“What?” Theron stammered, shocked. “Why is it glowing?”
“Because it’s mine,” Rose murmured, “apparently.”
Theron’s brows furrowed. “Yours?” he breathed, his skin paling.
She glanced back at him and held out the necklace, the chain looped around her fingers. The heavy, red Stone dropped and swung from the gold chain. “Can’t you tell? It matches my eyes. That’s like a fashion thing, isn’t it?”
Erik turned toward Geoffrey. “Did she just make a joke?” he asked. He shifted, wincing in pain. “I can’t tell because of that zombielike voice.”
Geoffrey ignored him, his dark eyes never leaving Rose.
“No,” Theron said. “You can’t be. Because if you are…”
Rose smiled and finished for him, “Because if I am, then, the Stone will be useless to you soon because I will be dead, and you need me to use it.”
“Let go of me. I will heal you,” Theron pleaded again.
“I’ll be dead because of you. Isn’t that ironic?” she said.
He struggled to move, but his body remained held in place by an invisible force, by her. “Please,” he begged. “I can fix this. Just let me heal you.”
She ran her fingers over the glowing Stone. “I have some conditions.”
Kallias frowned at her. “Rose, what are you doing?”
Theron stilled. “Anything,” he said, nodding quickly.
“My friends live,” Rose said, her voice still emotionless.
“Of course,” Theron said, nodding. “I can heal them, too.”
“And,” she said, drawing out the word as she stared at the Stone. “You have to make all of the other vampires leave the room. I don’t trust them.”
“What?” Theron said. “But then, I’ll have no one to protect me.”
“They’re not protecting you anyway,” Erik pointed out, drawing Theron’s attention. Erik laughed, “They’re more afraid of her than you.”
Theron’s eyes narrowed. “At least let me kill that one,” he asked Rose.
“No,” Rose said, looking up at him. “All of them live, including Erik.”
Theron looked at her. “You can’t expect me to send everyone away.”
“Send them upstairs,” Rose said, shrugging. She felt a warm liquid begin to stream out of her ears and lifted her fingers to touch it. She drew her hand back and stared at the blood that coated her fingers. “Or…I will just die.”
“Rose, please stop. You’re killing yourself,” Kallias pleaded.
“Okay,” Theron said quickly. He looked at the crowd of vampires who already seemed eager to leave the room. “Go upstairs. We will speak later.”
Rose waited until the last one had left the room, her dark crimson gaze narrowed on Theron. And then, finally, she released him. He fell forward, collapsing onto the ground, but he quickly regained his composure and stood.
She staggered, her eyes fluttering, as she began to lose consciousness.
Theron stepped toward her. “I need to heal you. Now.”
She held up her hand. “Not yet. First, untie them.”
“Rose, you don’t have time for this,” Kallias rasped.
“For once, I have to agree with your boyfriend,” Theron said.
“Untie them. Now,” she snarled at him, her eyes flashing dangerously.
Theron sighed and held his hands up in surrender. He shook his head as he walked over and knelt in front of Kallias, breaking the ropes with one tug.
They froze as they heard the screams of the vampires above them, long, agonizing, desperate screams that echoed off the brick walls of the building.
Theron stood and looked up at the ceiling, his brows furrowing.
“I smell fire,” Geoffrey said worriedly, “and burning flesh.”
“She is killing them,” Erik said under his breath, “all of them.”
“Rose!” Kallias yelled out as she collapsed onto the floor.
Theron spun back toward her, his eyes wide. “What are you doing?”
She didn’t answer. She couldn’t answer because she was choking on her own blood. She knelt on the floor, on her hands and knees, as blood poured from her nose and ears, and now, it had begun to trickle from her mouth as well. As she looked up at him, he realized that blood streamed from her eyes, too, dark, crimson streams that matched her glowing, red eyes. She was dying.
“I have to heal you! Now!” Theron said as he bit into his own wrist.
“I warned you not to hurt him,” Rose said. “You should have listened.”
