14. Rose
Rose
M y dove. He had called me his dove .
When I was Dahlia, he called me his dove all the time. I don’t think it’s a phrase he gives to everyone. He didn’t call Mina or Lucy his dove either. But to Dahlia he did. He was my lord and I was his dove.
And yet here we are again, lord and dove.
Does he know? Is he remembering?
I’m not sure. Though this Valtu is harder to read, I’m still pretty good at getting a handle on him and I think I’d know if he remembered or suspected. Instead, I think he used the term without a second-thought, not realizing the importance and relevance behind it.
Even so, I took those words straight to my heart. I’m holding them there tightly, because in the end, they might be all I have left of what we were to each other. That little term of endearment could be the only thing remaining in the end.
I exhale heavily, my heart feeling damp, and look out the window.
It’s the morning and I’m still in this damn room with its chains and nightmares.
Outside, the sun has risen above the clouds, a shaft of it coming in and turning the charcoal floor to light gray.
In the daylight it doesn’t seem scary at all.
It wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine this as some boutique hotel in the mountains or one of those crazy ass house rentals cut into a cave or something.
But last night told a different story.
The baby, the demon…
And the pure terror I felt when I realized that Valtu didn’t seem to care what happened to me. I was still just disposable to him, like all the others were.
Thankfully I fell asleep right away last night and slept all the way in till morning, the sex having tuckered me out.
Because…holy fuck.
I had completely forgotten that I was a virgin.
Before I remembered my past lives, I’d always felt a little sheltered from the boys.
Maybe it’s because we’d moved around so much, maybe because I didn’t know any vampires and so I knew I’d have to try and hide my true nature from everyone.
How can you date someone when your relationship will expire when you turn twenty-one?
So aside from a few kisses at a baseball game, or playing spin the bottle, or getting groped at the school dance, I didn’t have any experience with sex at all.
But only my body carried that reality, not my heart and soul. I’d had sex as Mina, as Lucy, as Dahlia, and when it was Valtu it was the dirtiest most mind-blowing sex you could imagine. There wasn’t anything that I haven’t already done with him.
This body didn’t know that though, not until he was thrusting inside me.
I’m tight and he’s incredibly large and the pain took me by surprise.
What happened next, well, that should have surprised me too. But it’s Valtu, so it didn’t. Some things never change. That man has to experience everything life has to offer, and he’s always made sure to take me along for the ride.
Now, though, my body is sore. When I move there’s a real tenderness between my legs. I know vampires heal fast—the marks the demon made on my chest are already gone, fully healed—but this feels like it might stick around for a bit.
I made it through the night, at least. He called me his last night, a hint of his possessiveness I once took for granted, but I don’t trust him enough to know that it will last. He might have claimed me, called me his dove, but that was last night and I have no idea what type of person he’ll be in the morning.
I decide to get up and find out. I pull my small bag of toiletries out of my pack and head into the bathroom to take a shower. To my surprise there’s modern plumbing, which makes me wonder how exactly this place was designed. Did he create it out of magic, or had it been something else before?
There’s hot water too, which feels like magic itself, and I find myself lingering in the shower, enjoying the warmth while trying to psyche myself up for the day.
I have to think on my feet without giving anything away.
This might end up being a very long game, but if I stay on Valtu’s good side, I have a shot of accomplishing what I came here to do.
God, you sound just like Dahlia , I think to myself.
It’s true. Our lives are overlapping in more ways than one. But Dahlia had to hide who she truly was—a witch. An assassin sent to kill Valtu. What I have to hide is, well, Dahlia. I’m at least free to be Rose.
In theory, anyway. What I want more than anything is to text Dylan, talk to my mom and dad, let them all know that I’m okay.
I want to know if they’re okay. But I had to leave my phone in San Francisco.
There was no way I could risk bringing it to Valtu’s.
Even though it’s encrypted and protected by a password and facial ID, vampires have an uncanny knack for breaking tech to their advantage.
And with Valtu possessing magic, well, it wouldn’t be long before he’d be scrolling through my phone and wondering how I’m connected to Lenore and Solon and everything else. The cat would be out of the bag.
