Rose

by Ripley Proserpina

  “No.” The simple answer was like an iceberg. The truth was huge and jagged and sat beneath the surface waiting to rip a hole in whatever came too close.

  “We came inside your apartment last night,” Horus suddenly blurted out. “To make sure it hadn’t bitten you. We found you asleep on the floor. Since you were alive, we knew you hadn’t been bitten.”

  “What. The. Fuck. Horus?” Seti whirled to face Rose. “We were in and out,” he said quickly. “I promise we didn’t do anything weird.”

  “Beside breaking in?” she sassed. Why was she teasing? What she should have been doing was calling the cops.

  The same side of his mouth lifted again. “Beside that.”

  “Stop joking around, Seti. There are more questions that need to be answered. Like—” He turned his gaze on her. “What are you doing back here? Why would you take the risk of returning?”

  What if I told you it couldn’t bite me? What would you do? She sort of wanted to ask the questions out loud since she didn’t like his high-handedness. Coming back didn’t equate to stupidity. “I wasn’t planning on going back to the marsh,” she replied. Suddenly, she thought about the way it had leapt out of the water and lurched toward her. “Crawler is a good name for those creatures. I used to call it a demon.” She gazed toward the path she’d taken yesterday. God, her emotions were all over the place.

  “Did you fight it off and escape? Is that why your clothes were torn? Are you human?” Seti asked.

  Now, if any other person had asked her a question like that, “Are you human?” she’d have wondered if they’d just been released from the psychiatric unit. But Rose knew better. Demons were real. Angels existed.

  Of course, she wasn’t quite right in the head either. “Yes, I fought. Yes, that’s why my clothes were torn. And…” The last question stumped her. “I think so, but there are things about me that are… different.”

  “You’re not a vampire,” Horus stated.

  Random. But, nope. She wasn’t a vampire. That was true. She didn’t sleep in a coffin, or drink blood. She walked in daylight and loved garlic. Not a vampire. “No. And not an X-Man.”

  “You were extremely lucky to escape that crawler,” Horus said.

  “I don’t know how a human could survive the bite of a crawler. It is poison. If it didn’t drain you dry, then you’d have died from that alone. Painfully.”

  “I’m familiar with pain,” she replied, while pondering what they meant by drain her dry. They had their own iceberg words. She didn’t want to admit that she could start to see below the surface, and that the comment went back to the word vampire.

  The three of them sat in silence for a moment. Rose wondered if, like her, they were trying to make sense of the unexplainable. The heat. Creatures—crawlers.

  “You smelled it on me,” Rose said. “How?” Maybe that accounted for the strange reaction she had to them.

  “I’ve been bitten by one,” Horus said.

  So she wasn’t the only one! But Dr. Stone had never mentioned another person like her…

  “But it was long ago,” he finished.

  He looked to be around her age, or a little older. “During the Boston Nightmare?”

  Frowning, he shook his head. “No.” He stopped. Apparently, that was all she was going to get out of him.

  “All of the people who saw them during the Nightmare are dead now.” Seti looked at Horus as if they were having a conversation without words.

  Finally, his brother replied, “All of them, as far as we know.”

  Rose was getting caught up in their conversation. These were the first people who not only believed her but seemed to have experienced what she had.

  A lump formed in her throat, and she swallowed hard.

  Horus glanced over at her. In a flash, he left his bench to sit next to her. “Why are you sad?”

  She wouldn’t cry… but there was something so freeing about being believed. And better than believed, that they brought it up. She didn’t say, oh, I saw this thing! And then they took off with it. They weren’t pretending just to set her at ease.

  This was different than Dr. Stone. Their belief didn’t hinge on what she could give them. Dr. Stone always wanted something from her, but these guys didn’t.

  “I should be freaking out right now and I’m not. I should be worried about you following me, and throwing around words like crawler and vampire, but I’m just so relieved I’m not crazy.” She laughed a little hysterically and wiped her eyes before any tears could fall. “You’re not really planning on murdering me.”

