17. Rose #2
“I hate you for doing this,” I snarl, breathless and feral and slowly losing control.
“About time you started hating me for something,” he says. His hand goes to my jaw, holding me until it hurts, his fingers bruising. “You know that you can’t stop it now, can’t stop it once it’s in motion. If you don’t drink from him, you’ll die from the agony and he’ll die for no reason.”
“Okay,” I whimper, trying to swallow the sawdust in my throat. “But promise me you’ll let him go after this. That you’ll compel him to forget this and let him go.”
“I promise to let him go,” he says, running his thumb over my chin. “Now go get your fill, my dove.”
He moves out of the way and pushes me a step toward the boy. The boy is staring at the ceiling and for a moment I fear he’s dead, but then he blinks and tries to look at me.
I avert my eyes. I look at the blood leaking onto the table and spilling onto the floor.
And I let myself go.
I rush to the boy’s side and grab his arm and sink my teeth over his wound.
The blood, so fresh, so young, fills my mouth and I drink, insatiable and unrepentant.
I feel all my humanity drain out of me while my veins fill with this stranger’s blood and in my heart of hearts I realize what I am and what I know I’ll spend my life trying not to be.
An animal. A creature. A monster.
Not a human being. I’m not Dahlia Abernathy anymore.
I’m Rose Harper. I’m a vampire and I drink the blood of the living in order to survive.
No, not even to survive but to live . Valtu was right in that I can’t go back to those blood pills, not after this.
Michael was just a taste but I tried my best to pretend it would only be a one-time thing.
Now I know it can’t be. I must feed and I hate myself for it, hate what I’ve become.
And I hate Valtu for making me this way.
I let that hate simmer inside me for a moment and then I use it to stop. It takes all my willpower but I can’t let him win. I can’t let his depravity push me to these depths. I can’t kill this boy because if I don’t stop, I will kill him.
I unhook my fangs and stagger backward from the table. The boy is barely breathing, his skin ashen and blue. In my trance, I don’t know how long I’ve been feeding from him but I think I’ve nearly bled him dry.
The boy jerks and then turns his head, manages to look at me with pleading eyes and I feel my humanity come rushing back.
It’s a relief. He’s alive.
“You said you’d let him go,” I say to Valtu, my voice cracking.
He’s been watching me this whole time, a glint of pleasure in his eyes.
“And I will,” he says simply. “A promise is a promise.”
He walks over to the boy and grins down at him, removes the chain cuff around his neck.
“You’re free to go,” Valtu says to him, brushing the boy’s hair off his forehead in a strangely tender gesture. “Thank you for your sacrifice.”
Wait. Sacrifice?
The boy is finally able to open his mouth, free from whatever spell Valtu had him under, and he lets out a weak but haunting scream that I know I’ll hear in my nightmares.
Then Valtu picks up the knife from earlier and in a blur of movement, stabs the boy right in the heart. The crunch of bone and a squelching sound.
The boy’s hollow scream dies in his throat.
But I’m screaming now.
“No!” I yelp, hurrying back to the boy. I push Valtu’s arms out of the way and place my hand around the hilt, pulling out the knife, yet only a little blood leaks out. There’s nothing left.
The boy just lets out a gasp, a wheeze and then he’s still.
He’s dead.
I look up at Valtu, shaking with the horror of it all.
“I let him go,” Valtu explains carefully as he eyes my rage. “He was dead the moment I cut his artery. I let him go, Rose.”
I blink at him in disbelief, trying to find the words. He’s excusing himself. He’s making it sound like killing him was the noble thing to do, ignoring the fact that he got his demon to abduct this boy and bring him here so we could feed.
“You’re a monster!” I scream at him.
His features harden, eyes turning to ice. “Isn’t that why you’re here? To fuck a monster? Or to become one yourself?”
Fire rages through me and I turn on my heel and run, my footsteps echoing against the stone. I go to the stairs, then up them to the second floor, needing to clear my head, to scream, to come to terms with what he did, what I just did.
He’s a monster, but now I’m one, too.
I run through the music mezzanine and straight to the shuttered doors that lead to outside, then fling them open and stumble out onto the balcony.
I’m met with a rush of snow, the wind driving it hard into an arctic swirl of white.
I run to the edge, to the railing, wanting the vertigo to bury everything else I’m feeling.
My hands clasp the stone railing and I stare out into the white nothingness.
It’s cold, even for a vampire, and I welcome it, needing it to cleanse me of my sins.
I open my mouth and scream, letting out all the horror I just witnessed.
I scream for all the deaths I’ve had to go through, all the lives I’ve lost, the women I’ve been.
I scream for the pain in my heart that I know will never go away so long as Valtu doesn’t know who I am.
And I scream because the man I loved has become a man that feels so easy to hate.
“What are you doing?” Valtu’s voice breaks through my anguish and he grabs me roughly by the arm, spinning me around until he has me pinned back against the railing.
I cry out, painfully aware of how high up we are, how easily I could just fall backward over the railing and fall through a blizzard to my death, or something even worse than death.
“Get a hold of yourself,” he says and through the passing white flakes I see the worry in his eyes, like he thinks I’ve actually gone mad. Maybe I have. Who could blame me after all I’ve been through? Only a fucking mad woman would end up here with him.
