A Vampire Named Rose

Chapter Twenty Two

"Now Rose, explain to me why you need the sun? It seems rather trivial."

"I love the sun, it gives me warmth. I tried night surfing once, it was not that great. This is about my soul?"

"Yes and Rose, your reason is trivial. I imagine there is more to it. I will blame this on you being a native of southern California. What are your other reasons? I need to make fun of you for them. I imagine that crap you women love to wear on your face is part of it too."

I took a deep and unnecessary breath. Gabriel is a man and he is from another time. Due to him being a man, he is part clueless.

"Gabriel, you are part of the male species so I do not expect you to understand this. I love wearing makeup. Do not call it crap.

Let's see, I do not want to be restricted to where I travel to. In some parts of the world, there is the midnight sun. I also do not want to be paranoid about holy objects. I would try to find my way back to Rome so I could have my soul back.

Then there is the fact that I do not want to turn into a psychotic monster. It goes against everything I stand for. I do not want to hurt another."

Gabriel broke out in laughter and laughed at me. "I will never understand the makeup, part of it is because I am a man. The other part is because when I was human, only the prostitutes wore makeup.

So what? Some places would be off-limits to you certain times of the year. Secondly, you will have no desire to travel to Rome once your soul is gone.

Last, did you ever think there is worse scum on the planet than us vampires? Let's see, there are Hitler and Stalin. Then there are all of those human serial killers. You, humans, are not so innocent like you say.

Did you ever think you are a slave? Rose, how do humans act around you and not your patients when they are under the influence of pain medication?"

"Why do you need to know this?"

"I need to prove a point to you. You are not helping. Just answer the question."

"Patients usually fear me when they are NOT under the influence of medication to Gabriel. It is called the needle. They fear the needle and they know I will stick it in them.

Nurses usually call me a bitch behind my back. The doctors are usually trying to flirt with me. This how it has been since I am a civilian nurse. It was never like this when I was in the Navy."

Gabriel had the gall to laugh at me.

"Explain away all you want Rose. They are afraid of you. I have a feeling you had plenty of male attention when you were human.

Your argument for why you should keep your soul is weak at best. You are above those vermin that you insist on taking care of. Let the humans take care of them. They are not your priority anymore."

"You will not win this one, Gabriel. I will be keeping my soul and I am not a slave."

One look and he knew I am not going to go down easily.

"The sooner you realize that you are cursed, you will know that I am right. Do you honestly enjoy having to pick up and move so often because the humans suspect something?"

Gabriel is still not going to win.

"Sorry, the soul is staying."

He pinned me back down and kissed me again. "What will I do? I want to have...

Gabriel did not get to finish because it sounds like Peter did or say something to Svetlana to piss her off.

"I am not your mate! Are you stupid? What part of I can and never will love someone without a soul do you not understand? It is bad enough that your friend is holding Rose hostage. I do not want to be entrapped by you."

Getting on Svetlana's bad side is something you just do not want to do. She is scary when she is pissed off, kind of like sister Eileen.

"I better go or else you will have a dead friend."

I walked into the living room where a showdown was going down.

"Good, you are here Rose. We need to ditch both soulless ones. I know he has been keeping you hostage."

Pavel was laughing in the background. He is overprotective of Svetlana and me, but I think we broke him.

"Peter, you are in dangerous territory with Svetlana. Gabriel, you are in dangerous territory with Rose. You pissed off the two women who could bring you to a painful and miserable end. I did teach the women how to torture. I believe Rose might have those syringes with holy water around here."

Pavel, he may come across the sweet and jovial type, but do not underestimate him. Pavel and Svetlana lost more. They lost their home. They couldn't even stay in Russia when they turned. They had to flee and they did not even know English.

"The three of you have your souls, yet the three of you are the most sadistic and bigoted I have met in my one hundred and sixty-eight years."

I went and stood by Svetlana. "If you are referring to the ten cc of holy water, it was self-defense. No, I believe what we are saying is a relationship will never work. The vampires with souls do not associate with soulless for a reason."

Peter sighed. "Svetlana; you call Gabriel and me monsters, but there are humans who make Gabriel and I look like choir boys. Look at World War II. There was Hitler and even worse, Stalin."

I was trying to discreetly tell him to shut up. The Bolshevik Revolution made them suffer as humans. Pavel said that most of the family was killed in the Gulags.

Svetlana sneered at Peter in a deadly voice. "Do not ever speak of Lenin and Stalin unless you lived through the damn Revolution yourself."

Peter looked at Svetlana and knew he should have put his foot in his mouth.

"Svetlana, I am sorry."

"Save it."

She ran off and I followed her to her room with the balcony. Svetlana broke out in tears and I gave her a hug. She just sobbed into my shoulder. Friends are always there for each other. Peter, you earned a spot on my shit list. I know he does not know of her past, but he could have connected some of the dots.

Peter knows the three of us are babies in the vampire world. Then there is the fact that Pavel and Svetlana can be hard to understand at times because of their accents.

The sun was just showing its first rays of light through the city. Peter and Gabriel could not follow us outside. It may have been over thirty years ago, but the wounds are still there.

Even though things were not so great in Russia when they were turned, there were spots of sun in the clouds for the two of them.

Svetlana had been married for three months and found out a few days before she was turned that she was pregnant. Pavel was going to be married to the love of his life.

Pavel was out a few minutes later. The only reason why the two made it through their first year as a vampire somewhat sane is that they have each other.

Svetlana moved away from me into Pavel's arms.

"Do I need a dustpan or holy water syringes?"

Someone does need to do something to cause a smile.

"We exchanged some words. We came to an understanding. I do need you to reinforce what I said."

"I will. Go take care of Svetlana.You might help her better than I can."

I walked through Svetlana's room and found the two men sitting in the living room looking rather terrified.

"Boys, we need to have a chat."