Blood Rose (26 page)

Neesa shuddered at the show of his strength even though she knew he was capable of more. My jaw dropped for it was the first time he’d given me an example of how strong he actually was.

Once the stone was split, it was really quite beautiful with swirled layers of different colors like the embodiment of a rainbow. Damien glanced up at me for a split second as he proceeded to powder the geode stone into dust with his bare fingers. He was analyzing my reaction to his strength.

“Okay, we also have Onyx to strengthen bones. Peridot, to help her body regenerate. Axinite, to aid in mending fractures. Blue Lace Agate, to heal bruising and wounds. Like her lip and her eyes and such. Azurite to strengthen her knee, combined with Malachite to help mend the muscle and tendons.”

Each stone was beautiful and unique. I had no idea how it was supposed to heal a broken bone let alone make a bruise vanish. It was this or nothing in the end.

“So I have to ask, as much as I get hurt why didn’t you ever mention this stuff before?” I was now laid on my stomach close to the edge of the bed, watching them both closely.

“My mother wouldn’t let me. She said you are too observant. You wouldn’t simply trust in the spirituality of it. She believed you would see the raw magic. Mother said you weren’t ready to understand and acknowledge our world.” Neesa looked sad as she answered me.

What she said was true though so I quit questioning her. I couldn’t face my own dreams, how could I have faced this before I had found Damien.

Damien looked up from the rock, which was mostly glittery sand by now, to look at me with a slight smirk. He shook his head, amused. “She doesn’t miss a thing, does she?” He too was doomed from my observant qualities it seemed.

“Okay, so now what?” Ignoring his teasing.

“Now you roll onto your back and get comfortable. Damien, can you go ahead and remove the splint on her arm? Lianna, you’re going to lie on your back and place your arms out to either side palm up. Don’t speak and try not to be scared.”

“Gee Nees, you really know how to make someone feel relaxed.” Sarcasm. Heavy sarcasm.             

XV

“DREAM SCAPE”

Neesa took a hand full of dust and rubbed it over her palms until they were chalky and sparkling. As gently as possible, she rubbed her hands along every bit of my exposed flesh. Even lightly sprinkling some over my lips. Repeating the hand dusting as needed.

She got her bowl of stones out and began the placement process. One on each ankle, knee, over my belly button and my heart, another directly between my eyes and one on the inside of each wrist.

This felt disturbingly like the trance meditation. I was seconds from putting an end to it. The intense look of focus in her eyes was all I needed to know not to speak or interrupt.

She didn’t speak to me as her mother had. Neesa was chanting in a melodic whisper. It sounded almost songlike with her honey rich voice.

Damien was back next to the window as soon as Neesa had begun. Obviously trying to stay out of her way. He respected her magic more than he admitted to.

Neesa stood next to the bed, one knee balancing her so that she leaned over me. Her hands danced over my body in a strange whimsical way. At times, the chanting would grow more intense. She’d place her hands firmly on my legs, or my stomach or both hands firm on my shoulders. Her fingers brushed once from my forehead down to my chin. Danced over my body through the air and then touched to my toes and brushed all the way up to my face.

My skin was tingling. I thought at first from the

powder but it was everywhere, even places concealed by my clothes.

Each place she’d touched me with her hands felt strange. The pressure lingered. Her hand movements became more dramatic as her chanting also became more exotic and intense. Once more, her hands placed hard against my shoulders and chest. The sensation was so shocking I gasped. There was no pain but the pressure made it feel as if her fingers had entered my body and grabbed a hold of something deep inside of me and was pulling it up and out.

When I saw what followed I wouldn’t have been able to speak if I wanted to. A blue shimmering fog seemed to spill from her fingers like she were holding dry ice. The substance had a trail of origin from where her hands had been. She repeated the process on my stomach. It felt just as real and had the same result. Again from my thighs. The thick fog swirled and danced above my body.

Could they both see this?

Now just the tip of her index fingers touched me. Firm though it didn’t hurt, I could tell she was touching on pressure points. Each time she came up she pinched her fingers together as if pulling a string. The fog streamed between her fingers.

What the hell was this? Was I hallucinating? Her chanting was so powerful now it seemed to no longer come from her but rather it came from everywhere.

I must have been trembling despite that it didn’t feel like I was. Each one of the stones precariously placed began to shake. Looking up to try to see Neesa I found myself mesmerized by the energy. It had taken on its own form.

The form of the same girl from my dreams in perfect detail though crafted of shimmering silver energy. She smiled down at me. Her hand reached for me. Then so suddenly that I nearly shrieked, each stone placed on my body exploded, forming a cloud of dust around me causing the apparition to fall apart. It looked as if a water balloon had burst midair. Just before I felt it hit me, everything went dark.

* * * * *

Pale sand felt like powder under foot. The sun blinded me. Everything looked white from the intense light but it wasn’t hot- just bright. The light began to fluctuate between white and pink. I couldn’t look up to understand why.

Slowly I turned in circles looking around me in attempt to understand my surroundings. In attempt to prepare for the worst. I was getting used to the worst these days. May as well be ready.

The first thing I realized is that this wasn’t a dream. I was perfectly one hundred percent me through and through.

Sand spread endlessly in every direction. It extended so far that it melted in with the horizon when my sight could no longer read the distance. Everything was level. No sand dunes, no slopes. Nothing Just flat beach or perhaps flat desert.

So what now? I looked down, noted I was in the same short black gym shorts and the running bra as I’d been in before. So I hadn’t changed. Somehow, I thought that was a good thing. Made things slightly more real.

Ah, the next thing to come to realization. No pain. No injuries. How long would it last?

Third. I wasn’t alone. Blackness masked the figure as the sun was too brilliant for me to make out the features. The figure was a ways off but moving steadily closer.

