Sleeping Beauty and the Demon (30 page)

Rose realized she’d made a lot of mistakes, but confiding in Patrick was probably the worst one. “This isn’t happening!”

Patrick tried to kiss her but she shoved him away. “I married Drago,” she said breathlessly. “I love him, not you.”

“Soon, there’ll be no Dragomir Starkov. Morvina promised me that.”

“I still won’t be with you!” she shouted.

He started to grope her. Then he yanked her face in his direction and kissed her hotly. To defend herself, she slashed her fingernails across his face.

Patrick cried out. He touched his face, then studied the blood. The sight flamed his cheeks. “First Starkov broke my jaw, now you’ve probably scarred my face!”

“I’m sorry, Patrick.” She wasn’t really, but she was extremely frightened.

“If you won’t be with me, Rose, I’ll let Morvina kill your savage husband
and
you!” The elevator door opened and he dragged her out. “Now get up on the ledge and climb! Oh, and try not to think about Morvina squeezing you to death before you reach Drago.”

“I hate you!” Tears stung Rose’s eyes.
How did I miss how evil he is?

Blinded by her tears, she turned toward the ledge. The hot summer wind whipped her hair about—and her knees wobbled.

When she looked all the way up, she could see nothing but the side of the building angling up and away from her.

Is Drago in place at the spire’s topmost point, waiting for me?

The way the ornate stones were stacked provided Rose with spaces to place her feet—just as Drago promised. Still, she doubted she could scale them.

“For Christ’s sake!” Patrick screeched. “Get up on the ledge. Morvina doesn’t have all night.”

Mouth parched, she shook her head.

Seething, Patrick lifted her onto the ledge by her waist. She gave a teeter and tried to balance herself. Patrick laughed as he stepped back inside the elevator.

“Don’t bother calling for the elevator again,” he said. “I’m going to disable it once I reach the lobby.”

Rose’s heart sank. She told herself not to look down, but she couldn’t help it. The street was more than seven hundred feet below her—and the commotion lining it waved in and out of focus. She came close to inching across the ledge. Then a debilitating fear gripped her. Vertigo was precisely that. A paralyzing phobia of heights that made a person’s limbs freeze and their pulse stutter wildly.

She was about to give up and slide down when she heard Drago’s voice. “Come and get me, Morvina!” he boomed.

Rose licked her dry lips. Hands shaking, she tilted the small clock-pin fastened to her costume and stared at the time. Seventy thirty on the dot.

Drago had turned into a demon.

CHAPTER 32

S
tretching her arms out in order to balance herself on the ledge, Rose summoned all of her courage. Once she reached the point where she could start climbing, she placed her foot on the closest stone and stepped up.

“Morvina!” Drago’s voice was octaves lower than normal and coated with a preternatural rasp. It was barely recognizable to Rose, but still, it brought her back to what he’d said at his East Hampton house. “
Tonight both of us will face what we fear most. And for everything to work out, you’re going to have to trust me
.”

Stifling the fright that swept through her—at least for a moment—Rose picked up her pace. With every centimeter she conquered, she tried to brace herself for seeing Drago in his grotesque form.

He’s still my husband,
she reminded herself.
And if I don’t look down, I might overcome my vertigo.

“Is Rose alive?” She heard Drago boom to Morvina.

“She’s on her way up,” came the voice of evil. “I want her to suffer before I put her out of her misery. Her vertigo is seeing to that. That’s why I’m going to kill you first, Drago.”

Heart racing, Rose continued to scale the incline. Each inch was painful, excruciating, terrifying. Thus, she wasn’t moving nearly as fast as she wanted to.

How can mountain climbers do this for a hobby?

“I have the lei coin,” Morvina crowed, “so don’t deny it. You know that I was Richard Bellum.”

“Yes. That’s what makes me want to kill you even more,” Drago growled.

“You don’t stand a chance.”

“I’m stronger than any person you could possess,” he challenged.

