Blood & Roses (Vigilante Crime Series)

by Kristi Belcamino

  When she looked down, she saw three black puppies skidding across the floor, tails wagging, tongues lolling, huge paws clawing for traction on the slippery marble.

  “What the hell?” she said.

  Eva leaned back against the door and crossed her arms. She had a small smile on her face that made Rose even more suspicious.

  Gia was down on the ground. The puppies were all over her, trying to lick her face and crawl into her lap. She was giggling. Despite herself, Rose began to smile but then quickly frowned again.

  What the fuck?

  Gia picked up one of the black puppies with a white patch around its eye. “I sort of like this one,” she said and looked over her shoulder at Eva.

  Eva nodded.

  “Would someone like to tell me what’s going on?”

  “We’re each adopting a puppy today.”

  Rose raised an eyebrow. “You might be. I’m not.”

  Her voice was haughty.

  “Do you remember that one time when I took Django to Madrid?”

  “Yeah? What about it?”

  “Well, I took him there to spend time with his girlfriend.”

  Rose frowned and sat up straighter.

  “What girlfriend?”

  “It’s sort of a long story but—”

  Eva interrupted. “These puppies are his grandkids.”

  “We were going to surprise you with one on your birthday, but they weren’t quite ready to leave their mother until this week.”

  “I told you I don’t want a dog.” Rose immediately felt guilty for the nasty tone and then decided she didn’t care.

  Eva and Gia exchanged a look.

  Gia stood up and shrugged. “Fine. But they are all living here for a while, so get used to having them around.”

  And then the two women and the puppies were gone.

  Rose was pissed.

  At first, she yanked the covers over her head. “What the fuck? What the fuck? They think they can just give me a dog, and I’ll forget about Django?” And Timothy?

  “That’s bullshit! I don’t want another dog. It’ll just die and fuck me up again. Fuck that shit.”

  Angrily, she kicked the covers off her again.

  “Fucking stupid dogs. I’m going to move out. They can stay here with those stupid dogs.”

  She started to get up out of bed but then lay back down and started to punch the pillows until she was exhausted. It was only when she was done and curled up in a ball that she realized her face was wet with tears.

  33

  The small whimper woke her.

  Blinking in the dark, Rose shook her head.

  What was that noise?

  It was coming from the side of her bed.

  A broad beam of moonlight coming through the windows illuminated a large stretch of the room between her bed and the door. Her door was open a few feet. That was odd. She froze, on alert.

  Then she heard the sound again.

  Leaning over, she saw what it was.

  One of the puppies had made its way into her room.

  It put its paws up on the side of her bed and looked up at her, making a small moaning sound.

  When it saw her face peering down, it wagged its tail, making its entire body wriggle.

  “Go away,” Rose said grumpily.

  It gave a small, happy yip.

  She pulled her head back and put her extra pillow over her face.

  The dog yipped again excitedly.

  Now that the puppy had seen her, all bets were off.

  Irritated, she leaned over again.

  The dog was losing its mind with excitement at seeing her.

  She sighed and leaned over and carefully picked the dog up by its midsection, lifting it into the bed with her. The dog immediately began to play, burying it’s face in the covers and giving small excited barks.

  “Go to bed,” Rose said and rolled over.

  Then, as if it knew what she was saying, the dog settled in against her back, its small nose pressed up against her neck and its paws pushing against her shoulder blades. Rose was afraid to move.

  Then, as she lay there, she heard the puppy begin to snore.

  Soon, she too fell into a deep sleep, the first time she’d slept that soundly since Timothy had disappeared.

  34

  Dylan gave a low, guttural growl.

  Rose, who was sitting on the grass with her arms looped around her knees in front of Timothy’s grave stone, lifted her head. The sun was setting, and the sky had turned purple since she last looked up. She squinted to see what Dylan had spotted.

  It was a family walking more than a hundred meters away. A man held a small child’s hand, and a woman carried a bunch of flowers. Rose examined them for a moment and then uttered a one-word command.

  Dylan settled back down, putting his massive black head on his paws. He’d done his job. He’d alerted her to company. He closed his eyes to slits.

  They didn’t allow dogs in the cemetery, but Rose didn’t give a fuck.

  Her dog was a part of her now.

  It had only been six months since he’d been in her life, but she couldn’t imagine life without him.

  She just didn’t go places that didn’t let him in.

  Gia had arranged for Dylan to be declared a companion dog, citing Rose’s recent trauma, which meant he could accompany Rose on airplanes and trains or any other way she saw fit to travel.

  And she was doing a lot of traveling lately.

  Shaniqua had opened the doors of the modeling world for her.

  Rose was tall and thin, if not a bit too muscular for the typical magazine model. But her exotic looks—creamy café au lait colored skin, black eyes, and sharp features—were highly sought after.

  Rose found modeling boring yet somewhat hard work, but signed on because it gave her the perfect cover for her main objective in life: hunting down and killing the Sultan.

  She only accepted jobs in locations where there had been some rumblings of girls gone missing or rumors of strange religious ceremonies.

