The Dark Rose

by Ramsey, Valentine

  The door creaked when she came back out. Dom groaned and turned over, sheets low on his hips. He rubbed his head and looked at her with heavy eyes.

  “I like that top on you better than I ever did on me. Come here and let me put it where it belongs, back on the floor.”

  Crawling in bed, Pan laid half on him and kissed him.

  “Mm.” He smiled sleepily, rubbing her back. “Breakfast never tasted so sweet.”

  “There’s no light for lightness,” Pan said. “But dark for deeper darkness. No alba yet to give the birds reason to sing a dawn song of night treason.”

  “Ah, then let the nightjar serenade the moon.” He cupped her face in his large hands, and found her mouth with his. After a moment, he ran his hand down her back, pressing her closer to him. “How do you feel? You don’t hurt do you?”

  “I think the soreness is expected. Otherwise I feel heavenly.”

  She was glad they had waited. There was pride in making love with her husband for the first time.

  He stroked her cheek with his knuckles. “Good.”

  “How do you feel?”

  The corners of his lips quirked up as he pushed the shirt off her shoulder and trailed his fingertips over her skin. “Whole, blissed out,…hungry.”

  Rumbling a growl, he suddenly rolled her on her back. Pan giggled as he undid a button, kissing the hollow of her throat. Content as well, she ran her hand up the nape of his neck and over his head, ruffling his hair. His lips caressed the valley between her breasts, all the way down to her bellybutton. Pushing the top off her shoulders, his mouth moved back up to her jaw.

  Tilting her head back, Pan offered her neck. Dom didn’t hesitate but sank his fangs into her vein. Pan moaned, arching into him as she hooked her arms under his.

  Making love to her husband the second time was what Pan had been looking forward to the entire time. Divine. Her back to his chest, Dom kissed the pinpricks where he had bitten as Pan played with his hand, loving the clamming ring on it.

  “Do you like your ring?” he asked. “I can get you a diamond if you would like.”

  Pan held up her hand, admiring her ring instead. Diamonds, cold and dead, were everything she had left behind, but this moonstone, alive with soft milky blue pink sheen was her future of happiness.

  “I don’t want diamonds. I want you and this moonstone. I love it, Dom. It’s perfect.”

  “Least now I’ve finally marked you as my territory.” He wrapped his arms around her and squeezed. “All beware who try to steal my wife, that crime is now punishable by sacrifice of their life.”

  Pan sighed. “I’m worried.”

  Dom tensed. “About?”

  “My date with black fate. The virus claimed you when you were nineteen. I’m about to be eighteen and I still haven’t gone through it.” She twisted in his arms to look at him. “What if I take after my father and don’t change until my late thirties?”

  The horror of it was sickening, her, a wrinkly grotesque old woman while Dom remained a young fresh faced man.

  “I doubt that will happen. It’s extremely rare.”

  “But what if it does? My mother wasn’t vampire born so her side doesn’t factor in.”

  “Was her blood maker vampire born?”

  Pan thought back to everything she knew of her mother’s heritage. “I think so. He had to be if he was King of the Argentinian coven.”

  “Then you can’t exclude her side. The condition Victor suffered happens to one in a thousand and hasn’t been known to be genetic. No matter what though, I will never leave you,” Dom said intensely. “Besides, when you do change it will be a devastating waste.”

  Pan frowned. “How so?”

  “You are…phenomenally gorgeous. It saddens me that you will not be able to preserve it into the legacy of a child. I feel guilty that my keep is steep.”

  “But—we’ll have a child, through the virus.”

  Dom sighed and rubbed his nose against her temple. “Some human carrying our child—it isn’t the same.”

  They spent the next few days in their room making love and making plans. Dom had wanted to flee to Spain, but Pan had ancestry there. Europe was peppered with both their heritage not leaving them many places to run without being tracked. Finally they settled on Mother Russia where they could be swallowed in its vastness.

  Packed and ready, Dom needed to feed before the long trip. Once he was back they would be on their way.

