“I am so sorry, Rose,” I say, apologizing for the situation I have gotten her in. The situation I was unable to save her from. The fact that she is back in this fucking house that I know has haunted her dreams.
“We’ll be fine,” she says without wavering.
I look at her curiously, struggling to find the bright side as she has. “How do you know?”
“It just has to be. Dean and Finn will come. They will find us, just like last time.” She nods her head, as if also trying to convince herself. “How long have you all been in here?” she asks, looking to the others in the room.
Numbers ranging from a month and a half to a couple of days leave the mouths of our fellow prisoners. As they get the restraints off Reg, he rips the gag from his mouth, a loud scream of rage escaping his throat. He rages like a caged animal as he walks back and forth, slamming his body into the walls. “LET US OUT!” he screams, banging his fists against the metal. “LAAAAANDYN!”
“Reg, she said she has manipulated him. He isn’t himself,” Rose tells him, placing a hand on his shoulder to calm him down.
I too grab his shoulder, locking eyes with him. “Calm yourself, brother. We must save our strength.”
“For what?” asks a red-haired woman from town, Jessica, I believe. “I’ve been in here for weeks. There is no escape. We will die here. It’s already been too long, and we cannot continue as we have, feeding each other. Soon we will go blood mad, and it will be impossible to stop from draining each other.”
“If we even make it that long,” Andy, a teacher at the local night school, states. “Shani will send her goon in to take one of us out. We are unwilling to attack him as it is clear he is not himself. Plus, he brings silver to keep us controlled. The ones that leave never come back. I don’t know if that is preferable to what we’re experiencing here.”
I put my back against the wall and slide down slowly until I am sitting on the hard, concrete floor. Hopelessness overwhelms me as I listen to their stories and the impossibility of our situation becomes more real.
“What about Pumpkin? Can he hear you from this distance, do you think?” I ask, grabbing at that one string of hope.
Rose looks at me, unsure. “I don’t know, maybe? I screamed for him when Landyn was attacking me, but I got nothing.”
“Who is Pumpkin?” Andy asks, looking at Rose.
“He is my cat,” Rose replies cautiously. It’s clear that she is wary of these people that she doesn’t really know.
An older woman moves closer to Rose, looking at her in question. “Do you have a familiar?”
“Yes. I mean, I think so,” Rose replies, looking to me for help. I nod to the older woman, who looks back to Rose with a smile.
“Then you are a witch. There is hope for us yet,” she says with confidence.
“I-I don’t know any magic. This…just happened,” Rose stammers.
“Shani attacked Rose’s cat Pumpkin, and in order to save him, we had to change him. That was when we discovered their connection,” I explain, putting my arm around Rose in comfort. “It was only this morning,” I add, amazed by how quickly everything has changed today.
“Try. The connection between a witch and their familiar is strong, so he may feel it. Even if it’s just a tug,” the old woman goes on.
Rose nods, her face strained as she closes her eyes and concentrates. If she were to fail, it would crush her, and that alone makes me hate this idea that the old woman has put into her head.
Rose
Eyes closed, I concentrate on that bond I have felt with Pumpkin since he woke up this morning. It’s a sort of thread connecting our minds to each other. If I concentrate on it, I can almost see a color—a mix of pink and orange.
Pumpkin. I say the word in my mind and reach towards my cat, who is miles away. Pumpkin, please help me. The soundless words come out as a sob in my mind, bouncing around with no reply.
I release the breath that I didn’t realize I was holding and look at Sebastian, who stares at me in concern. Some of the eyes in the room look at me with hope and others with skepticism. The old woman continues to smile at me encouragingly, but the red-haired woman that spoke with Seb earlier looks at me with disappointment. Nothing like disappointing a whole room of vampires that face certain death.
“Anything?” Sebastian asks.
“No,” I say sadly, my shoulders sagging with shame.
“It’s not your fault, Rosalie,” Sebastian says sternly, then he kisses my lips.