Theron froze and glanced down at her. He vaguely realized that the screams on the upper level of the building had ceased. He opened his mouth to ask her what she meant by that, but a strangled scream escaped his mouth instead.
He met her terrifying, inhuman gaze as she ripped his heart from his chest with her mind. She waited until Theron’s lifeless body hit the floor before she surrendered to the darkness that had been threatening to overtake her.
Rose collapsed face-first onto the floor, dying in a pool of blood.
—
Her eyes fluttered open, but as soon as they did, a blinding light burned her eyes, pain shooting like daggers through her eyes to the back of her head. She cried out and flung her arm over her eyes. Instinctually, her body curled into the fetal position as she tried to protect her eyes from the excruciating light.
Even with her eyes covered, she could not stop the thundering noise that pounded at her ears, like a perfectly timed bass drum buried deep inside her head, intensifying the agonizing pain that already throbbed so relentlessly in her head.
If that headache were not enough to make her feel nauseated, the scents certainly were. She smelled so many different scents at once: wood, detergent, leather, after-shave, cologne, soap, bleach, grass, trees, water, and hundreds of other scents that she couldn’t identify. She smelled everything so strongly. It was as if someone had placed the scents right under her nose…or perhaps it was even stronger than that would’ve been. She’d never smelled anything so overpowering. The scents made her stomach swirl and lurch violently. She whimpered in pain.
Aside from pain, she only felt one other thing: hunger.
Violent, unbearable hunger.
“You can uncover your eyes now. I turned off the lamp,” Kallias said.
“Stop yelling at me,” she growled.
She heard him sigh, “Sweetheart, I’m barely speaking over a whisper.”
Rose uncovered her eyes and rolled toward him. She never took the time to think about where she’d heard his voice. She just knew where he was somehow. She knew, without looking or listening, that he was sitting next to her, on the edge of his bed. The blinding light was gone, and she could see him now. She could see him sitting there in just a pair of jeans, one of his hands braced on the mattress and the other braced on the nightstand, as if sitting were a difficult task for him at the moment. His unshaven face looked reddened, stained by blood. Her eyes trailed down his abdomen, noticing the bandaged wounds, a large chest wound and a stomach wound. Her stomach burned as she noticed the dark red wet stains on the bandages. An intoxicating, sweet scent filled the air, calling out to her.
“What is that sound? And that smell?” she breathed. “Make it stop.”
Kallias glanced down, away from her, and Rose realized that she could feel his anxiety, his shame. “I’m afraid that would require me dying,” he sighed.
She winced at the pain in her ears. “I don’t…I don’t understand.”
As he looked at her again, she saw two very different emotions warring in his eyes: happiness and pain. He seemed both relieved and fearful at once.
A sharp pain shot through her stomach, the pang of hunger, and she curled up again, this time with her arm over her stomach, as she cried out in pain.
Kallias sighed and shifted to put more weight on the hand braced on the nightstand. It was obvious from the slow, labored way that he moved that he was still very injured. He held out his other
arm toward her and waited expectantly.
The bass drum grew louder, unbearable and thunderous, quaking her entire body, and the scent called to a part of her that she couldn’t control. Before she even realized what she was doing, she’d unfurled her body and flung herself out toward his arm. She wrapped his arm up with her arms and sank her teeth into his wrist, moaning as the warm, sweet blood poured into her mouth. She sucked at the bite wound mercilessly as the blood soothed the pain of her hunger.
She must have been feeding for a minute or so before she realized what she’d done. Her eyes shot open suddenly, and she shoved his wrist away from her. Her red, swirling eyes darted back and forth between him and the blood trickling from the bite wound in his wrist. “What…” she sputtered.
“It’s okay,” Kallias told her. He looked pale and weak. “You can take more blood. I can handle it, and…you need more. I can feel your hunger.”
“My…hunger?” she breathed. Her head spun violently.
He stared at her, his brown eyes drawn together with concern and pity.
