Blood Rose

by Jacquelynn Gagne

  Clutching my arm to his mouth with both hands, Demetrius jerked me against him just as his teeth tore into my arm. His fangs were so long they dug into the bone. It was too much for me to scream. A broken groan cried from my lips.

  The only thing that mattered was Demetrius was drinking my blood. He would weaken quickly and Damien would be safe from this monster. Drink up you bastard.

  Even when the body has been tortured beyond repair, the instinct of the mind is ultimately survival. Fight or flight, but at all costs survive. Even a man who attempts to commit suicide after slicing his wrist will always grab a towel to stop the bleeding or pull the skin tight to lessen the wound. The instinct of the subconscious will always overrides the conscious decision of the mind.

  Amazingly, my body did fight as he pinned me. I could feel a large piece of glass jetting out of my thigh from being thrown to the floor amongst the broken glass of the window. My hand wrapped around it so tightly it cut into my palm.

  Twisting my free arm, my hand reached up between us. With the last of my strength I forced the glass up into his neck under his chin straight up into his jaw. As impossible as it seemed, the glass cut straight through the scaled flesh and jutted up into the roof of his mouth.

  Demetrius’ bite released. As he reared back, I saw the glass sticking out from the bottom of his chin and dug up into the roof of his mouth.

  Blood poured from his jaws- his blood and mine alike. My eyes closed as I allowed myself to finally succumb to death. I don’t know how much blood he took but it was enough.

  It didn’t feel right though. Not the agony of my broken bleeding body. Something far worse. Acid. Acid and fire.

  A voice whispered through my mind. It was Liahm and a memory of something he told Damien. Dragon venom. Is that what this was? Never had I felt a burning such as this.

  My back arched until I thought it would snap. The seizing would cause me to tumble the rest of the way down the staircase. Landing on the floor with a thud, I heaved, gagging for air.

  As I lay there, I felt someone grab a hold of me. My body so battered I couldn’t fight. If it were Demetrius again, I was dead. If it stopped the burning, I didn’t care.

  He held tight. Painfully tight but what difference did that make now? I heard whispering though I knew from the tone he was yelling. Damien screamed my name but I could not hear. My eardrums were flooded with the roaring sound of my death.

  There was no white light calling me. No flash back of my life. Not that I would have wanted one.

  Damien’s voice was in an uproar of panic and fury. Carrying me up the stairs, he dropped me onto his bed as he ripped the larger pieces of glass out of my body, causing my voice to find me in sharp gasping screams. I could feel my soul slipping away. Begging for it to end yet it just wouldn’t let go.

  All the air had been sucked out of my chest. Gasping hard, my chest came up off the bed as I writhed in pain. My voice found my lips again in a screech like a banshee. Not all fires burn to kill.

  As I dug my fingers into the bed, the fabric gave away under my nails and the threads popped as I ripped through the thick comforter that was becoming drenched in my blood as the seconds went by.

  My body began to shake violently. I could feel his weight climb on top of me in attempt to hold me down. His hand held my broken jaw as I choked and drowned in my own blood.

  The only pain I could feel was the burning now. The broken bones did not matter. Nothing else mattered. Not even his cold skin crushing my torso could ease this agonizing torture.

  Lava flowed through my veins, singeing away at every cell of my body. It seemed to be pouring from my heart like an angry volcano. The fire I knew would rip through my veins until I turned to ash.

  Cold liquid filled my mouth suddenly causing me to choke. “Drink, Anna! Drink it!” Damien continued to yell at me. I groaned as the cold liquid drizzled down my throat.

  His body crushed against me, pinning me to the bed. His face buried into my arm sucking against the burning flesh of the gaping bite. Darkness was taking me into it. With every pull on my arm, a release of death tugged at my heart promising peace. My body grew still.

  IXX

  “DEATH BECOMES HER”

  Don’t ask me what happens when you die. It’s impossible to put into words. It is different for everyone. Even those who are not meant to die.

  Cold liquid poured down my throat on its own accord. Even as it dribbled down into my lungs, I did not choke. The dead can’t drown.

