by Tara Brown
The tears flow down my cheeks. Guilt and pain are everywhere. How could I have done this to him? How could I have let them turn him? I sucked his soul. I left him for dead and they changed him. It might have been to save him but it killed the sweet innocent awesome guy he was. I did this.
In my pain and suffering I don’t hear the sounds behind me. I don’t hear the warning sounds of uneasy feet on unstable rocks and sand. I miss the fact that a hand is reaching for my mouth. I miss it all until the excruciating pain is upon me. I wink but the pain follows.
My face is shoved into the grass on Lydia's lawn. I can see the house in my peripheral. Sharp stabbing pain and warmth cover my throat and shoulders.
"AIMEE!" I hear the screams. "WINK TO MARCUS'S!"
In the pain I try to reach back at the thing holding me down but my shoulders are limp. Broken.
I wink, feeling the warm liquid running down my throat.
In a flash of color and screams I see the bowler hat and Marcus. His face distorts slightly, in rage.
Shouts and chaos are everywhere. Blue eyes and a sweet face fill my vision that seems to come and go. Warmth surrounds me. I smell laundry soap and deodorant and sea air. I close my eyes and smile. I know the warmth surrounding me is Shane. He's carrying me to safety.
When I open my eyes I don’t see him. I don’t see anyone. I'm in a room with a fancy bed and enough space to make an apartment on the other side of the room, where the fireplace is.
I blink and look around the empty dark place. The smell in the air is ripe with the taint vampire's leave behind. I'm still at Marcus's. The memory of the stabbing pains in my shoulders flood my mind. I reach my hands around. The cloth of my shirt is ripped to pieces but the flesh of my shoulder is intact. It's as if it never happened. I climb off the bed and pad down the hallway. It's wide with paintings and art.
When I get to the large front sitting room, I hear voices coming from the far side of the massive room.
Shane is standing next to the tall blond Aleksander. They're laughing.
"Hey."
They both turn their heads.
Shane's eyes sparkle in away they never used to. Like Aleksander's. Like the magic of the immortals has put a spell on them. He grins, "Aimes, what's going on?"
He sounds normal but I can see he's not. I can see he's different.
"What happened? What was that thing that attacked me?" Flashes of fur and teeth and my own screams fill the back of my eyes.
Aleksander looks grim, which is almost impossible as he is so beautiful, "My dad. He attacked you. He has a thing for witches, must have mistaken you."
I frown, "For a witch?"
He nods, "You smell like Lydia's house.
"Why would your father attack me?"
Out of the corner of my eye I see the dark haired girl with the black soulless eyes, Ari. She smiles and waves like a zombie Barbie. I lift my hand weakly and force a smile upon my lips.
"So, Jon is in the cell?" She asks.
Aleksander beams and nods, crossing his thick arms. "Thanks to her."
Shane beams along with them, like he knows what they're talking about. I know Jon was the man who killed my mother in the previous way things were, but I have no actual idea how I did anything. "I just winked."
Ari grins, "To Henry. No one hates Jon like Henry does."
"What will happen to him?" I ask.
Boots click hard against the ground as Lorri enters the room, "We're going to wait it out with him. When Ophelia turns eighteen Henry will be allowed to kill him and give the powers of her sisters to her. We can't have Jonathan knowing where she is now and we can't risk the blue sisters finding her now. It's all too soon."
My brain instantly dashes back to the timeline. I piece it together and cross my arms, "Well what do we do for two years?"
A spicy grin crosses the redhead's face, "Train and fix all the things that we screwed up on along the way. If you'll excuse me, I'm going to send Daniel on a new task for work. You know, so the army of shitheads that he ends up building against us, is considerably smaller." She glances back at me, "No matter what, do not let Marcus kill Hanna."
I open my mouth to speak, but she's gone. I close my lips and look around. Everyone is looking at me like I'm in charge. My stomach sinks. I don’t have a clue what to do.
Ari smiles and puts a hand out, "We need to make certain your body remembers the training and killing. Are you ready?"
I glance at Shane. He laughs and shrugs, like I'm being offered my first drink at a party and he thinks I should take it. I grimace and take her hand. She flashes a picture of a place on her cell phone and I wink my eye.
Chapter Eleven
Egypt 2012
"What do you think?"
I scan the desert and nod, "I think if we can get him to come to us we'll have a better chance of saving some of the women." I pace back and forth in the sand. I look back at Ari and scowl, "I hate sand. These boots are new."
She laughs and lifts her DC sneakers, "Try these on for sand walking. I've got more in my shoe than is in the whole damned desert."
My phone beeps. I sigh and pull it out, 'get here now' it says with a picture of a dark alley.
"Giselle."
Ari looks at me and nods, "Great. Not again."
