5. Rose
Rose
NOW
“What does what feel like?” I ask my brother, shielding my eyes as headlights from the passing cars blind me.
Each day I’m finding it easier to be in my new, supersensitive skin, including eyes that hate bright lights and especially the sun, but I’m still not used to it yet.
I’m not even used to drinking blood. Part of me craves it, the other part still finds it icky.
“What is it like to die?” he asks.
I glance at him. His expression is grave for once.
I haven’t really talked to him a lot these last few days.
He’s been keeping to himself, hanging out in the garage now that I’m not in there.
The energy in the whole house has changed, becoming as somber as the gray clouds over the Pacific that only seemed to part tonight, and I know I’m to blame.
I haven’t been avoiding him, or my parents for that matter, just trying to figure out how to come to terms with everything the way that I normally do—alone.
But my parents, well, part of me thinks they might be avoiding me.
There is a strange wariness when they look at me now, like they’re waiting for me to lift up a mask and unveil someone else underneath.
I don’t know how to explain to them how I’m feeling or what I am, because I still don’t understand it, but I do know that I can be Rose Harper, as much as I can be Dahlia, and Lucy, and Mina.
My past doesn’t erase who I am in the present.
If anything, it adds to it. It gives me layers of life experience that weren’t there before.
“You want to know what it’s like to die?”
My brother nods. “Yeah. Who doesn’t?”
Humans have been obsessed with death for all of time.
I think vampires might share that same obsession.
Vampires can die, of course, in three different ways—stabbed in the heart with the blade of mordernes , the slayer’s blade; decapitation; or being burned alive.
But I think the obsession comes with their own lack of real mortality.
I take in a deep breath, my eyes going to the stars that are peeking out from behind moving clouds. “It’s peaceful,” I admit. “The moments leading up to it can be awful, but all that awfulness disappears once you make it over. You realize how little that mattered. How little most things mattered.”
“So what happened?”
“The first time I was Mina. And I died horrifically. At the hands of my father.”
“Fucking hell.” He whistles.
“Yeah. While my lover was feet away, held back by an army. My father…” I don’t even want to finish it.
Tell him what it really felt like to know the child inside me probably died moments before I did.
“Anyway, uh, once I passed over to the other side, once I knew I was dead and made peace with it, I was in another plane. I was surrounded by family and friends, some that I hadn’t even known in that lifetime. ” I pause. “You were there.”
Dylan balks at that. “What? How is that possible?”
I shrug lightly. “I don’t remember how. You learn everything when you’re on the other side, but you forget it all when you come back here.
I guess you have to, or you won’t learn the lessons you’re supposed to on this plane.
But yes, bro, you were there. Time is a circle.
All these lives are connected like a carousel around our soul.
We can only see forwards and back on the circle but the soul is in the middle and it can see every life at once.
It’s too much for our brains to really understand but it’s the truth.
I think you were there, Dylan, because our souls know each other from this life and maybe others. ”
He’s silent for a moment. “And to think I’m not even high yet.”
“Well, maybe it will make more sense when you are,” I joke.
“So what did it feel like? Being dead?”
“Like the biggest accomplishment,” I admit, smiling a little. Because the memory of that feeling still lingers inside me. “Like…getting to the showdown with the final boss, after so many tries, and winning.”
“You weren’t sad after the fact?”
I shake my head. “No. Not really. There were things and people I missed but I knew I would see them again soon.”
“And so how did you reincarnate? Does everyone?”
“I’m not sure. I think everyone can, but I also think it’s a choice. For whatever reason, I kept choosing to come back, in the same body, with my same ties to Valtu. There’s something I’m supposed to learn this time around that I never learned before.”
“Maybe you were supposed to come back as a vampire so he didn’t have to witness you dying again,” Dylan says softly. “You’re immortal now. You can be with him forever.”
He’s right. This time I don’t have to die again. We don’t have to be apart.
I just wish I had some sign in my gut that we’ll find each other again.
Guess I’ll have to find out.
“Can you do me a favor?” I ask him after we’ve sat in silence for a few minutes.
“What?”
“Take me to Eugene.”
He blinks and takes his gaze off the road. “Eugene? Why?”
