She was easily the most beautiful woman that Rose had ever seen, more beautiful than any actress or model, even more beautiful than Emma or Sofia—the only female vampires that Rose had ever met. A blue, satin dress clung to the woman’s small, petite figure. Soft, pale blonde hair fell around the woman’s shoulders, perfectly straight, with no hint of waviness or frizziness. The woman had flawless, milky-white skin—pale and soft, like thin, powdery snow. The woman’s full, plump lips curved into a seductive smile, and her deep, dark blue eyes bore into Rose, as if the woman could see straight into Rose’s mind.
“Who are you?” Rose asked, her brows furrowed.
“You tell me,” the woman said softly. “I’m in your dream, after all.”
“I’ve never seen you before,” Rose said. “I would remember, if I had.”
“Would you?” the woman murmured. Her head tilted to the side, an amused smile curling at the corners of her lips. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
Rose frowned at the woman. “Who are you, and how did you get here?”
The woman stepped closer. A seductive smile curved slowly at her lips. “Maybe I’m no one,” she said in that soft, lilting voice of hers. She pressed her hand against the side of Rose’s face, her palm soft and warm, despite the cold darkness that surrounded them. She tilted her face upward, her lips brushing against Rose’s lips, her breath caressing Rose’s lips with each word. “Maybe I’m just a beautiful woman that your mind conjured up for you to…enjoy.”
Rose’s eyes widened as the woman’s lips touched hers. The woman’s lips molded to Rose’s lips—soft, warm, and wet. As soon as the realization fully hit Rose—the realization that a strange woman had just kissed her…in a nightmare, of all places—Rose placed her hand on the woman’s shoulder and pushed her back. “What are you doing?” she sputtered, blinking in shock.
“Don’t you think I’m beautiful?” the woman asked with a coy smile.
Rose scowled at her. “Well, yeah, obviously, you’re beautiful. I don’t think anyone would argue with that. But…why the heck were you kissing me?”
“Why are you questioning it?” the woman countered, laughing softly, as if Rose’s concerns were absurd. She brushed Rose’s hand out of the way and stepped closer again, her soft curves pressing against Rose’s blood-soaked body. “This is your dream,” she murmured. “Stop questioning it, and just enjoy.”
“This isn’t a dream,” Rose argued. “This is a nightmare, the same nightmare that I’ve had every single day since the night I died, except…you’ve never been here before. I have no idea who you are or how you got here.”
The woman grimaced and glanced around at their horrific surroundings. “You have this dream every day?” she asked incredulously. “That’s terrible.”
Rose narrowed her eyes at the woman. “Who are you?”
“I told you,” the woman sighed. She waved her hand dismissively and rolled her eyes, as if she were annoyed by Rose’s questions. “I’m no one. Your sick, demented mind finally had mercy on you and conjured up a beautiful woman for you to have a little bit of fun with.” She flashed a seductive smile.
“That’s not how it works,” Rose insisted. “In dreams, the mind pieces together images from your memory and creates a story with those images. But you are not from my memory. I would remember you, if I had ever seen you before, and I don’t. So, who are you, and how are you here right now?”
The woman’s brows furrowed. “Why are you questioning this?”
“I’m pretty sure I just explained that,” Rose sassed.
“You’re fighting me,” the woman realized, her eyes widening.
“Now, that’s a bit dramatic,” Rose muttered indignantly. “I’m not fighting anyone. I just asked a few questions, a few appropriate and necessary questions.”
“You’re fighting me mentally,” she said. “Your will is fighting mine.”
Rose frowned at the woman. “I have no idea what you’re saying.”
“Most people just accept what happens in dreams, but not you,” the woman said thoughtfully. “You question everything. Relentlessly. It’s so strange.”
“If you think this is bad, you should see me in real life,” Rose muttered.
“How are you able to do this?” the woman mumbled. “What are you?”
“I’m a human,” Rose responded automatically. She frowned. “Wait, no. Not anymore. I was a human…until a few weeks ago. Now, I’m a vampire.”