I look back at the house belonging to the piece of shit vampires, who are running a drug blood service, and growl. I put my hand out. Ari takes it and we're in the alley. My boots click against the cold cement. I still smile at how strong they make me feel. How I feel just like superwoman in them. We round the corner of the alley. Giselle is standing over the body of a man.
His leather shoe is twitching. I put my hands over my face and look at her. She shakes her head. Her face is devastatingly beautiful under the dim streetlights.
"Did you come after?"
She nods, "I was hunting and I smelled him. When I got here he fled and the man was too far."
Ari looks closer, "He's still alive."
"Duh." Giselle pulls her thick black hair back and crosses her arms over her cute lime green pea coat. "Dude. Of course he's still alive. I just ate. I figured Aimes could have this one."
Ari looks pissed, "You let him live and suffer till we got here?"
Giselle takes a step towards her "Don’t be such a whore. I was being, like, thoughtful and shit. God."
I laugh and shake my head. I walk to the dying man and crouch down. I grip his arm where his expensive watch sits and let my power loose. Giselle would have gotten nothing from him but I eat differently. I don’t need there to be a lot of life force or emotion the way she does. I just need the soul to leave the body. I shiver and gasp as his soul slips from him.
I pull off his watch and take his wallet. "Tragedy of the city." I whisper. I feel sick. Shane and I haven’t gotten along since he was turned. His blood lust is too much for me. His friendship with Marcus is way too much for me. The dead man below me is his way of bending the Roses rules. The man broke one of the Ten Commandments no doubt, making him fair game for Marcus and Shane. I hate what Marcus has taught him. As long as they don’t kill an innocent, we can't touch them.
"So, we gonna tell Lorri?" Ari flashes me a sarcastic look.
I glance at Giselle, who is twirling her hair. It makes me miss my sister for a moment, "No." I sigh, "Him and Marcus will have a reason for his death."
Giselle nods, "They always do. They always find the bad humans. I never get that lucky. I thought I had one the other day. He was dragging some little kid down an alley but then I grabbed him and he had a priest robe on and the white collar thingy." She motions where her throat is. "So I knew he wasn’t bad. The damn probably was though."
"You know priests aren’t all good right?" I ask, almost speechless. Ari's eye shift funny at the comment.
Giselle shrugs, "I know. He just was kinda hot and so I knew he was a good one. Anyway, I don’t get how Shane always finds the bad ones."
Ari rolls her eyes, "Dude, they probably compe
lled them to do the bad shit and then ate them."
A flash of understanding whips across Giselle's face, "Oh my god, do you think? Wow that’s pretty smart actually."
Ari stares at her blankly, "Don't even think about it."
Giselle smirks, "Hey, I don’t need to compel them. I've learned how to do it so I don’t have to take it all. I haven't killed anyone in like six months. It's not the same but at least my record is clean. Lorri is such a nag about the humans dying."
Ari's head turns, "You smell that?"
I've already got the scent. "Hands in." We flash just as hellhounds round the corner of the alleyway.
I stalk across Lydia's grass and open the front door, "This is so messed up."
I glance back at Ari who scowls and pouts.
I ask, "What can we do about him?"
She shakes her head, "I really thought that when he turned into one of us, he would be a Rose."
My insides ache, "Yeah well, you're not responsible for the fact he and Marcus have a bromance of doom. No one saw that coming."
I smile the minute I enter the kitchen. Sam is sitting at the counter. He and Giselle and Ari and Ben are my saving grace in the world we live in.
Sam grins, "Hey."
I sit next to him and nudge him, "What have you been up to?"
He blushes and shakes his head, "Not much. You know."
Ari grins, "Spying on Hanna?"
His eyes dart at her, "What? No."
We all laugh. Giselle sits across from him and grabs his hands. She closes her eyes and moans, "God, I love you."
He pulls back and frowns, "Stop doing that." She flashes him a gorgeous smile, "Sammy, it's just a little sip of the Siren."
He wrinkles his nose, "It feels violating and wrong."
We laugh at him.
Giselle rolls her eyes, "Boys can't be violated."
He looks aghast. So does Ari.
The air swirls warm and the icy blue eyes are the first thing I see. My stomach twinges whenever I see Aleks.
He smiles sweetly, but the haunted look in his eyes is still there. It never leaves.
With his father trapped in a dungeon under Marcus's massive castle, Aleksander gets no joy. He used to live on the emotions and healing from the families of his father's victims. Now he has nothing to sustain him.
Giselle beams at him, "Hey sexy."
He blushes and shakes his head, "You say that to everyone."
She winks, "Doesn’t mean I don’t mean it when I do."
Ari frowns at her, "Keep it in your pants. God, you're the worst Succubus ever."
Giselle sticks her tongue out.
