12. Rose #2
No, even though I’m currently chained up to Valtu’s bed in some secret location in the Bavarian Alps, and even though it’s not the Valtu I’ve loved and lost, I know I don’t have much of a choice here.
I could have gone on as new vampire Rose Harper, but I’d never be able to live a long and happy life if I knew that my love was out there, nor would I be able to ignore the fact that justice would never be served.
It’s a big risk I’m here, and if there’s even a small chance I might not survive the night, it’s still a risk that needs to happen.
You don’t just stop loving someone because they stop loving you.
You don’t forget about a relationship because someone else forgets it.
No matter who he is now, what he’s done, who he’s become, he is still the man I love.
It might not be on the surface, but it’s still there, buried away.
That man was my home. He is still my home.
And I’m going to do whatever it takes so that he sees that, so that I can become his home again too.
Our hearts belong together because we had true love, and true love never dies.
Except he did kill you, remember , a voice says inside my head.
That he did. I really thought I would feel nothing but anger and betrayal at the first sight of his face, but those feelings were so far away. They still are there, despite the circumstances, despite seeing firsthand again how easily he succumbs to the darkness inside him.
But, as he tasted, there’s darkness inside me too. Maybe that’s why we’ve always returned to each other.
The darkness in me calls to the darkness in you.
I sigh, my heart feeling especially tender.
I know I’m doing this because I love him and I believe in him and I believe in us, but I can’t pretend that it didn’t sting while being with him tonight, tasting him, touching him, making him come undone like I have done countless times before, while he looked at me like I was nobody.
He treated me like I was a snack or a toy for him to taste and play with before he gets bored.
He looks at me and he only sees something to use and, fuck that hurts, and I know that pain is going to get worse the longer this goes on, I’m afraid I won’t be able to—
My thoughts come to a sudden halt.
I go still.
There.
I can hear something in the room with me.
I hold my breath and concentrate, ignoring the sound of my heart which is starting to whoosh loudly in my veins. I lift up my head and look around but the room looks the same as before. Empty and dark.
But there’s that sound again.
A cold trail of fear rolls down my spine.
It’s a wet gurgling sound. Followed by a mewling sound.
At first I think maybe there’s a kitten or a cat in the room with me, perhaps it’s always been there, but then it doesn’t quite sound like a cat either. It’s more human and yet…not.
Suddenly there’s a short gasping cry that echoes.
Oh my god.
It’s…it sounds like a baby.
A human child.
“Hello?” I say, my voice sounding flat in the stone room as I keep searching the corners, wishing like hell I could move.
It lets out another cry again, not quite one of distress, but the happy, gurgling cries that a baby might make, only there’s something off about it.
I feel a sharp pang in my womb in response, as if the baby is mine, and my mind wants to wallow in the pain for a moment and drift back to the babies I lost as Mina and Lucy.
I didn’t think I had any mothering instincts left since I never thought about being a mother as Dahlia, and I certainly hadn’t considered it as Rose thus far, but it’s rising up inside me sharp and powerful and primal.
Oh god , I think to myself, I thought I’d made peace with the past.
But the baby is somewhere in this room and it’s making those gurgling sounds and in front of me the bathroom door is slowly opening with a drawn-out creak.
Holy fuck .
I suck in my breath, sorrow and terror fighting inside me for dominance, watching as the door opens wider, the low creeeeeeak filling my bones.
Then the door stops.
Nothing comes out, not that I can see.
But I can hear it.
I can hear something shuffling along the stone floor. It sounds wet and thick, like someone dragging a wet towel on the ground, but then I hear the occasional slap of flesh.
What the hell is happening?!
“Valtu?” I ask and it feels like the darkness of the room is swallowing up my voice, eating my strength, my nerve. “Hello? Please tell me who’s there.”
The sound disappears. I wait a moment, listening hard for its return. But there’s only silence.
I breathe out in relief, relaxing back into the bed, hoping that this is all some horrible figment of my imagination.
Until I feel the covers shift underneath me.
I raise my head and look down at the bed and watch as the covers move back a little, as if being tugged, as if someone is lying at the foot of the bed and pulling at it.
Oh fuck. Oh god.
I keep my eyes glued to the end of the bed, right between my spread legs, a whimper escaping my throat as a tiny human hand comes into view.
A small bloody hand belonging to a baby.
I open my mouth to scream but no sound comes out.
The baby’s head rises above the edge of the bed. Half of its skull is crushed in, like someone stepped on it, and I immediately know that it’s my baby. It’s the baby I carried as Mina, after my father had stepped on my stomach and before he chopped off my head.
It’s me and Valtu’s first child. And the first child to die.
The baby looks at me, one eye popping out, its mouth crooked and drooling blood. An aberration, and yet part of me loves it like a mother would love its child. Because this is my child, isn’t it? A child I’d lost but had somehow found me again all these centuries later.
“Hello,” I whisper, a sob falling from my lips. “Hello little one.”
The baby opens its mouth wide, letting out a peal of metallic laughter and bares its fangs at me. Fangs. Of course it has fangs.
I am cursed, Valtu, don’t you see? I said that once to him, as I lay on my deathbed as Lucy, our second child still inside of me, dead. I see it now, clear as day. I’m cursed.
The baby starts crawling toward me, dragging itself along, and I realize it can’t move its legs. It pulls itself up the length of the bed, heading right between my thighs.
Like it’s heading back home.
Oh fuck. Oh no. Oh god no.
“No!” I cry out, trying to squirm, trying to move my body, but I can’t. I pull and yank at the cuffs but they only cut into my skin and I’m trapped. I’m utterly trapped.
“Help!” I scream. “Help! Abe! Valtu! Help me!”