  “We’re not.” Horus pinned her with a stare. “We are curious about you. And this heat is hard to ignore.” He touched his chest, and she had to smile. It sounded like a line from an 80s power ballad. He drew his eyebrows together as if confused. “What?”

  “Nothing,” she replied, knowing her thought was too random to make sense to him. “It makes the pain go away.”

  “Pain…” Horus said to himself before his eyes narrowed. “Why are you always in pain? Are you sick?”

  Did she share what happened to her, or not? What she was about to tell them went deeper than, yeah, I saw it, too. This was a secret her body kept, and they were bound to have questions she couldn’t answer.

  “A decade ago,” she began, “I went outside to catch snowflakes and was bitten by a demon—crawler. Ever since that day, I’ve lived with the consequences of having survived something everyone said didn’t happen.”

  “How?” Seti asked, but when she gazed at him, he was staring at the ground and shaking his head. He gripped his neck, rubbing it as if overwhelmed with tension before he lifted his eyes to her. “How?”

  “How does anyone survive a demon?” She thought back and found herself smiling. “An angel.”

  Horus frowned, thick dark brows lowering over his eyes before he side-eyed Seti. “An angel.”

  She nodded. “I’d been bitten, I don’t know how many times, and I could feel myself just slipping away. It was like my life was a thread and it unraveled strand by strand. The crawler was going to bite me again, but the angel came and he told me, ‘You’re not going to die.’ ”

  Horus and Seti were both watching her with identical frowns.

  “He said, ‘You’re not going to die,’ and that thread became a steel band, holding me inside my body. And so I didn’t.”

  8

  Seti

  Seti glanced at his brother to see if he’d come to the same conclusion. There was only one being alive that could control humans, soldiers, crawlers, and vampires.

  Ra.

  But was that possible? Had their brother found this girl, near death, and commanded her to live?

  He thought back to that time. It was ten years ago but only as long as it took him to blink. After they’d met Briar and killed Theia, who considered herself queen of the vampires, there had still been soldiers and crawlers left alive in the city. Most of them had heeded her call to fight, but a few, like in any army, had deserted in favor of survival.

  As Briar and her vampires, Hudson, Sylvain, Marcus, and Valen, had celebrated being alive, he and his brothers had taken it upon themselves to finish clearing the city.

  They had separated during that time, sometimes working with one of their old friends to make Boston safe. So, yes. It was possible on one of those nights that Ra had found Rose, killed the crawler, and saved her life.

  A picture began to form in his mind. Crawlers poisoned Rose when they bit her.

  Pain.

  “The pain you feel now,” Horus said, “is it the same as when you were bitten.”

  Rose shrugged, which was answer enough. “It waxes and wanes, but it’s always there.”

  “Except for now,” Seti said. The heat chases away the pain.

  “Right,” she replied, smiling. “Except now. I guess whatever this is—” She gestured between them. “Blocks it.”

  He had no control over their body’s reactions to each other, but he coul
dn’t help being a little proud that he made her feel better. It took away the guilt he had from sneaking into her apartment, no matter what his intentions had been.

  Rose glanced away from them, squinting at the sunshine. “None of the doctors I’ve seen can make this go away. Or explain it. And it’s not like you can follow me around for the rest of my life… I’ve learned to live with it.” She stood as if that was the end of it, but it wasn’t.

  His brother must have felt the same way because he stood. “That’s not true. You don’t have to live with this. You are seeing the wrong doctors.”

  “I’m seeing the only doctors,” Rose replied bitterly. “You have no idea.”

  “Horus is right,” Seti interjected. “There must be different experts. Maybe there’s nothing that can be done, but I’m not convinced of that.”

  “Ever since this happened,” she said, “I’ve been studied. I’ve undergone every test, and they all show the same thing—nothing. There is nothing wrong with me. They can’t explain the fact that some days a needle won’t pierce my skin, or I heal instantaneously.”

