Death (The Devil's Roses #5)

I gag. "I'm a virgin, please don’t do this." I whisper into the cold rough stonewall.

He chuckles his warm breath into my neck and presses what I assume is his erection into the back of my pants, "I can help you change that." My hands are burning against the bricks.

A scream rips from my throat. It's frustration and pain, from not expelling the rising pressure of my powers. Tears leave my closed eyes.

I whisper, "O, don’t do anything to him. They're going to kill Ari if he doesn’t go back up." He rips my shirt from my defenseless body. I'm trembling naked from the waist up in the freezing cold cell. I can't imagine what Ophelia is going through. She is watching the man, she thinks she will be with for all eternity, rape someone else. His hands reach around. He cups my breasts roughly. I cry out again, "Please stop. Please."

I'm not weak. I'm not feeble or helpless. I'm strong. I could kill him in a hearts beat but it would be a death sentence for my best friend and her unborn baby.

Ophelia is screaming behind the gag. She's crying and struggling. I can hear her.

He turns back, "You'll get your turn baby. Don’t you worry about that."

"Oliver, stop, please baby. Stop. He's done something to you. This isn’t you." She must have worked the gag from her lips. She's sobbing and her voice is cracking.

"Untie me first. Do me first." She pleads.

He grabs a fist full of my hair and slams my face into the bricks. My nose breaks on contact. He ties me up and gags me. Then he is across the room to her. "You want it first?"

I'm in a haze of blood and pain and tears and hating the fact I'm naked and hanging by my hands. The black blood is dripping down my face onto my bare chest.

"Untie my hands so I can touch you too. I'll make you happy I promise." Her words are shaky. I can hear it. She's crushed and I feel sick. He's taking too long. Ari is dead. I know she is. My heart is burning and aching. I spin on my ropes and watch, as her eyes become dead and unfeeling. She smiles weakly, "I can make you happy." Her words are as dead as her eyes.

"You haven’t had any magic training have you?"

She shakes her head, "N-n-not yet."

I can hear the smile in his voice, "And you won't tell your daddy, if I touch you?"

"I'm not a virgin." Her words are a whisper.

He gropes her, "Good."

I sob, watching it. "Please, just go stop him from killing Ari and then come back." My voice is broken. I can't speak without making sounds I don’t recognize.

He looks back at me, "He was never going to let her live. I was never planning on going back up there. Now shut up and wait for me to get back to you." His grin is cold and sick. "They need her before they need you. So she goes first. Hope that's alright."

Ophelia's eyes bug out of her head when she looks at me. He unties her hands and pulls her shirt off. She stands still and sobs as he grabs at her. She looks defeated. She looks up at me. I can see resolve in her eyes. I just don’t understand the decision she has made.

"You better make me happy bitch." He undoes his pants.

Her trembling hands lift, slowly, for his arms. She rubs them for the slightest second and then closes her eyes. Her fingers bite into his skin. Where her hands touch him black veins crawl up her arms to her bare breasts. They make a black pool around her heart. He's frozen when she touches him. She pulls the black veins from him until she can't stand anymore and falls to the cold stone, unconscious. He blinks and looks at me.

"Aimee?" He whispers, stunned.

I cry harder, "Ari. Get Ari."

He looks lost. His blue eyes are clearer than I've ever seen them. He's looks at me again and then is gone.

"Ophelia. Please wake up O." I look up into the stone ceiling and sob, "Please. Please help us. We fight for you, please help us."

Not that I expected anything, but when nothing happens I can’t help but feel a little disappointed. If there is a God, he cares for us the same as every other being. Even though we give everything of ourselves, he treats us no differently.

Her body moves with shallow breaths. She twitches and trembles.

"O. O, please don’t leave me here alone."

She moves a pale hand that is still covered in the black veins. Her fingers grip like she's having a seizure.

I close my eyes and lower my head but the air moves around me. I lift my eyes and jump. She stands directly in front of me. Her eyes are completely black. The veins are reaching her face. Her lip trembles.

Her voice is a whisper that doesn’t come from her. It's as if something speaks through her cold stiff body that is pressed against mine. We are bare chest to bare chest.

"She took it all Aimee. She took his evil and his dark. She took it all inside of her. She's dark now. Her soul is as dark as our father's."

I look at her black lips moving faintly with the whispered words.

