The Dark Rose

by Ramsey, Valentine

  Forest on either side, the pavement cold on her bare feet, Pan walked down the road in a calm daze of migration haze. For the time she walked, no cars passed so no one stopped to ask. Arriving at the council headquarters the guards opened the gates, seeing an innocent waif little girl in a white nightgown.

  But not so deceived were Dom’s five friends sitting atop the wall. His brows pulled in confusion, Urijah raised his head, pulling a straw from his mouth. When Deacon smacked his arm, Urijah’s eyes fell to the gun she carried at her side.

  Pan glared, daring them to do something. They turned and watched her head up the gravel drive. Chauffeurs leaning on cars glanced at her as she walked by and up the stairs into the empty halls.

  + Chapter 41 +

  Screams That Ring

  Urijah watched the Princess disappear through the doors. As the walking dead, he was used to the walking dead, though this he couldn’t quite comprehend.

  Dove looked at him, his diamond studded face glittering in the moonlight. “I thought she was murdered.”

  “Apparently,” Urijah flicked the straw away, “we were wrong. Find Dom,” he said, and jumped down.

  + + +

  Idiot! Love drunken moronic waste! He had been so intoxicated by Pan, his addiction so intense, it had clouded his mind with overconfidence, preventing him from doing everything in his power to protect her.

  Her love had set him on top of the world and his arrogance had kicked him off of it. Because of it he had not thought twice about challenging the all ruling death, tempting the might of the cold hearted beast to claim his right. And why he had to challenge it so Dom didn’t know. Challenged or not, deaths chilled black fingers should not have settled on Pan’s chest claiming her last breath. Dom’s fist clenched as he walked faster thought the labyrinth. Pan had been his and though he was not life, he was love in death itself.

  Pan, his mind whispered.

  Dom stopped and closed his eyes, his jaw clenching. He battled his eyes will to cry. Cracking his neck, Dom tilted his head back and looked up at his beloved. He turned her claiming ring on his finger. After a moment, he looked away, her silver orbed face too painful to endure. Drawing a breath, he wandered deeper into the maze.

  Pan’s screams as his kin had butchered her still rang in his ears and he had no doubt they would for years. He had been coming back through the forest when they pierced the night. Terror giving his feet flight, he had taken off for her when a dozen of his father’s vampires ambushed him. He had fought, but was overcome by their numbers. Pinned to Demeter’s bosom, his face mashed in her cold earth, he had struggled fiercely, roaring and screaming for Pan so loud he had not heard her screams silenced.

  Screams that echoed back from the corner of the universe to forever resonated their wretched accusing shrieks within the hollowness of his soul, his hell, the guilt of his failure condemning him to hell.

  Breathing hard, Dom stared dazed as Ellis had approached, calm and collected as ever as he cleaned blood from his hands with a handkerchief. A minor thing it was as more staining rose red splattered across him. Taking it in, numbness overcame him.

  “You have never taken me seriously,” Ellis had said. “Maybe from now on you will.”

  “You killed her,” Dom whispered in disbelief.

  “Don’t act so surprised Dominic. I warned you not to see her anymore and you didn’t listen. This is your fault not mine.”

  A rage like Dom had never known flooded him.

  “Do not blame me for who my heart chooses to love!” he roared, and surged to his feet throwing the others off.

  Rushing his father, Dom pulled back his fist, but Ellis being centuries older caught him by the throat and flipped him to the ground.

  “I’ll kill you!” Dom yelled, voice ragged.

  He struggled and thrashed, kicking wildly to get free, but Ellis dragged him up and slammed him into a tree, his teeth bared.

  “Good luck with that,” Ellis said, and shoved him at Demian. “Take care of him.”

  Dom looked around to see a fist coming at his face. And that was it, the end of his life. He had woken up alone on a jet. It was sobering to his soul to discover his friend from his foe, his father the latter, the most to matter.

  The pain of his loss was an eternal lesion on Dom’s heart, but the guilt of not protecting Pan was a monster devouring him whole, his struggling manhood drowning in the puddle of sorrow in which he stood.

