A Sanguinary Rose (Complete)

Halloween week turned out to be a great distraction and a much-needed shake-up in my life.

Principal Luther approved the Arts and Crafts club’s wishes to refashion Farpoint High School’s grounds to Halloween themes, as was customary every year.

Tombstones with amusing, irreverent epitaphs that described a school’s staff member in one or two lines stood before their respective parking spots. Since both Anja and Amanda were club members, they invited me to help them in the group decorations. We got together with a couple of Amanda’s friends and marked down the tombstones with inside jokes pertaining to each teacher after they’d finished carving them out from cardboard and papier-mâché.

“It’s been a while since I’ve been to Ireland.” Anja was brushing glue on the paper. “But we’ve got a good chance we might go next March for St. Patrick’s. I can’t wait. My Irish’s getting kinda rusty. Grandma pretty much speaks it exclusively since she never got to learn English properly.” Her voice went down to murmurs. “She still believes in banshees… says she heard the wailing walking up a hill and then grandpa turned up on his deathbed two days later.”

I looked up from the fake tombstone. “Well, are they… real?”

“Oh. I don’t know. Maybe.”

Other students took to crafting papier-mâché bats and spiders, and they’d latch them onto walls and windows all over school, along with hanging artificial spiderweb from classroom doorsills.

The student council committee took charge of preparations for the annual Halloween dance: A moon-modeled disco ball swung in the middle of the commons, orange and black ribbons framed the windows looking out to the yards, spider-shaped balloons hovered over tables, and coffin-shaped surround speakers took the stage that had been raised against the wall. Huge banners pitting Angel versus Devil football teams on the annual Halloween match draped the walls. Jack-o’-lantern-shaped sconces hung along the hallways, their orange light-bulbs shining wicked smiles on the walls in front.

In Farpoint it was the norm to have the whole week dedicated to All-Hallows’ Eve, starting October 28 and ending on November 3. Tourism skyrocketed, and costumed visitors from around the country and world besieged the small town’s main themed events, the shopping mall, and the biggest raves, specially on the 31. Perhaps Farpoint wasn’t entirely unknown around the globe as Dad claimed. After all, we were America’s very own Halloween-Town.

A monumental pumpkin was hollowed out, carved with a face, and placed in the town square in front of the Great Oak of Farpoint, with a bonfire dancing within it all night long. The haunted mansion’s tours atop Fell Summit Way got overbooked throughout the week—I found out because my friend, Rick, had been in a sour mood the first day after his plan got decommissioned. Forest trails such as the Devil’s Trail and Squalling Vale became much more traveled, specially after sunset. The multi-colored lamp-lit piers thrusting far into Lake Crescent and the quays along the shore provided romantic venues for couples to gaze into the moon’s reflection.

Houses in the suburbs set up their own decorations. As for us, Dad had been restless since the night he showed me the gun or maybe even before, and prohibited us from setting up our own. When he left to work, Mom put up a pair of Jack-o’-lanterns nestled between shrubs to attract trick-or-treaters while keeping a low profile from him.

By Monday, all sorts of people walked up to my face to ask me out for the Halloween dance. Most of them I knew by face, but not by name. I rejected Morganne twice (who knew what antics she plotted?), Jason came off too strong, and I finally settled with a senior student called Harvey, since Anja wouldn’t let Alan breathe, or vice versa.

***

By the end of the school day, as I waited outside Anja’s seventh, Oliver walked up to me with a jittery smile that looked more like a wince and flushed cheeks that looked more like tomatoes.

“Hey, Scarlett. Nice weather, isn’t it?” he said, rubbing his neck. I looked outside—the end of the world seemed to be at our doorstep.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, but someone’s already invited me. I said yes.” I tried on my best apologetic smile.

I could almost hear his soul getting crushed, but Oliver smiled wide. “That’s so great to hear. Good to know you’re not going by yourself.”

I was about to ask whom else he’d invite when he spun on his heels and stalked his way back through the hallway.

