Her Bloody Rose

Chapter 1 An Innocent Flower

"Now recite the major points of fatality for me again," called a woman's voice over the eerie yet surprisingly upbeat music blasting in Ezara Rose's ears as a shiny black Porsche pulled up alongside the curb. The vehicle screamed, I have money, bow to me, a clear giveaway that the inhabitants were human. Only mortals thought that money, status, cars, and titles equated to power, and had Ezara given any more than the fourth of a shit she was granting them, she would have used her superhuman speed to rush up to the car, rip the doors off its hinges, and bare her fangs just to show them what real power looked like. Just because she was Ezara Rose, and she fucking could.

But the desperate tone in the girl's voice as she answered back with a, "Mom, I've already named them for you four times," made the woman sitting in the backseat with her daughter seem less like a pompous socialite and more like a nervous mother. Probably to a freshman. If Ezara's heart hadn't stopped beating nearly a hundred years prior, it would have warmed a little at the thought.

At least until the woman's tone grew icy around the edge of her words as she said, "Well run them by me again. Supernaturals are nothing but murderers and predators, Faith, and I will not throw my guppy into a shark tank without knowing that she can defend herself."

She heard the girl sigh, the sound holding a deep weight to it that seemed heavier than mere annoyance, but she quickly covered it up by saying, "Decapitation and heart removal for vampires, silver bullet for werewolves as well as faeries along with iron, and pure rock salt for binding and exorcising demons."

"And witches," the woman wanted to know, the hard edge of suspicion edging its way into what seemed to most of the other students milling around Spero Academy's manicured campus as a tearful goodbye from an overprotective parent.

But Ezara could practically smell the sweat clinging to the daughter's lilac-scented skin even as their forms were hidden behind the black tinted windows as she whispered, "Cap her powers and burn her at the stake to ensure she never gains them back." Pain and pleasure raced through the car, stronger than any blood Ezara had ever tasted, and even though she couldn't see their faces, had never seen their faces, she could practically taste the satisfaction carving a smile out of the woman's lips. Their conversation ended with a practical request for the girl to phone home every day and a cold demand for their driver, Eiko to open the rear right door.

The sight before her was enough to stop many a frisbee game—courtesy of the werewolves—and breath, and Ezara could see why.

On the surface, the new girl reeked with the smell of a quintessential good girl, the kind who finished her homework before it was due, ran for class office, and always picked her clothes the night before so she'd arrive at school bright, early, and neat as can be the next morning. But underneath the doe-eyes and valedictorian work ethic, Ezara could smell the magik in her veins.

That, along with the thick curtain of sable waves that flew behind her like a cape as her mile-long legs carried her past the tree where Ezara sat and up the long walkway lined with rectangular bushes was enough to make even the most vegan elder vampire salivate with bloodlust, and Ezara was as intrigued as she was turned on.