  Oh God, her screams…

  Letting out a bellow, Dom smashed his fist into a statue. Rocks and dust flew as it crumbled.

  Love has never been known to die a natural death. It explodes, it implodes, it foreshadows and shames, for it cannot be tame. It runs wild, never knowing feelings of mild. It is broke, it is the suns smoke. It shines, it whines. It is everything that provides these words of rhyme, straight from the mouth of the divine.

  “But not this time for the divine has forsaken and taken what was mine,” Dom said.

  In his most devastated hours, when he needed her comfort most, Pan’s apparition would appear in ghostly host with signs and prophecies that beckoned him to die and travel where fearful eyes have long gazed, as he didn’t know how much longer he could survive without her.

  Winding deeper into the labyrinth garden, Dom couldn’t help but note the bitter symbolism. Wandering lost in hopes of finding oneself again where with every twist and turn there could be looming menace, but satisfaction lay at the end for those who braved the perils of the unknown.

  He hadn’t wanted to come tonight, but Ellis insisted. Insisted as in ordered, ordered as in dragged him out of bed and forced him into a cold shower. Its iciness had been the first thing to revive him from his grief.

  Reaching the center of the Summerhouse of Sin, Dom could find no beauty in the flourishing garden of all white blooms. He plucked a dahlia head and studied it. He wanted to crush it in his fist, but could find no reason to be cruel. Sighing, he tossed it in the fountain pond.

  “Dominic!” Several voices abruptly called.

  Dom looked for an escape, but the others blurred up before he could run.

  “Leave me,” he said, turning away from them. “I wish to be alone.”

  “But—”

  Dom rounded on Urijah, his eyes glowing with more life than they possessed in weeks.

  “Leave me to my grief!”

  Urijah glowered back. “Your grief will be hundredfold if you know you did nothing to save her!”

  Dom snarled and shoved him. “My most trusted confidant seeks to betray me to my own guilt?!”

  Urijah shoved him back. “How can you wash her away when heavens scorching sun has not yet won, your love-sick sighs still remaining earth bound! The Princess lives!”

  Dom’s eyes went wide.

  “She is alive,” Urijah stressed. “And she’s here.”

  His heart down a thousand trials now flew up a hundred miles.

  “Stifle beauty and steal my breath,” Dom breathed. “Speak fast and with truth.”

  “Her death un-witnessed by you or me or any in between with eye or ear—” Urijah let out his breath. “With mutual overthrows of mortal kind, I suspect Ellis and Victor played you both with wicked lies.”

  Dom looked around at them for confirmation. Could his cowardly heart which may falsely grieve dare to hope?

  Elle nodded.

  “It’s true,” Katzen said.

  “We saw her,” Dove said.

  “My Pandora alive?” Dom said, aghast.

  “And here!” Urijah said.

  “She brings a weapon of death,” Deacon said darkly.

  Dom’s newly inflated heart dropped. “A gun?”

  Deacon nodded. “Black chaos radiates from her.”

  With the speed of desire to quench his loves pyres of fire, Dom took off for the mansion.

  + Chapter 42 +

  The Beloved Friend, Revenge

  Pan pushed open the doors to the grand ballroom. As she glided through them, vamp
ires began to watch her curiously. She paid them no attention as they parted a path for her to her destination.

  + + +

  “I feel so bad for the darling,” Monroe said, touching a white gloved hand to her chest.

  “Don’t,” Jon Kida growled. “He was a Gray, for touching her they both must pay.”

  “Don’t speak so harshly,” Nanon said, placing a hand on his arm then added sternly to Victor, “She’s very young, you forget that and expect too much from her. You should be ashamed for torturing her so.”

  Victor rolled his eyes. “Given a few months she’ll forget him and be infatuated with someone new. I know my daughter; she is very inconsistent in where she chooses to place her affection. That’s why I can never buy her puppies. She grows bored.”

  Disbelief flashed in Nanon’s eyes, but she simply shrugged and sipped her blood.

  Monroe suddenly shrieked and all conversation fell silent. Every eye focused on an object behind him, Victor looked over his shoulder and turned.

