer is one you already know. You are not fully here, Rose. You must give up your life for those you love. You must dedicate yourself to burning out the evil that has reigned here for a thousand years.” Her eyes were sad. “I can no more send people back to the land of the living than can Vincent. This was the hope he dangled in front of the dead to keep them trying for something more. It kept them pre-occupied with something other than what he was doing. I was forced to lie to you earlier, but now I can speak the truth.”
And there it was, the discordant notes I’d been picking up on with our first conversation. Vincent had to have been controlling her to a degree even then.
“Shut up, bitch!” he screamed, spittle dribbling down his chin. Mad, he was mad. How could I not have seen it before? He was good at hiding it, I’d give him that much.
The Chalice sighed and shook her head. “The evil he has spread can be cleansed, but it will be cleansed as it grew in bits and pieces, slowly, over years.”
“You mean . . . one at a time, don’t you?” I could still see the hordes of grawks coming for us over the plains. Thousands of them. The task was daunting to say the least.
The Chalice nodded. “You have the power to heal them. If you give up the life you knew.”
“And what about you in all this? What is your role?”
“I was not always the Chalice. I have gone by other names.”
“Like fairy godmother?” I grinned.
She smiled back. “I must go now. This is your choice, Rose. You will know how to heal your men, and from there how to heal this world.”
Her body began to fade from view and I held out a hand to her. “Wait. What if I need you again?” But she was gone, and my attention was off Vincent too long. I’d let him go by accident.
He slammed into me, driving me to the ground. I tried to roll with the momentum but he was stronger than he looked—especially for an old man.
“Hold her down.” A new voice entered the fray.
Gavin.
I twisted my head to see him coming toward us, a knife in his hand, the edge gleaming. Torq limped by his side, breathing hard.
No, this was not happening. “Torq, don’t do this. Don’t help him!”
“You left me to die!” he snarled, blood flecking his lips.
I jammed my knee into Vincent’s dick and balls, he groaned and rolled off me, clutching at himself. I pushed to my feet and then Torq was coming for me.
All I could see in my mind’s eye was the spear he’d thrust through Liam’s chest, killing him right in front of me. A spear appeared in my hand and I held it out, using Torq’s own momentum to drive it through his heart. He reached up, his hands circling around the haft. “Shit.”
“Golden rule,” I said. “Your mother should have taught you that.”
He slumped to the side and went to the floor as the light went out of his golden eyes. I jerked my attention from him to my father, Gavin.
“Too smart for your own good. Your power here will be great on the other side. The Chalice?” His eyes searched the room. “Where is the Chalice?”
“I freed her.” I smiled and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “Which means you are never going back. You are never going to hurt Dominique or anyone else again.”
Gavin’s face purpled with emotion.
“You should take a breath. I’ve heard your head can explode if you hold it too long.” I grinned at him. I had nothing to lose, and he had everything.
With a scream of rage, he threw his hands outward and the house began to shake as if he’d pull it apart. “The Chalice is not gone, fool of a girl.”
Underneath my feet, the floorboards shook and trembled. The house . . .the house was alive.
The house was the Chalice.
I didn’t think about what I was doing. “You cannot return to the land of the living. I forbid it!”
He blinked at me. “You . . .forbid it? Who do you think you are?”
Embrace the truth, Rose. Those words floated through me. Embrace who and what you are. You are queen here. You are the one who can make this world whole.
“I am Queen.” I said the words once and the house shook like a gong had gone off inside it. “I am Queen.” The second time it was Gavin who trembled and I took a step closer to him. “I AM QUEEN!”
The final syllable fell and the world around us shattered on shards of light and music. I floated inside it and then landed on my feet. I found myself walking forward until I stood over my own body.
My own body and there was Dominique and Ally, her older sister. They were in a dim room lit by candles on all sides, but even the candles didn’t seem to push back the darkness. But it wasn’t the room that held my attention, but the people
in it. My body was stretched out on a sumptuous bed, covered to the neck with a heavy blanket. The skin of my face was pale, waxy, and my cheeks had sunk in. I basically looked like shit.
“She’s fading.” Ally put a hand on Dominique’s shoulder, gently. “She doesn’t have long.”
“She has to come back,” Dominque whispered. “She has to. I have to be able to tell her.”