  Whispers filled my ears. A thousand far away voices all talking around me in hushed languages. The words all foreign and just quiet enough I couldn’t make them out. A thin part of my subconscious yearned to know.

  Damien cradled me in his lap. My bitten arm was held against his mouth as he sucked the venom out of my nearly drained body.

  The flesh around the gaping wound already dark grey where the venom had spread. Every few seconds he would turn and spit the venom out, gagging on the poison before he would return to my arm. Despite that my body was nearly emptied of all its blood, he continued. I had been contaminated. He was trying to cleanse my vessel of the poison.

  Unable to move, unable to speak or react in any way I lay there. My body succumbed to death, though my soul lingered.

  Watching on in wait remained a ghost not ready to let go of her corpse. A ghost not ready to let go of a life when it had just discovered love.

  * * * * *

  Liquid poured into her mouth and down her throat yet again. Now I could see where it was coming from. Damien bit hard into his wrist, pulling the skin back and forcing her mouth to open and drink straight from his veins. Carefully he held her head back, forcing the dead girl to take his blood. He’d given the body too much. He was too weak to give so much.

  Even the eternally dead can’t communicate with the spirit world. Not usually anyways.

  Furious for he knew he was failing, he laid her to the floor and stood, turning away from her pacing back and forth. Coming up to the wall his fist reared back and flew forward with all of his strength. Plaster bellowed out a cloud of dust instantly. The wooden studs snapped on impact and the stone of the outer wall nearly exploded. “You’ll give her back to me!” He swung again with the same result before he returned to her side. “Anna, please… Don’t let go.”

  A ghost. Forgetting quickly. I wasn’t supposed to forget. Or was I not supposed to remember? No. Too soon. Not yet.

  Don’t leave me, Damien. I’m right here!

  He heard nothing.

  Damien was now so weakened from the blood loss and poisons, his body trembled severely. His skin, usually pale was now so placid it had become translucent.

  Her blood was tainted from the bloodstone and now the dragon’s venom. In his attempt to save this corpse, he was poisoning himself.

  But not just a corpse. She was me.

  As if he knew I could hear him he spoke to me, softly now as if I were only laying there resting. “I know you can hear me, Anna. You haven’t left me yet. I know that you just don’t want to suffer any more but I need you. I can’t let you go. I love you, Lianna… You have to wake up. Please wake up, sweetheart.” Taking my hand gently, he brought my fingers to his lips kissing gentle but fiercely. Laying my hand down carefully at my side, he bit his wrist once more before bringing it to my mouth, forcing me to drink.

  I felt a tug. It was as if I was being pulled away. Again I was forgetting.

  What happened to that girl? So much pain. Her body radiated with pain. Agonizing grief. No. Not her. She had lost her pain.

  It was from the man with her. A man but barely more than a boy. Reduced to such from his grief. She, like his heart, was being ripped away from him. He deserved more and should not lose so much.

  Gently he removed any glass left in the many cuts of the body tenderly so that if she came back her body would not heal around them. His fingers lightly ran over the deep gash on her chest. Teeth marks. His body burned with anger for what they’d done
to her.

  The girl’s body was unable to move or react. No matter what he did. No matter what he did or how long he spoke to her, which he never did stop. He asked her to stay with him and told her if she stayed, her wounds would heal. That he’d take care of her and that he loved her. It was heart breaking to watch.

  Stuck in a strange state of suspension we waited. The many voices were hushed but they were not gone. His blood was coursing its way through the body, working its way through her veins. Absorbing into dead muscles and tissue slowly and amazingly repairing them. Even the bones were mending, just as the cuts of her body.

  A ghost lay beside a girl. A vessel. Slowly ethereal fingers reached for the hand of the dead. White fingers placid in death. It wasn’t touch. They merged.

  * * * * *

  The pain was so much that I never wanted to wake again. His blood was bringing me back. The burn was unlike the venom of the dragon but a burn of ice. As if my veins were filling with liquid nitrogen.

