Cursed, Book One of The Devils Roses

  Cursed, Book One of The Devils Roses

  Title Page

  Prologue

  Chapter One - LOVE AND DRUGS CHANGE EVERYTHING

  Chapter two - Friends and Foes

  Chapter three - BEAUTIFUL BOYS EVERYWHERE, OH AND A STALKER

  Chapter Four - THE WORD IS HAMTARD…

  Chapter Five - I AM A RATIONAL HUMAN BEING

  Chapter Six - WHAT HOT GUY, OH RIGHT MY BOYFRIEND

  Chapter Seven - JUST CALL ME JESSICA FLETCHER, WITH A CRAMP

  Chapter Eight - A IS FOR ADULTERY, INFIDELITY, TREACHERY, FAITHLESSNESS…

  Chapter Nine - IS THERE PHILLY CREAM CHEESE IN HEAVEN

  Chapter Ten - HAPPINESS IS IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER

  Chapter Eleven - ETERNITY IS A LONG TIME TO BE DEAD

  Chapter Twelve - NEVER TRUST ANYONE WITH OBSIDIAN EYES, JUST SAYIN

  Chapter Thirteen - AM I A WANDERER OR A BELIEVER, DOES IT MATTER

  Chapter Fourteen - THAT WAS AMAZING, UHHHGGGG

  Chapter Fifteen - CABIN FEVER WITHOUT THE CABIN IS CALLED INSANITY

  Chapter Sixteen - WHEN IS ANYTHING EVER ENOUGH

  Chapter Seventeen - HOW MUCH SIN CAN A SIN EATER EAT IN A CITY FULL OF SIN

  Cursed

  A novel

  Book I of the Devils Roses

  By

  Tara Brown

  Copyright 2012 Tara Brown

  http://TaraBrown22.blogspot.com/

  Smashwords Edition

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  of this author.

  Other books by Tara Brown

  Bane - (Book #2 of The Devils Roses)

  Hyde - (Book #3 of The Devils Roses)

  Prologue

  The heels of her boots clicked with every strike against the cold soaked cement as she rounded the corner never taking her eyes from him. His outdated pleather jacket gave him away from the three blocks distance between them, she never would have noticed before but diversions were a necessity and fashion seemed like a reasonable one.

  In overconfidence he never looked behind him, he never imagined he was being followed, his instincts lied to him allowing for a false sense of security as was common with the fiercest animals in the forest.

  She fingered the platinum ring on her right middle finger with her thumb. The small band had a thin red line running through the middle of it. On the under side of the ring sat a rose. The ring was her mark, it was her badge that permitted her to follow the man.

  Foolishly his seedy way of life led him down a dark alley perhaps to wait for his next victim, she winked her right eye flashing directly in front of him. He didn’t have time to respond and change into a worthy adversary, she had his arm within seconds.

  Sweet time stilled for her, making every moment crystal clear as her senses heightened for the feast, she heard the tires of the cars driving past the alley rotate several hundred times as she lifted him into the air letting her bare hands make contact with the warm fleshy meat of his arm. His eyes shot to the ring on her finger spreading recognition and fear across his face, "You're a Rose."

  His last words.

  She shivered eagerly feeling her fingers lick at the essence flowing through his body. The satisfaction filled her like a rich chocolate bar melting into her taste buds sending chills through her arms where the fire soothed her hunger.

  “Stop!” a mans’ voice echoed through the alley.

  The fire went out.

  She dropped the dead man to the cold ground feeling the tingle end, she didn’t like ending her meal that way. She licked her lips wondering if her eyes were still glowing like molten steel from her feast. She looked down the alley to a policeman standing with his gun drawn. She observed the way his hands shook with the sizable gun in them, she smirked knowing it was from lack of confidence, he was clearly new to the force.

  “Stay where you are.” His voice never wavered but she could sense the fear coming off him. It was a scent that rode on the winds as if searching out her nose.

  He squinted no doubt from the confusion of her still glowing eyes.

  She smiled raising her hands, “Run his prints and you’ll thank me.” He wasn’t an innocent and the Roses did have rules about that sort of thing.

  He walked toward her slowly assessing the alley and the danger, “Get down on the ground.”

  She shook her head, “Really, really would you lie on this street? This alley is filthy”

  A gust of wind blew past him bringing with it a scent like laundry soap and deodorant with a subtle mix of windblown sea air, she would know that smell anywhere.

  His smell was the soundtrack to her youth and innocence. His was the only true love she had ever known.

  His face started to light up under the lone streetlight in the alley that clearly the cities budget had forgotten.

