Blood Rose (Blood Books Book 1) (4 page)

She stopped. I waited for her to finish, but she said nothing. I knew she couldn’t; she couldn’t actually say it, that she’d
kill
me, her daughter, the chosen one.

The witches around her tensed. I wondered if they too worried that she would order them to kill me. I wondered if they wanted to. To them, I was no longer family. I was the threat.

I said nothing as I turned and faced my things. My pictures were a shattered mess on the floor. My books from classes I had taken at our local college were in stacks on my desk. Dirty and clean clothes were piled on the floor. What was I to take? My coven. Could I take my coven?

The vampire offered me his hand again. His eyes beckoned to me, as if he were silently asking me to trust him. Looking from his eyes to his hand, I opted for the only option I was given and took his peace offering. With his hand held in mine, we left my room, and my family, behind.

The air outside was refreshing. I begged for it to blow away the fear, the doubt, the pain that clouded my mind. With the slightest inhalation, I was discovering new scents. From flowers to meat and rust to salt, I smelled the world as if life was sprawled on a platter before me. But more than that, I could
feel
it. The life that drove nature to survive flowed through me. It was as if I could tap into its energy and harness its power as my own.

“You show an impressive level of control I’ve yet to see in a newborn,” the vampire said.

I yanked my hand from his and wrapped my arms around my chest. I didn’t like my decision to simply leave my coven behind, but I hated my choice to leave with
them
.

“I’m Jasik.”

I rolled my eyes and looked away. I mentally told myself that I had no choice. If I stayed behind, my family would kill me. If I left with the vampires, then maybe, just maybe, I could learn to control what I was, and my coven would welcome me back. I could become the ultimate tool.

Being a chosen-one-turned-vampire had to have its perks.

“We need to get back. The sun’s rising soon,” another vampire said.

He glanced at me, jaw clenched. His eyes were bright green, and they seemed to outline each curve of my body as his gaze dropped down. I felt vulnerable under his stare. He didn’t look at me with wonder, curiosity, or lust. He looked at me with disgust, hatred, and fear. He quickly turned away and joined the others. I felt odd beside the blue-eyed vampire: vulnerable yet safe. My hatred toward him was tinged with curiosity.

“That was Malik, my brother.”

I ignored him.

I looked at my house, my eyes lingering on my bedroom window. My mother stood beside the curtain, watching me, before quickly stepping out of view. I wanted to call out to her, beg her to let me stay, but I knew leaving was my only option. They would never be safe around me until I was able to control what I was.

Focusing on the room, I closed my eyes and listened. At first, I heard nothing, but then the world consumed me.

“Stay safe, my love,” my mother whispered.

“Can you
believe
Braedon said that?” a girl said with a chuckle. Her voice was distant, hushed. She sounded young, weak.

“Did you want anything from the store?” a man asked. He was closer. His voice was coarse, deep. He was closer to me than the girl. I heard him clearly, as if he stood just behind me. But no one was there.

Laughing.

Crying.

Horns.

Barking.

Clanking heels.

Hiss of a cat.

Squeal of tires.

Sizzling of a fryer.

I dug my fingers into my hair, collapsing to the ground. My mouth opened, but I couldn’t breathe.

“Focus on just me,” Jasik said as he pulled my head against his chest. “Shield yourself from the world. You can do it. Raise your shield, Avah.”

“I-I can’t. It’s s-so loud!” I said, pushing myself harder against him and squeezing my eyes shut. I was sure the witches had done something. I had outworn my welcome, and now, they were using their powers against me. This was it; this was the end. 

“Avah, you can do this. You’re strong. Pull your strength from within. Use it to shield yourself from the world.”

“I can’t!” I yelled, angry that he was barking out orders I couldn’t comprehend.

“Jeremiah! She needs you,” he yelled.

I opened my eyes as a hand firmly grasped the back of my head. Kneeling before me, the vampire with dark skin and glowing, gray irises pulled me into his arms. I met his gaze, and slowly, the world went silent.

“She’ll be fine,” Jeremiah said, dropping his arms. “I’ll slowly remove it to make the transition easier.” He walked away.

After the pain subsided, I stood. “What did he do to me?”

Jasik’s face hardened as he stared at me. “Let’s get somewhere safe, and then we’ll talk.”

“No. Tell me everything.
No,
” I said, taking several steps backward. 

After several minutes, he softened and said, “It’s not that simple, Avah.”