“I’m going to catch a plane to San Francisco,” I tell him.
“What the fuck?”
I jerk my thumb at the backseat. “Already packed my bag, put it in the back before we got going.”
He glances over his shoulder and notices my bag there for the first time. “What the fuck, Rose?” he repeats. He eyes me, bewildered. “Now? I thought we were going to 7/11.”
“We can hit one on the way to the airport,” I assure him.
“Why don’t you take your own car?” he asks me.
“I don’t know how long I’ll be gone. It might be sitting there for a really long time.”
“Rose,” he says again, shaking his head. “I know you’re going through a lot right now, with your whole vampire thing and your past lives thing, but this is nuts. Why are you going to San Francisco?”
“I want to see Solon and Lenore. They’re the only ones that can help me find Valtu.”
That’s not one hundred percent true. During my research I did find Dr. Abraham Van Helsing who is a researcher at Oxford.
One look at his photo and I know this is the same man I was friends with in the late 1800s in London, then in Venice twenty-one years ago.
If he’s still around, then he can help me find Valtu.
But before I jet across the Atlantic to do that, I need to talk to Solon and Lenore and see what they know.
It wasn’t easy to discover where they operate.
I know from Dahlia’s memories that they operated the feeding club called Dark Eyes in their house in San Francisco.
The problem with vampires is that any human who knows the truth about them will never tell the general public.
They’re compelled not to. So if you search the internet for either a Lenore Warwick or an Absolon Stavig, you’ll come up with nothing.
It’s so thoroughly wiped that there isn’t even any record of Lenore, who went to Berkeley as a human, ever existing.
But I know that there was a club called Dark Eyes in the 1930s that old Russian czars used to hang out in and that the current club was modeled on that.
I also know that club was located in the basement of the William Westerfeld House, which has some crazy dark past itself.
Putting it all together, I’m guessing that’s where Lenore and Solon live.
“What makes you think you’ll find them?” he says. “Wouldn’t they be in hiding if Mom and Dad are? You think they’ll be easy to find?”
It’s not that I think I’ll be able to just waltz up to it.
I’m sure there’s a ton of security protocols in place.
From what I remember about Solon in person, and what Valtu had said about him, plus all we had learned about him in the witch’s guild, he has a lot of magic guarding him and that included intricate wards.
But I still have to try. Maybe when they know who I am, if I can make it that far, they’ll want to see me. I’m hoping so.
“Fine. I’ll take you to Eugene,” he says after a moment. “But I’m going with you to San Francisco.”
I give him a look of surprise. “What? No.”
“I’m not letting you go to that city alone. Rose, you haven’t traveled anywhere alone.”
“Neither have you.” When you’re a vampire, your social life tends to be a little sheltered. Sure, both my brother and I have friends but we’ve always held them at arm’s length.
“Which is why I’m going with you.” He sighs, slamming his palm against the steering wheel. “Actually, as the oldest, I should be reporting you to Mom and Dad.”
“Oldest? You’re twenty-two! You’re a year older than me. And reporting me? What am I, twelve?”
“Then why not tell them? Why sneak off this way?”
I give him a steady look. “You know why.”
Obviously they can’t ground me. But I do live in their house and there is no way they would let me go. I might have newfound supernatural strength as a vampire, but I haven’t tested it out yet, and there’s two of them and one of me.
“Whatever,” he says. “I’m going with you.”
This is the last thing I want. This is something between me and Lenore and Solon.
After all, I had met them before. But I have to admit, not only am I touched by my brother’s protectiveness, it might be nice to have him there.
I’m not worried about going places alone—he’s right in that I never have traveled alone as Rose, but as Dahlia I was seeing the world by myself.
Yet, I really don’t know what to expect.
Everything I know about these vampires is from twenty-one years ago.
“You didn’t even pack,” I point out.
“Then we’re going to do some shopping once we get to San Francisco,” he says with a twinkle in his eye.
* * *
The drive to Eugene took just under two hours, with the weather getting progressively colder as we got to the airport. It’s late November, just after Thanksgiving, but the air smells like snow and I’m hoping it will hold off until we take off.