  Picking at the dinner he had brought her before leaving to hunt, Pan paused, looking up as a sudden feeling of unease prickled her skin. She listened, wondering if what she thought she heard was Dom coming up the hall. When the door didn’t open Pan went back to eating, but dooms cold fingers tickled down her spine again, more prominent this time.

  Dropping the fork, Pan shoved back from the small table and strode to the window. Peeking out, she gasped, her heart plummeting a hundred feet seeing eight SUV’s parked down on the street.

  “They found us,” she whispered in horror.

  How was this possible? Why wouldn’t they just let her go? Why was time against them so? They had run so hard and so fast, reaching the speed of light, it should have given their feet flight, where all time should have transpired in the past. And now in the present, they should be free, but it was not so.

  Not bothering with the packs, Pan ran for the door. If she could get to Dom in the forest, there was still time for them to escape and turn time around, burying its ugly face in the ground.

  Throwing open the door, Pan slammed into a barrier of solid male chest. Staggering back, she gasped, looking up into Raphael’s black eyes. Other Rose vampires flanked his sides.

  Raphael’s lips curved up in a wicked smile. “Hello kitten.”

  Pan slammed the door on him and ran back into the room. Raphael kicked open the door, it sides splintering and they strode in after her. Running to the window, Pan tried to yank it open, but it was nailed shut. Letting out a cry, she whirled around to face them.

  “My bride to be running away with another man,” Raphael said. He was vibrating with furious restraint, fist clenched. “Fortune has it we have not yet married or your punishment would be most severe. I have to say Pan, I never—”

  Raphael paused and sniffed. Eyes flaring, he threw a savage look at the messy bed. Pan glanced at it, knowing he smelled her virginal blood. His fangs dropped as he snarled.

  “Whore! You are engaged to me!”

  Flashing across the room, Pan screamed as Raphael grabbed her by the neck and slammed her into the wall.

  “You dare let a Gray taint your holy shrine when you are sworn to be mine!” he roared, a blazing red now bleeding into his black unholy eyes.

  A pathetic cry escaped her throat as Pan clutched his wrist, trying to breathe.

  “Raphael—” Kieran began to warn.

  “Shut up!” Raphael roared and looked back at her. “Promised to me by your own father!” He hissed, seeing the pinpricks on her neck.

  Pan struggled to break his grip, but he was beyond strong. Raphael’s face fell as his eyes caught the ring on her hand gripping his wrist.

  “Raphael!” Andre roared, storming in. “Release her!”

  Raphael snarled over his shoulder. “She. Is. Mine.”

  Andre’s voice was low and deadly. “Not yet she isn’t.”

  Growling low in his throat, Raphael released her neck and stepped back. He snatched her wrist.

  “Stop!” Pan struggled as he yanked off her ring, but he held her away. Raphael dropped it and stomped it under his boot. “No!” she cried.

  Tears sprung to her eyes, seeing it bent and destroyed. She bent to pick it up, but Raphael yanked her back. Pan tugged against his hold.

  “The Gray was found with one just like it,” Archer said.

  Pan froze in her struggle. “What?”

  Her tears stopped as she looked at him with huge eyes. How could they know that?

  “That’s right, my dear sweet,” Raphael s
aid bitterly. “We tracked and ambushed your Gray in the woods. He is now and forever—dead.”

  Pan shook her head, disbelieving. He was lying. That’s all Raphael did was lie. Serpent heart hid with a flowering face.

  “Liar!” Pan screamed and made to hit him, but Raphael caught her wrist. “Ancient damnation! Your words are contamination to our love! You could never defeat Dom, he’s too strong.”

  Raphael’s lip peeled up. “Don’t believe me? Ask your darling protector.”

  He shoved her at Andre. Pan stumbled, but Andre caught her. Clutching his jacket, Pan looked up at him pleadingly.

  “Tell me it’s not true,” she begged. “Tell me. Spare me misery and tell me it’s not true.”

  Andre’s jaw clenched. “I wasn’t in the attack party, but from the blood—”

  “Show her,” Raphael ordered the others.

  Archer and Cylar held out their hands. Dried blood covered them in blotches as if they had tried to clean it off. Pan gaped at them in horror.