“Make it simple.” I wouldn’t budge. I’d sit outside my home until my coven came for us if that’s what it took.

“I’ve never encountered a vampire like you. And I’ve been around a long time,” he said as he turned and began walking toward the others. “I’ve heard the stories, but I always thought they were just that: stories.”

I walked beside him, meeting his gaze. “What do you mean? Why am I so different?” I said. I kicked a stone with my foot, watching it bounce against the concrete, stopping once it reached a patch of grass.

I felt the pavement’s vibrations rattle through my body as the stone glided against it. I knew it had to be my status as the chosen one. I had never heard of a witch becoming a vampire, though I always thought it had to have happened over the centuries. Elders must have assumed a witch would one day turn, because they passed down laws and penalties against it. Speaking of turning into an immortal came at a high price. The betrayal to one’s coven would cost a witch her life. I wondered if the vampire knew I was chosen to harness The Power of the gods, the power that was to annihilate the vampire race.

Glancing up from the ground, I watched as two teenagers approached us. The boy had his arm around the back of the girl’s neck, pulling her close to him. She smiled as he did this, probably enjoying the safety he provided—not realizing that there were monsters in this world that his arm was no match for.

I examined his physique as a scientist would in a laboratory. His arms and chest were tightly bound by his t-shirt. Thin white lines danced across his pale skin. Stretch marks. The closer we came, the more I saw. Goosebumps covered his skin; fine hairs stood on end. I remembered that the air was cool during the ritual, though I didn’t feel chilled now. I felt the breeze but not the cold.

They were just feet in front of us. His shirt seemed to become tighter and tighter the closer they came. I wondered if he took steroids. Time seemed to slow as they passed. The wind picked up, blowing their scent into my open and willing nostrils. I licked my lips, my tongue sticking to dry parts of skin.

Shutting my eyes, I swallowed hard as my throat began to close. Its dryness was painful, scratchy. When I opened my eyes again, my fangs were exposed, and I was just steps behind the humans. I didn’t know how I had gotten there, and I didn’t care. An arm’s length was all that separated them from death, from me. Just before I could leap from behind, I was yanked backward.

“No.” His voice was stern, controlling. I was shocked that he cared. Vampires were murderers. Why would he stop me?

Looking up, I met his eyes. I didn’t understand why he had stopped me, but I was thankful he had. Remembering who I was had become more and more difficult as the night went on. The vampire’s proximity felt oddly intimate, making my skin burn. My fangs retracted, and I pulled away from my captor, horrified at my newfound hunger.

I shook my head and wrapped my body in my arms. In that moment, I hadn’t cared if I took that teenager’s life. I had lost control. I had wanted to kill—I was
ready
to kill. But I didn’t
feel
like a killer. I just felt hungry. I dropped my arms and resorted to the only thing I knew how to do in this new world: I ran.

Someone was calling after me, but the voice quickly grew faint. As I ran through the woods, the forest blurred at my sides. Yet, the world remained clear before me. As my feet pounded against the hard, packed ground, my legs never grew tired. Weary of my strength, I came to an abrupt stop and fell to my knees.

“What have I become?” I said aloud, burying my face in my palms.

“Avah?” a voice said. Footsteps approached from behind.

I jumped to my feet and spun around. I watched the vampires approach me with caution. We were in another small clearing. The forest that surrounded Shasta had often protected me from prying eyes while patrolling. I found comfort in northern California’s seclusion.

I knew these woods in the dead of night. I knew where I had hidden weapons, buried deep in the ground. I knew the trails to find home. I knew the berries that grew in the bushes. I knew of the hidden cemetery, where my coven buried our loved ones.  These woods were part of my life, my family. I felt sickened when I thought of these vampires using the earth as their hunting grounds.

“Everything will be okay,” he said. His words were soothing. I was angry, confused, but as soon as he spoke, I grew calm. His reassurance was all that it took to make me feel at peace, even when only moments before a storm had raged within me. The thought of him having power over me left me sick. I refused to believe he could sway my feelings. “We’ll find you something to eat.”

I shook my head. “I don’t even know what I am anymore. How can that be okay?” His words annoyed me. How was it that the undead thing before me was so optimistic?

“You’re like us now. A Hunter,” he said. He signaled to the others with his hand, waving them away in some secret movement that I didn’t understand, and two of the three ran off into the woods while Malik took several steps toward me, concern filling his eyes.