But my scream feels weak and flat, like it’s contained in these walls.
And the baby keeps coming. Snapping its bloody fanged mouth, its eye nearly hanging out of its crushed skull, bits of brain matter leaking from its nose. It moves like a wet mop, these sloppy shuffles forward, all blood and other things I don’t want to think about.
“Mother,” the baby says, its voice positively deep and inhuman.
It reaches for me, heading right for my womb, its little hands grabbing my skin as it tries to force its way back inside me, and I’m unable to close my legs to stop it.
I scream and scream and scream. My body bucks and jerks, hips lifting off the bed, trying to stop it from coming inside but its little nails are digging into me as it reaches in deeper, grabbing a hold of my cervix.
I scream again until my throat is raw and the sound vanishes and I can feel the little monster pulling itself inside of me, feel its teeth biting at my insides until I’m bleeding profusely on the bed.
I’m going to die here. It’s going to eat me from the inside, it’s going to bleed me dry.
I throw my head back, ready to scream again in this never-ending horror when suddenly…
It stops.
The pain stops, the pressure stops, the sounds stop.
It all stops.
I look down and there’s no baby. There’s no blood. There’s nothing there at all.
“Jesus,” I swear breathlessly, beads of cold sweat rolling down my forehead. “What the hell was that?”
I keep looking around the room, thinking I’m going to see the baby appear somewhere, or see a tiny bloody handprint, evidence that it was here, but I’m utterly alone in the room again.
I put my head back down on the pillow and close my eyes, trying to control my heart and my ragged breath. If I were human, I think it’s possible to have had five heart attacks by now.
How could my mind have conjured up something so real? I felt that pain.
And that’s when I hear another sound.
A scraping of something rough against stone.
My eyes fly open and I look up at the ceiling.
I see the scaly black body of the bad thing lying flat against it, its xenomorph head tilted to the side to stare down at me with one beady red eye.
I suck in my breath, gasping in horror.
This can’t be real either, can it?
But from the way it waits there against the ceiling, silently watching me, I know it is. It’s as real as it was the last time I saw it.
I try my bonds again but the metal remains as cold and unbreakable as before. Valtu must have magic on them to keep me tethered. A panicked vampire should be able to break through nearly anything.
The demon thing continues to study me and I continue to stare up at it in horror, caught in the path of its focused stare.
Then its long leathery tale twitches and it starts to pull itself along the ceiling with its six-inch claws and then down the adjacent wall, a skittling sound in its wake.
I pinch my eyes shut, hoping that when I open them again the demon will be gone just as the baby was.
But when I open them, the demon is still there.
This time it’s closer.
Right by my foot.
It tilts its watermelon shaped head at me, as if in thought, and suddenly I know exactly what this hell beast is thinking.
It’s wondering what I’m doing here.
Because we’ve met before. In Venice.
The demon knows me, has seen me as Dahlia.
And now it sees that I’m here, two decades later.
I’m guessing the reason it’s here is either because Valtu befriended or trained it, or it has something to do with the book, since that’s where the demon came from in the first place, summoned out of Hell by Saara.
How loyal is this beast? Will it tell Valtu? Can it tell Valtu?
Is it going to kill me instead?
Yeah. That’s the more likely choice. After all, when it appeared in my bedroom in Venice after I was astral projecting, it tried to kill me. It was created to kill witches.
But I’m no longer a witch. Right?
At the very least, my vampire nature must override it. Right ?
The creature looks at my foot and extends its bony leathery hand, the long black curved claws like a demonic bird’s.
I flinch, watching in horror, waiting for it to bite my foot right off. Can vampires grow new feet?
But instead of sinking its claws into my flesh, it takes them to the cuffs and with a quick swipe it cuts right through the metal, like a knife through butter.
Part of the cuff clatters to the floor and suddenly my foot is free, the skin around my ankle aching profusely.
The demon slowly goes around the bed, doing the same to my other foot, then my hand. I can’t help but stare at it with bated breath as it leans in to cut through the last cuff, both horrified and fascinated that this demon creature that once tried to kill me is actually letting me go.
Unless this is part of the game , I tell myself. Maybe it just likes to hunt .
Oh, well fuck that.
I carefully get off the bed, my legs shaking from disuse, not taking my eyes off the demon.
I back up until my head hits the wall and I watch as the demon walks around on all fours over to the door, reaching up with its claws and carefully opening it.
It disappears out into the hall, swallowed by the darkness, the door left open.
Panic prickles through my scalp and I feel like dry-heaving.
I can’t stay here in this room anymore, I have to make a run for it, I have to find Abe and leave this place, but stepping out into the dark void of the house feels just as awful.
I know the demon just let me loose, but if it gets off on hunting down Valtu’s guests, I’m going to be in big trouble.
I don’t have a choice though. I quickly slip on my underwear and the sweater and then I’m heading out into the hall.
It feels like a million eyes are watching me as I scamper down the hall towards what I hope is the downstairs where I think Abe’s room is, moving as soundlessly as possible. Yet as I move, I sense something large and dark behind me, tailing me.
It might be the demon, it might be some other horror that lives with Valtu—the company he keeps—but I’m not slowing down to find out.
I move faster and faster until I’m running, my bare feet slapping the floor, and then I’m moving past the music room and down the stairs and bursting out to the living area where I find Valtu and Abe, drinking and sitting by fire.
Both of them get to their feet, Abe looking concerned while Valtu looks completely flabbergasted. I swear that look on his face might have made all of this worth it.
“How the hell did you get out of there?” he asks incredulously. Then his expression grows even more surprised as he looks over my shoulder.
I don’t even have to turn to look.
I know what’s there.