“Don’t beat yourself up, Rosie,” Reg says weakly, sitting on the floor with his face in his hands. “It was my fucking job to keep us safe. I let my fucking feelings get in the way of my job. I realized something was wrong with Landyn, but I didn’t do anything. I tried to help him like a fucking idiot. Now look at us. I keep failing you, kid. I keep failing you and promising it won’t happen again.” He slams his fist on the ground, rage vibrating through him.
“Reg, it’s not—” I start, but my words get cut off by a sound. I look around the room, then freeze.
Rose. Rose? ROSE! The sound is screamed in my head like a loud cat’s yowl.
Pumpkin?! I yell the words in my head as tears well in my eyes.
Where are you? Dean and Finn are freaking out! Dean just keeps yelling at me, ‘Find her!’ Like I haven’t been trying, Pumpkin says, and I soak in the sound of his feline voice, feeling the comfort of home.
Shani took us. Reg and Sebastian are with me, along with all the missing vampires in town. We are at Jason’s, the place where he took me months ago, I explain, and my fear makes the internal words come out faster than normal. Can you tell them?
I can only speak to you, Rose. I have no way of telling them anything. I can’t read or write, Pumpkin explains, sounding defeated.
Fuck. I curse, not at my cat, but at the fucking world. At giving me the ability to talk to a cat, but not giving the cat the ability to communicate with anyone else but me. What good is being a witch if you can’t fucking do anything?
You will be able to do things in time. You just have to learn, Pumpkin soothes.
I won’t if I can’t get out of here, Pumpkin! She plans to kill us! I argue. Can you try to lead them here? Just try to get them to follow you, I beg, hoping I can remember the directions well enough for them to find us.
Yes, I will try. For you, Rose, I would give my life, Pumpkin promises, and a sob leaves my lips.
“Did he hear you?” Seb asks, his hands cupping my face. I nod my head, then lower it to his chest to hide my tears.
“He is going to try to lead them to us,” I whisper, too scared to truly believe in it.
“Then we wait,” the old woman states as she sits down on the hard floor. “For if we put our fate in cats, we will always be rewarded.”
Sebastian looks from the woman to me, his mouth agape. “In cats?”
“Of course, why do you think there are so many crazy cat ladies? They are wise beyond belief; we only have to listen.” She smiles widely. “My name is Lily.”
“I hope you are right, Lily,” I say with an uncertain smile. “I’d hate to be forgotten for a bowl of food or a fallen hair-tie.”
“Have faith in your familiar, for they are gifts from the fates,” Lily intones with a wink.
“I sure hope you are right,” Reg groans, lifting his face from his hands for only a moment. “I’ve always been more of a dog person.”
Lily makes a tsk sound and shakes her head. “Men.”
Dean
“I can’t help but feel like we’ve fucking done this before,” Finn growls, clenching his fists. “We fucking failed her. Again.”
“I know, we are not worthy of her,” I say sadly through an ache in my chest that feels as if I am being stabbed.
“That may be true, but I am still unwilling to give her up,” Finn growls. “Pumpkin! Pick up the fucking pace!”
Pumpkin turns around and hisses at him, but continues to run forward, slightly faster now.
“How can we even trust that he is taking us to her? He’s a fucking cat,” Finn huffs, running with me behind Pumpkin, though we’re going slower than if we were just running on our own.
I heard her scream, but thought it was a dream. By the time I was up and realized her and Sebastian were gone, it was too late. I froze. I searched the loft. I searched the nightclub. I refused to accept that she could be taken from me again. That we had let this happen again. My shoulders tighten as I try to speed up, wishing that Pumpkin could just run faster. That we could speak to him.
“I just know it. He knows she is gone. You can see how frantic he is. She had to have contacted him,” I explain.
“Or he is just a fucking cat and has led us on a wild goose chase to where he thinks she could be,” Finn replies angrily.
When the house comes into sight, we both stop in our tracks and stare up at the dark navy abomination. Pumpkin stops and looks back at us with another hiss.
“She couldn’t be in there,” Finn says, looking at the house in confusion. “She killed him; we saw it.”
