Black Rose: Book 2 - The Dracula Duet, page 1
Black Rose
BOOK 2 - THE DRACULA DUET
KARINA HALLE
Copyright © 2023 by Karina Halle
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover design: Hang Le
Editor: Laura Helseth
Proofreader: Chanpreet Singh
I’m more than just a little curious
How you’re planning to go about making your amends to the dead
“The Noose” A Perfect Circle
I found you in the water, you were soaking wet
Falling deep into your dripping heart again
“Vivien” +++ (Crosses)
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana
Contents
Playlist
CONTENT WARNING
Prologue
1. Rose
2. Valtu
3. Rose
4. Valtu
5. Rose
6. Valtu
7. Rose
8. Valtu
9. Rose
10. Rose
11. Valtu
12. Rose
13. Valtu
14. Rose
15. Rose
16. Valtu
17. Rose
18. Rose
19. Valtu
20. Rose
21. Valtu
22. Rose
23. Valtu
24. Rose
25. Valtu
26. Rose
27. Rose
28. Rose
29. Valtu
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Karina Halle
Playlist
“Vivien” - +++ (Crosses)
“The Vampyre of Time and Memory” - Queens of the Stone Age
“The Noose” - A Perfect Circle
“Last Cup of Sorrow” - Faith No More
“Sensation” - +++ (Crosses)
“Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd” - Lana Del Rey
“Some Kind of Ghost” - Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
“Bitches Brew” - +++ (Crosses)
“Born to Die” - Lana Del Rey
“Stripsearch” - Faith No More
“Ever (Foreign Flag)” - Team Sleep
“Sunspots” - NIN
“Initiation” - +++ (Crosses)
“Head like a Hole” - NIN
“16 Psyche” - Chelsea Wolfe
“Ultraviolence” - Lana Del Rey
“Change (In the House of Flies)” - Deftones
“Ashes to Ashes” - Faith No More
“The Hollow” - A Perfect Circle
“God Hates a Coward” - Tomahawk
“The Blackest Day” - Lana Del Rey
For a more extensive playlist please check my Spotify by clicking HERE or searching for “Karina Halle Black Rose” or scan this pic:
For Bruce: thank you for being the best doggo in the world. You are forever loved, my sweet boy.
CONTENT WARNING
Hello there, dear reader! Thank you so much for wanting to read Black Rose, and if you’ve been waiting some time for this book to release, I’m grateful for your patience! The Dracula Duet is now complete.
Just in case you picked this up on a whim, YOU MUST READ BLOOD ORANGE BEFORE THIS BOOK…Black Rose is not a standalone. But since you will have read Blood Orange already, you’ll be familiar with the content warnings and there are similar warnings for Black Rose including:
Graphic violence, gore, blood, horror, harsh language, mild BDSM elements, sexually explicit situations, ghost of an unborn child, talk of suicide and pregnancy loss, death and grief.
Prologue
THEN
“She is dead.”
Bellamy grips the edge of his desk with bony fingers and thinks his heart might give out. It lurches in his chest, then seems to disappear entirely, as if erased. Her name doesn’t need to be spoken because he innately knows the truth.
He knew it. He knew it even before Atlas Poe uttered the words, standing in the doorway to his office, afraid to step inside. He had felt severed all morning, blaming it on a dream he had, as if he lost some crucial part of him and couldn’t remember it. But now he knew why. When you spent your years training a witch, shaping them to be another version of yourself, and take on the role of their guardian, they become connected to you in ways beyond what’s natural. In many ways, she had become a daughter to him, though any love was conditional.
“What happened?” Bellamy asks, his voice barely audible in the vast depths of his office.
“She was killed,” Atlas says. “Murdered.”
Bellamy’s eyes pinch shut. “By whom?”
“They believe it was the vampire, sir,” Atlas says. He clears his throat.
Oh, damn.
Bellamy leans back in his chair, struggling to take a breath. There is a deep sorrow inside him that wants to rise but he never has room for sorrow in his life, so he pushes it away and lets the disappointment wash over him. He had given Dahlia one more chance to prove herself. During her last mission, the one that nearly got her ejected from the guild for good, she went and got too close to the female vampire she decided to befriend before killing, and the vampire became wise to her. If it wasn’t for Bellamy rescuing Dahlia at the last moment, Dahlia would have died then.
And this time, Bellamy wasn’t there to save her. He assumed he wouldn’t need to. He thought that her desire to prove herself would have meant she’d taken extra precautions. But somehow her glamour must have slipped. Her truth must have come out. Valtu probably murdered her on the spot. The last he had heard from Livia was that the two of them had become very close. He almost smiles at the thought of Valtu suffering from the sweetest betrayal, but he stops short of feeling happy.