  I longed for death again. Death would have been sanctuary compared to the torture that ripped me apart from the inside out. The ice turned my bones to stone.

  Ice filled my veins with scorching acid, searing away at the fringes of my sanity and taking me to depths of pain not bound by the reality of the world I once knew.

  The voices lingered, observing. Dead languages and new ones alike filled me. The voices were infuriated. The whispers were violent and not as contemplative as they had been before.

  As if stuck in a nightmare where I couldn’t scream and no one could see nor hear me as I begged for help, it felt as if I would forever be trapped in this damnation.

  It did not last forever of course. However, I did come to find that it did last, for a very… very long time. Coming back from the dead is always a slow process though. Isn’t it?

  With time, my body healed as his blood ravaged me. Stealing the essence of my life. I began to tremble. Despite how sickly Damien was this seemed to bring a spark of hope back to him.

  Countless hours passed. The blood causing so much violent pain my back would arch off the bed in sharp spasms. As if a series of terrible seizures had taken over, my body twisted and turned. It felt as if I was stuck in this eternal hell for days.

  Everything ends though. Even death so it seems. I lost awareness of my surroundings for a long time during this period.

  * * * * *

  Gasping hard, I shot straight up. My breathing ragged and heavy. Opening my eyes though I couldn’t see. My vision so blurred it was as if opening my eyes for the very first time.

  Everything was so different. Painfully acute and sensitive. Even the smells were more potent. I could taste every molecule in the air. The sounds were not only a deafening roar but heightened. I could hear animation in a world that was once mute and lifeless before.

  My skin felt as if it were tingling with sensitivity though the physical pain had ended. As my eyes began to adjust I saw there was no false light in the room. Only what sun had broken through the windows.

  It too seemed different. Gleaming with glittery gold’s some brilliantly bright others warm and rich. All of them mingled together. The color seemed so abnormal I wondered if I was dreaming. It was nothing like I thought it should be anyways. Not like I remembered it had looked.

  The universe was truly alive for the first time.

  Everything was a part of everything. Color had taste. Sounds had smell and every other combination of my senses exploded with a new and astounding acuity.

  Hands took a firm grasp on my arms from behind me, tightly holding me against him. It hurt but I ripped away from him, spinning on my heel.

  “Anna?” My hand instinctively shot up, locking my fingers around his jugular. A hideous snarl ripped through the room before I realized its origin was my lips.

  Damien’s hand carefully took a hold of my wrist and pinned it down to my side. My mind had room for just one thought. Fight.

  My struggling was to no avail. In a second, Damien was entrapping me. His large form like a cage over top of my body so gentle but I knew unmovable. “Stop.” His tone wasn’t the type you argued with.

  As my mind registered his familiar voice and strength, I gasped again in my own horror. “Damien!” A fearful whisper. As he released my wrist, I lunged for him.

  Wrapping my arms around him, I clung to him for dear life. My head buried into his neck as he pulled back. Sitting up and bringing me with him, arms wrapped tightly around me, holding me against him as if he were afraid to let go.

  Our lips found one another’s aggressively. We clung to one another like that, desperately but completely unmoving. The center of my chest was heavier, cool and somehow different. It was then I comprehended I had stopped breathing. Yet my lungs were not aching for oxygen.

  My chest felt so different because my heart wasn’t beating. Not that I had ever been able to really feel my heart beat but now I could definitely tell it was not.

  Not that I had wanted to but I parted from him slowly. Though not fully. Slowly my lungs filled. I knew this because my chest rose up with each breath and tasted the air as I inhaled. But there was no satisfying relief. As if I did not need a relief of breath.

  Responding to my unspoken thoughts. “You only need to breathe to speak.” Damien’s hand came up, fingers brushing my lips.

  “I know it’s a bit strange. Just hang in there, alright?” Those perfect hands cupped my cheeks and pulled my chin so that I would look up at him. Damien’s lips had curled into a slight smile that could only be described as a smirk. I loved that smirk.

