Bloodrose

by Cassidy Raindance

  “Abandoned warehouse three blocks west of my apartment,” I whispered as quickly as I could get the words out.

  As I heard the words come out of my mouth I knew that I had fooled no one. I had not one drop of dignity left and stood in an ocean of real fear. I had no idea how far Sebastian would have gone. And I wasn’t prepared to find out.

  Sebastian made a motion to the guards and they set me down on the carpet. Knowing I needed to save face as much as I could, the curious and judgmental eyes ripping me apart with every passing second, I pulled at the guards’ hold still on my arms and sent a renewed glare towards Sebastian who began turning to leave.

  “You’re not going to find her there. This is crazy,” I shouted louder than I had intended.

  Sebastian stopped and the room became quiet. He turned back around to look at me then, taking the few short paces to close the distance and I found his breath hot on my cheek he was so close.

  “When I find her, and I will find her, you will have the Queen to answer to for your involvement,” he said, his words loud and echoing through the now silently but listening room, “And if I find her hurt I hope you would make peace with the idea of an eternal death because no one will be stepping in for you Lydia, certainly not me,”

  “This is illegal,” I said, my words were barely a whisper and I didn’t realize until they had fallen that hot tears were streaming down my face, “It’s illegal and you know it,” I screamed for the entire night to hear, my rage rushing through me.

  I knew he would find Prussia dead and that Penelope would be long gone. For him to disgrace me in front of the court in this way, for him to shame me over a human against our laws and ways was not right. Anyone would see the wrong in this. And it hurt me that he had done this. It hurt me deeply as a spear through the chest.

  Whatever Sebastian had turned into I knew where my loyalties still needed to rest and my priorities were clear. The moment Sebastian left for the warehouse I needed to send Penelope a text and warn her to get out, to get out fast. She wasn’t safe with the Queen’s guards on their way knowing exactly where she was.

  “Long live the Queen,” said Sebastian, taking a step back.

  My rage dissipated into confusion quickly as I felt a dull pinch at the back of my neck and the guards let my arms go. Sebastian raised his head with pride. If I didn’t know any better I would think the Queen stood behind me. As a precaution I decided I should echo the same sentiments he expressed less I be accused of not expressing appropriate love for the Queen.

  “Long….live…the…” my voice trailed off as I sent a hand to investigate the pinch that had been at the back of my neck. I didn’t feel anything and even the pinch had disappeared quickly. But I turned enough to see who had been behind me. And why.

  Confusion turned to shock as I recognized Tommy. He worked with the Queen’s roses, her bloodroses, but he also studied us, our blood, our species, and our genetic makeup. He held an empty syringe.

  “You’ve been given a light sedative,” said Tommy.

  I turned back toward Sebastian to express how unacceptable this entire treatment had been but he had already gotten what he had wanted. I only caught the fleeting glimpse of him leaving, a group of armed Queen’s guards at his heels. Sebastian had gotten what he wanted.

  I looked around at the faces still watching, still judging, and still taking in my entire predicament. I had called them. I had wanted them to watch. The only question I had left to ask myself would be whether my performance had been good enough to garner favor from the court to overthrow the Queen. A moment later a remaining guard picked me up and tossed me unceremoniously over his shoulder as the room went black. My last thought - that I hadn’t had a chance to warn Penelope.

  Chapter 27

  Picking up Prussia’s scent wasn’t difficult once I knew where to look. Even faint, I could smell her fear. It made my stomach turn that I smelled her in this way – as hunter smells prey. But I had to hunt her scent to find her. I didn’t have any other scent to go off of and while I couldn’t describe the way she smelled I could pick her out of a crowd in an instant.

  I wasn’t intimidated by the building when I found it, not far from her apartment and the park but too close for comfort more than anything, but I did imagine how Prussia must feel being inside. And it made me furious at what kind of pain a person might inflict in a building like this. Nothing good could be going on in a place like this.

  Abandoned, creepy, and rat infested, it’s what Lydia and I would have looked for if looking for a place to torture. And I could smell it from the street. I entered the eerie abandoned building and the smell of blood coated everything. Even if it had been wiped up, the stench still permeated from every surface. This had the thick and unmistakable scent of a slaughter house for humans.

  I had brought a dozen of the Queen’s guards with me and hadn’t intended to use even half of them. But finding this building in the way that it was, I wondered if a dozen would be enough. I knew my team would work cohesively and they knew my intentions exactly. A clean sweep had simple instructions. Extract the prize and kill anything else that bothered to move, run, scream, beg or breathe.

  The only thing I could hear as my guards moved through the building, starting from the top and working their way down was the blood drops and splatters to the floor. Each floor I heard another person extinguished. As my team came closer I knew that the clean would be complete any moment.