Her eyes narrowed on the blood on his wrist, and her stomach clenched with hunger again. She quickly scurried to the other corner of the bed, drawing her knees up to her chest as she tried to control the urge to bite him again. It felt so overpowering, so instinctual. Her entire body convulsed from the pain.
He turned toward her, holding his hands up. “It’s okay. Just breathe.”
“What’s happening to me?” she breathed, her eyes widening in horror.
He watched her nervously, as if she were a bomb about to explode at any moment. “Why don’t you take a little more blood before we talk? You need it.”
“No!” she growled, her eyes flashing a darker red.
Kallias nodded slowly. “Okay,” he conceded, “if you’re sure.”
“I bit you,” Rose sputtered breathlessly. “I…I bit you.”
Again, he nodded slowly, uneasily. “It’s fine. I knew you would. It’s…”
“I don’t understand. Why…why would I do that?” she stammered.
He winced. “Try not to talk so much. You’re cutting your lips.”
She frowned, but as soon as she thought about it, she realized that her lips did feel raw. She pressed her fingers to her lips, wincing in pain, and pulled them away, surprised by the droplets of blood she saw on them. And then, without thinking, she licked the blood from her fingers. For a moment, she just felt relief from the taste of blood, but then, it occurred to her what she’d done.
Her breath began to come in quick, harsh pants. Her heart raced.
“Rose, calm down,” Kallias said uneasily. “This is all…normal.”
“Normal?” she growled. She vaguely realized that her voice sounded almost like an animal, a growling animal. Her eyes flashed such a dark shade of red that they looked almost black. “Normal?! What about this is normal? I bit you! I want to bite you again! I just…” she trailed off, her yelling morphing into sobs.
Kallias looked as if he were suddenly in pain. “Rose… Baby, don’t cry.”
“What’s happening to me?” she breathed, her entire body shaking.
He inhaled sharply and turned toward her, moving closer. Her eyes grew wide as another wave of hunger threatened to take over. She quickly leapt out of the bed and backed into the wall. He froze, his brows drawing together.
“I…I can’t… I can’t control it,” she stammered.
He crawled out of bed as well, his movement still slow and labored.
“Don’t come any closer,” she pleaded.
Kallias approached her slowly with his hands outstretched, as if he were afraid of spooking her. “It’s fine. You can have as much blood as you want.”
“What’s going on?” she asked, her voice cracking.
He exhaled slowly, nervously. “How much do you remember?”
She flinched as flashbacks assaulted her mind, more vivid than any memory had ever been. “I remember…Theron t-torturing me,” she whispered.
Kallias’s face contorted with pain, as if the memories hurt him as well. “I’m sorry. You were right. I should have never left you. I…” he trailed off as he noticed that she was shaking. “He can’t hurt you anymore. He’s dead.”
Rose nodded, her eyes dark and haunted now. “I killed him, didn’t I?”
He stopped in front of her, his brown eyes full of empathy. “We don’t have to do this right now. You don’t have to process everything all at once.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Did I kill him?”
Kallias sighed and nodded slowly, his brows knitted with worry.
“And the other vampires?” Rose asked. “What happened to them?”
He continued to stare at her apprehensively, terrified that this would be too much for her to handle, especially now that she was… “They’re also dead.”
“Because I killed them?” she prompted, her voice cracking.
“It was the last thing you did before you killed Theron,” Kallias said.
“I killed fifty vampires at once?” she breathed.
He nodded nervously. “You burned them. With your mind. You saved our lives. If you hadn’t killed them and Theron, they would have killed all of us.”
Rose nodded as the memories began to stitch themselves together in her head. Her eyes grew haunted as she stammered, “I remember… Kallias, I remember being…dead. It was dark and cold. I actually remember it. I…I died.”
He swallowed uneasily. “You have to understand that…I couldn’t lose you,” he whispered. “In the end, it wasn’t even me who made the decision. It was Erik. I was too distraught, too upset, too…broken. Rose, you were dead.”
She stared at him, hating the agony and grief that she saw in his eyes.