“But different,” I said. I was different. I needed to remember that.

“I’ll go with Char and Jeremiah. You’ll be all right?” Malik said.

Jasik nodded without looking away. “Maybe it’s time to have that talk? Malik will make sure they find something, so why don’t you sit down and relax.”

I obeyed. I was eager to learn more. I needed to understand what I had become. Everything I knew about vampires had been taught to me by witches. Our elders mandated daily gatherings. We had learned how to fight, how to scavenge, how to use our magic as a tool to kill.

We were taught that vampires had always been a feral species, one that was a mystery to witches. We knew they were the cause of almost every human war. Luckily, witches had stepped in before the vampires’ existence became known, but in the 40s, witches came close to losing the war against vampires.

One vampire realized his race was close to extinction. In retaliation, he formed an army and murdered over five million humans in Europe. When he knew witches and the human armies were mere moments from trapping him, he took his own life. A coward’s way out. My grandmother was a child during these horrific times, and with the rise of each full moon, she would tell us the story of how one vampire had the power to almost annihilate an entire group of humans.

Her stories were powerful tools against the vampire race: they would instill a mindset of murder into the next generation of witches.

“I don’t know what you know, so I don’t know where to begin,” Jasik said, frustration filling his voice.

“How ‘bout the beginning?” In truth, I remembered everything I had ever been taught. I remembered my hatred for his kind and the disgust in myself for asking him to change me instead of trusting The Power would save me. I would not have been chosen if I could not handle it. 

“We’re supposedly mortal enemies, you know. You and me.”

I said nothing. What was I to say? We weren’t
supposedly
enemies. There was nothing supposed about it. We were enemies.

“The blood running through your veins isn’t just that of a vampire. The witch in you didn’t let go when you died. That power is still flowing through you, making you
different
.”
The witch in you didn’t let go.
I choked down the snide remark begging to be let loose. He treated my heritage with disrespect, as if being a witch was similar to vampirism. Mortality was nothing like immortality. Witches were
nothing
like vampires.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I’ve heard stories throughout the many long years I’ve been a vampire. Rumors, mostly, because our lack of an encounter with a being such as yourself has prevented us from proving any real existence of a hybrid creature.”

“Hybrid?” I asked, dumbfounded.

“Well, more or less. That would be the appropriate human label, but to us, you’re so much more.”

“How so?”

“If the myth is true, then you would be the answer to our problems. A feasible way to control the fight, to give us the upper hand.”

“What fight?”

“Against Rogue vampires.”

“You’re fighting vampires?”

“More or less.”

“Vampires from vampires? You protect your kind from your kind?”

“You see, vampires have a goddess. Like mortals have their gods. Do you know why the mortals’ gods gifted humans with power? To protect humans. Hunters are no different. I guess you could say we’re the witches of the vampire race,” he said with a chuckle. “So yes, we protect vampires from vampires.”

Suddenly, the history I remembered seemed drastically different than the story he was telling. I had been taught that vampires were nothing more than soulless demons inhabiting human-looking bodies. I had been taught that though a vampire may look like your loved one, talk like your loved one, they were not your loved one anymore. The demon had many disguises and used many tricks to buy your trust. But falling for them would cost a witch her life.

“Your gods gave witches powers just like our goddess gave vampires powers. Gifted humans found a new name: witches. Gifted vampires received a new one, too: Hunters. That’s what we do. We hunt. We hunt Rogues, vampires too dangerous to live. We protect our kind from those poisoned by power and hatred.”

“How do you know which ones shouldn’t live?”

“Rogues stand out. They’re different—the way they move, the way they look, the way they think,” he said as he rose.

“Jasik… why did you save me?” I blurted the words before I even realized I wanted to ask.

The question sounded stupid as it left my tongue. He had saved me because I begged for it, right? I wasn’t so sure that that was his only motive. Why were they there the night before our ritual? He saved me then, too. He saved me from Malik’s fangs. Did they know what was to happen the following eve? How did they get to our coven in time? Why did they save us? I had so many questions, and I didn’t know where to begin.

“We were hunting them. The Rogue vampires that attacked your coven.”

As he spoke, his eyes grew distant. I couldn’t understand why it affected him as much as it seemed to. I hated that I couldn’t understand the connection that now tied us together. But more so, I hated me. I hated my decision to become a vampire. I hated my fear of dying. I hated that I didn’t trust The Power. But most importantly, I hated that I didn’t hate the vampire before me. I wasn’t even afraid of him. Somehow, deep inside, I knew he wouldn’t hurt me. And that sickened me. I wanted to despise everything he stood for… but I couldn’t. I wondered if turning had changed more of me than I realized.

