A Sanguinary Rose (Complete)

Once Anja left, I realized she had been right all along. The forbidden elixir held no substitute.

If Mr. Royce had been feeding me a cheap supplement that only quenched my thirst, then human blood was a nectar of the gods, fulfilling and reinvigorating. It flowed through my veins and filled me up with a kind of euphoric, hyper energy that kept me pacing around my room. It granted a sort of renewed strength to my muscles, a quick step to my feet. The one thought bouncing in my mind was that I couldn’t stay inside my room. I had to let off some steam.

The black attaché case with the anti-vampire medicine was a stark reminder of my ‘unnatural condition,’ so I snatched it and shoved it in a corner of my closet. I hopped in front of the mirror to fix my bright scarlet hair, streaming down in a river of gleaming curls over my shoulders. The new sunglasses were my favorite gift. I put them on and struck a feisty pose. Although my drab clothes made me groan.

Gone now were the long-sleeved moderate blouses and sweaters I was used to. I slipped into a denim mini-skirt and a pink tank top that read in a cheeky cursive Double Dare Me.

The window slid soundlessly, and the roof tiles creaked under my bare feet. I tossed the high-heeled boots, and they thudded on the grass ten feet below. The fall would’ve been significant had I been human, but I alighted nimbly, the wet grass stalks licking my soles, and put my boots on. Things like that made me appreciate what I had become—I mean, who wouldn’t love superhuman strength to shake their bullies off like flies, or dark vision to quickly find their panties? Perhaps it was a good trade, even if it meant turning into a heap of ash in the morning.

What to do now? Sometimes I walked down the piers sticking into the middle of the lake or along the quays to listen to the whispering of the muddy waters. Other nights I’d stare out across the sea on the shore or between the boats moored at the harbor, smelling the stench of fish and saltwater. Some Fridays I’d meet up with Rick and the others to go over to a house party, although with each passing day I felt our friendship growing distant.

My feet took me through meandering lighted paths through parks, down narrow streets older than the Declaration of Independence, before the massive grinning pumpkin in front of the oldest government buildings in Farpoint’s Main Square, and back to the Halloween-decked suburbs where the occasional modern, two-story house rumbled with rock or electronic music.

It wasn’t long before midnight came and went. Partygoers stumbled out of a house’s porch hollering goodbyes, muffled by cheap Scream masks covering their groggy faces. Others, too drunk to drive, or even stand, shuffled along the sidewalks in their blundering quests to go home. At one point I spotted one jock-type guy wearing a baseball cap passed out on a front lawn whose party had disassembled minutes ago. His blood reeked of alcohol; I could tell at a distance from a whiff.

As night ran its course, more and more I noticed shadier characters standing around corners or loitering between alleys. These figures blended in the darkness, hooded shadows whose watchful eyes followed the bystanders, although no one in particular. Hands tucked in pockets, they tailed their victims with a slightly hunched posture, keeping enough distance to avoid suspicion. Not that they’d suspect anything; many of these people wouldn’t know what hit them.

One stalker headed my way as he tailed a drunk. Interest glinted in his eyes under his hoodie as we passed by each other.

“Better keep walking, buddy.” I told him and he turned away, hot on his victim’s tracks.

I had suspected it from the beginning, but now I could undoubtedly affirm they were vampires—at least one or two on every block and ready to trail any dolt as oblivious as a rock, or ready to pursue if one bolted.

One thing was for sure—never had I seen so much movement outside at this time.

I had a good idea of what would happen to these people if the stalkers had it their way. After all, it happened to me. Even if I played hero, there were too many would-be victims. I could only watch. The longer I did, the more helpless I felt for them.

It was a girl’s bone-chilling scream that spurred my muscles into action. The echoes ripped through the still cold air, but the scream was cut short before it could attract more attention.

Towards the corner on Elm Wood Road, two black-garbed figures tussled with a scrawny-looking girl wearing a sweater, one restraining her arms and the other muffling her calls for help with his arm locked around her head. They dragged her away from the lamplights and under the cover of darkness like a snake swallowing up a mouse.

My heart was at my throat as I sprinted down the wet asphalt. I doubted that girl was anybody I knew, but some protective maternal instinct overrode any sense of survival to run the other way. I couldn’t allow her to suffer the same fate or worse.

There was a nagging thought in the back of my mind demanding me to stop and think. What would I do if I caught up to them? Dad’s words came back to me at that moment: A bullet to the heart will suffice. Not the head, not the lungs, not the legs; it has to be the heart. I was unarmed though. What then, stupid?

The hand over the girl’s mouth slipped, and a piercing shriek escaped for a split second before they cut it off. That was enough to spur me back in pursuit. The captors rushed across the empty Light’s End Road. The three of them passed under a pool of light, revealing the dark stripe-patterned hoodies, and the pink sweater stamped with a white bunny, all torn from grappling.

My high-heeled boots clicked on the pavement, breaking the stillness in the street. One vampire snapped his face toward me. His eyes shone like a cat’s in the darkness, instilling a dread I hadn’t felt since Tobias sired me, like a stab at my guts, like bugs crawling down my back. The shock rooted me to the spot.