  Seti was too surprised by her pronouncement to answer right away, but Horus jumped right in. “What?”

  Was this why she hadn’t freaked out when he’d brought up vampires? “Things about you that aren’t human… this is what you meant,” Seti realized.

  She nodded.

  “Then it’s a good thing we know better doctors,” his brother said while holding his gaze. We have to bring her to Hudson.

  Hudson Nors was their friend, and he and his brother, Marcus, were geniuses when it came to vampires. They’d created a medicine that allowed vampires to walk in sunlight, and Marcus was on his way to creating a synthetic blood that could sustain them.

  And then there was Briar.

  If anyone could figure out what was going on with Rose, it would be them.

  Before they did, however, there was one more thing they’d have to do. Tell Ra.

  9

  Rose

  Rose reached for her phone. Better doctors. She did a quick internet search and turned the phone around to face Horus and Seti.

  Horus took it, lifting his hand to cover the top and shield it from the glare so he could read. Embarrassment crept up her neck, but her skin wouldn’t give her away, so she forced herself to sit up straight and meet their gazes when they finished reading. “No one will take me as a patient except for Dr. Stone. And he doesn’t believe me about the crawlers. So it doesn’t matter who you know, they’re going to respectfully decline your request.”

  “Doctors don’t turn down patients,” Seti said.

  “They sure as shit do,” she scoffed. “Especially when they come with media coverage and a reputation.”

  “Our doctors won’t turn you down.” Horus crossed his arms, and she thought if anyone could bend a doctor to their will, it was him.

  The wind blew, and it was chillier than earlier. She glanced up at the sky. Clouds were starting to gather. She’d lost the natural light she needed which meant going home to get light equipment and then hauling it all back here.

  “If your doctor will see me,” she said quietly, not sure they’d even hear her over the wind, “I’ll go. But don’t ask me to tell my story because they won’t believe me, and I’m tired of people looking at me like I’m crazy.”

  “Hudson said to come now.” Seti was reading a message on his phone. “I’ll let him know we’ll be there as soon as possible, but we have one thing we have to do first.”

  “What?” Rose asked.

  “You should meet our brother.”

  She glanced from one man to the other. “You’re brothers.” It wasn’t a surprise, they looked very similar, but the more they spoke the less she saw those similarities. “Are you twins?”

  Horus nodded. “Our eyes aren’t the same color, though.”

  “I noticed that,” she replied. Seti’s were a blue that was almost black, while Horus’s were a warm, dark brown, but there were other differences. Horus spoke quietly in even, serious tones, while Seti seemed ready to laugh. She’d caught him with his half smiles, and the way he responded to Horus was… “Horus must be older.”

  “I am,” he replied. “How could you tell?”

  She couldn’t put her finger on it. “I don’t know. I don’t have siblings, but something about you…” She looked at Seti. “…reminds me of a little brother. How much time is there between you?”

  Horus frowned. “I don’t know. Our parents are dead, and Ra doesn’t remember.”

  “I’m sorry,” she replied, and without thinking, touched his arm. He wore a light hoodie over jeans, but he’d pushed up the sleeves. His skin was warm and smooth, and his muscles flexed beneath her hand as he automatically drew away.

  Why had she done that? “I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I—”

  “Do you want to drive with us?” Seti changed the subject. “We have to go into the city to get our brother. We’re staying with our friend in Back Bay.”

  “Fancy,” she said without thinking, and he chuckled.

  “It is pretty nice, but it’s been in their family a long time.”

  “Don’t ask about the floors,” Horus muttered as they started toward the SUV. “Marcus doesn’t shut up about it.”

  Rose giggled, and he cast a quick glance at her before returning his gaze to the ground. His cheek puffed a little, like he was smiling, but she couldn’t be sure without staring.

  As they approached the car, she slowed. “This seems crazy, doesn’t it?” she asked. “You’re giving up your whole day to help a stranger. Don’t you have better things to do?”

  “No,” they both answered, and she giggled again.

