The Roses Academy- the Entire Collection

by Tara Brown

  “That was awkward.”

  Ari put a hand out for me to take. “I really hope she gets laid. ‘Cause she’s snippy.” I took it and we were back in the cold air of Maine. My boots crunched on the forest floor.

  “Do you really think it’s one of us?”

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Dorian’s the only one who can make one of me. Phillip can flash but he’s Nephilim, and you guys are friggin’ weird. Neither Aleks nor I would ever do a dark thing.”

  Ari shook her head. “No. Dorian would never. I know he wouldn’t. I'm super curious about Oliver and Phillip though.”

  “Friggin’ angels.”

  “Yup.” We trekked out of the woods and up to the house where Lucas had lived as a child. Horrified faces watched our every move.

  I stopped and stifled a giggle when I saw the amount of black and red blood sprayed across the front of Ari. I peered down at myself. “We better get cleaned up.”

  “Oh shit. Where were you?” Lucas stormed across the grass to us. “Why do you two look like that?”

  I licked my lips and hurried up the stairs. Ari was hot on my heels. “Busy,” she said and we ran in the large log house. Inside, it was gorgeous. “Phillip and Trist would die and go to gay Heaven in this place.” Ari laughed nervously and closed the door. She turned the lock.

  Lucas banged on the door and glared through the glass. “Ari, open the door.”

  She stood at the door and spoke through her teeth, “Go see if Janine will let you in.”

  We walked up the stairs but Aleks flashed into the house and stood in our way.

  “What's going on?” His ice-blue eyes were worried, or angry. Probably angry. He scanned over the bloodstains and arched an eyebrow. “Did Lorri call for a mission?”

  “No.” I swallowed and glanced back at Ari. Aleks filled the room with warm wind. The door opened and closed. He and Luke were standing inside staring at us. “That’s cheating. We locked you out for a reason.” I wanted to be mean but I was high from the deaths.

  Aleks complained, “It's annoying to lock us out when we don't know what we did.”

  Ari raised her hands fast. Both men were pinned against the wall. Luke exhaled loudly at Aleks. “Dude, I was good with not knowing. She cools off quickly if you don't poke the bear.”

  Ari's eyes flashed. “I saw you. I saw you checking her out.”

  Luke seemed confused. “Who?”

  Ari spit out one word, “Janine.”

  Luke rolled his eyes. “Ari. She’s like a hundred and eighty years old.”

  “So what?” I pointed at Aleks. “He’s way older than that.” Luke gave me a pleading look to stay out of it. I scowled, ignoring them both. “We saw you, both of you. Flirting and smiling and letting her kiss your faces.”

  His cheeks flushed with color. “Aimes, it was not what you guys think.”

  “She looked like she could be on The Dukes of Hazard. Don't tell me I don’t know what it is.” Ari scoffed.

  Lucas laughed. “She was the key to the elders council. They all listen to her. She’s one of the few females in the pack who’s an elder. Her husband was the alpha when he died.”

  “I saw the look, Luke. She wasn't even looking at you and you were drooling on her legs.” Ari glared.

  “No, you didn’t.” He struggled with the invisible hold she had over him. “Babe, it wasn’t like that.”

  “I don’t really want to talk about this.” Ari dropped them to the floor and marched past me. I followed her up the stairs.

  She slammed a door to a room. I didn’t know which one to go to so I went to the bathroom and poured a bath. I stripped my blood-soaked clothes off and climbed in.

  “You can't possibly think I would find that woman attractive,” Aleks spoke through the door.

  “Why? I find her attractive,” I snapped.

  He laughed and it was like my favorite song. I couldn’t even be angry with him.

  Chapter 6

  Worst idea in history

  Ophelia

  “There are hookers everywhere. I don’t even know where to put them all,” Trist shouted overtop the screaming women all speaking different languages.

  “This one’s from Monte Carlo. I'm going to flash her to the hospital there and wipe her mind,” Phillip yelled at us.

  “O, honey, you need to help out.” Lydia rushed past me.