I get dressed, glad that I crammed a week’s worth of clothes in that bag, though originally I thought I’d be in Northern California, not the Bavarian Alps.
I slip on leggings and a tunic top of dark gray silk that shows off my breasts, then decide to take the leggings off in the end.
I’d never go out in public without something underneath since the top barely covers my ass, but since it’s Valtu and I’m supposed to be his plaything for the next while, I guess it can’t hurt.
I decide to forgo the bra and underwear as well in the end. They’d just get in the way.
Then I head to the door and pause, realizing he’s locked me in here. Am I supposed to just wait until he comes to get me? Knowing Valtu, yes. He always liked to keep me waiting, especially when it came to anything related to sex.
I try the handle anyway and to my surprise it opens. Either he never locked it with wards at all, or he unlocked it this morning.
I make my way out into the hall, the floors cold against my bare feet, and head down the corridors to the lower level. This time I don’t feel any eyes watching me or any dark presences at my back. The demon must be elsewhere.
The thought of it makes me shudder. The way it watched me, the way it held me from behind. The pain of its claws. It didn’t say anything to me, just this low raspy breathing, but I could feel what it was thinking all the same.
The demon was showing me to Valtu.
It was saying: this is the one you used to love. This is the woman you made yourself forget. What should I do with her?
Valtu seemed to think the demon was claiming me as its own but that’s something I wouldn’t bet on. To do so could cost me my life.
The light at the end of the hall grows brighter and I find myself in the music mezzanine. There are two cigars in an ashtray, smoked halfway. Though no longer smoking, I breathe it in and smile. It’s the same cigars that Valtu used to smoke.
I look around for him here but I don’t see him. The view through the windows catches my eye and I open the shuttered doors to the balcony and gasp.
It is stunning out here.
I step out onto the dusting of snow, the chill biting through my feet, and into the cold wind and immediately feel like I’m flying.
We’re on top of the world and though I’m wary about getting too close to the railing, flanked on either end by gargoyles, I can see the mountain peaks across the valley, the clouds passing just below us.
Twirling around I look up at the rest of the castle and the mountainside.
I can see where the upper floors go, the row of windows, then two tower-like impressions above the rest that seem to push their way out of rock.
The rest of the mountain goes straight up for another fifty feet or so until it ends in a craggy-peak, snow settling on the sides.
Suddenly I get the feeling that I’m falling and I stumble for a couple of feet, right up to the railing. I grip the edge of it and look over for a moment and see nothing but a sheer drop of two thousand feet, straight down into the forest far below.
The vertigo takes hold of me and I gasp and quickly move away from the edge.
I know I’m immortal, but there’s no guarantee that a fall from this height won’t kill a vampire.
Plenty of opportunities to get your head sliced off on the way down, not to mention the pain of the impact.
We might not die from things like that, but it doesn’t mean things don’t hurt.
I’m just catching my breath and calming the spinning sensation when I catch a fluttery movement out of the corner of my eye. For a moment I think it’s a bird that’s come to perch along the stone railing.
But when I turn to look at it, I realize it’s a bat. A small black bat resting there on all fours, sharp claws at the tips of its leathery wings.
“Hello,” I say curiously to it. I had no idea bats could be found this high up and in winter.
The bat seems to stare at me for a moment and I get this peculiar feeling, like it knows me, or I know it, but that can’t be possible because—
Suddenly the bat takes flight, going straight up in the air and down right in front of me and with a gust of wind the bat warps in shape and size and suddenly Valtu is standing right in front of me.
“Oh my god!” I scream, hands at my mouth as I stumble backward.
Valtu just dusts off the shoulders of his black coat and eyes me with a hint of amusement.
“Did I scare you?” he asks mildly.
“A bat…you just turned into a bat. That bat was you?”
“Of course.” He gives me a ghost of a smile.
“We can do that!?” I exclaim.
“We? Oh you mean vampires. No, no, no,” he tuts, looking proud of himself. “You can’t. But I can.”
“How?”
“A magician never reveals his secrets.”
Of course. The damn book.
“Do you know magic, Valtu?” I ask, playing dumb for a moment.
His dark eyes narrow, brows snapping together. “You know I do. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”