  “No! No! No!” she screamed, bursting out sobbing and sinking in Andre’s arms.

  “Where is she?” Victor said, striding in.

  Pan looked at him through her tears. “Why?” She pulled from Andre and walked to him. “Why couldn’t you have left us in peace?”

  “You are my only heir,” Victor said. His eyes were cold, his voice deceivingly calm. “My daughter—and he was a Gray! I told you! I told you if you defied me one last time I would kill him!”

  Pan cried out at his words. An hour previous Dom’s lips had graced hers, two hours before that they had been making love, his body protected in her arms where nothing could harm, but now—

  Dom…killed, murdered, butchered…his body lying cold where her arms could not hold, cradling him to her chest, where her tears could not fall to rest and wash away his wounds, gracing him back to life.

  “Do you care nothing for my happiness?! To steal the only love my heart has ever known?” Pan pounded his chest with her fists. “And you killed him!”

  Victor wrapped his arms around her, crushing her against him. Pan tried to push away, but she couldn’t muster the energy to put any force behind it. Giving up the fight, Pan gave in to Victor’s might, crying in his arms, clutching him tight.

  Agonizing pain gripped her heart, tearing it apart. It hurt so bad, Pan thought it was trying to chisel free of her chest, it was beating so fast, wanting to join Dom in his eternal rest. She was sucking in sharp cutting breaths, but she couldn’t seem to get enough air. Her mind fuzzed and the world tilted…

  Pan wasn’t aware she had fainted until she resurfaced to consciousness and found herself cradled in Andre’s arms. The star specked sky above paid witness to him carrying her.

  “Kill me,” Pan whispered, turning her face into this chest. Her voice pitched higher as tears began to choke it. “I can’t exist without him.”

  “When you wake,” Andre said, his voice coming from a faraway place as Pan felt herself beginning to drift again, “everything will be all right.”

  What a shame to upon himself with lies he does defame. Death devouring love had feasted on her soul this night. Nothing again would ever be all right. Dom’s last words whispered through Pan’s mind before she faded into oblivions black womb of peace.

  Forever and always, I love you…

  + Chapter 39 +

  Moonstone Island

  Pan grieved, her sense of everything else taking leave. She had forgotten the world as the world had forgotten her. The world was not her friend. There was no world in her existence though world and earth and nature all at once existed and all around her persisted.

  The whisper of wind, the breath of waves, the cry of rain, the thunderous clash of the debating heavens, the scent of sunshine mingling with that of her brine as she cried crystal tides that friendly sighs sought to dry.

  But like a storm of passion, now breathy winds, now undying rain, sighs dry her cheeks, but tears make them wet again. Variable passions stir her constant woe, most of them directed at her father the foe.

  And sunlight for sorrow, the brightness of which she could not find to borrow, but under the moonlight in mirroring sorrow, she could stand to kneel and harrow the earth, blood of all blood, where she buried her marrow.

  Her spirit now buried, life continued on around her, but Pan wouldn’t know it as she was exiled to Moonstone Island. Her father had named it after the rose. The irony was—bitter sweet, in light description.

  Sleep had become her only escape. Her only way to see Dom’s face yet every time it appeared, Pan had to banish it away as the devastation was too severe. The worst of it was the horribly crushing knowledge that she would never again know his lips, hold his hand, cradle his land, make love and memories with him, see his smile, tease it to stay awhile, feel his loving touch, speak unsaid words of adoration by gazing into his eyes for hours on end.

  Drawing her legs up, Pan wrapped her arms around them, tucking her head down as tears began to seep from her eyes adding salt to the wounds of her raw cheeks. Never again would she hear Dom’s laugh, never again would she fight with him to carve out a path.

  “Oh my wee popkins.” The bed sunk as Magda sat on the edge. “My poor dear, come to me, come to me now.”

  Pan let Magda pull her into her arms where she rocked her, rubbing her back and stroking her hair.

  The ocean night breeze blew the curtains and cooled her hot skin. Pan’s eyes were closed, but she wasn’t asleep, instead finding a moment’s peace listening to the waves.