  I walked to the center of the large main room of the building, right through the front doors and I could feel my adrenaline racing. I needed to wait until my guards finished their sweep before I would know exactly where Prussia was and if she was alright. I needed to wait but I didn’t want to. I wanted to rip someone to pieces. And I wanted to find the bitch that took Prussia away, the one that intended to cause her pain. I wanted that one all to myself. My guards knew it and if they could, they would save her for me.

  I walked slowly with quiet steps. I didn’t want to give anyone a clue that we were there. But I also wanted a piece of the action as well. I waited for them to come to me, to stumble upon their own deaths and to find that they lacked in the moment it counted most. They had picked the wrong side and they had made a bad bet. It would end here and I would end it for them.

  I turned in a circle as I reached the center of the room and waited, patiently, for any motion or movement towards me. Vampyrs were faster, stronger, swifter but I had been more closely descended from the Queen than any of these mouth breathers could ever dream and I would put them in the ground permanently.

  The room didn’t have much in it. The random dust covered furniture that you couldn’t make out what they were had been surrounded by uncomfortable looking chairs stacked, also under dust covers. Whoever had meant to come back for this stuff had been abandoned it long ago.

  I continued to turn in a circle, looking for any kind of life or death after life. I looked for my men and I looked for any signs that might point me to Prussia. My radio that connected me to my team remained silent and I continued to hear the distant splatter and drops of blood. But it became longer in between each death now. The clean sweep would be coming to a close in a mater of minutes. It concerned me because there had been no indication that we had found Prussia yet.

  When I heard the splatter on the ground floor, on the floor I stood, that’s when I knew that something had changed. I headed toward where I had heard the noise as fast as I could go. I wound my way through dirty, littered, dark passage ways until I found the building open up into the back of the warehouse.

  A great room with windows beginning at the top and reaching all the way to the ground floor meant that if they had processed meat it had been done back here. I noticed the random dry blood stains on the now concrete floor. I scanned the open space and determined the most likely place for anyone to be – a sort of backroom. It looked like a freezer space area.

  I ran as fast as I could. I couldn’t wait on my team. They would have my back any m
inute and they would hear any noise. Something told me that Prussia didn’t have any time to lose. They had had her long enough and there would be no telling what they had done to her.

  When I got near I could smell her perfume without any trouble. It mixed with blood that smelled sweet and it made my stomach turn. The aroma made me furious with hunger and ashamed at the thought that it was Prussia that my hunger and thirst craved. I didn’t wait a single moment.

  I grabbed the metal riveted door and forced it open with all my strength in the event that it had been locked from the inside. It crashed open and I saw her – the woman from the park. Her face dripped with blood and the room wafted an intoxicating aroma of death towards me. I fought off my urges, all of them except one.

  When my eyes landed on the chair in the middle of the room, one vampyr feeding on the blood drenched body, my rage enflamed me. I gave a roar of a battle cry as I went for the one still crouched at Prussia, looking as though I were not invited but not impressed or concerned with me. He ducked his head back down to take one last drink. My most base instincts took over and my rage had full reign.

  “Kill her! Now!” screamed the woman, blood foaming at the corners of her mouth.

  Her eyes were wide with both fear and anger. I took the few short steps to the vampyr crouched to continue feeding on Prussia and I grabbed his head. His teeth were sunk into Prussia’s wrist and if I yanked him away he might rip what remained of her wrist out.

  She would bleed out in seconds, though from the looks of things she had died hours ago. Blood soaked her from head to foot, her hair had become matted with her own blood in places, there were deep gouges all along her body and I didn’t have much choice in how to get his teeth out of her.

  I went with what I knew. I used my hand on his head to simply squeeze. The bastard bit down even harder. I evened it up with the hardest squeeze I could manage. I knew he had decided the pain had become too great and would ask for mercy. Before he could beg, I felt his skull collapse in my hands. Large chunks of his head popped all over me, all over the room, and a large piece of brain splattered right on the blond woman’s chest with a streak of his blood slapping her in the face.

  I could see her face begin to register what had just happened but I didn’t want for her response. I ripped off the vampyr’s arm at the shoulder and bit away the flesh surrounding the protruding bone. It took less than a second as my carnal instincts assured me that if Prussia really wasn’t alive – this would comfort me in the years to follow. As soon as the bone was well revealed I used my hand to snap the end into a point and looked at the blond haired woman.

  Her face had turned into a rage twisted mess. Perhaps I had killed someone that mattered to her. Or perhaps she just didn’t like having her little party crashed. Either way, when I snapped his arm bone into a sharp point and looked at her she took a step back. The step back is a subconscious signal of retreat, the step that you can’t hide because your fear is too great which is exactly what I wanted her to feel. I wanted her to be more afraid than she had ever been in her life.

  No one came into the Queen’s domain to take whatever pleased them. The vampyr with the crushed skull moved beneath where I stood, looking at the woman. The woman hissed at me, small particles of blood spattering out at me. In the briefest of moments I could smell the blood right before it hit my face. She had fed on Prussia.