  “Pandora?” he said, stunned.

  Circled by spectators, in a white nightgown, her feet bare and dirty, dark crescents shone under her vacant eyes, her skin sun starved ivory. Victor’s eyes fell to the gun she held pointed at him.

  + + +

  “I loved him,” Pan said in a quiet voice. “I loved him and you murdered him!”

  She cocked the gun and put it to her temple. Everyone gasped and backed away. Andre pushed through the crowd, but Victor stuck his arm out quickly blocking him.

  “Don’t,” he said, centuries hidden fear finding his face. “The slightest jar and it could go off.”

  Pan’s murmuring heart did a lot to speak, but it stuttered so badly it could only struggle to beat. Her lips did not hold back to communicate its agony.

  “Your war has driven me to hate what I am!” Pan screamed, her face red and strained. “For what I am is what sealed the doomed fate of my beloved husband!” Her voice trembled and an unending river of despair began to stream down her face in the form of tears, so she barricaded her fears and stood unyielding at this frontline of enemy Rose tine.

  “You scourge the barrel of grievances in effort to always find another. You clutch your hatred to your bosom as a mother would a child, feeding it fire from the depths of hell! I will never let you turn me against my love whether he resides in this world or the next for if my tongue was to mar his glorious Gray name, then surely—surely I am traitor to my own heart.”

  Pan trembled with the conviction of her rage. “And I promise you—I promise you father! I am a creature of pure selfishness and my heart…covets all, and in it the truth.”

  Victor stepped towards her. “Pan—”

  Heart pounding, Pan moved back, shifting from foot to foot. “Don’t come near me!”

  “Okay,” he said, holding up his hands. “Okay.”

  “Nothing will sway my devotion when I long to die and yet again be at his side. Neither heaven nor hell or any dimension in between can separate our love. You are no great force. Our love is of a level so beyond I pity you. I pity you for I have had it and you have not!” A tortured wail escaped her.

  Sobbing, Pan rubbed the barrel of the gun against her head. The angels…the angels had shown her the way to reach Dom’s place of stay, but for payment of their chantry they had taken nearly all of her sanity. She was clinging onto it by a thread.

  Choking on her tears Pan said, “What have I done to you to deserve such cruelty?”

  “Nothing,” Victor said with desperateness. “You’ve done nothing. Pan, I am so sorry.”

  “Sorry? You’re not allowed to be sorry as forgiveness follows it! No, blood hatred of enemy foe, it is time for you to reap what you sow!”

  “My darling love—”

  Pan shook her head hard. Lies! He didn’t know love and neither did she anymore. Revenge! Revenge! REVENGE! It was her only friend!

  Pan sneered at him. “Be still my heart, your denial tears it apart!”

  “Just put the—”

  “Speak not for the thief you are! To have viciously stolen what was mine in the divine light of love. You took my heart,” Pan whispered, chin quivering. “What gave you the right, bitter and lonely man that you are?” Shaking, she shifted on her feet. “Answer me this father. Answer your child seeded from the venom of your fang. Is this what you want?”

  Victor shook his head and stepped forward again. “No, Pan. No, of course it’s not.”

  Pan raised her head, bravery infusing her eyes with defiance. Taking a deep breath, welled tears leaked over and ran down her flushed cheeks.

  “Well, it’s what you get.”

  Closing her eyes, Pan pictured Dom’s face and began her assent to his heavenly place. She put the gun to her heart…and blew it apart.

  All gaped in horror as her knees gave and she fell back dead, blood blossoming on her breast. Nanon’s strangled cry joined that of the echoing gunshot. Her knees buckled and Jon Kida caught her. She clutched him tightly, eyes huge with denial.

  Victor stared in dumbfounded confusion.

  + Chapter 43 +

  The Flattering Truths of Sleep

  “NO!” Dom roared.

  He shoved frantically through the crowd, the echo of the gunshot reverberating through his body along with the terror of what he would find. Pushing through the last barrier, Dom cried out as devastation crushed him. Stumbling, he fell to his knees next to Pan. He lightly touched her cheek, her arms, unsure what to do, needing to feel to know it was real.

