Roses for Rachel

Chapter 16.

Flames.

All around me, I'm surrounded by strange blue flames. My heart is racing, but I don't feel any pain or heat, I only feel fear. Fear of the flames, fear of dying. The flames are coming closer and closer by the second. I look down and see that I'm naked, and when I glance back up, the flames are gone. Now I'm in the middle of the cavernous dungeons, just another naked body among the hundreds. I turn around to run for the big black doors, but they're blocked. By Fern. She stands in front of the doors, naked like the rest of us, and waving me over to her. I look around and then step towards her, avoiding the bodies of the sleeping on my way. "Miss Rachel..." She whispers my name and it echoes off of the walls. "Never safe..." I hear her say and I stop walking to stare up to her. Her face looks afraid. "Danger is everywhere...secrets..." Her words continue bouncing around the room and ringing in my ears. Then she screams. High pitched enough to break glass, eyes round like marbles. Suddenly she's broken. Her body is torn apart and stacked in a pyre. I scream her name and run to her, reaching my hand out to touch her icy skin. The blue flames come back, engulfing her body, but when the flames touch my hand it isn't blue anymore. It's just fire. Hot, burning, agonizing fire.

I wake up thrashing around in the bed, screaming nonsense about Fern and secrets.

"Rachel!" His voice pulls me from my terror. "Rachel, wake up."

I feel his cold hands on my shoulders shaking me. I sit up straight, bringing my hands to my face to make sure they aren't burnt. I check both sides, sighing that they are just my regular slender hands, not the charred mess I was sure I'd find. I turn my body quickly, wrapping my arms around Calvin desperately and cry into his neck while he rubs my back and shushes me. After a long while, Calvin lets me go just enough for him to pull back the covers and crawl under the blankets with me. He laid back on his back, fluffing the pillows, then pulled me down to him so that my head was resting on his chest. "I'm sorry." I said through my tears.

"For what?" He asked surprised.

I sighed. "For crying, and waking you up, and stealing half of your bed, and-."

He tilted my chin up, looking down into my wet eyes. "Never apologize for feeling things, and you didn't wake me, I haven't been able to sleep at all, but it's not your fault that I can't focus on going to sleep with someone as beautiful as you lying in bed beside me." He kissed my forehead sweetly. "Do you want to talk about it?"

I thought for a moment, tracing little circles on his chest with my finger. "Blue flames." I whispered.

"Ah." He said with a nod. "You saw her then?"

"Yep." I replied. "I've never seen a dead person before."

"I'm so sorry about all of this, Rachel."

"Why was it blue? The fire, I mean." I asked looking up at him.

He was looking straight ahead, staring blankly at the TV that was off. "When you burn a vampire, the flames look blue, and it has a sweet smell instead of the burning smell of a normal fire."

"I didn't know vampires could be killed." I admitted. "I have a pretty limited knowledge on you still, but I thought you were invincible."

He sighed and smiled a little. "Mostly, but not entirely." He told me. "You already know we can be weakened by juniper, but we can be killed too, if you know what you're doing. The heart has to be pulled from the chest, and then it and the body must be dismembered and burned."

I sat up on my elbow, turning to face him. "So someone could kill you?"

He looked at me strangely, pulling together his eyebrows. "Yes." He replied. "Why?"