“Aw, Oliver looks blue lately,” Anja said, coming out of class.

“It’s either that or red. What’s up?”

“I’m just gonna check real quick on Alan, so I’ll see you at your place later on,” she said, smiling.

My eye gave a slight twitch. “Fine, but he can’t come in, got it?”

“Totes. He’ll just drop me off and pick me back up.”

“All right. See you there.”

Rain rapped on the windowpanes in a steady rhythm when I walked out on the school grounds. Dark clouds gathered and clogged the sky, heralding a major storm that came once or twice a year. Lightning rent across the blue in the distance, and I braced for the thunder to rattle my ears.

Students ran past me towards their cars, or their parents’ cars waiting in the school’s circuit. Others spread open umbrellas and took off home on foot while the least fortunate unchained their bikes and hustled on.

I drew from my backpack an impermeable drape and put it on over my indigo hoodie. The meager light that filtered through the clouds still stung my eyes, so down the bridge of my nose went my sunglasses.

As I stalked by the scarecrow on the school grounds, my thirst for blood spiked, throwing it off the charts, despite my urges being sated moments ago, despite the fact the vampire was weakest at noon.

The urges I kept repressed sprouted, and the thoughts I kept out flooded my mind. There was a sting on my lower lip. I drew blood from it when I pinched it with my fangs. My hair turned a bright scarlet. Anyone running past me during those moments could’ve been an easy prey, and I mean anyone, but I clamped down on the impulses. The hell’s happening to me?

A big, broad-shouldered bull of a man watched me across the road, sitting upright on a wet bench in the park. Beads of water rolled down his hat’s brim and over onto his black leather trench coat. Despite his black-tinted sunglasses, I knew he watched me; surely, he was the cause behind my predatory senses going haywire.

He didn’t talk and he didn’t move. But some weird, covert force beckoned me to approach the stranger, as though strings gently tugged at my limbs and compelled me forward. I crossed the street, rivulets of rainwater gliding along the curb and into the gutter, and stood a few feet away him. He patted the bench at his side.

Despite the blood thirst choking my self-control, some deep instinct told me to keep my distance, and not to even think of attacking his throat. I sat next to him as far as the length of the bench allowed. But the man’s bulk covered a half, and my head barely reached the height of his burly shoulders.

His voice was deep and gruff. “How was it?” He said, looking straight ahead at the emptying school grounds. “They say you always remember your first above the rest.”

The memory spilled into my mind—Melanie’s body going limp, tumbling like a rag doll on the grimy floor, her smug expression wiped off her face, her glazed eyes staring at the ceiling. A tear of blood rolled down the side of her neck; another fell off my lips. Just like the boy in the book’s pictures, I became Tainted.

“They say nothing else tastes better in this chaotic dimension of ours.”

Silence.

“Do you agree, Scarlett?”

The wind shifted; the breeze fanned my face. “Yes.”

“How do you feel about it?”

“Conflicted.”

The man leaned forward over his knees. “Who says that? You or the demon within?”

“Us.”

“Tell me, Scarlett, have you ever been afraid of the dark, of the stalker that prowls in the shadows?”

The wind howled through the leaves. My bright red hair swept up. “Yes, that’s every girl’s nightmare. But not anymore.”

“Then what is the darkness to you?”

“Safety and comfort. Without it I wouldn’t survive.”

There was a fleeting glint in his eye as he turned to face me, but the sunglasses hid it from view. “The darkness doesn’t betray. It is your one true ally.” He paused. “Did you know humans possess demons within? Some are stronger, some weaker. But they are bound by flesh and soul. When Tobias awoke you, yours was liberated, but it’s still restrained to your will.”

A thunderbolt shook the sky.

“Do you know what people are?” he asked, before answering himself. “Shells. Breathing, walking shells. What makes them whole is what’s inside. Not organs or blood, but the potential that lives within them—their soul. And every single one of them has a demon in it. You’ve freed the one in her.”