“Let’s go,” I reply, starting to walk towards the house with Pumpkin beside us. I pause for a second when we get to the porch and see the squad car in the driveway. Taking a deep breath, I’ve raised my hand to knock on the door when Finn takes an alternate route. Wood splinters fly in the air as the door that was newly installed is busted open. The scene feels all too familiar as we walk over the shards of wood into the old house. Except this time, we aren’t greeted by a Rose fighting for her life. No.
Ausar, still in uniform, leaps from the couch in the living that looks much more modern than when Jason owned the house. He grabs for the gun in his holster, only to find it is missing. Finn and I look to the bench by the door at the same time, and before I can reach for it, Finn has the gun in his hand and pointed straight at Ausar.
“Put your fucking hands up,” Finn says threateningly, his eyes black with rage.
Ausar complies but stares at us in anger and confusion. “What the fuck are you doing?” he demands as his eyes flash gold.
“You fucking shift, and I shoot you in the head,” Finn replies, instead of answering his question. “Now take us to Rose.”
“Rose?” Ausar asks, his eyebrows raised. “Why would Rose be here?”
“Where is your sister, Ausar?” I ask, looking around the room for signs of Shani.
“She is upstairs sleeping, why?” Ausar darts his gaze from Finn to me, but his eyes don’t leave the gun for very long.
“SHANI!” Finn roars while keeping the gun pointed at Ausar. “Will she be armed?”
“I don’t know. Probably? We are cops. What is the plan here? Kill us? Then what? You think you won’t be caught?” Ausar questions.
“You have Rose here; you should have thought about the consequences of taking my mate,” Finn says, seething.
Pumpkin yowls as he leaps towards Shani, who is trying to enter the room inconspicuously. She grabs the cat and slams him into the wall, then swings her own gun into the room and points straight at Finn. “Drop it,” she demands, putting the barrel close to Finn’s chest. “This gun is loaded with wooden bullets. One shot, and there’s one less Whitaker to worry about.”
Ausar looks at his sister with surprise. “Shan, what the fuck are you doing? Why do you have wooden bullets?”
“It’s for protection. I told you they weren’t to be trusted,” she growls, eyeing us both. “They’re all the same.”
“Shani, what are you saying?” Ausar asks as he stares at his sister in disbelief.
“They killed our parents!” she says, her voice cracking slightly.
“Is that what this is about? That was years ago! They had nothing to do with that,” Ausar yells, his hands down and facing his sister.
“I won’t let them kill any more of us. I won’t.” Shani looks to her brother pleadingly. “This is important, Ausar. We are some of the last sphinxes left.”
Ausar looks at her sadly as his shoulders sag. “This isn’t right, Shani.” He sighs loudly, dragging his hand down his face. “Is Rose here?” he asks worriedly.
“I have been collecting the filth from town and putting them in the basement.” Shani spits out the words, her glare penetrating Finn and me. “With one order from me, Landyn will kill them all. I know they won’t attack him. It will be quick and easy.” She grins evilly, tightening her grip on the gun.
“Did you manipulate his mind, Shani?” Ausar accuses as he moves closer to his sister.
“Yes, that’s how I got Sebastian and Reg. Then I was able to easily lead her from the nightclub. He is the perfect weapon to use against them,” Shani explains. “Now, I just need you. Help me, brother. Together, we will remove their stain on the world.”
“Shani, this isn’t right. We are officers of the law. We’re supposed to protect people,” Ausar pleads.
“If you aren’t with me, then you are against me,” Shani replies, tears welling in her eyes. The gun sags a bit in her hands, and Finn takes the opportunity presented to him. He swings the gun in his hand, slamming the butt of it into her skull.
Screaming, she swings the barrel of her shotgun in the air. She presses the trigger just before Finn leaps at her, and my heart drops.
Finn
Fuck. I think as pain lances through my arm. I’ve been shot.
Luckily, the shot missed my chest, and the wooden bullet passed right through my arm instead of getting lodged inside me. I recognize another yell that doesn’t belong to Shani. Instead, it comes from Ausar. While on top of her body, using my forearm against her throat to pin her to the ground, I turn to see Ausar clutching his shoulder near his collar bone. Blood drips from the wound, and he holds his hand to the area.