There was a deadpan callousness to his face, a complete disregard for consequences, feelings, and reason. The way the two moved, struggled, hauled; the lack of any communication, even face expressions or gestures o grunts—they looked as though they were operating mechanically. They vanished behind the pine trees clustering around Farpoint’s Boot Hill—the cemetery.

I swallowed my fears through the knot in my throat and followed them at an unsteady pace beyond the gaps among the great pine sentinels. The underbrush grew dense and scratched at my bare legs, and the roots stood out like giant gnarled hands twisting at odd angles, threatening to catch my foothold. What little moonlight spilled through the canopy was enough for me to see well, to distinguish the three silhouettes ahead scuffling their way out of the forested patch and onto the graveyard.

I stumbled to a halt amid the trees, holding on to the trunk for respite, only too aware of the enshrouding silence. The only sound left being the wind breaking through the leaves and the undergrowth rustling as the two vampires and their victim reached the first row of slabs, headstones, and monuments. The area was jam-packed with a hundred more humanoid shapes.

My breath wafted away in clouds of steam. I watched, petrified, with a jolting heart and electric shudders down my spine, as scores of heads turned in unison to look at me, sunk in absolute silence, and a hundred eyes glowed under the moonlight. There was a sudden rush of air and goose bumps covered my skin. The hair on my neck stood on end, and I turned on my heels.

A giant’s shadow towered over me and I lost consciousness.

***

I dreamt there was a graveyard showered with white, pale moonlight. Among the headstones and monuments stood scores of faceless, motionless figures sunk in unbreakable silence. A silence so devoid of the usual night noises—the chattering of the forest, the chirping of insects. A silence so stifling you could hear your own heart racing; a stillness so palpable and anomalous to drive anyone insane. And then a disturbance rose in the air, followed by the tiny moans of a girl in languished suffering.

“No... no... help...”

Her cries echoed in my eardrums, as though they came from within me. After that came the faintest hints of snapping twigs and quivering branches. Then I caught movement by the base of a tree trunk.

There was a girl with a pink sweater slumped against it, and leaning over her, a dark, humanoid shape. It was a vampire feeding, I figured by the slight, harrowing sucking noise and the eagerness in its head’s movements. I saw the exact moment the girl lost her life as her eyes glazed over, watching me over her killer’s shoulders. For a moment, the moonlight shone its hair a flaming red.

And with it, the rest of the world also turned crimson. The effulgence streaming from the sky gradually shifted color, turning from a ghostly white to yellow, orange, and finally a sullen, sinister red. This view brought back a haunting memory I had buried deep within my psyche, and now it came crashing back to me. Above Farpoint, the whole bloody moon swelled and pulsated like one giant heart.

I woke up with a cold sweat dampening my neck and forehead, sticking my bronze hair to the side of my face. A bright light above left me blind as my eyes flicked open. In a panic I bolted from the mattress and onto my feet to look for a shade. Barring my face with my arm, I realized it was a plain old bar of light, and that I hadn’t fallen asleep outdoors nor in my room with the shutters wide open.

It was a clinic—squeaky-clean white tiles, bright fluorescent lights, a strong scent of antiseptic soap clinging to every surface.

The door opened, and a middle-aged man wearing a lab coat and a tie entered the tiny clinic room, scrunching up his eyes at the clipboard in his hands.

“Ah, you’re awake. This way, please.” His voice sounded good-natured. But his eyes told a different story. They crinkled as though something amused him.

“What is this place?” I wanted to be home, to wake up for real and take a long, cold shower to shake off all of these messed up feelings of uncertainty. Not knowing what was real, what wasn’t—I’d gotten tired of that crap really quickly.

“Come this way. You’ll find out shortly.”

“Make me, and you’ll join your ancestors ahead of time.”

He smiled. “Please, do try. I double dare you.”

I looked down at the words printed on my tank top and glowered at him. Somewhere deep in my gut I knew nothing good would come from pouncing at his throat. Just like Mandala. So I complied. After all, I’d done nothing wrong. It’d be fine.

The hallways outside the clinic displayed the bustling of the early hours of work. Employees scuttled from office to office, traveling the corridor in hurried steps. Men in suits carried their briefcases. Women wearing black blazers and white blouses underneath carried steaming cups of coffee in one hand and hugged folders with their other arm.

Judging by the pillars holding up the stories, the spider chandeliers hanging in the middle of the hallways, the 18th century oil paintings decking out the walls, the swollen and blanched tiles of timber creaking under our collective weight, and particularly the scent of old wood and molded rafters, I knew this was one of the government buildings in the middle of town.

The man in white led me up two stories to a door with a brass sign that read Malcolm Faux, PhD, Overseer.

The first things that drew my eye inside the office were the large open space to move freely around and the great gold-embroidered rug in the middle. At the far end with his back turned to the shuttered windows, sat a plump man with a receding hairline on a leather swiveling chair beyond an enormous mahogany desk.