  I roared back at her and without losing eye contact with her I plunged the sharpened point into the chest of the vampyr still wiggling in small movements on the floor until the point slammed into the concrete floor underneath. My hand still in contact with his chest, I felt as he burst to flames and turned to ash at my hands.

  The woman watched in horror as the vampyr disintegrated into flakes as I continued to watch her. I watched the pain wash across her face again and again, all passing in mere seconds. When she finally looked at me, I knew that I had the fight I wanted and that she knew one of us wouldn’t make it out of this room alive.

  “Do you know how old I am?” she hissed at me.

  “How old you were,” I corrected, calmness and control in my voice, “Did I know how old you were is what people will ask…after I give you the eternal sleep,”

  That seemed to piss her off plenty. She leaped toward me and I jumped right into her path, wanting to stay between her and Prussia. I didn’t expect for an intelligent blow to fall on me. Her hands moved swiftly and I knew after a few hits to the head and body that she had training of some kind. She knocked me on to my butt and I glared up at her from the floor.

  “You’ve been trained by the Royal Guard,” I thought out loud, realizing that she wasn’t as disconnected from the court as I had been led to believe.

  “You’ll definitely find out, now won’t you?” she taunted me.

  It made me think to Lydia but I had to push it out of my mind as I watched the woman reach for Prussia’s throat where she sat still in the center of the room in the blood drenched chair.

  I stepped between the woman and Prussia and managed to get one of my hands around her throat. She kicked her leg up over my head and I knew what she planned to do before she executed but delivered it faster than I could react. She used her leg to leverage herself out of my grip by pushing on my throat with her calf and simultaneously kick me in the head as she pushed me backwards. She did a cocky spin and landed in a fighting stance, a smile across her face.

  I hadn’t fallen but she had managed to get out of my grip easily enough. Her ability to fight had become problematic. I stood for a moment to assess my next attack and my ears pricked up. The team had reached this floor and would come in any moment. The look on her face suggested she realized I wasn’t alone and we would have company soon. She began inching her way toward the door and I decided now would be the best time, when she had other things on her mind like an escape.

  I ran to intercept her at the door and she barely made it in front of me, closer to the door but exactly where I wanted her. I grabbed the back of her shirt and pulled as hard as I could. I pulled her so hard that she lifted off the ground and flew into the back wall, dropping hard to the ground. I didn’t wait for her to get up. I ran to where she had fallen and snapped her left leg. Blood splattered all over the wall. I picked her up by the throat and carried her one handed, feet barely dragging a bloody path behind her, to where Prussia sat in the middle of the room.

  “What did you want with her?” I yelled.

  “A snack,” she said through gritted teeth, “A…royal…snack,”

  I snarled at her and growled a deep, low growl. She hissed a gargled hiss back at me. I grabbed her by the head and her eyes went wide with the realization of what would come next but it came faster than her mouth could open to protest. I crushed her skull and enjoyed watching her face distort into different levels of pain in that instant.

  The last spray of blood splashed the crumbling walls of the dank basement. But I stood defeated and my heart ached at what I had failed to do not only for the Queen but for Prussia. Never mind the fate of our species. I hadn’t managed to save her frail life no matter how hard I had tried.

  I looked down on Prussia still sitting in the chair, streaks of blood from feedings so entangled with one another that she looked dipped in it all. I let a hand touch her hair and felt the single soft wave by the crown of her head that wasn’t matted with blood. I gave a light stroke to her cheek as I tried to find a way to say goodbye.

  “The perimeter is secured. Full sweep has been achieved,” said one of my men, “Do you want to take her with us?”

  “No,” I said, looking down on Prussia’s blood soaked and chewed body, “I don’t think the Queen would have any need for a corpse,”

  “I mean the one in the chair,” he said, “We took care of everyone in the freezer already,”

  “Is she not still alive?” asked the guard.

  “There is no way she could still be alive with this much blood,” I said, pointing around on the floor.

  I said i
t with anger in my voice and when I looked at the guard I saw him take a step back.

  “Very true, I’m sorry…” said the guard, “Did you check for a pulse?”

  I wanted to rip his head off. I gave him a dirty look and a deep growl uttered deep in my throat. His mouth clamped shut immediately as he realized he had crossed a line he hadn’t known to be there. He couldn’t see me trying to say goodbye to her? He had to keep igniting false hopes? A human couldn’t lose so much blood and survive.

  I had been too late. She didn’t stir, she didn’t move to my touch, she didn’t wake to the noise of what had gone on around her, and as I looked down at her again her skin looked pearl pale with an ethereal shine.

  I let my hand stroke her cheek one more time. And I felt her exhale. It wasn’t much, it was the smallest motion, but I had felt it and even if the chances were one in a billion, it ignited a hopeful spark in me that hurt immediately. Because I knew it more than likely to be an involuntary reaction of a decomposing human body than anything else but still I had hope.