  She was leaving for her first assignment out of country in the morning, which was why she was saying goodbye to Timothy tonight. She’d already stopped by to say goodbye to Gia and Nico.

  As she immersed herself in memories, Rose realized she was losing Nico to Alzheimer’s was the same day that Timothy had come into her life to save her from the dread that had overtaken her very soul.

  Rose was spooning orange marmalade onto a slice of toasted baguette when Nico shuffled into the room in his robe and slippers. Django was at her feet, whining. The big dark brown lab and Pitbull mix was waiting for some crumbs to drop. She slid a piece of cheese she had sliced off the counter and let it drop to the floor as if by accident.

  He wolfed it down immediately. She smiled.

  She was trying to shake off the remnants of her recurring nightmare: no matter how the dream began, it always ended with her in the water in San Diego watching the boat go up in flames. But in her nightmares her dad and Gia were always the ones on the boat.

  “Rose! What a surprise! You’re already here!” Nico said and ran up to where she sat at the kitchen bar, arms open to hug her.

  She hid her dismay and looked over his shoulder at Gia who had walked into the kitchen behind him.

  Gia’s eyes met hers, and Rose felt something hard and sickly settle into the pit of her stomach.

  She pulled back from the hug. “Daddy,” she said with a smile. “Remember, I got here last night?”

  Nico blinked, his smile fading for an instant before returning. He laughed. “Yes. I was just teasing.”

  But Rose didn’t miss the look he gave Gia.

  Gia reached for the coffee pot. Rose had woken before them and made a French press pot of coffee that she was now sipping out of a bowl, French style.

  Gia poured a small cup and took a sip.

  “Yum. You are still the best barista I know, Rose.”

  Rose smiled but felt as if dark shadows
were flapping their wings around her peripheral vision. What was going on with her dad? And why was Gia trying to hide it from her?

  Nico poured a cup of coffee and settled in at the kitchen table. Big French doors opened up to an inner courtyard, and the scent of the flowers outside drifted in on the breeze.

  Rose loved the house in Spain. For the past year, it had been her sanctuary. Even just the one weekend a month was a heavenly escape from her rigorous training. Not that she would forego the training in any way, but on the weekends she spent away, she had a more relaxed routine.

  This morning she had woken at dawn, laced up her running shoes, and ran five miles on the beach with Django by her side. Then, near the parking lot, she had done push-ups and sit-ups on a yoga mat and then pull-ups on a piece of playground equipment at a park on the way back to the house.

  “Mija, you are so beautiful,” Nico said. “You look like a young woman. You are no longer a little girl.”

  Rose wore shorts and a tank top, and her long, dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Even without the makeup she’d started to wear, she knew she looked older than twelve. She felt older than that. She definitely acted older than that.

  But right now, she didn’t feel older. She felt like a small child again. She jumped up and wrapped her arms around Nico. “I love you so much, Daddy.”

  She squeezed him as tightly as she could while struggling to hold back her tears. She didn’t know what had come over her. Lately her emotions seemed wild and out of control. She was ecstatically happy one moment and then bursting into sobs the next. Gia told her it was normal. That it was hormones. That nowadays, girls often went through puberty at her age.

  Rose hated it. Every second of uncontrollable sadness, rage, happiness…all of it. It was awful.

  Now, with her face buried in her father’s robe, Rose let a few tears slip out before wiping her face on the soft fabric and drawing back.

  He laughed. “You are my moon, my sun, my stars.”

  Rose looked down.

  He lifted her chin, “What is it, mija?”

  “You forgot I was here last night.”

  Something passed over his features that sent dread through her body.

  He sighed and took her hand. “Let’s sit down.”

  They walked into the living room, and he sat on the couch, patting the spot beside him. Gia followed. She wouldn’t meet Rose’s eyes.

  “What is it, Papa?” She felt like a little kid calling him that. She’d started calling him Daddy when he’d moved to San Diego so she would fit in with the other American kids. Papa was what she’d called him when she was younger in Mexico.

  “I have started to forget things. It’s true.”

  Rose looked at Gia in alarm. Gia’s face remained expressionless.

  Turning back to her father, she reached for his arm. “What does that mean?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe nothing. We aren’t sure. They did a MRI and couldn’t find anything in particular that caused it, but maybe some mini strokes. Maybe early onset Alzheimer’s. We are meeting with some doctors next week about it. There are lots of possible treatment options.

  Rose scrunched up her face. “Alzheimer’s is when people can’t remember their own family members, right?”

  Her father nodded solemnly.

  Rose jumped up from the couch. “No!” Her entire body shook. She could feel her face grow hot.

  Django stood, too, at alert, ears peeled back.

  “No!” she said again. It was that uncontrollable rage, and it made her want to destroy everything she saw. It made her want to hit and punch and break every single thing.

  Nico looked down.

  Rose shot a look at Gia and saw such sadness there. She glared at the woman she’d grown to love as a mother. “You’re lying!”

  Gia very slowly shook her head.

  Rose ran out of the house feeling as if she was going to explode. She slammed the door behind her as hard as she could.

