18. Rose #2
I feel so much fear, so much terror, that I cease to exist at all and I’m just this ball of horrible energy, reaching, spreading and—
CRASH!
Suddenly the room explodes in a flash of light. There’s the sound of glass breaking, shards of it cutting my skin, frozen air mixing with white hot heat and a burning smell.
The abyss falls away and the boy is no longer holding my throat.
He’s not touching me at all.
Instead, he’s a thin stalk of charcoal, the floor beneath him marked in a black pentacle, and suddenly he collapses into ash and dust until he’s just a burnt mess that billows across the floor, mixing with the snow coming in through the window.
I gasp, staring at him in confusion. My eyes go to the window which has shattered, the clouds whirling outside, and it feels like my brows and lashes have been singed. The smell of burnt flesh lingers in the air, making my nose crinkle.
Then my focus goes to the door.
Where Valtu is standing. Eyes round, mouth open, staring at me like I’m the ghost now.
“What the hell was that?” he asks, his voice higher, his tone careful, as if he’s actually afraid of me.
“You tell me!” I exclaim. “It’s you that’s causing these ghosts to appear!”
“No. Not the ghost,” he says flatly. “ You . I just saw lightning pierce through that window and strike him. You did that. You made that lighting strike happen.”
I can’t argue with that because it’s exactly what it looks like. “I don’t know. I don’t know how I did it. I was just so afraid. You said yourself that it’s normal for vampires to be locked in with the elements.”
“Not like that,” he says, and his gaze hardens as it falls to the floor. “And not like that .”
I follow his eyes to the black pentacle on the ground.
It’s not that the ground is burned in such a way that it looks like one, the way you might see shapes in the grass after a lightning strike, but that there are five clear points and a circle in the middle.
A symbol that Dahlia was very familiar with.
I blink, shaking my head, not understanding it. “I don’t know. I didn’t do it on purpose.” I look up at him with pleading eyes. “I really don’t know what happened.”
His expression is cold and wary as he stares at me, his jaw tight. “Who are you, Rose? Who are you really?”
“I’m Rose Harper,” I tell him, placing my hands on my chest. “I swear to god I am.”
“ What are you?” he whispers harshly.
“You know I’m a vampire. You saw it today. You know your own kind.”
“And you’re also a witch.”
I give my head a more violent shake. “I’m not. I’m not a witch. I can’t be. You’d be able to tell, you know you would. Unless I was wearing a glamour…” I trail off.
His eyes narrow at that thoughtfully. “A glamour. I’ve been fooled by one before.”
“You remember that!?” I exclaim and for a moment I’m filled with hope.
Now his frown deepens, the line between his brows a hard line. “No. I don’t remember. I was told. How come you know about it?”
I fumble for the words, panic rising in my chest like a caged bird. “I just knew, I don’t know, I heard it somewhere, I—”
“Enough with the lies!” he roars.
I go still. My heart feels like it’s crawling up my throat, it’s going so fast.
“Tell me who you are, or I’ll kill you,” he says, his tone a steel blade. There is no mercy in his eyes. They look like black holes to nowhere. “I’ll kill you right here and now.”
I swallow, gathering resolve from somewhere in my veins. I raise my chin and look him dead in the eyes and decide it’s time to put a stop to the charade. “It wouldn’t matter if you did. I’ll just come back.” I pause. “I always do.”
Clarity slowly washes over him and his eyes widen. “Y-you…” he stammers, mouth dropping open. “You’re her .”
The way he says her , like it’s some sort of disease, feels like he’s ripping my heart right out of my chest and spitting on it.
And yet…and yet, telling him the truth, ending the lies, feels better than I could have imagined. I only wished Dahlia had the chance to tell him the truth, too.
“Why are you here? What do you want?” Valtu manages to say, sounding so distraught and pained that it breaks my heart. But I have to remember what he’s capable of. Right now, he reminds me of a cornered animal. A dangerous one that’s ready to snap.
“I’m on a fool’s errand,” I tell him. It takes all my strength to say it. “I was hoping I could make you remember.”
He looks vaguely horrified at the idea. “You thought you could make me remember? I’ll never remember you.” His words are sharp and quick, a wasp’s sting to my chest.
“I know that now,” I say, my voice going quiet as the dejection becomes hard to ignore. “But it was always worth a shot.”
He closes his eyes, running his hands down his face, shaking his head. “None of it…none of it was real.”
“It’s all been real, Val!” I protest.
