18. Rose
Rose
B ack inside the building, my head starts to clear a little. I brush the snow off my shoulders and glance warily at Valtu who is doing the same to his.
I’m still mad, despite all that. I’m still horrified at what just happened downstairs. A good fuck doesn’t erase everything. It’s not magic.
“What should we do about the body?” I whisper, swallowing hard.
He gives me a curious look. “The body? There is no body left. It will have been disposed of by now.” He clears his throat and he quickly loses his impassioned look, composing himself. “I should go downstairs and clean up the rest of the mess.”
His dark eyes pierce into mine and I know he’s wondering if I’ll join him.
But I need time to be alone, to think.
“I think I’ll head to bed,” I tell him.
There’s a flash of disappointment on his face and then it’s gone, his face beautiful but blank. “Then I shall see you in the morning,” he says, his voice clipped.
He turns and strides off across the mezzanine, disappearing down the stairs.
I glance over at the darkened hallway that leads to my room and sigh.
Even though I do want to be alone, I hate the idea of being alone in that bedroom.
When I’m with Valtu I feel fine, or something close to that, but when I’m alone, everything about this place gives me the creeps. And obviously for good reason.
I tell myself that the bad thing is currently taking care of the boy and that it shouldn’t be bothering me. As if a demon devouring an innocent human is something I can use to assure myself.
But it’s not the bad thing I’m afraid of.
I’m afraid of myself, of my own judgment.
Because that boy I just fed from, that I helped kill, he had a home.
He had a family. He had a life and I just…
I just ended it. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t think he’d die, my actions led to his death.
If Valtu hadn’t stabbed him in the heart, he would have eventually died anyway.
I had drained all his blood, sucked him dry.
And it felt good. It felt so damn good to drink from him that it makes me sick.
Who am I? What have I become? No wonder my parents tried so hard to keep the idea of feeding rooms and the old ways out of our lives. They didn’t want me to turn into a monster because they both knew how easy it was to become one.
I make my way down the hall, past the flickering candles on the walls.
They never seem to go out, another product of magic inside these walls.
I go inside my room and turn on all the lights.
Then I strip off my clothes and get in the shower to wash away all the blood but when I finally emerge, I don’t feel any cleaner.
I don’t feel any calmer. And now the lights seem too bright, the shadows too dark, and I shut the lights off again, slip into the old Cherry Coke T-shirt I sleep in, and get into bed.
My thoughts eat away at me like termites.
I think about my parents. I was too hard on them.
I wish I could go back and erase what I said to my mom.
I know why she lied about how she became a vampire and I know that my parents did everything they could to protect us.
I wish they had told us the truth but, at the same time, I could see how it would be so much easier to just brush it under the rug.
Had I not remembered all my lives when I turned, I would be back in Newport right now, drinking from blood bags and popping pills and living a safe and sanitized life.
I would have kept my humanity. I wouldn’t have known this hurt, this shame .
Perhaps it was destiny, though. Maybe each life with Valtu was always nudging me toward my true self, toward that true darkness.
Valtu has always been a bit of a bad influence on me.
When I was Mina, he charmed me. He wasn’t even a vampire yet—neither of us had any idea of what he would become.
But he was one hundred percent him and all that he is.
Witty, charming, and leaning on the side of deviant.
As Mina I should have played it safe. I was the general’s daughter after all and I was destined to be with someone that would have pledged allegiance to Russia, someone under my father’s tyrannical influence.
But that wasn’t my destiny at all because the moment I laid my eyes on Valtu, a peasant, I knew he would corrupt me.
That he would be the answer to everything I had wanted.
I was so ready to flee with him, to run away, to give up the safe and secure life I was accustomed to.
I would have gone anywhere with Valtu. But we weren’t given much time together in those early days.
As Lucy, I was an upper crust Victorian lady and Valtu pursued me with everything he had.
Of course, Valtu knew I was Mina and I didn’t, so he wasn’t taking no for an answer when it came to me.
He knew I would be his. Meanwhile, I barely knew of sex and yet I was willing to let him do anything to me.
He pulled loose the threads that held me tightly together, he turned me from a lady to something wild and completely his.
Another step toward something feral and free.