  “I don’t know what to do.” I was stunned. I’d never seen anything so disgusting in all my life.

  Trist shouted in Japanese at a girl who sobbed and hugged herself. She ignored him so he switched back to English. “Honey, you can't sit there without underwear. That couch is an antique.”

  I laughed and wanted to cry at the same time.

  Scared of the chaos, I turned and walked out the front door and onto the street.

  Instantly, Oliver was there. “You shouldn’t be out here.”

  “I couldn’t be in there. They found some house my father had in Rio. It was full of girls. I couldn’t watch it.” My hands trembled. “They’re all my age.”

  “Oh God.” He grabbed me and pulled me into him.

  I tried to block out the sound of the girls but they were everywhere.

  And then it went silent.

  We were surrounded by greenery. “Where are we?”

  “Peru,” Oliver spoke softly.

  The air was warm and wet, rich almost. Breathing it in made me feel high. “Where?”

  “The Andes. There’s a village down the hill where I once hid for five years.”

  “Why?”

  “To hide from your father.” His words whispered against my forehead. He took my hand and pulled me through the bright green forest. “He was crazed. His gifts were meant to pull the sickness from the blood. That’s how he was to use them. We were each given something as a gift from our father as we fell. Mine was used to pull sadness and misery from the soul. Emotional pain. When I went dark with your father, I began to love the taste of them dying in my arms, humans.” I drew back a bit, but his huge hands enveloped mine and dragged me along the hillside. I grew more afraid of him as he continued, “I couldn’t stop myself anymore. I pulled and sucked until they died every time and I never gave it another thought.”

  “That’s disgusting.” I didn’t know why he was telling me this or why he had brought us to the middle of the forest to do it, but it didn’t make the weird story any better.

  “I agree. Your father’s charismatic. He really had me convinced we were better than humans. So we had fun, a lot of fun. At the expense of many lives.” He swallowed hard and faced me, letting me see the discomfort the story held for him. That didn’t make it better for me. “In our travels and adventures, Dorian and I met a young man named Marcus. He was also a charismatic young man, sarcastic and funny.”

  “Marcus, the vampire?”

  “The very one.” He pulled me to a huge tree. It was the most incredible thing I had ever seen. He flashed us high above the ground to one of the branches. My heart beat wildly as I gripped the rough bark of the tree. I could see for miles. The mist was settled in amongst the mountains and hills.

  “I met him for the first time in that village right there. He had come with Jonathan, who he’d befriended in Europe, to seek a shaman.” He pointed to the cluster of small homes. “Marcus was smarter than the other humans we had been around. He quickly caught onto what we all were. He wanted the immortality and the power. We told him there was no way we were turning him into anything.”

  “He wanted to be a vampire?” That was insane.

  “He did. He knew the story of Henry’s niece and Aleks’ dad. He used that to convince Ethan, Henry's brother, that the dark magic was the only way to punish the man responsible for his daughter's death. Once Ethan turned dark, he had no care for what he taught Marcus and Jonathan. One day he taught them how to enslave his own brother, not realizing they would do it.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Marcus wanted the magic of the fae. He
wanted the immortality. Jonathan offered him his blood, which would make him the highest vampire, below Jonathan. But Marcus didn’t want to be below Jonathan. Dorian had repented his sins and gone back with Lorri, fighting evil. Marcus used the guilt Dorian had over his dark deeds to convince him that going after Henry's magic was the only way to kill Jonathan. That was how we met Aleks. Marcus secretly went to Aleks and told him that taking Henry's heart was the only way to get the power to kill Jon, Aleks’ father. Henry, thinking he was much older and considerably smarter than them, caught them in the act and cursed Marcus as a soulless vampire. He didn’t realize what he had given Marcus was the very thing he desired.”

  “Is that when they stole the heart?”

  “Not yet. First Henry got his revenge on his brother. Henry was livid with him. He found him and murdered him, taking his magic.”

  “This is a weird story. Marcus is a bigger shit than I imagined.”

