Chapter Twenty Three.

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Running. I'm running and running but I'm going nowhere. I'm in a dark corridor, the sirens blaring in my ears, and the red lights strobing around me while at the end of the hall there's a red rose floating in the air. I try to go for it, but I can't. I need the rose. I have to get there. I have to. Screams go unheard. "Rose!" I shout, but my voice is nothing but more sirens. Suddenly I'm not alone anymore. There are men beside me. All of them have on white mask with eerie painted on black smiles. They look at me, then up the hall at the rose. "No!" I try to scream as they walk right passed me while I continue to try to move, but my feet won't cooperate. They get to the end of the corridor, their fake smiles reflected by the red strobe lights as the man in front reaches out his hand and plucks the rose from the air, then tucks it into his jacket before the men run away. My feet break free from my hold, and I run as fast as I can in the direction the men went, but they've vanished into thin air.

"Rachel!" Calvin's voice pulls me from the nightmare. "Rachel, wake up."

I shot up in the bed, holding my hands to my chest and feeling the erratic beating of my heart. "Rose." I whispered gravely. "Rose."

Calvin reached out and took my hands in his, bringing them up to his mouth and kissing them. "It's ok." He whispered to me in the dark room, the only light coming from the living room through the cracked bedroom door. "She's ok." He told me. "I just spoke to Pedro. They are heading out to see a movie." He said gently.

"Calvin, I can't keep doing this." I whispered to him, looking down at our hands. "I can't."

Calvin nodded his head. "I know, Rachel, but there is just a little while longer." He sighed. "Two more weeks, Rachel, then I promise I will have it set up where you two can see each other, and possibly even better, you two could disappear together." He said. "I was just about to go meet with the men. The storms have finally let up."

I nodded in relief. They were supposed to have been going after the men in Britain over a week ago, but a blizzard had moved in the day before their operation was supposed to take place and there were no planes available to get them there. "Good." I muttered, taking one of my hands back from him to chew on my fingernails. That had become my awful nervous habit now.

The first week of the competition, aside from the first night, had gone off without a hitch. I haven't seen the man with the roses again, and since I have been so closely watched and kept locked away from the people pretty much all of the time, he's had no way to get to me even if he wanted to. Calvin had been right. He probably was just part of the rebellion and trying to rattle me, which admittedly had worked.

Mine and Calvin's first date had been a few days ago. The night before the council let us know that we needed to start letting the people see the riff between us so that they would root more for Lexton to win, rather than me. It had been pretty easy to do. Things with us have been weird since our fight the other night. We've been quiet. I hate it, but I also don't know what we can do to make it better. It's easy for the jealous side of me to decide that the weirdness is that he is getting feelings for Lexton, but the more logical side of me tells me that he is just trying to distance himself from me in preparation for me leaving again. I wish I could shake him out of the funk he's been in, but at the same time, I'm still a little hurt from him throwing in my face that this whole plan was my idea. I didn't have any other choices. Rose and I need to be free from this place and from vampires. If it were just me, I'd stay with him, but it isn't just me. Rose is more important than what I want. I thought he understood that, but his cold words make me wonder.

"Are you ok?" Calvin asked, pulling me out of my own head.

I nodded my head. "Yeah, it was just a nightmare." I told him. "I keep dreaming of roses." I admitted. "Every time I try to get the rose, a stranger steals it from me."

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