“Had we been even a minute later, we wouldn’t have been able to save you. Any of you. We were informed of a group of Rogues that had been destroying small villages, making their way across the coast, and we were sent to remove the problem.”

“And you did, right?
All
of them?” A gnawing in the pit of my gut told me I missed something—an instinctual predatory reaction I began to feel the moment I witnessed the death of my father: kill or be killed. I thought back to the fight. I passed out before it had ended.

“We killed all but a few.”

My world came crashing down as the realization hit me hard: the vampires who stole my life from me, the vampires who
forced
me to play the only hand I had been dealt, still walked, still lived, still breathed. Anger boiled within me as an acidic slop rose in my chest. I forced it down in a quick gulp. The thought made me sick, furious. They should be dead. Everyone who had any part in the attack should have perished beside the fallen members of my coven. I would make them pay.

“You were sent? By whom?” The idea of a vampire government and secret militia terrified me more than I would admit—even if I had become one of them.

“Our High Priestess. As Hunters, it is our duty to protect our coven. These Rogues were creating a problem that needed quick resolution.”

“I see,” I said, trying to wrap my head around the world that thrived when the lights went out. It felt eerily recognizable, as if I already knew of the world he lived in. His world sounded too much like my own.

“Vampires live in covens, too. Each coven has four Hunters. Each Hunter is blessed with one gift: the ability to be a reader, a healer, a shielder, or a seer. It’s believed that when combined, they would create an ultimate power.”

“So what are you?” I asked, swallowing the knot that formed in my throat. The world of vampires was far more vast than I had every realized.

“Don’t you know?” He gave me a boyish grin, and I fought to not forget what he truly was: a murderer. I couldn’t let his seductive British accent or his charming looks make me forget. “Look within yourself. Find the answer.”

He stood and faced me, and I took that as my cue to follow his lead. I stood before him. I focused on him with an intensity that made me shudder. I didn’t know what I was doing.

And nothing happened.

Instead of tapping into some hidden vampiric power source, I just stood there, jaw clenched, digging my nails into balled fists. Needless to say, I wasn’t very good at being a vampire, so I did the only thing that didn’t make me look like I was constipated. I called upon spirit. I wasn’t sure if I still had my Pagan powers, but the vampire seemed to think I did.

I relaxed my body, shaking away the nerves, the tightness. I closed my eyes and focused on my breath. Inhaling through my nose. Exhaling through my mouth. I pictured the world around me.

The moon had reached its peak, and as it slowly set, the sun would soon rise. I focused on her, on Mother Nature, on her power—the power that was nestled in all her children.

As a spirit user, I had a small affinity for all magic, because spirit was everywhere, in everything, but I had never perfected my skill of using the other elements for long periods of time. I reached within myself, tugging the new part of me that contained my heightened senses toward the part of me that held onto my past.

My magic encompassed me, wrapping around each crevice of my body just as it had done before I had changed. I formed a small smile.

Turning into a vampire hadn’t meant losing who I was. Being a witch would always be part of me. I hadn’t turned. I had transitioned—into a better, more powerful version of me. The me who made a sacrifice to become The Power’s vessel. The me who made the ultimate betrayal in order to save myself and my coven.

I reached out to the vampire, placing my palm flat against his chest. His scent hit me first. His essence was cool and tingled in my lungs. He smelled of musk and mint. His heart pounded beneath my hand and in my head. I had heard it before, when the distance between us became less and less, and each time, it rang in my ears. I knew it was there, but I still hadn’t expected to find a heartbeat.

One. Two. One. Two. I counted the echoing beats as if I had just regained my ability to hear. Heat pulsated from his body and radiated through me. My breathing became heavy.

As I stepped nearer, I watched as a soft glow around him shone brighter and brighter. Reaching out to it, I smiled as it swirled around my essence, wrapping me in a warm blanket of bliss. But as I pulled his magic closer to me, it began letting go, releasing my body from its grip. It left me alone. Cold. Blissless.

Sticks cracked, jolting us out of our trance. Jasik spun around, his hand easily maneuvering his blade from its sheath. He stepped before me, protectively blocking my body with his. I stepped beside him in a deviant move to show him that I didn’t need his protection.