His head nodded toward the school grounds, and I followed his gaze.

Melanie watched us from across the street, umbrella raised on high. Her sleek raven hair whipped her face. Her eyes darted when I turned—she was afraid to look me in the eye, but it was clear she, too, felt compelled to come here.

I bolted from the bench and backed away. “Who are you? How do you know about Tobias?”

“I am merely an envoy from the powers that be. Call me Mandala. No need for you to introduce yourself, Scarlett Rosenbaum. Your file is stored in our archives.” His meaty lips curled. “That girl would still be chained to mortality, if you hadn’t avoided us all this time.” He touched his temple under the brim of the hat. “Think on that.”

My feet rooted to the grass. There was something he kept doing that prevented me from running away, something that overrode my senses and forced me to stay—like a tugging in my limbs.

“You may or may not know, but the further you evolve, the stronger, faster, and smarter you become. Some may want to take that away from you. Law dictates we take that away from you, but... loopholes can be found. It is you who decides.” Mandala stood from the bench, at a towering height of seven feet, and swept his trench coat. “Right now you’re an outcast, but as I said, the darkness doesn’t betray; it takes you in with open arms. ORPHEUS is here for your every need.” He looked at Melanie across the street. I turned to her, too. “Don’t forget that.”

There was a sound of wind snapping, a sudden flash of light. When I looked, he was already gone—vanished into thin air. A circle of bent grass remained where he had stood. At once, my thirst for blood receded, and the instinct to pounce on someone’s throat had dispelled. Bronze color washed down my hair.

He had been talking to us both, somehow. That’s what I believed. But Melanie didn’t acknowledge it. She went on her way along the sidewalk as though nothing had happened, the storm gathering strength above us like a dark omen of what’s to come.

***

“So, why a lynx?” I asked Anja as she was doing my hair in front of the dresser’s mirror in my room.

“Uh, something about the stars...” Locks of red hair twirled about her fingers while her other hand ran a comb along the tufts. Her green eyes, absorbed in thought, were fixed on her handiwork. “My mom taught me to braid it like this. I always loved the look. Well, that is before I got the bob hairdo.” She giggled and held two tufts to begin braiding. “Why a lynx? Oh, I’m not entirely sure about the facts. Apparently because of the stars’ alignment when I was born. Mom’s actually a tigress, you see. My uncle a bobcat and Grandma a serval. I’m so hoping we go to Ireland next year—it’s always been my favorite time of the year and it’s been so long. We’d drive out to picnic and then look over the cliffs of Moher and the crashing waves. You have to go see them one day. You could even come with us! Anyways, Grandma used to say ours was a gift from the stars. Unlike werewolves, which people say they’re cursed.”

“Am I? Am I cursed, too?” I studied her reaction in the mirror—first lines of bewilderment creasing her brow, then her eyes widening.

“No! That’s totally not the case.”

“It’s just what I’m starting to think... based on things I’ve said and thought, things... I’ve done.”

“Oh no, you’ve done nothing wrong. Don’t fret it. Apples and oranges, apples and oranges.” She flashed me a nervous smile. As if on cue, the doorbell rang. She took that chance to change the topic. “Who’d be out at a time like this?”

“Probes the mailman.” Even though I was also glad for the distraction, it gave me a bad feeling. Somehow I linked it with my meeting Mandala a few hours ago.

By the time we reached the front door the mailman had gone, swallowed up by unrelenting sheets of black rain. We hauled the box to my room, and I locked the door. The shutters were halfway drawn, giving us a glimpse of the lamp-lit streets and cars outside. Muffled electronic music was playing in one of my neighbor’s house, making their walls shudder and carrying over to ours. I drew the shutters and took out my house keys to saw through the box’s tape.

“Wow, who sent you presents?” Anja asked, beaming her usual oblivious smile.

“Don’t you know today’s my birthday?”

“I didn’t!”

“It’s not.”