The woman smiled. “I know you’re a vampire, Rose.”
“And you know my name, too, apparently,” Rose said dryly.
“I know a lot of things about you, Rose Foster,” the woman whispered.
Rose raised an eyebrow. “Oh, really? I thought you said that you were just a creation of my mind. How does a creation of my mind know anything?”
The woman giggled. It was a soft, bubbly sound that sounded out-of-place in this dark nightmare. “You caught me. I’m real,” the woman laughed. She stepped forward, her dress swaying around her delicate, girlish figure. The front of her body—her soft, flat stomach and her small, soft breasts—pressed against the front of Rose’s body as she moved her lips to Rose’s ear and whispered, “I’m also alive.” She leaned back on her heels, a slow, seductive smile curling at her lips. She pressed her finger to her lips and whispered, “Shhhh.”
Rose stared blankly at her. “Uh, that’s great. Now, who are you again?”
“You’ll find out soon enough,” the woman assured her.
“I will?” Rose said, frowning.
“Yes, do you know why?” the woman asked. “Because you need me.”
“I need a dream person who says she’s real?” Rose asked skeptically.
“I’m the only person who understands you, Rose,” the woman said.
“Oh, good,” Rose muttered sarcastically. “The only person who understands me is in my dreams. I would act surprised, but…honestly, I’m not.”
The woman continued, as if Rose hadn’t said anything, “Your friends don’t understand you. They care about you, of course, but they’re terrified of you.”
Rose felt the blood drain from her face. “They are?”
“Your vampire friends are,” the woman confirmed, a slow, sensual smile curving at her lips. “Your human friends aren’t, but that’s only because they don’t know what you are.” She stepped forward and tilted her face up toward Rose’s face. Her thin, delicate fingers curled around Rose’s jaw, as if she were going to lean in for another kiss. Her breath tickled Rose’s lips as she whispered, “When they find out, they’ll run in the other direction…as fast as they can.”
Rose felt every word on her lips, and in any normal situation, she would’ve pushed the strange, seductive woman away. But what the woman said affected her so deeply, as if the woman were voicing her worst fears, and that paralyzing fear held her frozen in place. “Not Audrey,” she breathed in disbelief.
The woman smiled. “Especially Audrey.”
“Audrey and I have been through so much together,” Rose argued. “She’ll accept me. I know she will. I’m not that different as a vampire.”
“Aww,” the woman cooed, her tone full of thick, fake pity. “You have so much faith in her. It’s so tragic…especially considering how disgusted she will be when she finds out that you drink blood. She will call you a monster.”
“You’re lying,” Rose accused half-heartedly.
“But can you really blame her?” the woman continued, finally taking her hand off of Rose’s face to make a sweeping gesture toward the carnage around them. She laughed, “Look at what you’ve done. You are a monster, aren’t you?”
The ball of nauseating guilt that weighed down Rose’s chest seemed to suddenly increase in weight, until it felt as if it would crush her. “I did it to save my friends,” she whispered. “I didn’t want to kill anyone, but I had no choice.”
“Oh?” the woman said skeptically. She stepped around Rose, toward Theron’s corpse. She pla
ced her blue, high-heeled shoe on Theron’s head, turning his face to the side so that his dead, glassy eyes looked directly at Rose. She raised an eyebrow at Rose. “You didn’t want to kill anyone? Not even him?”
“No,” Rose said weakly. “I had no choice. He was going to kill them.”
The woman circled around Rose, like a predator circling her prey. As she walked around Rose, she leaned in close and whispered in Rose’s ear, “Liar.”
Rose shuddered. She watched as the woman finished circling her.
“He hurt you,” the woman reminded her. “He scarred you.”
“That’s not why I killed him,” Rose said softly.
“He tried to rape you,” the woman continued.
Rose felt sick at the reminder. “I didn’t kill him because of that either.”
The woman leaned in close and whispered, “He hurt the ones you love.”
