Devils Roses 05 - Death

and disgusting, watching them kill unarmed women who don't fight back. They chant even as they are ripped limb from limb.
    Tristan screams again. His fingers twitch, "LORRI!" He screams. His hand whips from his own neck and shoots a bolt at the ground in front of me.
    "MOVE." He screams.
    I grab Ari and Luke and wink. I leave them in the living room at Marcus's and wink back. I grab the first witch and suck. She tastes like the best thing I ever ate. Dirty filthy death.
    We murder every one of them to the sound of Jonathan laughing his head off. As the last witch drops dead, Tristan vanishes.
    Jonathan stops laughing and grins, "Thanks for finishing it for me. I didn’t know how I would get him to get the magic from his sisters." And then he too is gone.
    Lorri screams and her and Sam are gone.
    Sarah is crying in the middle of the dirty road. I can hear her but not see her. She isn’t making anyone but herself invisible. She must have panicked and dropped the guard.
    "Sarah. Come to me." I whisper. I feel her next to me when I can see her again. I pick her up and wink her to Marcus's. I hold her tightly.
    Aleks is there instantly with Ben, Hanna, Roland and the doc.
    We stand in the middle of the living room, covered head to toe in black blood and disappointment.
    We have failed. In every way possible. Well, except for getting back Ari. She is nearly unconscious on the ground and looks like she might die any second. So the success feels less than that.
    Ben and Roland leave the room with the black blood coating their muzzles. Lucas sits and cries sad wolf sounds that break my heart. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to fix her. I don’t know anything, except that if she dies I will never heal. None of us will. She is the bane of our existence but she is the heart as well.
    His soft wolf sobs are killing me.
    "Go change." I say.
    He looks at me. His green eyes are filled with tears. "Go change. I won't leave her side."
    He stands and leaves.
    The children are crying. Even Anne.
    Lucas and Ben come running back in. Lucas is pulling is shirt on.
    "Aimes." He says.
    I shake my head, "I don’t know. I don’t know what to do. I, we need Lorri and Sam and Dorian." I'm shaking.
    "She needs to be examined." The doc looks at Marcus, who is sitting on the couch in a bathrobe and greasy hair. "Want to help me, old friend?"
    Marcus looks at him and then back at the TV.
    "MARCUS!" Doctor Jekyll shouts.
    Marcus climbs off the couch looking hideous. "Fine. Jesus. Stop the shouting." He walks toward the lab. Dr. Jekyll lifts Ari up off the floor and carries her towards the lab. Lucas and Ben follow. I stand, frozen in the middle of the room. I don’t know what to do.
    Sarah sobs in my arms. She never should have seen any of that. Any of the death and horror. The witches never even fought back. We slaughtered them and they let us.
Abbey gets up from the couch and picks Sarah out of my arms. She winks at me and carries the sobbing child down the hall to a bedroom.
    "Everyone get cleaned up, so when Lorri gets back we're ready. Her and Sam will know where they went." Aleks says to everyone and walks over to me. He takes my hands in his. That's when I notice the blood for the first time. I pull my greasy hands away from his and wipe them on my pants. I can't get it off. I'm scrubbing to the point of it being raw. He grabs me and flashes us to his house in England. We are in the old bathroom. I stand there frozen as he undoes my pants, "She's going to be okay."
    I tremble, "I can't lose her. I just can't."
    He looks down at me and stops my breath, "Hey. You won't."
    He pulls my shirt off and starts the old shower. The water smells funny. He says it is how the water smells in the country. I just know it's hard to wash my hair with it.
    He lifts me into the shower when he has us both naked. He takes a facecloth and rubs a bar of smelly soap against it. He starts at my arms and slowly scrubs. He is gentle but thorough.
    He lifts my arms and does my armpits and under my breasts. It would feel like an invasion of privacy with anyone else, but somehow with him it's intimate. I don’t scrub myself with him, ever. He isn’t forcing me. He's charming me.
    I need him to. I need to feel something.
    He rinses and soaps up again and makes his way south. I feel my body tense up. He leans into me and kisses my lips slowly, but doesn’t stop his hands from taking the cloth between my legs. The roughness of it makes me moan into his