  She gulped pushing down her feelings. She felt frozen in panic but also desperate to see him, just one glance of him would fill her for the next hundred years.

  He looked at her frowning in disbelief, “You, you’re the one?”

  She could see the raw emotion on his face. His lower lip trembled no doubt followed by his entire body.

  She took a step back putting her hands out, “Just pretend you never saw me, the medics will say heart attack.”

  He shook his head, “No, not you.” His face twisted in pain, “Anyone but you. Why?”

  She blinked slowly remembering every second of their time together, she crammed it into a memory slot.

  Every touch.

  Every smile.

  They had become her playlist when the burn in her chest grew so unbearable only those little moments could sooth her.

  She inhaled sharply turning her heart off and spoke flatly, “I have to eat, they make sense.”

  He looked sickened, “You’re eating them? How? They have no marks. None of the others had marks.”

  She looked down ashamed momentarily, she wanted to explain, she wanted to be that girl, his girl sitting on the back steps listening to his dreams but instead she turned jumping onto the handrail of the stairs next to her and climbed the fire escape.

  She ran the stairs before he could register she was leaving. She could still smell his fear but it had switched to a different kind, the kind that broke her already tattered and abused heart. His fear of losing her again filled the air along with his scream. She felt the tears rolling as she listened to him scream her name but she ran to the top of the building desperate to get away.

  Before…

  Chapter One - LOVE AND DRUGS CHANGE EVERYTHING

  “Aimee?”

  I looked up from my pages of scribbles, I needed a moment to recognize not only where I was but who was speaking to me, again I had let my daydream take me.

  “Aimee?”

  I looked at the front of the class recognizing the glare Miss Simms my English teacher was giving me. It was the look she gave all the bad kids, I realize the PC term is ‘challenged youth’ but my sister is one of them, I'm not fooled. The only challenges in their idiotic world were of their own making. I looked at the board behind her remembering what we had been doing, Twelfth Night.

  “Aimee what is the theme Shakespeare is trying to hide beneath the themes we easily see?” She asked as if trying
to trick me.

  I nodded, “Beyond the obvious themes of the folly in ambition and the uncertainty of gender he, as he always did, liked to use the theme of love as a means to suffering as if it were a weapon. Twelfth Night is only one of many of his plays if not in all of them where this theme is present.”

  And there it was.

  The difference between myself and the ‘challenged youth’.

  She wasn’t used to catching me lost in space.

  I might have scribbled, I might have gazed out the window and I might have gotten lost in a few moments of lonely daydreams but no matter what I was a nerd and even if I didn’t have the answer I could easily make one up.

  She smirked, “Nice answer, pay attention.”

  I nodded but continued my scribbled flower garden.

  I felt someone’s gaze upon me.

  My eyes darted up taking my breath away. He always took it away. His sweet smile, sandy blond purposely-messy hair and sexy grin always made my heart do a little flip even then when it was covered by at least a mile of frost and snow.

  He nodded at me, “Nice answer.”

  I felt my face blushing as Miss Simms rattled on passionately about the themes I’d just given her.

  His grin made me surface, not many things made me surface.

  I felt the classroom around me suddenly grow brighter as I watched him watching me. His gaze had remained far too long.

  Once I had wanted him, once when I believed in love, once before the world crashed into my heart and destroyed all my happiness and hope, I had dreamt about him asking me out. I had fumbled my words around him, I had gotten lost in sentences when he walked by, I had even forgotten my name watching him.

  “I might need a tutor.” He whispered at me from his kitty corner seat.

  I smirked feeling my breath grow hot suddenly, “It’s too late for you Shane, years almost up.”

  He laughed softly making the smile that I loved, it had once been my food.

  My sister turned around sharply and blew him a kiss. He raised his eyebrows at her and nodded.

  I was saved by the bell as Miss Simms shouted homework and other things at us.

  I grabbed my books fleeing from the class and the spectacle of my sisters’ inappropriate make out sessions with the boy I loved.

  I hurried along to my locker. My hands fumbled with my lock.

  When I got it open I stood inside the safety of my open locker door. With my face shielded I took a few deep breaths.

  Arguments filled my head convincing me of things I didn’t want to believe, things like he had flirted with me.

  “Aimee.” I closed the small metal door smiling up at him nervously, why had he followed me to my locker?

  “Hey.”

  He put a hand on my closed locker taking a step closer as if blocking my path, “I was wondering if you were going to come to my party this weekend?”

  I frowned confused, “What?”

  He looked down at me in a way I’d never seen before, “Aimee you haven’t been to a party all year, its senior year.” His eyes grew serious, “You’re going away to university and who knows how long before we see each other again.”