His head snaps up, dark eyes blazing at me. “Don’t call me that,” he seethes.
“My name is Rose, and I do have a brother and my parents live in Newport, Oregon. But I’m also Dahlia and Lucy and Mina. Val, I know you better than anyone else on this planet.”
“You know nothing about the person I am now,” he snarls, storming over to me, clouds of ash rising up as he stomps through the pentacle. He shoves his finger under my chin, forcing it up, his nail almost piercing my tender flesh.
I stand my ground, refusing to back down and keep my eyes on his. “I think I do,” I say carefully. “You’ve shown me plenty of what a monster you’ve become.”
“A monster because of you!” he screams, flecks of spit landing on my cheek.
I bristle, my face feeling tight and red. “Hey!” I snap. “You’re a monster because you erased me. I kept you good. I kept you whole.”
He removes his finger and steps back, laughing, a sharp and acidic sound that echoes around the room. “You kept me good? You ? Who helped kill an innocent human today?”
“That isn’t fair!” I cry out. “You did that on purpose. You tried to corrupt me.”
“Corrupt you? You’re the one who has been here under a lie, fucking me left and right to get what you want. And what do you want, your revenge? You want to murder me for murdering you? You want the book too, is that part of your deal?”
“No.” Then I stop and close my eyes, breathing in sharply through my nose. I can’t lie anymore. “Yes.” I look at him, pleading. “I also came here because I need your help, and yes it involves the book.”
“Well, you’re not getting my help,” he says and takes another step closer until there’s barely any room between us.
His breath is hot on my skin and his eyes are fire.
“You’re not getting anything else from me.
I erased you. I got that damn cursed book to forget you.
How fucking dare you show up here and hide who you are?
How fucking dare you think that this was the right thing to do? ”
I grit my teeth, trying to keep it together. “I did it because I love you.”
His head jerks back, his features distorting. “Love? This is what you call love? If you truly loved me, you would have stayed forgotten!” He averts his eyes and shakes his head back and forth. “No. This can’t happen. I will not make all my sacrifices for nothing.”
“Your sacrifices?!” I explode. “I’m the one who died!”
“Then you should have stayed dead!”
I blink. Inside I’m plummeting like an elevator, the cable snapped.
I stagger back a step and realize that this is the end of it. That I had a chance and now it’s gone and now Valtu will never, ever want anything to do with me.
I’m not getting the book.
I’m not getting him.
I’m getting nothing.
I’m staying forgotten.
Valtu looks at me with violence in his eyes, breathing hard, nostrils wide, his teeth set in a sneer. “You need to go,” he ekes out in a low, threatening rumble. “You need to leave right now. And pray that fucking demon lets you go. Because if he doesn’t, I’m not going to save you.”
Valtu points to the door, his message more than clear.
I know protesting or pleading will make no difference.
I can’t stay.
I fucking blew it all.
I look at him for the last time and he has the audacity to look away, as if he’s so ashamed and embarrassed of me he can’t even look at me. Maybe I feel I deserve some of it. Maybe I deserve all of it.
I stride past him and quickly go down the stairs.
It’s going to be a long hike down that mountain, and though it’s probably the middle of the night, I’m going to have to hurry if I want to escape this place unscathed.
I still don’t know what the bad thing thinks of me or wants from me, but I have a feeling if it sees me leaving, things will be different.
I go to my room and slip on jeans and boots and the coat, then cram everything in my bag and go.
I don’t have a phone but as soon as I get down to the village, I’ll call the number Abe left for me on my hand.
If anything, he can help me figure out what to do next.
He certainly expected that this would happen.
That’s right, keep telling yourself that , I think while I hurry through the halls and to the front door. Think of the next steps. You need to get Leif back, you can’t give up on that, even if you have to do it without Valtu’s help.
I keep that going in my head, over and over, because the moment I stop thinking is the moment I start feeling and I know I’m going to start crying and never ever stop.
My love. My Valtu.
He really is gone.
And I will never be his again.
I open the heavy front doors, the metal creaking, and step out into the night. I have no idea how to get to Mittenwald, but I figure if I head straight down the mountains toward the lights below, I can’t go wrong.
I hurry down the steps, careful in places where it’s icy, then start down the worn path that snakes along the crags of the mountainside. I’m a single thought away from breaking down in tears, a single thought away from dissolving completely.
But then there’s a raspy wet snarl behind me, reverberating through the chilled air.
A snarl that can only belong to one thing.
It found me.