It was her. The girl I had dreamed of since my childhood. She was dressed in white shawls, looking just as I remembered her to be. “Hello, Lianna.”

“Well you know my name. That’s good to know. What’s yours?”

“That’s not important.”

My eyes narrowed. From the light? Maybe. “Where are we?”

“Between reality. We’re in limbo. Do not distress. You’re not dead.”

I needed a moment to take it in. She let me have it, showing no impatience. “Are you? Who are you? Why do I become you
every
night? Why do I watch your people getting murdered and tortured so brutally? Why must we feel their pain?” I sounded desperate. I was desperate.

She said nothing. Only looking on at me with pity. “Are you real?” She laughed at my apparently silly question.

“Every bit as real as you are. Yes, I suppose I am dead. Then again here I am. So there for I am no longer. That’s thanks to you of course. Which is really thanks to me.” She seemed smug over her riddle.

“Why are we here? Was I right, the dreams are a message?”

“No. They’re a story. Nothing more. Just a very old and very important story. We feel their pain because we must, Lianna.”

“And Damien?”

“He’s why we’re both here isn’t he? The answers you seek are simple, Lianna. All questions have but one answer. Blood.”

“My blood or his?” She only looked at me. Her patient smile made her angelic. Her lips parted to speak. The light was blinding. It over whelmed everything. I could see nothing but the white and pink radiation.

“If you’re to survive what is coming then you must listen. They are coming for blood, Lianna. They will destroy everything,” her voice became a whisper.

“You must stop them. The key is in the blood. There is great power in sacrifice. There is life in death. The magic is there, Lianna. You have to reach for it! You must have faith!”

* * * * *

“Wait!” I woke up with a painful gasp as my body jerked up right. My hand was reached out as if to grab something, then tightened to a fist and then held to my chest. As if that could slow my pounding heart.

Damien was suddenly kneeling on the floor in front of me. His hand took mine. Our gazes locked. His other hand came up to my chin, his thumb stroking my cheek. “Are you okay?” He whispered so as to not wake Neesa. She lay curled up in a ball asleep at the end of the bed. She looked utterly exhausted.

For the first minute, I couldn’t answer him. The image of the sandy world and that strange woman from my dreams still burned me. “Did you see it? Did you see what happened?” His eyes narrowed. He didn’t answer. Instead he just sat waiting for me to continue silent and patient. “She said that all the answers were in the blood... What does that mean?”

Damien’s brow lifts precariously as he looked to Neesa in silent question if I meant her. All I could do was shake my head. My hands were shaking. I clinched my eyes shut and shook my head. “Tell me,” his voice was surprisingly soothing. I nodded, taking a deep breath. He moved to the head of the bed, keeping my hand in his and pulled me into his lap, arms circling me protectively.

I explained everything I experienced with Neesa up until I blacked out. Then what all had happened next. The dream was so short that it didn’t take long to explain. I had somehow managed to skip over the part about Damien without him realizing it or picking it up from my thoughts.

Damien’s brow furrowed as his foot nudged Neesa in the leg lightly. “Wake up Descendant,” his voice rumbled like a growl. Nothing gentle about that.

As Neesa’s eyes popped open she wrinkled her nose grouchily and looked up to Damien so obviously ready to give him a verbal reaming until she realized I was awake. “What can I help you with?” She grumbled through clenched teeth.

“You put her in a trance and promised no one could reach her there because it would only induce an out of body experience so that she could heal
peacefully
with
no stress
from her mind.
Your
words Descendant,” his words were venom.

Damien starred at Neesa expectantly who only looked confused and worried. “And yet that’s not what happened.” Her eyes widened as her lips parted slightly. It was a look of fear. “What happened was another being pulled her into a metaphysical dimension.”

“Oh shit.” Neesa grumbled as she sat up and looked at me as if she wasn’t sure what she was looking at exactly.

“She’s fine. No monsters waiting in the darkness this time. Just an undead spirit who’s been haunting her for her entire life thus far.”

Neesa seemed mostly confused. My eyes rolled at Damien’s ploy in tormenting Neesa. With a sigh, I repeated my story and the warning.

“Well see there? Nothing bad really happened. She didn’t get hurt and I really don’t think she’s possessed. I mean she still seems normal.”

“Possessed? Okay this is not The Exorcist and you are totally not a priest so don’t joke.” I laughed. No one said anything. Worst of all no one looked at me for a good two minutes. “You’re not joking.” Silence. “Are you?”

Neesa twisted herself so she sat cross-legged on my bed staring down at her toe rings as if they were the most fascinated things she had ever seen.

“Nothing happened. So it doesn’t matter but I do want to know how you’re feeling.” Damien ran his hand against my shoulder, making me shiver and prickle with gooseflesh.

“Stiff mostly. Sore. Better than I did before. Not a hundred percent by any means but the intense pain is gone.” At least Neesa looked more cheerful with the acclimation.

“You should go look in the mirror. The bruising is already clearing up. Then you need to drink your tea.” She yawned out the last sentence.

Damien let me go reluctantly. I slid to the edge of

the bed and placed both feet on the floor to brace myself to stand. “Moment of truth.” I announced before standing up slowly.

Honestly, I was prepared to hear a snap crackle pop and nearly collapse as I slowly eased weight from one foot to the other. Don’t get me wrong, it hurt but it was more like a painful twist rather than a full on break.

“Not bad am I right?” Neesa chirped as she fell over onto her back.

“We’ll see.” Slowly I walked to the bathroom surprised to see it was nearly four in the morning according to the clock by my bed. Exhaling a heavy breath, I flipped on the bathroom light as I stepped up to the counter and looked in the mirror.