That’s when Rose felt it again: that intense, overpowering anger that burned through her veins like fire. It was a dark, intense power that seemed to supercharge every cell in her body and overtake her mind. She knew from experience that if this weren’t a dream, her eyes would look different right now.
The woman smiled. “There’s the anger.”
Rose squeezed her eyes shut, breathing deeply, as she tried to push back that dark, uncontrollable power. Dream or not, she couldn’t lose herself to it.
“This world has been cruel to you,” the woman said.
Rose opened her eyes. “This world is cruel to everyone.”
“Yes,” the woman said, “but it’s crueler to some than others.” She moved closer, her eyes softening with sympathy. “You and I have suffered unfairly because of this world’s cruelty. We know darkness that others don’t.”
“You can’t just focus on the cruelty. This world has good in it, too,” Rose insisted. “Wherever there is evil, there is also good to fight against it.”
“Good?” the woman scoffed. “This world has scarred you—physically and emotionally—since you were born. You never knew good. Only pain.”
Rose gasped as a terrible pain tore across the skin of her thighs. Her eyes widened in shock as she glanced down at her thighs and noticed the rips in the thighs of her jeans, revealing raw, bleeding skin. Her thighs burned and throbbed, as if they’d just been cut open. “What?” she breathed in disbelief.
“You were only four years old,” the woman said, as if there were nothing unusual about the sudden wounds on Rose’s thighs, “and he whipped you until your skin peeled away. You were covered in blood, and he still didn’t stop.”
Rose trembled at the memory, her eyes wide with horror. “Please, stop.”
The woman tilted her head to the side. “Why would I stop when there are so many more to choose from? Do you remember the one who bashed your head against the coffee table? Or the one who punched you in the face?”
Rose screamed out as the skin around her forehead and scalp split open, blood pouring down her face, just as it had done when she was a child. Bruises appeared on her face, as tender and painful as they’d feel if they were real, and blood poured from her nose. She collapsed onto her knees. “Please, stop.”
“But the world is so good, remember?” the woman sneered.
Rose began to sob at the memories that were suddenly thrust to the forefront of her mind, as vivid and real as they’d be if they had just happened. “I healed,” she whispered, trembling in pain. “I forgave the ones who hurt me.”
The woman knelt in front of Rose. “They don’t deserve forgiveness. They deserve to suffer for what they did to you. This world deserves to suffer.”
Rose shook her head stubbornly, tears streaming down her face. “No.”
The woman pushed Rose’s blood-soaked hair out of her face, trailing her fingers down the curve of Rose’s jaw. “I can make them pay,” she whispered.
“I don’t want that,” Rose insisted, her voice cracking.
The woman’s brows furrowed. “Why not?”
“It’s not who I am,” Rose stated.
The woman’s hand fell to her side, and she stared at Rose, as if Rose were the most baffling person in existence. “What about your ex-boyfriend?” she asked, grasping desperately at another memory. “He tried to rape…”
“I know what he did,” Rose interrupted.
“He violated you,” the woman insisted, “destroyed your self-esteem…”
“It doesn’t matter what memory you show me,” Rose said. “I remember everything that happened to me, but it’s over. Vengeance…is not who I am.”
For the first time since the woman had appeared in the dream, sadness tinged her blue eyes. “I thought you…of all people…would understand me.”
Rose’s chest tightened with sympathy for the woman. “I’m sorry.”
The woman stood. She cast another look down at Rose, disappointment etched in her soft, feminine features. “We will meet again soon. In real life.”
Rose frowned. “We will?”
“You will regret turning me down,” the woman warned.
—
Rose jerked upright in bed, her heart racing against her chest, the traumatic nightmare still fresh on her mind. She stared blankly at the white blanket around her waist, somewhat surprised to find it clean of blood. She could still feel the pain in her thighs and her face, as if the wounds had been real.
“Rose?” Kallias asked groggily, sitting up beside her. “Are you all right?”
“Here. I can help,” Erik said as he sat down on the edge of the bed, the mattress sinking beneath his weight. He placed his hand on Rose’s shoulder, and calmness swept through her body, slowing her rapid pulse and easing her fear.