  Blood blossomed over her heart, soaking her nightgown.

  “No, no, no!” he cried, placing a trembling hand over the wound. If he could…just stop the bleeding, she would be fine…everything would be fine…

  But blood began to pool out from beneath her.

  “NO!” he roared, tendons popping out in his face and neck.

  Bleed his aching heart the bullet had torn hers apart!

  Urijah and the others pushed out behind him.

  “We’re too late,” Urijah said.

  Dom stroked Pan’s cheek, her beautiful face that deceived sleep. Tears of blood fell from his eyes, rolling down his cheeks to the corner of his lips. Why, by fate, and his worthlessness as a defender, did he always have to be so late in saving her?

  “Pan,” he whispered, and rested his head against her still chest. “My eyes do not trust the flattering truths of sleep, for my ears heard the unflattering ring of irons keep. Death has sucked the honey of your breath, yet has had no power on your beauty. How could it when it warms the coldest hand of this chilled child.” He ran his hand down her stomach, hip and thigh, back up to her face. “My only life, I should die with thee.”

  Sitting up, Dom looked down at her. Running his hand over her hair, he kissed her lips, his tears smearing them, painting them scarlet.

  “My love, I kiss these lips knowing my name was whispered on them. I grieve that I will never hear it again.”

  Sliding his arm under her back, he pulled Pan into his arms, cradling her limp and lifeless body to his chest. He stroked his knuckles over her jaw, her head hanging back. Behind him, Elle sniffed, a single blood tear rolling down her cheek. Dove took her hand.

  “From the fatal fangs of these two foes a pair of star-crossed lovers were born,” Elle said, her voice soft and childlike. “One to take her life, penalty for her father lies that her beloved has died. But her lover indeed alive, in body and eyes, is now condemned to live death alone since her spirit has left to roam. Both cursed from their parents duel hate, known for long, but known too late, consequence this devastating fate, for never was there a story of more woe than this of Pandora la Juliet and her Dominic del Romeo.”

  Ellis pushed through the crowd. “Dominic—”

  Dom’s head snapped up at his father’s voice. “Murderers!” He threw a seething glare at a stunned Victor. “Your Rose name may have well been shot from the deadly aim of this gun that murdered her so. Her blood is on both your hands!” />
  He turned his eyes, scorching with pain and dripping with blood rain, back on his father. “You made me believe she was dead, murdered by my own,” he snarled.

  “Son—Victor led her to believe the same. We thought if you believed it you both would grieve and then your love would find leave. We thought it best for both covens.”

  “So you can continue your war?” Dom spat. “Fuck the coven! This war has taken every inch of my sanity and tolerance! She loved me being a Gray.” Dom lowered his head, tears rolling down his cheeks. “She loved me. And I loved her. And now—” He looked up at his father from beneath his brow, eyes blazing again. “You took her from me again. Not once but twice!” He held up his bloodied hand. “This is your fault!”

  Looking down at her lovingly, Dom stroked Pan’s face leaving a smear of blood, a streak of war paint preparing her for battle in the afterlife. Groaning, he picked up the gun and put it to his head, closing his eyes. Shoot death from a gun, this must be done.

  He pulled the trigger. There was a click as the revolver turned over, but no explosion of a bullet disguised in the form mercy.

  Dom roared. “Such cold salvation I hold in my hand for those of mortal land! But such uselessness when it comes to the undead! Educated in pain, schooled in agony, but never will I solve the bitter equation of the Death Professor, my grim oppressor.”

  Dom gazed at Pan, his beautiful wife. Noticing she wore her moonstone ring, he took her small hand in his and stroked his thumb over it.

  “Death unoffered by man’s inventions of destruction when I am the indestructible invention of evolution. So, I must seek it elsewhere,” he whispered. Smiling to himself, knowing he would soon again lie with his beloved, Dom kissed the freckle under her eye and then her lips once more. “Steal the mortal blessing from your lips for the poor living corpse that I am struggles to breathe life with kisses.”