Sam shakes his head, "No, I met one who was worse. She tackled this Siren, I knew in Greece, to the ground and sucked her dry right in public. It was sick. Giselle at least only takes a little."
"Gross." Ari winkles her nose.
I look back at Aleksander and tilt my head, "What's going on?"
He leans on the huge counter and shakes his head, "We go for Ophelia today."
I lick my lips, "Today?"
We've been planning it for almost two years. Ophelia is the start. The catalyst of the beginning of the end.
I had noticed Lorri was feistier than normal and Lydia has been running around like a chicken with her head cut off.
"She knows us all though right? She remembers the way it was before?"
Ari looks down. She always does when we talk about before. She still regrets turning back the time. I look at Sam, who is like a brother to me and know she made the right choice. I couldn’t imagine living in a world where he didn’t exist.
Aleksander shakes his head, "No. She doesn’t remember us. She was wiped the day they realized Ari had changed the time. Dorian went and wiped her, Tristan and Phillip. Oliver was wiped by Marcus and Henry. Everyone had to play out the parts the same as last time. Jonathan couldn’t be privy to the way things had worked out. Dorian and Marcus and Henry had a lot of mind wiping and clean up to do apparently."
Ari's cheeks are bright red.
Sam reaches across the table and grabs her hand, "Thanks for not leaving me behind."
She smiles.
"My sister, my dad, my mom, Sam, and the kids are all fine because of you." I smile.
Aleksander's eyes widen, "Ari, I never meant to hurt your feelings. Sorry. I know you saved me once."
She shakes her head, "I just hate that somehow there is always a glitch. Something gets taken or screwed up because of the reset."
Giselle stands and walks toward Aleksander, "Okay, so what's the deal with Ophelia? What are we doing?"
His eyes creep over to me. I frown, "What?"
"It's me and you and Sam going for her." He says.
I look at Sam and smile, "You're the bait I guess huh?"
Aleksander laughs. I know he's bait too. They smell too good to women. Sam is especially bad. In this world he hasn’t fallen in love with Hanna yet. Not in the way that tones down his Siren side. He has moments where he's unbearable to be around.
High-heeled boots interrupt the momentary silence.
Lorri storms in with Dorian right behind her. He flashes a grin at me, making heat stir low in my belly. I know I'm blushing, but I keep my eyes down.
"We leave in an hour for Ophelia. Today is the day. The sisters came to Annabelle earlier." She glances at Sam and cocks a dark eyebrow, "I told you to stay away from Hanna. She's made it without turning into her father. Thank God in Heaven. Dorian brainwashed her aunt and uncle and I convinced Marcus to give the cure to her dad. We all know it's temporary, but it's better this way." Her lips curled into a twisted grin on the word convinced. I shuddered imagining it. I'd seen her fight. It was dreadfully frightening.
She looks at Aleksander, "You leave in an hour. You know where."
He nods and she's gone.
"You ladies look nice today." Dorian saunters over to the table grinning like a fool. A fool he is not though.
Giselle swoons, "You do too."
He flashes her a smile and then looks at Aleksander. "Brother, we need to have a little chat about a few things."
Aleksander nods and follows him out of the kitchen.
I look at Ari and whisper, "I didn’t think he was ever joining us."
She shrugs, "I don't think he did. I think they're holding his dad's death for ransom. He helps and they kill him and end Aleks's misery."
I look back, "Dorian and Lorri are kind of evil like that."
"Yup."
Just as it gets quiet the kids come running into the kitchen. My heart lifts. I smile at Danny, "Did you get Mist of Pandaria yet?"
He beams, "Yup. Made a monk last night."
"Me too."
Giselle rolls her eyes, "Nerds."
Chapter Twelve
Ophelia
I look once more at the mirror. Something feels different but can't explain it. I sigh and leave the room. Mom and dad smile at me when I walk into the kitchen.
"Hey honey." Mom hands me toast.
"You're dad and I are going to the movie tonight. Are you going with Abbey to the pool party tomorrow?"
I shake my head and groan, "Yikes mom. Pool party with the mean kids? I don’t think so."
Dad laughs, "You are so like me. I hated the mean kids too."
I grin at him and bite into my toast. I grimace, "Is this natural peanut butter again?"
Mom scowls, "Yes, now eat. I'm not buying that peanut icing."
I glance at dad who shakes his head and makes a disgusted face.
I snort.
Abbey bounds into the room pulling her hair into a ponytail. "You coming with me tomorrow?"
I shake my head and shiver, "Hell no."
She rolls her eyes, "Dude, Jake asked me to ask you to come."
I narrow my gaze, "No he didn’t."
She nods, "For real. I swear. He did."
"Jake? Jake Mackay?"
She nods, "The one and only."
Mom shrugs, "Pool party at L
ance's house might not kill you, O. Hang with some seniors before grad."