Then Dahlia. Oh, Dahlia. I had just one goal. I had one mission. And I threw it all to hell the moment I fell in love with him again. I went from a vampire slayer to a vampire lover in what felt like no time at all, and then he’s the one who ended up killing me . The ultimate corruption.
I let out a heavy breath and sink back into the bed, my emotions pulling me in every which way, like a whirlpool that keeps changing direction.
I must fall asleep with these thoughts in my head because suddenly I wake up.
My eyes snap open and I look around the dark room, feeling the heavy pull of sleep alongside my erratic heartbeat, adrenaline on high alert, wondering what just woke me up.
I hold my breath and listen.
Please don’t let it be the demon, please don’t let it be the demon.
There’s no sound except for the howl of wind outside the window, the patter of thick snow on the pane.
Then I hear it.
The creeaaaaaak of the bathroom door.
I watch as it slowly opens.
Opens.
Opens.
Oh fuck no, not the baby again.
Thank god I’m not chained down this time.
I’m about to get out of bed and go for the door when something drips on my arm. I stare at it, a dark splotch of foul-smelling blood spreading on my skin, then look up.
The boy is staring at me.
His back is on the ceiling, his arms and legs splayed in broken angles, his mouth open wide in a silent scream. Blood drips down from the gash in his arm, splattering cold on my forehead.
You did this! his voice screams inside my head. You did this! You did this!
I yelp and throw back the covers, leaping out of the bed. They tangle around my legs and I stumble to the floor, my hands taking the brunt of the fall.
You did this! The boy keeps screaming and suddenly he falls from the ceiling onto the bed, as if gravity lost its hold, and I’m scrambling to get to my feet. I reach for the door and fling it open just as I hear his bloody feet hit the ground behind me.
Holy fuck!
There’s nowhere for me to run but to Valtu and I don’t even know where his room is in this maze of hallways, but I head down a passage I haven’t been through before, running as fast as I can.
The candles quiver in my wake but thankfully don’t go out and from behind me I hear that slap of his bloody feet on the floor, coming after me, closer and closer.
My vampire speed is put to the test, but the boy keeps up with ease.
Finally I come to a set of stairs and head up it just as I feel a whoosh of air, the boy lunging for me, just grazing the ends of my hair as I fly around the corner.
I yelp and run up the stairs two at a time, my thighs burning, up up up until I’m wondering if it’s a trick, if there’s a door at the end of this all and god help me if it’s not Valtu’s room.
Then I see the door, metal and heavy, faintly lit by one flickering wall sconce.
“Valtu!” I scream. “Help me!”
I reach the door, going for the handle and pushing and with a heavy groan the door opens a crack. I throw my weight against it, aware that the boy is running up the stairs on all fours like a rabid dog, snapping at my heels.
The door opens more, enough for me to slide on through, and I launch myself into the room, expecting to see the type of bedroom that Valtu would have.
But it’s not a bedroom at all.
It’s a literal torture chamber.
There are chains hooked up to the walls, blood stains splattered all over the floor, and there’s even one of those stocks that you’d find a medieval criminal in, with holes for the head and hands.
“What the fuck?” I whisper out loud.
I have no time to ponder it. The door flies open further, banging against the wall hard enough that dust floats from the ceiling, and the boy comes staggering into the room, raging blue eyes fixed on me.
I’m fucked. The room is circular and there’s nowhere for me to go, the window a narrow slit that I wouldn’t even get my head through.
“Valtu!” I scream again, praying he hears me through the house. Praying he cares.
The boy takes another step forward, his ankles broken, his movements like a zombie.
You did this! You did this!
I back up against the wall and look for a weapon. The chains. Maybe I could wield the chains.
I make a go for them, all the while hoping to hell that this boy is only an apparition just like the baby was, that he’ll suddenly disappear and I’ll escape unharmed.
But he doesn’t disappear.
Instead, he grabs me by the throat, his fingers cold as ice and nails cutting my skin and drags me right up to his face.
You did this! he screams, and his mouth gets wider and wider and wider until it’s just a big black hole with teeth that’s taking over his face and I’m being sucked into it, being sucked into this never-ending abyss, this cosmic world of horror.