The Order of the Rose Episode Six: Do Vampires Dream of Eclectic Sheeple?
 |
| Dream Stalking |
The Order of the Rose Episode Six
Do Vampires Dream of Eclectic Sheeple?
The Idle Hands nightclub smelled of sweat and synthetic fog. Valentina didn’t need to hunt here. She could have any patron in the dance club upstairs. The desperate ones in the dark corners of the basement lounge tasted sharper. More alive in their fear.
She chose a boy with tattooed knuckles and dilated pupils. He thought he was leading her to the emergency exit. She let him believe it until the alley’s darkness swallowed them both.
 |
| On the hunt |
“You’re freezing,” he whispered, pressing against her.
“Stone in winter,” she murmured with an awkward smile. The same words she’d offered Azreal. But this didn’t warrant creativity. Or persistence. Or stamina. Just presence and a pulse.
She kissed him before he could speak again. Her nails elongated, raking down his throat, pinning him to the brick. His gasp became a moan as her teeth-needle-fine, real-pierced the artery. This wasn’t like the Order’s delicate sips. This was gorging.
His memories flooded her: a mother’s voice, a stolen car, the first time he hit someone. She swallowed them whole, all the while thinking of Darren. This prey was a thin gruel of corpuscles and meth.
She wanted a feast
She wanted Darren’s heat, his humanity. She wanted to break it and rebuild him inside herself.
She dropped the boy before his heart flatlined. No need to finish him. Whatever happened next, the drugs would receive the blame.
Valentina wiped her mouth and smiled.
Tonight, the real hunting began.
🩸🩸🩸
Darren’s skin burned.
The rose thorn’s puncture on his finger had festered into something unnatural-a hot, rhythmic throb that pulsed in time with his heartbeat, spreading through his veins slowly, like syrup through a garden hose. He tossed in sheets damp with sweat, unable to wake, unable to sink fully into rest.
The dream took him gently at first.
Azreal’s mouth on his throat, but not biting. Kissing. The garden at midnight, the darkness of a new moon, the marble table beneath his bare back. Azreal’s weight pressing him down, familiar and wanted, the blood ritual forgotten in favor of something more honest.
“You’re mine,” Azreal breathed.
“Yes.”
Then the cold came.
 |
| Invaded dream state |
Valentina materialized behind Azreal, naked and pale as marble. She didn’t walk; she simply became present, the way fever becomes present. Her fingers threaded through Azreal’s dark hair and yanked his head back, exposing the column of his throat.
“No,” Darren tried to say, but his tongue was heavy.
“Yes,” Valentina whispered. “Watch.”
Her teeth entered Azreal’s neck with a soft eerie squelch. Blood, real blood, a thick crimson arterial smear painted her chin. Azreal didn’t struggle. He ground harder against Darren, moaning into Valentina’s feast, his pleasure and his death indistinguishable.
Valentina looked down at Darren with eyes like black glass. She held Azreal’s wrist and guided it to Darren’s mouth.
“Drink,” she commanded. “Or I will empty him.”
Darren swallowed. The blood tasted of copper and whiskey and Azreal’s soap. Valentina leaned over them both, still feeding, her hair a curtain around their three bodies. She was the axis now. The fever. The dream.
When she kissed Darren, Azreal’s blood passed between them like communion.
He woke screaming and hard, alone in his bedroom, the sheets twisted like straitjackets. His finger throbbed where the thorn had pricked him. In the dark, he touched himself and wept, not knowing if he wished to finish the dream or purge it from his skull.
He tried both.
 |
| Do it |
Sitting alone in the quiet darkness of her drawing room, Valentina smiled knowing her connection with Darren was solid. “Good boy, Darren. See me. Go ahead. Finish.”
Frank aka Foxxfyrre
Comments