Forever for Rose

Chapter Ten.

My head buzzes under the lights in Pedro's bedroom where he lays me on the bed and I weakly bring a hand up to shield my eyes. "Dalton, the lights!" Pedro shouts and Dalton appears in the doorway, looking over at me with worry etched into his chiseled face as he flips the switch and the overhead light goes out, leaving nothing but the light from the other room coming into the dark room. I know they can both still see fine, but the two of them turn into shadows in my eyes.

Their shadowy figures bring back the fear in my mind, and as images of the man and his white eyes and the mess of words he whispered come back to me my head aches again and I wince. "Lights." I whisper, balling my fists at my sides. "I need to see, I keep seeing him..." My voice quivers and a hand finds mine. I expect it to be Pedro's but as the little lamp on the bedside table casts the room in a warm glow I find Dalton's hand in mine, our fingers intertwined together.

He sits on the side of the bed next to me and looks down at me. "What do you need?" He asks and Pedro sits on my other side, brushing my hair from my face.

"Yes, what can I do for you?" I hear the panic in his voice and see the phone in his other hand. "Should I-?"

"No." I shake my head once slowly, relieved that no pain follows. "Don't call them or I'll be on the first flight home." I don't miss the slight flex of Dalton's hand. "I'm ok." I assure Pedro and he looks torn. "I promise." I whisper.

He sighs, putting the phone on the table. "What happened?" He asks.

I open my mouth but Dalton beats me to it. "She was just walking and then all of a sudden she dropped to the ground and she started screaming." There is horror in his voice as he talks and I don't know whether to be embarrassed that I'd done that, or maybe a little touched that it had freaked him out so badly that something was wrong with me. "I tried to catch her in time but she did bump her head a little."

"That explains this." I sigh, rubbing my forehead where a dull throbbing is.

Dalton brushes his thumb back and forth over my hand once and then continues on. "She started convulsing and her eyes rolled back in her head."

Whelp, now I'm embarrassed.

Pedro leaned in over me. "What happened, sweetie? A vision?"

I nod once and shudder at the thought of it.

"I don't know what happened..." I close my eyes for a slight second and then wrench them back open when I see the strange man's face still lurking in my mind. "I went in like I normally do when I have a vision. It's like I close my eyes here, and I wake up somewhere else." I try to explain but my face is flaming as they both watch me. I know I probably sound like a crazy daisy. "I can walk and move around in the vision, but I can't interfere with what happens, and no one else can see me..." I pause. "Well except that one time," I remember the woman and the sight of Pedro being drug away in chains. "Anyway, there was a man and I followed him to a woman's door on one of the upper levels. He knocks and she opens. It was pretty obvious she didn't know who he was, but he knew who she was. He called her by name and then he...he started chanting this thing under his breath and my head started to feel like it was being ripped apart from the inside out." Out of reflex I move my other hand on top of the one Dalton is holding, gripping him tighter. "It hurt so badly, and when I moved to try to get a look at the man's face...his eyes...they were stark white while he chanted."

Dalton shakes his head in disbelief. "I don't understand, what kind of chanting?"

"I don't know." I admit, trying hard not to think of it. "He was whispering it under his breath, but it sounded like maybe it was in Latin, or some other older language."