As the calm emotions washed away the terror from her dream, Rose looked up, noticing Erik sitting next to her, dressed in green sweatpants, his wavy blonde hair dripping with water. A distinct, soapy scent clung to his skin. Rose realized that he must have recently showered, which struck her as strange, considering the clock on the nightstand showed that it was four in the afternoon.
Kallias placed his hand on her back, his fingers rubbing her back in gentle, soothing circles. “Was it that nightmare again?” he asked sympathetically.
Rose hung her face in her hands, rubbing her eyes with her fingers. “Yeah,” she sighed. “It was different this time, though. There was a woman.”
“Oh, I like the sound of this,” Erik said with a playful grin.
Rose lifted her head to pin him with an irritated glare.
“Oh, right. Bad timing,” Erik said, cringing. “Oops.”
“What woman?” Kallias asked curiously. “Sofia?”
“No,” she answered, frowning. “I don’t know who she was, actually.”
“Was she hot?” Erik interjected.
Rose scowled at him. “She was exceptionally attractive, yes.”
“That sounds like a good dream to me,” Erik said, shrugging.
Rose just stared at him, clearly not amused by his remarks. “It wasn’t.”
Kallias leaned forward, his long, brown hair falling over his face, and wiped his hand over his face, as if he were trying to wipe away the drowsiness.
“I’m sorry I woke you guys up,” Rose sighed guiltily.
Erik shifted uncomfortably but said nothing.
“Don’t apologize for that, Rose,” Kallias said, scowling at her. He rubbed the back of his neck, scratching absently at the tattooed flames that covered some of his scars, and then, he leaned back against the headboard, apparently planning to stay awake. Empathy burned in his brown eyes as he stared at her. “I know what it’s like to have those nightmares. I have them, too.”
“Besides, your emotions are what woke us up, and you can’t control emotions,” Erik said. He flashed a cocky smirk. “Unless you’re me, of course.”
Rose tossed the thick, white blanket off of her and swung her feet over the bed, feeling the rough, flat carpet beneath her bare feet. Erik stood and moved out of the way so that she could s
tand. “You two go on back to sleep,” she sighed as she stood. “I’m just going to splash some cold water on my face.”
“Are you sure?” Kallias asked skeptically. “I can stay awake with you.”
“No, I’m fine,” Rose said, forcing a smile. “Just go back to sleep.”
Kallias studied her suspiciously. “Rose…”
“I said I’m fine,” she snapped. She shook her head, anxiety still buzzing through her veins from the nightmare. “Sorry. I just…I need a moment, okay?”
Kallias nodded, his brows creased with worry. He lay back down, pulling the blanket up over his bare torso. His eyes slid closed as an overwhelming tiredness overtook him, pulling him back into a deep, sun-induced sleep.
Rose cast a curious glance at Erik who still stood awkwardly by the bed, and then, she walked past him, toward the bathroom. The white tile floor felt cold beneath her bare feet, and the bathroom smelled of soap and water. She stopped in front of the sink, glancing at her reflection in the mirror. The skin beneath her wide, azure eyes looked blackish purple, like bruises that rested perfectly beneath her eyes. She knew she needed to go back to sleep, but she didn’t see that happening anytime soon, not after that nightmare. She turned on the cold water and cupped her hands beneath the stream. Her disheveled, auburn hair fell forward, around her face, as she leaned over the sink and splashed her face with the icy, refreshing water. She noticed Erik’s scent drift into the room.
“You weren’t asleep,” she said without looking up from the sink.
“What makes you think that?” he asked from the doorway.
Rose glanced at him, cold water dripping from her eyelashes. He leaned against the doorframe with his arms crossed, his green eyes watching her warily. She waved her hand at his wet hair. “Well, for one, you’ve already showered.”
He dragged his hand through his drenched, blonde hair. “Oh, yeah.”
She leaned her hip against the sink. “Why were you awake?”
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