My heart pounded hard on my rib cage as I knelt before it. Whatever it was, it had to do with Mandala. I was certain. Anja’s eager expression pushed me to open it, her big, black-tipped lynx ears in full display now.

“A magazine?” It was on top of the contents. The cover said, in tall red print, V: Every Day Survival Guide.

“I’m no expert, but you should flip through that.” Anja’s eyes went wide, her ear flicking. “Oooh. This is lit.”

From the box she pulled a black case with a label that read polycarbonate sunglasses, polarized lenses, and maximum protection.

I put them on and stood before the mirror. The light in my room got dimmer. We tended to disagree on our fashion choices, but she was right on that regard. They looked damn good.

“Check me out.”

“Meow.”

“Stop. That’s weird.”

Bundled together and neatly folded in stacks were sets of anti-UV clothes, such as matching hoodies, pants, blouses, gloves and socks, all destined to keep from getting charred like bacon.

On top a brochure from Farpoint’s college campus, Whispering Hollow University, with its motto underneath, In Luce et Tenebris. I looked at the courses offered—Cryptology, Cryptobiology, Cryptozoology, Cryptoanthropology, Cryptopaleonthology, Occult Arithmancy, Enochian, Otherworld Geology, Stargazer, a few others, and then there were the usual ‘human’ courses.

“That’s one too many cryptos for my liking. What does any of this mean?”

“I’ve always wanted to be a stargazer,” Anja said, breathing down my neck.

“You can do that outside, almost every night.”

Her short blonde hair bobbed. “It’s not what you think it means. There are other ways to study the stars.” She looked at the brochure. “Oh, and you know what’s the best part? It’s tuition-free for all of us. Deviants, I mean.”

“That’s a nice plus. But I was aiming for Yale, or something.”

“I’ve heard they rarely accept deviants. Except for a few devil families, we’re excluded from the Ivy League. Could be I’m wrong. What else have you got?”

“Well, this isn’t half bad. I’m feeling pampered so far.”

But I jinxed myself after that. The next item I took out of the box was a container of ‘garlic patches,’ a preemptive measure so I’d lose appetite for blood while I wore it. It wouldn’t be too terrible, except the stench of the patch itself was revolting, and it would linger on my nose and taste buds during use.

Then came the black attaché case at the bottom of the box.

Anja’s smile vanished from her beaming face. She squinted. “Fancy... but who’d send you this?”

The latch made a clicking sound as I unclasped the case and spread it open on the floor. Several small glass vials filled with red fluid sat in black sheathes of velvet. Their labels read SanguineX. My palms were sweaty as I picked one up and read around its back. “After administering medicine, the user may experience weakness, duller senses, and reduced perception to be akin to a human’s state...”

But it wouldn’t make me human again.

“Oh, did they... find you out?” Anja asked.

Mandala had said: Law dictates we take that away from you, but... loopholes can be found. They would either take my traits away or enhance them, or at least that’s what I understood. I didn’t think either two options were ideal. Maybe the latter if I had to pick...

Anja broke the smothering silence in my room. “Scarlett. Perhaps you understand what happens if you feed too much, but do you know what happens if you don’t?”

I hadn’t thought of that.

“You get weaker and weaker. You could lose your mind and frenzy if you go days without feeding. That’s just as dangerous, to your own self, at least.” Anja looked at the crimson vials with disgust. She took the attaché case and snapped it shut with a click. “These meds don’t just kill your appetite, but also dull your senses. They make you malleable and… and well, weak.”

“It’s for your own safety and the others’. Even my parents and brother are in constant danger as long as I live under the same roof.” Thinking that tied up a knot in my throat. “If Dad finds out what I am, I don’t know what he’d do. If I follow these, in the worst-case scenario, perhaps I wouldn’t be myself, but everybody else would be safe in my company.”

“You’re his daughter. He wouldn’t dare harm you.”

“He didn’t want me to invite anyone in, not even you. He slammed the door to his study yesterday when Mom took my side. Dad’s not the same. I don’t know what’s happening to him.”

