Page 20 of Black Rose

It’s a girl in her early twenties, short blonde hair, brown eyes and a cherubic face. She’s got duct tape over her mouth and her wrists and ankles are bound. She’s been stripped completely nude and there doesn’t seem to be a scratch on her body but that’s not what has my chest going cold.

It’s that I know her.

It’s one of my students, Kate Rutherford, a piano player from England. I know I just said I’d kill whatever humans I had to in order to get my hands on the book, but I can’t do that to someone I actually know.

I glance sharply at Saara. Of course she looks amused at my reaction.

“You did this on purpose,” I sneer, gesturing to the girl. “You knew she was one of my students.”

“Yes, well, rumor is that you’re rather fond of your female students, aren’t you, Professor?”

“Valtu,” Bitrus warns from behind me. “Don’t take the bait.”

But I have to take the bait. She’s talking about Dahlia.

“What do you mean by that?” My hands flex at my sides, a volcano of rage bubbling up beneath the surface, just ready to explode.

She shrugs and I glance at the girl again, Kate, her pleading eyes searing right into me, asking me to help her. I have to look away, back to Saara’s smug face.

“Oh, not much. Just that I know you’ve been fucking one of your students,” Saara says. “Someone beneath you from the sounds of it. A human. A dirtywhore.”

“Valtu,” Bitrus warns again but I’m lunging across at Saara in less than a second.

I wind up and deck the vampire right across her pretty face.

There’s a crunch of bone under my fist and I hope I broke her perfect nose, even though it will correct itself in a minute, but god does this violence feel fucking good.

She goes flying to the tile floor, her face deformed and caved-in as she sprawls, broken and bleeding.

“What the fuck?!” she screeches, her words garbled as she presses her fingers to her face. “You fucking hit me!”

“And I’ll fucking do it again!” I snarl at her, about to deliver another blow, maybe punch her head right off, but I’m suddenly held in place. I feel a heavy pressure around my chest, my arms pressing against me. It’s like an invisible rope is being wrapped around me and before I have a chance to react I’m being yanked backward through the air.

And right into Aleksi. His arm goes around my throat, pressing in. I’d be able to fight him off but not this magic. “I can’t pretend she didn’t deserve that,” Aleksi chuckles in my ear. “But I’m afraid you’re not the type of person we’d have over at a dinner party.”

“Fuck you.”

“Uh huh. Mind telling us what you’re really doing here?”

I meet Bitrus’s eyes across the chapel, where he’s now kneeling beside a sobbing Kate and quickly untying her bonds to free her. He’s warning me not to say it, to hold up the lie, to keep things going until our backup gets here.

But I can’t.

“The book,” I plead, my voice sounding so desperate it makes me sick. “The Book of Verimagiaa. I need it.”

Aleksi laughs while Saara slowly gets to her feet, leaning against a pew for balance.

“And what makes you think we’d give you the book?” Saara mumbles as she staggers to the next pew. “Especially now.”

“Because you can’t handle the burden of it. The responsibility of it. But I can.”

Saara snorts, then spits out blood onto the floor. “Who are you, Tolkien? The book is no burden. And it belongs to us, fair and square.”

“You stole it,” I tell her. “You have no claim to it.”

Give it to me so that I can bring back my love.

Give it to me so that it’s not abused.

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