“Leave us,” he told the man in white. I heard the door close behind me. “Now, Scarlett. Sit,” He gestured at the wooden, cushioned chair across. “All you need to know is I’m Farpoint’s overseer. I’m in charge of the government’s affairs on the occult and supernatural branch running Washington State. Let’s cut right to the chase, shall we?”

I’d been pretty shaken up since waking up, but now a feeling of dread closed in around my heart like a fist. Of all people reprimanding me, for something I did or didn’t do, why the big cheese? On what scale did my actions affect anything to have the top gun of ORPHEUS hammer down judgment upon me?

“Dr. Hans tells me you haven’t taken your meds. In fact, he said you fed recently. Mark my words, Scarlett, SanguineX is the most important substance in your daily life from now on. That is, of course, if you wish to keep living among your loved ones. I think we were particularly clear on that regard.”

It was true I had fed recently. The effects of the blood I had drunk from Anja had long subsided, but I still felt fresh from the act.

“I’m supposed to be at school by now. My mom must be worried sick,” I said, patting my mini-skirt’s pocket. I had left my cell phone in my bedroom. “How did I get here? Why am I here?”

“One of our employees found you meandering through the woods, putting yourself and others at risk.”

At risk? How so? He was telling the truth, to an extent. I couldn’t get over the fact he was most likely omitting information. I thought back to my midnight stroll; details were blurry. Did I faint?

“We might have to resort to putting you on probation,” he said, yanking me from my musings. “That includes taking custody of you from your parents, and force-feeding you your required doses of SanguineX, and I put it that way because I’m all out of euphemisms. You’ve more than proved you cannot coexist among your fellow human and non-human. It’s twice you’ve fed on others by now.”

I could feel my lungs struggling to catch a breath. How did they find out about Anja and me, though?

I pieced together a few bits of memory.

“There were vampires stalking people yesterday. They were roaming the streets, and who knows how many of them fed. But I’m the one being problematic?” By then I was recalling. “No, I wasn’t meandering. I was trying to help somebody.”

“Oh, you got me there. You remembered,” Malcolm said, mocking me with arched eyebrows and raised hands. When silence dragged on, he gave me a snobbish smile. “As veritable and unbiased as your memory might be, your behavior hasn’t been acceptable. First you hid, you fed, and you disregarded the rules. You will comply.”

I glanced around the office. Leather-bound books lined the dark burnished-paneled walls. An oil portrait painting of his size-strained suit and smug, round face hung over a bust likened to his more ideal image. I recalled the words Mandala told me then. Loopholes.

“I don’t want to take the meds,” I began, hesitating. “If there are alternatives. I will be better than this.”

“What are you saying?” Malcolm tilted his head.

“I... don’t want you to take this away from me.”

I could see my reflection in his glasses as he frowned with interest. “So you like being a vampire?”

I saw myself lying to his face. Although as I thought on it deeply, that statement carried some truth. “Yes.”

But he didn’t seem to pick up on that. “You’re telling me you feel fine outperforming your fellow humans in speed and bulk with no merit of your own?”

“I like being stronger.”

The ugly sneer in his pudgy face stretched wide. “That’s the kind of mindset we’re looking for. One of our top performing employees had already endorsed you. And I can see why.” His grin turned dead serious. “You can say you work for the government, but any breach of confidentiality will cause your termination.”

“I understand.”

“And should you reject this offer, you will take your meds, final warning.”

“I’d be mad to reject it.”

The office door opened behind me. A familiar rush of air made my flesh creep, and I glanced over my shoulder.

“We’ll get on with your contract signing for another time. Your assigned counselor will be in charge of showing you the ropes,” Malcolm said, gesturing at the door. “Right now, he’ll take you to school.”

Mandala crossed the office, the folds of his trench coat swaying behind his feet and rested his huge gloved hand on the back of my chair. There was something about the warlock that made it suffocating to be near him, as if he carried an aura of weighty air.

“Unless he walks me straight inside the school building with an umbrella overhead, I don’t know how you plan on getting there without getting your hands smudged with ash.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem,” Malcolm said, looking up at the huge man. “Take her and go.”

I caught a mouthful of air and held it in. The hairs on my arms and neck stood on end. I rose from the chair, but it wasn’t me making those movements, it wasn’t my brain sending those signals. There was a tugging within my arms, my legs, my torso, as though puppet strings slithered through my skin pores and usurped control of my limbs. The force pulled me upward on my feet. It didn’t hurt too much, but nausea assailed my throat. It felt as though there were someone under my skin.

My arms swung around, and so did the rest of my body with them.

Mandala had raised his brawny arm toward me. His fingers curled, and the yank on my legs towed me forward.

I opened my mouth to protest. My voice came out muffled when he sealed it close with another closing hand gesture.

Malcolm barked with laughter behind me. “Enough. Just go.”

I didn’t stop moving until I was inches away from the hulking man. He made a sweeping movement with his arm, and runic marks shimmered into existence under our feet. There was a flash of light, a rush of air, wind whipping in my ears, and I suddenly became weightless for what seemed an eternity, forcing out a scream from my throat, until I dropped to my knees on the rug—a different one.

It was Principal Luther’s office.