How can he be when his dear Dahlia is dead?
“This is my fault,” he says quietly, mainly to himself.
Atlas hears him. “How so?”
Bellamy grunts and runs his hands over his face. They shake slightly as they do when his emotions become too much for him. All the magic in the world couldn’t seem to get rid of them; neither did conventional medication like anti-depressants. He is a young sixty in every way except that. He hates to think what he’ll be like in ten, twenty years. The thing he despises the most about vampires is that they don’t have to suffer through aging. It is thoroughly unfair.
“She wasn’t ready,” Bellamy says, glancing at Atlas briefly. “I knew she wasn’t ready. She was too foolish, too weak, lacked a sense of purpose and self. Too eager to make people like her. No doubt she threw her mission all away for that vampire. And look what that got her.”
Atlas nods. He doesn’t say much, which is why Bellamy likes him. Atlas is also a powerful witch in his own right. He’d been kicked out of the guild a couple of years ago for accidentally murdering a human, a civilian caught between Atlas and his attempt to slay the vampire witch Lenore. But Bellamy operated outside of the guild most of the time. He gave control to the new leader, Qiang, under the pretenses of his early retirement, but continues to run a sect outside of the guild, guarded by magic that Qiang, or any witch on the committee, can’t see through.
It is in this sect that Bellamy welcomes witches such as Atlas Poe, who have been ostracized because of mere circumstances. Murder is often necessary for Bellamy to accomplish his goals, so why should he judge those who have done the same? The founding father of witches, Jeremias, the Devil rest his soul, welcomed the darkness, and so Bellamy wants to do the same. Especially now that Jeremias has been dead for some time.
Someone has to take his place, after all.
“I have more bad news,” Atlas says.
Bellamy sighs. When it rains, it pours. “What?”
“Livia is also dead.”
Bellamy feels flames building inside him. First Dahlia, now Livia? Both witches, both like daughters to him in some way.
“What about the book?” he asks.
“We don’t have any intel on that. Yet.” Atlas pauses. “There is something else. But it’s good news. It’s something you may want to take advantage of.”
“And what is that?”
“The twins are unprotected.”
That really gets his attention. He sits up straight, staring hard at Atlas’s dark eyes which look like black holes across the dimly lit office. “How do you know?”
Atlas doesn’t say anything for a moment. Bellamy knows he won’t be forthcoming. Let him keep his secrets. Atlas has many connections to the city of San Francisco, ones he won’t speak of, plus there is the magic that Atlas possesses, magic that even Bellamy doesn’t fully understand the origins of. Something about his bloodline being connected to Edgar Allan Poe.
“Solon and Lenore are in Italy with Valtu,” Atlas eventually says. “There is no real protection in the house with Solon gone. If I can get through to Ezra, then—”
“You’re not doing this alone,” Bellamy interrupts him, tapping his long nails against the worn desk. “Get us the first plane out of here.”
“Sir, I can handle it—”
“No. I am not taking any more chances with my subordinates. Look what happened the last time I did. She’s dead, Atlas. Do you want that to be you? No. We will take the twins, we’ll take the mother, kill the rest. I’m going to personally step inside that blasted house.” He pauses, his eyes going to the anemic sunlight coming through the stained-glass window. “Besides, it would be nice to trade in the gloom of Scotland for the gloom of San Francisco, wouldn’t you agree?”
And so, they make their plans.
Chapter 1
Rose
NOW
It’s funny how we’re taught that the secret to life is knowing who we really are. That once we look deep, spend years soul-searching and find out who that person really is at the core of us, that the rest of our life will fall into place. Finding our “authentic, true selves” means we will finally find peace.
It’s a lie, like all the other lies that our identity-obsessed society tells us.
It’s not that we can’t know who we are, rather that we are always changing. We are fluid. The moment we think we have figured out who we are and what we want, something inside of us changes. Always in motion, never in stasis. Even those that fear they are stuck are actually on the move, doing what they can to break free, flinging themselves against a wall again and again, hoping their confines will crumble.
My whole life I was told I had one identity: a vampire.
Or rather, that when I turned twenty-one, I would become a vampire.
So my identity has been someone waiting for that clarity of self. I was Rose Harper, I moved around a lot, I had an older brother, parents who loved me, I spent my childhood as most humans did, and one day I would rely on human blood for survival. My biology and chemistry would change, I would go through The Becoming, and come out the other side as something more than I was before. I would finally be whole.