“Fuck you,” I practically spit at him.
“Yeah, that’s just what I was thinking,” he growls.
Before I can say anything else, he’s kissing me again.
It’s a brutal, punishing kiss, one that I feel all the way to my toes, and I try to put my palms against his shoulders to get leverage but his mouth overtakes mine.
His hands slip to the hem of my dress and he hikes it up to my waist, all while pressing me even harder against the railing.
Then he’s lifting me up, so the railing is no longer supporting my back and I feel the dizzying drop of space behind me.
I gasp and he buries it with his lips while one hand goes to my upper back, holding me in place, and the other unzips his pants.
“You’re here to fuck the monster, aren’t you?” he rumbles against my mouth, his lips and teeth trailing roughly along my jaw. “Isn’t that what we are?”
I push against his chest, trying to break the kiss, but his grip is too strong. My heart is pounding against my ribs, not just from the height but because of all the emotions whirling through me, pummeling my heart like the blizzard.
I love him. I loved him. I hate what he’s become.
I hate that he’s right, that I am a monster too, and that terrifies me because I don’t want to be like him. The Valtu I loved had his darkness but he was also filled with light and I am so terrified that I won’t find that with him, not here and not with this life.
It’s breaking my heart into pieces.
“Tell me you want this,” he says, positioning his cock at my entrance. “Tell me you still want me despite everything I’ve done.”
“Or what?” I say, trying to hold onto his biceps, the fear of falling making the edges of my vision blur. “Or you’ll let go? Or you’ll kill me too? You’d like that, wouldn’t you? You’d like to just let go and never have to see me again.”
It’s a rhetorical question but he stares at me in such a way it’s like he’s actually seeing it happen. A faint look of horror comes across his brow.
“The darkness in me calls to the darkness in you,” he says roughly, and I have to bite my lip from crying at hearing those words out loud. “If you want me, you’ll want me as I am, right here, right now.” He brings his face in closer until I can see the gold flecks in his eyes. “So, do you?”
I search those eyes, looking for a sign that the man I love is still there, that he’s worth fighting for.
I’m not sure if I find him.
But I decide I want him anyway.
“I do,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper.
“Good,” he snarls and then with one violent thrust he enters me, pushing the air from my lungs and almost sends me over the edge and into a freefall.
I gasp in fear and pleasure and he’s holding me in place with thousands of feet below my back, the wind whistling past.
He groans, rough and guttural, and then his mouth is on mine and his tongue sweeps over my lips, claiming me with a ferocity that matches the storm around us.
I’m his and he’s mine, not just now but always. If I’m going to stay by his side like I have before, then I have to accept him now, as he is.
But what if accepting him means that I’ll lose my humanity too?
The blizzard whips around us, snowflakes sticking to our skin as we move together, his hips pumping against me, a rhythm as old as time.
I’m lost in the moment, lost in him, lost in the memories of the man he was before this new darkness took hold.
But for now, all that is pushed aside as I focus on the pleasure coursing through me, on the way his hands hold me so tightly it’s almost painful.
“Val,” I whisper to him and he pauses for a moment, lifting his head back to look at me, a strange look of awe in his molten eyes.
“It’s been a long time since someone called me Val,” he says, his voice low and nearly swallowed by the wind.
Right. My old name for him. I don’t want to give anything away so I skirt around it. “Do you prefer that, or my lord?”
He gives me a wicked grin. “Oh, definitely my lord.”
I feel my entire body burn with want. “Then, my lord, it would please me if you finish what you started,” I say with a coquettish smile.
He growls and adjusts himself, pulls my leg up, putting me off balance then thrusts his cock back into me in one stroke, all the way to the hilt, letting go of me just enough that it feels like I’m falling.
I cry out, the sensation almost too much to bear, like he’s fucking me into space, but then his grip is back, strong and hard and I shift my hips against him.
“That’s it,” he says, his lips hot against my ear, his cock even hotter as he pulls out and thrusts back in, his large hands on my hips helping me find the rhythm.
“Harder,” I whimper, digging my nails into his arm with enough force to draw blood, my other hand braced against the railing. “I want it harder.”
“As you wish,” he rumbles and starts moving faster, slamming into me with a force that makes me moan with pleasure and pain. The wind howls around us, the snow falling faster now, like it’s racing my heartbeat, and in this moment it’s just him and me, lost in the storm and each other.
I feel myself getting closer and closer to the edge, my body shaking with need as he drives into me relentlessly. Then, with one final thrust, I come undone, my body convulsing around him.
“Val!” I cry through a ragged gasp, his name coming so easily to my lips. I see stars and feel heat and I’m breaking into a million pieces, carried away with the snowflakes.
He follows shortly after, his body shuddering with release as he empties himself inside me.
For a moment, we stay like that, holding onto each other as the wind and snow swirl around us. Then, with a final kiss, a kiss of sweetness, of tenderness that disarms me, he lifts me up and back onto the floor of the balcony.
My legs give out, the vertigo finally taking over, and I collapse, wanting to be as far away from the edge as possible.
Valtu just scoops me up like I weigh nothing at all and brings me to my feet, ushering me back inside the building.
The storm rages on outside but I have a feeling the storm between us is only just beginning.