"What can I do?" I ask.

"Kill her now before he finds her. Before it's too late."

I look around shaking my head, "I can't. Don't ask this of me."

Her eyes start to flutter.

"Do it before she gains consciousness."

I try to move my trembling hand to her arm. The black veins move with the flow of her blood. The poison is filtering everywhere. Tears blind me to everything but the blackness of her fluttering eyes. If I close my eyes I can smell the ocean and see the harbor of my small town. I can hear my mother laughing and my sister criticizing me and even that makes me smile. I can see my father rocking in his chair with a book and a tea. He smiles at me over his books. I can ask the voices inside of her to untie me and wink home. I can refuse it all and let the cards fall where they may. I sniffle as her hand is lifted and pressed into mine. They know what I am. The fire is waiting for her skin. It's waiting for me to do it. It is still there from the wall in the face. Her cold bare chest pressed against mine feels weird. I keep my eyes closed, until as I release it. I pull it hard and fast and let it take the control.

Her body slams hard against me again and again as she struggles. The real her must be there. She feels herself dying and is fighting me.

But I've let it go. I've let it have her. It sucks and pulls. Even though my eyes are closed the tears find their way out. They soak my face and chest.

"Aimee." She speaks softly once.

Her body heats up just as I feel the suck stop. She's dry. I open my eyes in time to see the horrified look on her face, frozen there. Her dead body slides down mine. The tears have soaked us both. I go limp in the ropes.

I hear voices. I'm shaking and trembling.

"I'm not talking to you."

"You're talking right now."

"I hate you."

It's two men bickering. I ignore them both and hang swinging against the ropes. Ophelia's corpse is against my feet, which barely touch the ground.

The wind moves and he's there. He's holding me. His body forms around mine, cocoons around me. He's warm and soft and real against the cold and pain that I'm stuck in. He unties me and holds me. I feel my winking powers coming back once the weird cloth is off of my wrists.

"Oh my god. What did you do? Who is that?" The men start shrieking.

"Ophelia? Ophelia? Is that Ophelia? Will one of you talk? One of you bitches better start talking."

I look past the huge arm that’s holding me in the air, to a handsome man covering his panicked face and shaking his head. The other man is also shaking his head but in tiny twitches. They look at me accusingly.

"What have you done to her?"

Tears are pouring from my face. I try to talk but the words aren’t there. I don’t have any. I'm empty and broken. I've killed my friend.

The voices whisper in the wind above us, "She had to brother. She had to do it. Ophelia pulled the darkness from Oliver."

The one I'm assuming is Tristan lifts his face and screams. He howls almost. The other man grips him and pulls at him, but he struggles hard to get to his sister's corpse. He claws and struggles but the other man pulls at him. "No. Trist she's gone my love." He says soothingly. Tristan is a ball of emotions and fury. His eyes meet mine, breaking my heart again. "I never met her. You bitch, I never met my own twin sister."

I sob silently. I won't steal his moment of grief from him by being sad.

Dorian winks into the room. He grabs me from Aleks's huge arms and pulls me to him, "I need you. Now." He winks us to the cold snowy courtyard.

No one is there. Nothing is there. No blood, but the small amount that was forced from Ari's throat.

"Where is she?" I ask.

"He took her. He took her. Sam has gone to track him. I need you to go with me to Marcus's. I need him on our side. I need Jon dead and the dead girl's magic transferred to Tristan." His voice is frenzied.

I nod. I will do anything. I know that. I've just proven it. I killed my friend. My heart is broken and numb and lifeless. I'm far deader than I imagined.

"It won't work." I look back at the man speaking. It's Oliver. He is dead looking and broken like me. He stands, leaning against the door to the stairs that leads to the cell I was just in. "We are doomed. He will win like he always does." He looks at me with regret blanketing his face. "I'm so sorry." His words are nothing. They're nothing but air and emptiness.

I shake my head, "You owe me nothing. You didn't know me anymore than I knew you."

He swallows, "Is she….down there still?"

I lose control again and sob. My face nods with the heaves and sobs. He's devastated and I'm bare-chested and frozen and dying inside from the pain and the sorrow of my own betrayal. I betrayed her. I've lost the war for us all. I killed the one in the prophecy.

Dorian wraps his coat around me and holds me to him in a way that feels familiar. Like we've done this before. "Why won't it work?" He asks.