  She headed for the beach. She raced down the narrow streets of the Gothic quarter, brushing by people out shopping for bread and cheese and wine until she hit the Ramblas and then she raced by tourists and delivery men and drug dealers offering their latest wares. She ran until she hit the sand and then she ran even faster. She ran until she could barely breathe, past teenagers smoking cigarettes, grandmothers bathing topless, and the young mothers watching their children build sand castles. Then she collapsed on the sand. She was sitting like this, staring out at the turquoise water when she felt someone beside her.

  She looked up.

  A boy with dark hair flopping over one eye looked down as he took puffs of his cigarette. He held out his pack to her.

  She took one, and he was instantly crouched on the sand beside her lighting it.

  “You looked like you were outrunning the devil.” He spoke in Spanish. Thank God it wasn’t the dialect she normally heard in Barcelona that she could barely understand.

  She inhaled deeply and then exhaled, proud that she didn’t cough.

  “I was,” she said coolly.

  “Did you evade capture?”

  She shook her head sadly. “It’s not the kind of devil you can outrun.”

  He stretched his legs out before him and stared at the sea.

  She did the same.

  Then he stretched and yawned, and she snuck a glance at him. He was shirtless. His tanned chest was on the skinny side but still defined. He wore dark blue swim trunks and nothing else. He looked at her with his eyes hooded, and Rose felt something she’d never felt before: desire.

  It made her uncomfortable.

  She leaped up and threw the cigarette on the sand before walking away without saying a word.

  “Hey!” he yelled after her. “Hey! What’s your name?”

  She ignored him completely.

  She heard him mutter, “My name’s Timothy.”

  She kept walking and realized she was holding her breath, waiting to see what he would do.

  He didn’t chase after her, and he didn’t call after her again.

  Good.

  But part of her was also disappointed.

  Now it was time to say goodbye to Timothy.

  Like she did once a week, she had brought his favorite book of Dylan Thomas poems and read a poem out loud.

  When she finished, she said, “I still don’t know why you like these poems so much.”

  She turned toward Dylan. “At least it helped me come up with a good name for you, though.”

  The dog looked over at her for a second and then closed its eyes again.

  Rose no longer wept every time she went to Timothy’s grave.

  Now she laughed and told him stories and read to him. She knew people might think she was crazy. She didn’t care. And sometimes, like tonight, she unrolled a blanket and laid down to watch the sunset. When Dylan saw her get the blanket out of her backpack, he stood, wagging his tail. He was still such a puppy in some ways. Highly trained and lethal, but a puppy just the same.

  When she spread out the blanket and laid down, he snuggled up beside her. With her head on her arms, she stared up at the sky as the colors turned from purple to midnight blue to black with glittering stars.

  It had been a long day. She spent most of it training at the dojo and in the gym.

  Her goal was to be a finely oiled killing machine. James Bond or Jason Bourne would have nothing on her. She was fast. But she needed to be stronger. Sometimes she grew furious that simply because of her gender, she could never be as physically strong as some men. But then she decided to turn that anger into part of her arsenal. She knew to embrace her weaknesses and make them her strengths. She also knew that much of a battle was in the mind. That her thoughts and mindset controlled everything.

  Being small and seeming weak would have to be used as advantages.

  She would make sure that everyone she took on underestimated her.

  Just like in chess, the one who lost was the one who made the most m
istakes. She would make sure that her opponents made more mistakes than her.

  It was a mind game, as well.

  As she mulled this over, she realized that her days needed to be even more structured. She would become even more adroit with her meditation and mind work in addition to her physical training.

  Resolved, and with a solid plan, she closed her eyes for a second. She thought it would be okay to rest. For just a few minutes.

  However, the long days of training and few hours of sleep hit her, and she soon fell asleep.

  She woke to the sound of Dylan growling. She sat straight up, instantly alert, senses searching for any danger nearby. She couldn’t see a thing.

  Clouds had come in with a cold wind, covering the stars and moon. The night was pitch black. She felt Dylan bristling beside her and heard his low, warning growl.

  Reaching for the dagger strapped to her thigh, she pulled herself silently to a crouch, searching the blackness around her.

  Suddenly, Dylan leaped to his feet, barking furiously.

  She grabbed his collar and stood, heart pounding, thrusting the dagger out before her, unable to see anything. It was unearthly dark—a darkness she had never experienced before. She couldn’t even see her hand in front of her face. Terror raced through her.

  It couldn’t be?

  A terrible stench drifted her way and she couldn’t help but gag but did so silently.

  An icy cold surrounded her. But there was no breeze.

  That’s when she knew for certain.

  It was the Sultan.

  “You cannot escape your destiny, child.”

  It was the Sultan’s voice. A voice that she knew immediately but would be unable to describe afterward except to say that it was disturbing and unearthly.

  He was there.

  Impossible.

  And yet, he wasn’t there.

  The clouds parted. To her astonishment, the cemetery was empty. There was nobody in front of her.

  She would’ve staked her life that the Sultan was standing less than ten yards in front of her. She could sense him.

  Her entire body was shaking. Then she heard something. A different voice. This one husky and deep inside her being.