  I stuttered, “uh, uh, uh, n-no. Probably not coming but thanks for the invite.” I was lost in the conversation. I wanted to jump up and down and say yes but I knew a night spent watching my sister chew on his face would kill what tiny spark of life was left in me.

  I turned and walked away before I just grabbed his face and kissed his soft looking lips and broke my sisters heart. Why did he want me to come to his party?

  My brain shut off before I spent my day thinking about Shane. It couldn’t be helped, he was so sexy and kind. He didn’t belong with my sister, she didn’t like him for the right reasons. She liked that he was popular and his life was filled with drama. She thrived on drama.

  Gahh, I was thinking about him.

  I avoided my moms’ spot and took the bus home. I didn’t want her to see me crushing on my sisters’ boyfriend even though my mom would have understood. She knew I had loved him since I was old enough to understand boys and girls were not the same thing.

  When I got home my dad was in his office closed up tight. He was starting to become a hermit. I wasn’t certain how vacation and bereavement leave worked in the real world but I assumed eight months of not really trying to show to work was bad. I grabbed a yogurt and went to my room to study.

  I fell asleep instead of studying.

  The dream was the same every time, the city stunk of decay and ruin was all around me while people cried in agony searching for their loved ones. A disaster had hit and destroyed everything in a moment. I looked every way but through all the pain and suffering all I saw was his face. He stood so near to me again for the first time in what felt like a lifetime, breathing me in. I wanted to touch him, I loved him so profoundly. My father’s hands reached out to me like he was my knight in shining armor trying to save me.

  He called to me, he anted me away from the man in front of me who I had never considered a threat.

  I stuck my hand out to take my fathers hand but I felt confused why he would want me away from someone so perfect. I looked back at my love and realized my father was sticking his hand out to save him and not me at all.

  My father looked at me cautiously, urging him to get away from me. I turned my back on my father and stepped closer to the man I loved smiling at him.

  My mom screamed in anguish and the world shattered into a million pieces but I felt the warmth and realness of his face so close to mine for just a second. I knew somehow the disaster was my fault.

  I heard someone calling and looked up to the sky full of debris, “Wake up Aimee,” the soft voice I knew so well, it was my mom who whispered to me.

  I woke startled feeling my own embrace and the glisten of the beads of sweat that soaked me.

  I had fallen asleep in my clothes again. I sat upright for a moment pulling my sweater off feeling the night’s cool air brush against me softly.

  I looked around dazed expecting to see someone, I had been certain voices had woken me. Perhaps it really had been my mom trying to talk to me. I rolled on my back as I slipped off my jeans and pulled the blankets around me. The enveloping darkness was a warm comfort inside my bed.

  I fell back to sleep dreaming of him again but in the new dream I floated staring at my parents smile unable to touch the ground and unable to fly away. I was in limbo watching them waving to me while they sat on a swing with him.

  The breakfast table the next morning felt grim as I contemplated my dreams though I remembered very little. I didn’t have the garden-variety teenage girl dreams anymore. Nothing about my life in eight months had been garden variety, tragedy had struck.

  I felt myself get lost for an eternity in a second remembering our families worst moment.

  When my mom died I was walking home from school, I felt a warm wind hit me and thought briefly it must be the Santa Ana winds from California coming up the coast. I shivered at exactly the same moment my cell phone rang and my twin sister screamed my very own unimaginable into my ears. My legs ceased to exist as I crumpled on the side of the road.

  My soul literally made an attempt at leaving me as my chest ripped into a million pieces. I had actual physical pain paralyzing me, for the first time in my life I felt my hearts exact location.

  Her death took my breath and my sanity simultaneously. I sat on the cold concrete and rocked back and forth in an attempt to block myself from the truth.

  I knew hope was taken from my world but I didn’t know just how large of a piece it was.

  I didn’t know if I would ever recover.

  I believed I would be fine as long as I didn’t leave that spot in the road where the warm wind had no doubt been my mom brushing against me one last time to tell me how much I was loved, of this I was certain.

  My father found me on the side of the road, he left the truck running in the middle of the street as he ran to my sid
e and sat there with me. I had rocked back and forth for hours on concrete while he had searched high and low for me but I was numb and devoid of every feeling, if I acknowledged one pain I would have to face the other.

  I knew my father was touching me but I refused to feel him as he cried on my shoulder nearly shaking me. He tried to get me to stand but I rejected his attempts.

  I knew nothing was special about that place on the side of the road on the way home and if I left it I would never again find it. It was the last place my mom had touched me and I needed it.