  The sound came from her. Tough, lone wolf, crazy, one-time child media-sensation Rose Carrado. “Okay, then,” she said and got into the back seat when Seti opened the door. “Promise you won’t—”

  Horus got into the passenger seat and shut the door with a slam. “We won’t murder you,” he growled. “Promise.”

  She smiled and leaned back into the seat. This was nice, tooling around Boston in a fancy car, on her way to a fancy house.

  “So what’s your brother’s name?” she asked. Seti drove fast, but traffic was light. Jamaica Plain to Back Bay could take anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour. At the speed he was going, and if they kept hitting all the green lights the way they seemed to be, they’d be there in ten minutes tops. “We haven’t had a red light, yet,” she observed.

  Seti glanced toward Horus. “Must be lucky.”

  “Ra,” Horus said.

  Rah? “Huh?”

  “Our brother’s name is Ra.”

  “Like—” She pretended her hands were pom-poms. “Rah-rah?”

  Seti chuckled as Horus shook his head. “Like the Sun God, Ra.”

  “I don’t know sun gods,” she replied. “I don’t know mythology beyond what I learned when I had to read The Odyssey. But your names are unique.”

  “I’ve never met a Rose before,” Horus replied.

  “Really? There were ten of them in my high school. Rosa, Rosalie, Rosario…”

  “Well there were many Horuses where I grew up,” he retorted.

  “Did you grow up in Boston?” she asked.

  “No,” he answered. Like when she asked him about being bitten by a crawler, he didn’t elaborate.

  In the front seat, Seti sighed. “We lived in Canada for many years. We came south about ten years ago, then went down to Costa Rica for a while.”

  “Did you see any leopards?” she asked. “Or is it jaguars in Costa Rica?”

  “Jaguars,” Seti answered. “And yes. Many.”

  “Did they get close?” she asked, and Horus snorted, but she didn’t know what was funny about the question. Seti glared at him before glancing in the rearview mirror toward her.

  “No,” he replied. “They were afraid.”

  “Huh.” One of the nurses at the hospital had gone to Costa Rica on her honeymo
on and talked about being stalked by one on a jaguar tour. She’d actually paid to go into the jungle in the middle of the night, and she’d had to sign a waiver to say she and her new husband wouldn’t hold the tour responsible if either one of them were dragged off by a big cat. “I wonder what’s scarier in the jungle than a jaguar.” She thought about it. “Probably snakes.”

  One side of Horus’s cheeks lifted, and she smiled. Ha. Two smiles.

  They didn’t say much for a while, but as the Charles River came into view, she started to get nervous. “Will your friend mind that you’re bringing me to his house?” she asked.

  “No,” Horus replied. One word. Succinct.

  “What about your brother?” she asked.

  Both of them were silent, which was answer enough. She sighed and turned her face to the window. She was in it now. The most she could do was be polite and hope their brother wasn’t outwardly rude.

  They turned down a side street of single-family red-brick houses. Rose sat up a little straighter. This was nothing like the neighborhood she’d grown up in. These were houses that cost millions of dollars. For God’s sake, there was off-street parking. That alone was worth more than she could hope to make in her entire life.

  She studied the car a little closer. It wasn’t a luxury SUV, though it was still out of her price range.

  “You’re not in a frat, are you?” What if this was a rich-boy joke? She’d read books and listened to true-crime podcasts where those sorts of things happened.

  “A fraternity?” Seti pulled into a brick driveway and turned off the car. “How old do you think we are?”

  She couldn’t really tell. They looked about her age, but who had friends that owned their own house in Back Bay? Or were doctors? Unless they meant their parents. “Twenty?”

  Horus burst out laughing. He hit the dashboard with his hand and then gripped his side as he lost it. “Twenty!”

  Okay, maybe she’d guessed young, but it wasn’t that funny. It wasn’t tears-rolling-down-cheeks-funny. It was more… thanks for the compliment, I’m actually thirty-seven funny.