  The only way to describe his expression was amazement. My head was spinning. It was so terribly difficult to focus but I forced myself to try. My hands placed around his wrists tightly, for the security of knowing it was him touching me. “Why do you look so surprised to see me, Damien?”

  His eyes sparkled. “I thought you left me.” His fingers brushed my cheeks, palms never releasing me. His forehead pressed to mine.

  “Now why on earth would I ever leave you when I’ve only just found you?” He smiled to my whispered words.

  “Damien, what’s going on? What’s happening to me?” Mumbling out in a low rumble, my throat tickled in a strange manor. My voice sounded different or perhaps it was my ears. I couldn’t tell. The confusion was overwhelming.

  “Well-” Damien started to say.

  The sounds of the forest filled my head like a million drums set to an ear splitting volume. Like a nature CD turned to max power in one of those sound rooms.

  “Why is it so loud?!” My words came out in an angry hiss deafening to my ears. Frantically I looked around me. We sat on a hard wooden floor in an otherwise completely empty room. No furniture, not even a bed. At some point he had moved me. Maybe he destroyed the other room. A memory scratched at the back of my id insinuating such possibility.

  Damien’s arms embraced me tight against his chest. His voice filled with heartache. “You’ll be okay. Just try to tune it out. Just focus on me. You have to focus, Anna. It will get better, easier. I know it’s loud but those sounds get softer I promise. It all gets much easier.” A hand wove into my matted hair.

  Nodding softly, I felt like a small child. A child just born into the world and distracted by everything. “Anna, can you listen to me?” His voice was soft but demanding. Dire.

  Nodding, I stared up into his pitch black eyes. The whites so contrasting it was almost shocking. Mentally putting us into our own world, I tried to block out everything else. “You died, Anna but not in the way you think. It was just your body.”

  Time slipped away from me. Memories flashed in a blur. A haze of snapshots that I vaguely recalled. A storm, oil pastels., warm embers burning in a fire place, broken glass, a dandy. No. A vampire? Maybe. Dark flesh on top of me. A Dragon? Pictures of fairy tale dragons fluttered through my thoughts. Pain. So much pain.

  “You’re a Vampire. Do you understand?” His hand brushed my cheek and tangled into my hair with the other.
A black fire burned in his eyes. His lips were white and dry and for a long time they entranced me.

  It was as if looking at them made me almost remember something. It was important I knew but I couldn’t focus enough to think exactly what I was supposed to remember.

  The spinning in my head made everything wobbly. I stared at him as if he had told me the world actually exploded and we were on the moon.

  “I died.” My hand cupped over my throat. It felt strange to speak. The words did not sound like my own. The key was off. It barely sounded like my own voice at all. “I died slowly. I remember the pain. I’m dead now.”

  A flash of a memory. I saw myself lying with Damien. Him holding me, feeding me his blood.

  “No. You’re not dead. Well, you are. Your human life is over, yes. But you turned, Anna. You’re a Vampire now. Demetrius-” He sounded furious with that one word. Damien carefully pulled my hands into his own- his eyes seeking my full attention.

  “Demetrius bit you,” his voice rippled, a throttling snarl rumbled through his chest. He pulled me into his lap slowly. My hands ran across my arm where I knew the skin should be torn but it wasn’t. I was whole. My fingertips brushed my jaw. I thought it should hurt. But it didn’t.

  “He bit you. For the time it had kept you alive. You would have died before I could get to you, if not for the venom. It’s very complicated. I will explain it to you thoroughly, I promise, but now is not the time, Lianna.” Damien looked ashamed as his fingers stroked my cheek so tenderly. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered. He watched me as if I wasn’t real.

  Damien was hiding something from me but I didn’t have the energy now to find out what that might be. As he spoke, the memories were flooding back. I fought to keep my sanity. What little I had. I mumbled, “You saved me. Thank you. I owe my entire existence to you.”

  Something felt wrong with me. Like hunger but much worse. Wild and angry starvation. The feeling shook my entire body to its core. Achingly, I fought the trembling until I could control the feeling ripping through my veins. My body felt as if it may explode.