“You’ll hate me for this,” he mumbled. He looked so depressed, so brokenhearted. “And you have every right to hate me. It was so, so selfish.”
“You turned me,” Rose realized.
“I didn’t know what to do. I…I couldn’t lose you,” he whispered again.
She nodded. “Then, that means I’m a…” she trailed off, running her tongue across her teeth. Even though she’d expected it, she still gasped when her tongue scraped across the sharp fangs where her canine teeth should have been.
“Yes, Rose,” Kallias sighed. “You’re a vampire.”
—
Erik stepped out of the bathroom, toweling his wavy, blonde hair dry, as he headed toward the bed. He froze as he saw her standing in front of him.
“What the hell?” he gasped.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she murmured, her voice as soft, lilting, and seductive as it had always been. She walked toward him, her long lashes fluttering. She raised an eyebrow at the towel around his waist, a smile curving at her lips. Her dark blue eyes met his astonished gaze. “It seems I’m overdressed.”
“You’re dead,” Erik said, still gaping at her.
She took the ends of her blue dress into her hands and curtsied, giving him a smoldering, seductive look as she did. “What do you think of the dress?”
“It matches your eyes,” he responded almost automatically.
Her plump, pink lips curved in amusement. “I knew you’d say that.”
“This is a dream,” Erik realized. “I’m dreaming about you again.”
“Well, if I’m dead, I suppose it must be,” Alana said, smiling at him.
“I need to wake up,” he said, wincing as he pinched himself.
She tilted her head back, her pale blonde hair falling behind her shoulders, as she looked up at him through her long, fluttering eyelashes. “Why would you want to wake up? Didn’t you miss me? I know I missed you.”
“It’s hard to miss someone who treated you like shit,” Erik muttered.
“That’s not fair,” she pouted, poking out her bottom lip. She trailed her long fingernails along his bare stomach until they reached the towel. She cupped the other hand behind his neck and pulled his face toward he
rs. “I treated you very well,” she murmured, her lips curving as they brushed against his, “in bed.”
Erik knew he should pull away from her, that he shouldn’t kiss her, not even this dream version of her, but he couldn’t help it. His body and soul would always respond to her, the only woman he had ever loved. He pressed his lips to hers, groaning at how real her lips felt against his, at how real she tasted.
Never breaking the kiss, Alana walked backward, her heels clicking on the hardwood floors with each graceful step. She pulled him with her, tugging him toward the bed, as they kissed. When the backs of her legs collided with the oak footboard, she turned and, with one easy push, shoved him onto the bed.
His green eyes grew dark with lust as she crawled onto him, her blonde hair falling over her shoulders to frame her soft, feminine face. She straddled his stomach, and he groaned as he felt the silk of her panties against his bare skin. He trailed his fingers along her thighs, along her perfect, alabaster skin.
“My subconscious remembers you well,” he commented.
She leaned down to move her face close to his. Her soft, pale blonde hair fell around their faces like a curtain. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“You always did use sex to get your way,” he spat harshly.
Her blue eyes narrowed, and for a moment, he expected her to pull back and slap him. It was the kind of thing she would have done in real life, after all. But instead, she just smiled an innocent, coy smile. “Only because it works.”
“Why do you haunt my dreams?” he sighed, his brows furrowing.
“Because you still love me,” Alana whispered as she kissed him.
He pulled back suddenly, pushing her until she was sitting upright on him, her lips far away from his. “I don’t still love you. That’s not true at all.”
Alana licked her lips and raised an eyebrow. “Oh, really?”
He pushed her off of him so that he could sit up. He glanced at her, trying to ignore the way her dress rode up her legs, revealing every inch of her thighs to his gaze. “You’re a manipulative, psychotic bitch. You ruined me.”
She ran her hand through her perfectly straight, blonde hair, and shifted her body so that her legs spread provocatively. She flashed a seductive smile at him. “You enjoyed every minute of it. Stop pretending that you didn’t.”
The Stone of the Eklektos Page 80