“Shani,” he groans, looking at his sister in surprise. “What have you done?”
When she looks over and her eyes connect with Ausar’s, a sob wracks her chest. “Let me go to him,” she sobs, and her eyes never leave her brother’s injured form.
“Fuck that,” I growl since I’m not letting this evil bitch free. “Dean, find the basement. Get Rose and Seb.”
Dean nods, then walks over to Ausar. “Where is the basement, Ausar?” he asks softly, crouching down in front of the man.
“The door is in the kitchen, but she keeps it locked.” Ausar groans as his body begins to heal around the wooden bullet. We need to get the bullet out, but that is the last thing on my mind right now. I look down to Shani again, her face still turned toward Ausar.
“Where are the fucking keys, bitch?” I snarl at her, using my other hand to turn her face to me. “Tell me. Now.”
No words exit her lips. She just keeps her eyes to the side, staring at Ausar. I look over at Dean while I use all my weight to hold Shani down. “Check her pockets.”
Dean comes over and begins digging in her pockets, producing a set of bronze keys and a cell phone. I nod at him, motioning my head toward the kitchen. “Go get our girl.”
“And our brother?” he asks, a small smile on his lips.
“Yeah,” I say, smiling back, “him too.”
“Give me the cell phone,” Ausar says, his hand still on his chest. I look at him warily, as I’m unsure whether or not to fully trust him when I have his sister pinned to the ground. “I’m going to call this in.”
“To the humans?” I ask incredulously.
“No.” He pauses, as if saying the words hurt him a great deal more than the wound in his shoulder. “No, I’ll have to call it in to Silver Springs Supernatural Penitentiary.”
Dean hands Ausar the phone, and I feel all the fight go out of Shani’s body as her brother turns her in—as her plan and her world crumble around her.
Rose
Sebastian and Reg stand near the entrance, readying themselves for a fight as gunshots echo above us. I have not moved since I sat down next to Lily after contacting Pumpkin. She keeps her hand on my leg, smiling at me. “It sounds like your men have arrived, led here by your familiar,” sh
e says proudly, her head held high.
“Yes, but will they just end up down here with us?” I ask as I look up at the ceiling nervously, willing my eyesight to see through the floor above me.
“FINN! DEAN!” Sebastian screams, banging on the entrance of our prison. “WE’RE DOWN HERE!”
“LANDYN! HELP US!” Reg adds, staring at his friend through the glass. Landyn looks at us in confusion, as if the manipulation is failing. “Landyn,” Reg repeats as he knocks on the glass. “Fight it, you can fucking fight this shit.”
Lily looks at me, grabbing my hand and squeezing. “Do you feel magic within you, child?”
“No,” I say helplessly, then place my head against the wall behind me. “I feel no different than I ever have.”
“Not at all?” she asks as she looks at me with a knowing smile that really just pisses me off. No, I don’t feel any fucking magic inside me. This isn’t Harry fucking Potter. Hagrid isn’t about to bust in here exclaiming, Yer a witch, Rosalie. I’m just Rose. Turning into a vampire is the most magical thing I’ve ever experienced. Except finding my men and making them mine. Also saving my cat and forging this telepathic connection with him. Okay, maybe there is more magical stuff brewing than I may have realized, but I don’t have any underlying powers that I am just forgetting about or haven’t discovered yet. If this were a movie, I’d just be one catchy song away from the discovery of the magic within me. But this isn’t a movie; this is my life. A life where the fat girl got the guys, all three of them. She got to change into something wonderful and gets to live forever. She gets amazing friends and a fucking familiar. This shit is better than a movie because it’s real.
“Landyn,” I say his name robotically as I let all those thoughts spin in my head, my undead heart metaphorically glowing with magic. Like some kind of fucking Disney movie, I feel tendrils of magic within my chest, waiting for me to call on their help. “Landyn, open the door.” I open my eyes and see that almost everyone in the room is staring at me in confusion while some look at me like I’ve fallen off my rocker. But Lily smiles, squeezing my hand tighter in hers.
Rose- Feelin Thorny Page 11