My heart ached with leaving her, my best friend, sister of my heart and now of my blood. I reached out to her.
“Dom.”
She spun around. Her eyes widening. “Rose! Are you okay?” And then she looked back at the body that had been mine. She shook her head. “No, don’t leave me. Please, please, don’t go.”
I sucked my lower lip in and bit it hard, but the tears didn’t hold back. “I . . .I’m needed here, Dom. Gavin and Vincent, they hurt this place and I can heal it. I have to.”
She wrapped her arms around herself and Ally hugged her from behind. “Are you sure, Rose?” Ally asked. “Is there nothing we can do to help?”
“There is one thing.” I looked at my body. “Hurry along my death. I need all my strength for this place. To save those I love.”
Dominique stared at me, her tears drying. “You’d better make sure it’s damn magical by the time I get there.”
I laughed. “Fucking amen.”
The laughter died and I nodded at her. “I know you’re my sister. I think maybe I always knew. Take care of each other, and I’ll be here, waiting for you when the time comes. I hope a long time from now. Live your life to the fullest, Dom. Love hard, play harder, and protect the weak.”
Dominque put a hand on the chest of my body and closed her eyes. Tears leaked out from under the lids. “I love you, Rose.”
Her hand tightened over my heart and there was a moment of panic where I thought I’d made the wrong choice. “I love you, Dominique.”
And then I was back in that floating space again, and when my feet touched down, I was in the house where Vincent still writhed on the floor and Gavin hunched in the far corner.
“What did you do?” he whispered. “What did you do to me?”
I drew a breath and I felt the change in my body, in my power, and the strength running through my veins. “I took control of my life. Go. You are one of my subjects now and while I can’t kill you, I can take away your freedom if you cause grief.”
Gavin scrambled up, his eyes wide. Whatever he’d seen had been enough to scare him straight, at least for a little while. I knew I should be more concerned about just what happened, but I had specific things going on in my head. As in deal with Vincent and then get to my men.
Gavin was gone in a flash through the window. I heard a thud and then there was a snarl of grawks. Of course, he could be trapped as one of them. I hurried to the window in time to see him taken down by the five grawks. I flicked my hand at Gavin and marked him with a large red X across his back. He could stay as a grawk until the all the others had been redeemed.
“You are not queen,” Vincent growled.
I turned slowly to him and the house around us shuddered, a flow of energy running from it into me and with that energy came images of the past. Of what this place had been, and who had lived here. I’d been wrong, the house was not the Chalice. The house had been the former queen’s home.
“You killed her, didn’t you?”
He sneered at me. “You can’t kill the dead.”
The first grawk . . .the queen of the grawks. The house shuddered as if nodding. I pointed a finger at Vincent. “And you’re done.” Then picked him up with my mind and tossed him out the window.
I could see now why he’d not wanted me to sleep with my guardians. In them, I’d found my strength, my understanding of this place and in their love, I found a reason to stay and fight. How many women had come this far only too fail?
Too many. The house seemed to answer me. Too many failed and our sadness grew.
I nodded and started back the way I’d come. The house already felt different and I let my power flow through it, changing it, shifting it back to its former glory.
The flashes of light and sparkle that danced around me half blinded me. “I feel like I’m in a damn Disney movie,” I said to myself.
I made my way to the top of the stairs. The five men hadn’t come back in. I shifted the stairs from a slide back to proper stairs and headed down. At the bottom, I went straight for the front door and continued out and down the steps. The five of them spun around as a unit and launched at me. I caught them all in the air as if they were in a net.
I went to Ivan first, drew him toward me. He was snarling and snapping his teeth, and though he hadn’t been a grawk long, already his skin had faded to a dusky ashen, waxy tone and the gray of his eyes had darkened to black.
I made a pinching motion with my fingers and his mouth slammed shut. “A kiss for a prince,” I said softly.
I laid my lips on his and the power in me surged up and through him.
I let him go and he stumbled down to his feet, shaking and shivering as though I’d stuck him in cold water.
His head hung low and I went to him and put my hand on it. “Ivan.”
Slowly he reached around my hips and hugged me to him. “Rose, I knew you’d save us.”