I had prayed my whole life, in silent, pitiful cries inside my mind as I lay in bed at night cast toward an unknown creator, that once I turned, once I became what I was supposed to be, that everything else would fall into place. That I would know peace, instead of this raging, turbulent chaos inside of me, one that jerked me from one emotion to the next my whole life. That the feeling of being incomplete, of missing something, of not being able to fit in with society, of being seen as an other, would finally go away.
I always felt there were different people locked inside me and I kept pinballing between them all, not knowing where I’d land.
But now I know the truth.
Now the truth has blasted through my veins along with the primal drive to drink blood.
I just turned into a vampire.
I just discovered who I really am.
And there will be no peace.
I’m standing in the garage, staring at the bags of blood in the fridge. I want to drink them all in one go because the need for blood is insatiable—like a painful combination of thirst and hunger that makes me believe I’ll go mad without it. And yet the realization of who I am—who I have been—makes me feel just as crazed. I need the truth and I need it immediately.
I relent to my vampire instincts and grab the bags, tearing them open with teeth that have turned into fangs, a process that’s seamless, just a warm sensation in my gums as they sharpen in real time. The blood goes down my throat in seconds and it isn’t until both bags are empty that I feel that incessant hunger subside.
Then I yank open the door with newfound strength and step into the house. I had been locked inside for the last few days, but my mother had untied me earlier when she realized that I was no longer a danger to myself or anyone else, and now I’m free to leave. I know I need a shower something fierce, my sense of smell is so strong now it’s overwhelming, but all of that pales in comparison to the true need I have inside me.
The need for the truth.
I head right down the hall toward the kitchen where I can hear my mother laughing about something. I can hear my father talking as if he were right next to me. My senses are heightened to the point of being uncomfortable.
They both stop to stare at me as I barge into the kitchen and stop at the granite island in the middle, my hands gripping the counter like I’d crumble to my knees without it.
“Rose?” my mother asks, her violet eyes filled with worry. “Are you okay?”
“Where is Dracula?” I manage to say, my voice sounding foreign, deeper, like I’m hearing someone else speak.
My mother frowns. “What? Dracula? Honey, you should sit down, you’re going through a lot. Have you had your blood yet?”
She comes over to me, but I hold my ground, my body starting to shake with rage.
“No!” I cry out. “No. Dracula. There’s a real-life Dracula, I know there is, you’ve talked about him. Where is he?”
“Rose,” my father says gently. “You’ve just transitioned. I understand you have a lot of questions right now. But your mother and I are going to help you through this. We both went through the same thing as you.”
His words produce a sharp stabbing pain in my heart, because I know he’s lying. I know it now. There were things that have thrown me off in the past, things my mother has said about her transition into a vampire that contradicted each other. But I can’t focus on that right now.
I need answers.
I need to find Valtu.
A name that hadn’t meant anything to me for the last twenty-one years and now, now that name means everything to me.
Because he was my everything.
Time and time again.
“You’ve told me that there is a vampire that inspired Bram Stoker to write Dracula,” I say, trying to keep my emotions in check, even though they’re coming in from all directions. I feel like a ship being slammed by waves, water pouring in through the portholes. “You said you knew him. That he helped you once. Where does he live? Is he…is he still alive?”
Oh god. What if he’s not?
My father bristles, his hazel eyes flickering with a hit of discomfort. I’ve seen him do this before when Dracula was mentioned and there’s something about that, something about all of this that feels like if I just thought a little harder, dug a little deeper, that I’d discover something big.
Bigger than the fact that I’ve just remembered all my past lives.
“I believe so,” my mother says, sounding confused. “But we haven’t seen him…it’s been a long time.”
“I need to find him,” I tell her.
“Why?”
My father clears his throat. “Rose, what has gotten into you? Why are you so interested in Dracula? Do you think he’s the king of the vampires? You know that’s not the case.”
I stare at him for a moment. I’m so used to never seeing my parents age, that sometimes I forget how close in age we appear. My father will never look a day over thirty-five. He will always look like a tall, Nordic guy with big muscles and thick dark-blond hair.
I look at my mother. She should look the same as me. Not literally, of course—she has violet eyes and black hair, I have green eyes and red hair, inherited from my father’s side, I’ve always assumed. But she should look twenty-one, the age she would have transitioned.
But she doesn’t. For the first time I’m realizing my mother looks older than twenty-one. Not as old as my father, but closer to thirty.
“Rose,” my mother says, folding her arms. “I know you’re going through a lot right now, but please tell us what’s going on.”
How do I even explain this? They’re going to think I’m crazy.