  Andre’s voice broke her trance. “Gertrude says you haven’t eaten in days.”

  Pan didn’t startle. She didn’t have the energy for it. She was an empty shell with a small portion of hell.

  “I just want to die.” Barely more than a whisper, even her voice lacked animation.

  To stop feeding life, she figured it would soon wander away and die. There was a sudden void in the moonlight falling over her as Andre came around to the side she faced.

  “There are quicker ways to end it.”

  Pan had imagined just walking into the sea and going under never to be seen again. She had imagined cold deaths steal, choking on pills, a noose hanging loose. But she was like a wave, inconsistent in where she chose to lay her grave.

  “I’m too cowardly.”

  “Suicide is cowardly.”

  “Says the man who has not suffered the murder of his love in cold blood simply for who he chose to love.”

  “You’ll find other love.”

  Pan’s eyes snapped open pinning Andre with a seething glare. “The ease with which you said that appalls me. I don’t want other love. Dom took mine and left none for anyone else, not even myself. He was my soul and now all I have is a bloody, jagged, gaping hole.”

  “You have something if your eyes burn with that amount of anger.” Andre dug in his pocket. “I managed to swipe this.”

  Pan’s breath stopped as he placed her wedding ring on the bed. The band had been bent back as best as possible, but there was still a dent. Pan reached and closed her hand over it. Closing her eyes, she held it to her heart.

  “Why am I here?”

  “Your father is furious for having married and defiled yourself to a Gray. He wants time to calm his rage and for you to turn over a page and gain new perspective of the world and get over all you believed to have lost.”

  For all that it cost, everything was lost. Losing her sanity, losing her propriety, losing all her love, her raven feathered dove, losing all fight, losing her souls right, losing her voice of her dying choice. Losing life’s worth, its smile holding no mirth, losing the color one lone Gray gave to her black and white world. Losing so much more than she had gained, now having nothing left worth the pain.

  “Exile isn’t going to accomplish that,” Pan said.

  “Pampered exile of course.”

  “Andre?”

  “Yes?”

  “Just leave me alone.”

  Pan didn
’t hear him leave, but she knew he had gone. Opening her eyes, she took a shuddering breath and slipped her wedding ring on.

  + Chapter 40 +

  The Angels Call

  Two weeks passed until Pan was allowed to come home. Cold pale weakness now numbed every feeling part of her shattered heart. She resembled a rose claimed by an untimely frost, pale and wilted, a ghost of her former self. No one bothered to bother her anymore, the living dead respectfully leaving the living dead to her bed.

  Circled by hundreds of towering candles that set the dark room aglow throwing shadows about as if they were scuttling demons, Pan knelt with palm to palm in holy palmers kiss, whispering a fast paced prayer, hoping the saints gave a care. A drop of blood splashed her cheek like a tear. Oblivious to the thorns piercing her forehead of her rose crown, Pan prayed harder, mustering every ounce of conviction hidden in her cells and pores.

  Dom had answered the angels call. Sneaky, they had flown low and raised him above leaving her to walk solo, treading the earth alone, a cold and lonely human home. But if she prayed hard enough, held back her tears and opened her ears…

  Like a long sweet choir hum in the middle of an inhuman song of mortality gone wrong, Pan heard the beautifully absurd…angels call.

  Dropping her hands, Pan looked up at blackness where angels flew invisible. In a gust of wind from the whoosh of their wings the candles extinguished in trails of smoke and the dream went black.

  Pan’s eyes snapped open as she suddenly knew what she had to do. Tranquility had never befriended her so sincerely before. The peace she felt now left her vacant of anything else. Sheba grumbled and stretched as Pan got out of bed. Going to the carved chest at the foot of it, she opened it and knelt. Digging through the silks to the bottom she found the lump she was looking for wrapped in a peachy gold silk scarf.

  Unwrapping it, Pan held the silver revolver molded with roses that Dallas, a once upon a time cowboy, had given her for her thirteenth birthday.

  Moonbeams shone through the dark empty halls as everyone was at the coven meeting. Leaving through the front doors, Pan headed down the drive. Fate was on her side as she walked invisible to the few guards eye.