  “He’s the biggest.” Oliver chuckled. “He is incredibly smart and wicked. His brain is ridiculous. He is a doctor, a chemist, a botanist, a pharmacist, and a lawyer . . . My God, I can’t even name them all. He’s even written novels under assumed names. It’s frightening really. Anyway, we all have more respect for Marcus now. Except Jonathan, who wants him dead. Jonathan and Marcus are now even. The only difference is that Jonathan can wink, like all fallen. But in strength and abilities, they’re evenly matched. God created one and a fae God created the other.”

  “That’s messed up.” I gulped.

  “Fearing Jonathan would find a way to kill him, Marcus somehow convinced Dorian and Aleks that Henry was a threat to them all. Henry was on a rampage, ready to kill them. So they used the things they had learned from Ethan and stole Henry's heart. His heart is inside Marcus as we all know. Henry doesn’t know it, thanks to Ari. And Henry is completely at Marcus’ will.”

  “We should free him.”

  “No. He was volatile. He was dangerous. He went dark after killing his own brother. It’s best if we let Marcus keep him under wraps. The children of your mother, the ones born of the fae, they're not stable.”

  “I don’t feel stable either.”

  Oliver kissed my forehead. “You aren’t.”

  “Why did you hide in this village?”

  “Your father knew I had helped them. I helped Marcus and Aleks and Dorian. I too had turned to Lorri. The saying 'Hell hath no fury' actually came into existence because of Lorri and your dad. She loved him a long time ago. When we fell, he went for Lillith, seeing opportunity and power.”

  “He left her for my mom, even though my mom didn’t want him?”

  “Yes. Lorri loved him for a long time. She kept making excuses for him and expecting him to come back to her. He was her weakness. When he didn’t, she started the hunt for him. Unfortunately, by the time she had tracked him down, he had built a huge army for himself. Most of the archangels that had fallen and almost all the Nephilim agree with him. This is our playground. Here we have freewill and the ability to choose. We are immortal. The gates of Heaven will never open for us anyway, so it doesn’t matter what we do. We have fallen.”

  “We can kill him together.” I squeezed his hand.

  “No.” He squeezed back. “But I want you to do a spell for me though. Just in case. This will be our meeting place. You can make a port here. This tree’s magical. It was spelled by the village shaman.”

  “Why?”

  Oliver’s eyes sparkled. “In case you need to run or hide.”

  “Run?” The word sounded insane but then so was everything else I’d been living for the last few months. “What do I do?”

  “Close your eyes and hold the tree tightly. Call Mother Earth. Call the power and light of the spirits. Ask the spirit of the shaman who blessed this tree to allow you to mark the tree as yours. Visualize a door shape in the air that you can walk through from anywhere. The rest will come to you.”

  “Okay.” I swallowed hard and closed my eyes. The earth magic filled me straightaway. Like Mother Earth and I were connected all the time. My body hummed with it. The rough bark heated in my hands until it was the same temperature as my skin.

  I focused on the doorway. Flashes of the shaman blessing the tree filled my mind. His skin was old, dark, and wrinkled. His eyes were completely white and his dark skin was sweaty. He rocked and chanted while smoke swirled up from somewhere.

  His white eyes darted at me. He smiled and put a hand out. I felt myself letting go of the bark and reaching for him. He spoke something I didn’t understand but as I asked permission he nodded.

  My sisters stood in front of him, blocking my view of his face.

  The blue sisters shook their heads. I pushed past them to get to him again.

  “O, don't do this. This is dark magic.” Their voices floated in the air around me, but I swatted at them and sat beside the man. He crossed his skinny brown legs. I crossed mine too. He closed his eyes and took my hand. His skin burned mine, sending fiery pain up my arm. I screamed out but I couldn’t take my hand from his grip.

  I could smell the stench of my own skin burning. He pried open my hand and rubbed it into the ground and he vanished.

  My eyes flew open. My lips parted but no sound escaped them. The sun had set. It was dark in the tree. My hand continued to clench the branch, searing with agony.