“But you can’t starve yourself either. That’s what these meds will do to you,” Anja said, kneeling next to me. She put her hand on my arm.

“Mr. Royce gives me cow’s blood every day. I’ll be fine.”

“It isn’t the same. It’s not as healthy.” She said, dropping to her voice a whisper. Her hand moved along my arm. She was caressing it.

I tightened. Goosebumps sprang over my arms and neck. “Okay.”

Muffled music from neighboring houses rocked the windows. I could make out the faintest hints of Africa. Otherwise, it was mostly silent; Mom scuttled to make dinner downstairs.

Her mouth brushed my ears when Anja leaned in and whispered. I caught a strong floral scent of jasmine. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting the best for yourself. Cow’s blood is only a cheap replacement.”

My heart was racing and sweat broke over in my palms. She wasn’t threatening or frightening me. I glanced at her exposed limber neck, her short hair bob floating over it. She was tempting me.

“No, I can’t.” I pushed her away. “I don’t wanna hurt you.”

“It’s best for you.” Anja got her on fours, and tilted her head to the side, baring the skin of her neck.

“What did they do to you? Tobias won’t threaten you anymore. And I’m not gonna hurt you.” The image of Melanie’s body lying on the grimy floor flashed in my mind and my innards crumpled. “Anja, I don’t wanna hurt you. Please.”

“You wouldn’t. Just a drop to keep you healthy. My wrist then; it’s safer.”

I couldn’t meet her gaze. The smell of blood, seeping through muscle tissue and skin, only got stronger. My mouth watered.

Anja edged closer. I measured my breathing to stay calm. She slipped her hand in mine. Then I heard purring.

“Your hair... it’s changing color. How pretty,” she said, her emerald eyes glittering with wonder. Her fingers skimmed over my ear as she stroked my reddening hair, coiling them between locks and running them down their length.

I shut my eyes. The impulse became stronger. The tip of her nose brushed mine and the light breeze of her breathing. Drawn into it, I angled my head sideways—not based on animal instinct or want for blood, but something else.

Instead of lips I found soft warm skin. Something feral and predatory replaced whatever I was feeling for her, and I bit down on it, piercing her wrist as though it were tinfoil. Anja whimpered, then let out a sigh as she continued to stroke my hair. Rich, intoxicating blood trickled between my fangs. It tasted even better when they were willing. It was quick to dope me, and I kept drinking.

Seconds later the ugly realization struck me, and I shoved her arm away, wincing. In a sense, I felt betrayed. A tear of blood clung to my lower lip; it smudged her wrist in red, with two small orifices visible in the middle.

“I was about to tell you to stop, but I didn’t have to,” Anja said, drawing a weak smile.

I looked at her horrified as my throat closed up. “Why did you do that?”

“I told you, for your own good. And, well... I liked it...”

I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “Liked it? Liked it? How? Doesn’t it hurt?”

“Only the first pinch. But wow, it felt... good.”

“How can it?”

“Don’t worry. I heal fast,” she said.

Unlike her, I couldn’t relax. There was a sinking feeling in my stomach. “You have to clean up. Alan’s going to see it. And Mr. Royce. Oliver.” I shook her shoulders. “Anja, they cannot find out. Nobody. We’re never doing that again, you hear me?”

“You gotta.”

“No.”

“We’ll be careful. Small quantities only. I heal fast, and I’ll hide it.”

The doorbell rang at that moment, and I bolted to my feet. “He’s here. Go wash down, quick.”

I was too ashamed to show my face to Alan, so I told Anja ‘see ya tomorrow,’ not before I made damn sure she had all the evidence covered up, and quickly closed the front door behind her.

It was clear then I had four options: go down the path of corruption and become stronger; take the meds and get weak, possibly go insane while keeping those dearest safe; conform to cow blood and hope for the best; or try to find a cure so I may wake up from this strange reality. Anyhow, I had eternity at my disposition.