I sighed, happiness floating through me like a pack of helium balloons. Assuming balloons made a pack. I went to Liam next, tugging him out of the net and sealing his mouth shut. I kissed him, and as my power flowed through me and into him, his arms snaked around me and he kissed me back.
Hunger for him spiked hard through me and I had to fight off the urge to just take him away and find a place to strip his clothes off. He was breathing hard as I pulled back. “Rosie, girl, I knew you would be the death of me.”
I slapped his shoulder and laughed. “Sassy bastard. You’ll get yours soon enough.”
He swatted my ass I let him go. “Counting on it. I feel left out.”
Jessop was next and my heart ached as I drew him down to me. He looked very little like the brown eyed vampire who’d stitched me up in a treehouse on a beach. I smiled as I kissed him, and cried a little. “I’m sorry it took me so long.”
He slumped into my arms. “The sun is coming.” I kissed him quickly and he and Liam bolted for the castle. They made it just inside as the sun broke through the trees.
Sunrise. For the first time in a thousand years, this land saw the sun.
I turned to the last two grawks. There was nothing left of the men I’d known in their bodies, except for the vague size and shape.
Mars was next and it felt to me like a lifetime had gone by since we’d outrun the Morloosh in the mountains. Since I’d felt his magic sizzling along my skin. I carefully closed his mouth and kissed him.
He hit the ground hard and flopped onto his back, panting. “Kessler, hurry.”
I didn’t ask him why. I all but yanked Kessler toward me and kissed him hard, pouring my power through him. He bucked and jumped against the power, and for a brief second, I thought he was going to fight me.
As suddenly as the fight happened, it slid away from him and he kissed me back. He fell to the side. “Ivan, help me!”
Ivan hurried to me and scooped up Kessler. “Everyone into the house,” he said, back in command once more.
My general. I knelt by Mars and helped him up. He slung an arm over my shoulder. “Much longer and you would have lost us both,” he said.
“How can that be? I can bring you back,” I said.
“Wait until we’re inside. I’ll explain.”
He tightened his arm around me and kissed the side of my head. “I had no doubts, not in you.”
“Bullshit.”
He laughed, threw back his head and with that the cloak covering his face. “I didn’t. Honest.”
Honest, I’d give him that. The men I found were honest to a fault.
And they were all mine.
Once inside the newly refinished mansion, Mars explaine
d what he meant. “The grawks have something of a Hive mind. They are all connected. As soon as the queen felt you bringing us back, she tried to stop you. If there is any sort of pattern to you returning the grawks to their former bodies, she will try and stop you. She will fight you for their lives.”
“Why?” I’d seen the memories of this place where she’d been queen before Vincent had turned her. She’d been kind and generous and had looked after her people. The Chalice had been her friend, and mentor. And now the Chalice would offer me the same in my new life. My new quest.
“Anger. She’s filled with anger for those who are not grawks here,” Ivan said. “I felt it too, this desire to kill everything that might enjoy its afterlife.”
I closed my eyes and slowly nodded. “Then it’s a good thing I’m staying.”
The men all jerked at once like I’d pulled a marionette string through them at the same time.
“What did you say?” Jessop managed to speak first.
I drew a slow breath. “They told me I had a choice. I could go back to the land of the living, or I could stay here with you and try to stop the grawks and their queen. The choice was a lie, but before I knew that, I chose you. I mean, really, the whole fighting a horde of grawks is just a bonus, right? That’s what I was meant to do. What you were meant to do. From here on out, we’re a team and we’ll find a way to cleanse this world of the evil Vincent set in motion. It’s going to take a long time, so . . .I hope you all are good working with me for what’s probably going to be . . . like forever.”
Jessop grabbed me first, hugging me to him and then I was passed from man to man. “Is this what it’s going to be like every night?” I asked as I got to Liam.
He roared with laughter. “You think we can keep up with you?”
I grinned back at him. “No, but it’ll be fun trying.”
Would you like to see more of Rose and her men? See them take on the queen of the grawks, see Rose’s sexy times with Liam and Kessler? Well, here’s the deal. I need to know that you—the readers—want more. The best way to do that is leave a review on Amazon and tell me you want more! If I get at least fifty reviews, then I’ll write a special follow up book for you amazing readers!