  I hauled it back but the burnt skin from my palm stuck to the branch. I cried out and stopped pulling away. My hand shook.

  “It's okay, O. Just pull it back slowly and then heal it.” Oliver was still with me.

  “Did you leave?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “You did.”

  I peeled my hand from the branch. Tears streamed down my cheeks. When I finally had it off, I turned it over, gasping at the circle with a line through it that was burned into my palm. The skin was red and blistered. I placed my other hand over it and pulled the healing from the tree. The hand healed instantly but the scar, the circle with the line through it, remained.

  “It still hurts,” I muttered.

  “I know. It will for a while. You've left a piece of yourself here. It is the only way to make a port. It’s so that you can find this place again. Your piece of you will pull you here.” He took my hand and kissed the palm. The air moved and we were on the street in front of Lydia's.

  Ari was standing on the front steps. I sensed that she needed me. “I better go.” I pointed at the house, still favoring my other hand.

  “See you later.” Oliver let go and stepped back and then he was gone.

  I felt bleak and weird about the things he had told me.

  “Hey.” I glanced at Ari and tried to smile.

  Trist came bursting through the door. “O, it’s like Pretty Woman meets a Miss Universe pageant in there. Phillip has taken ten of them home but there are still like twelve girls we don’t know where to take. They came from poor countries. It’s chaos. Giselle is up and about too. She already almost ate a nice girl from West Africa.”

  “Yikes.” I checked the scar on my hand and nearly wished I were back at the tree. Instead, I walked through the door.

  Phillip flashed into the hallway beside me. “O, not cool. Leaving us to deal with all this.”

  “Guys, mellow out. She’s going through some shit.” Ari grasped my good hand. She dragged me through the house to the back door. The cool misty day made me shiver. When we reached the bench at the dock in the backyard she let go of my hand and sat. She stared at the water like she saw something I didn’t.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “No.” She shook her head. “It's a mess. It’s all a mess. Aimee, Ben, and Luke are miserable without Sam. Hanna’s a disaster. Her heart’s so broken. My dad said she’s blacking out again. Marcus is hiding it from Lorri so he can keep her at his house, under his control again. Giselle’s eating anything she can touch, literally eating. Shane’s being brainwashed every week because somehow he finds his way back to Aimee. Even Annabelle is dying inside without the l
ittle kids. Lydia barely looks at me. Somehow we all have to come together and fight your dad. Without something to fix us, it just isn’t going to happen. We won’t win.”

  “I know.” I sat beside her. “I agree. We need to find the missing link. Where it all went wrong.”

  “Sam. We need him. He is the key to killing your dad. Lydia and Annabelle agree. We need Sam back. Hanna is a mess because of his death. Even if they weren’t together, her guilt is eating her alive. If Aimee wasn’t here, if she had a normal life, we wouldn’t have the Giselle issue, and Aleks would be hunting his dad full time. We would have gotten Sam and the kids long before. Lydia told me she wasted a lot of time on helping Aimee control herself. They knew about the kids but never went for them. They were all here helping Aimee. I love her more than I love Lucas, but she’s it. I have gone over the data and timelines a dozen times and if she had never come here or become a Rose, our lives would all be different.” Ari lowered her gaze, her head slumping. “She needs to go back.”

  “Oh God.” I winced.

  “I know. If I could control the push, I could ensure this isn’t her future. She could have a normal life. Dorian can make a different soul sucker. It doesn’t have to be Aimee. She is just a victim of circumstances. I think if I push and you help me with it, we can control it.”

  “If you’re sure,” I agreed. “I can help. Let’s just do it.”

  “And neither of us winks. Port Mac is not close by. It’s hours away,” Ari groaned. “Guess we're driving.”

  I frowned. “Dude, Phillip?”

  “No.” Ari was curt. “No one can know. You need to put a spell on Aimee so she doesn’t remember anything the moment she gets back to Port Mac. Giselle too. So when they go back everything is normal.”

  “Blake too,” I added.