“I wouldn’t be too confident, Drago,” Morvina fumed. “You don’t have the lei coin. I do. Plus, I have another secret.”

“What secret?” Drago scoffed.

“When I was a child, I was disfigured by arthritis. My mother was a beautiful fortuneteller who dabbled in the occult. In a horrible accident, I fell off a horse and lay dying. My mother gave me an enchanted coin to save me.” She paused. “Not only did it save me,
it gave me the ability to live forever.”

“My God!” Drago bellowed. “You’re the fortuneteller who doomed me!”

Rose sucked in a sharp breath.

“Yes!” Morvina hissed. “When you came to me, I looked into my crystal ball and learned you’d be my opponent in the Victory. All I had to do was get you to accept the coin. And you did.”

“You bitch!”

Morvina tsked mockingly. “It was your choice to become immortal.”

Horrified but unseen, Rose clung to the side of the building.
Keep talking, Morvina. It’ll give me time to reach you.

“Forget me, Morvina,” Drago said. “Why did you curse Rose?”

“Long ago, I asked my crystal ball to show me the most beautiful woman in the world. The ball wouldn’t tell me. I asked the cards. They wouldn’t tell me. Then I knew. The woman hadn’t been born yet. I decided to draw on my mother’s spirit. During a spirit writing session, I penned the name ‘Rose Hayes’.”

Bile edged up Rose’s throat. Her foot missed a groove and she floundered to maintain her hand grip.

“So I settled into the body of Rose’s aunt—before I became Richard Bellum. When I was Morvina, I cursed Rose to die on her twenty-first birthday—which happens to be the anniversary of your turning, Drago. I figured Rose’s beauty would peak in her twenty-first year. Now I can kill both of you on the same night. How deliciously convenient!”

“Rose has hardly begun to live,” Drago said. “You’re a she-devil!”

“No one deserves to be that beautiful—especially when there are hideous children in the world.” Morvina paused. “Everyone thought my cursing Rose had to do with an argument I had with her mother. But that was all nonsense and drivel. I just want her youth and beauty.”

Hearing Morvina’s admission nearly knocked Rose free of the tight contact she had with the building. Hanging on for dear life, she remained frozen for a moment. Then she lifted her shaking hand to the next brick. She commanded her feet to follow the action of her hands—although the ballet slippers she was wearing were just that. Slippery.

Reaching down, she yanked the heel of one of her shoes off her foot. In doing so, she caught a glimpse of the spectators’ blurred faces. It made her vision disjointed and she nearly whirled off the building.

Closing her eyes to the dizzying sensation, she peeled off the rest of her slipper by feel and let it fall. Transferring her grip to her alternate hand, she managed to remove the other shoe.

Once she flung it free, she was left in nothing but her stockings. She ripped at the material until the soles of her feet were exposed. Able to grip the bricks better now, Rose continued to climb. She gulped against the gigantic lump in her throat because she heard nothing now. No voices. No car horns. Nothing but the wind whistling around the pyramid-like structure.

Were Morvina and Drago staring each other down? Or is my vertigo wreaking havoc on my mental capacities?

Ten more bricks until she’d be able to witness the Victory take place.

Before Rose reached the midway point of the pyramid, she heard Drago shout, “It’s time for you to die, Morvina!” Then punches were thrown. Clothes were torn. And no doubt blood was being shed.

Who will lose their head?

Beyond anxious, Rose climbed until the demons came into view. Drago, who was garbed in remnants of his white dress shirt and dark trousers, looked exactly like Morvina. With scaled gridelin skin, scalloped wings, hideous faces that resembled gargoyles, and sharp fangs that glimmered in the moonlight, the demons clinging to the narrow spire chilled Rose’s blood.

She forced her eyes to remain on the horrific scene. One creature had the other in a chokehold—and the one in the chokehold was stammering for breath. Rose’s debilitating fear returned. She wanted to come to Drago’s aid by clawing at Morvina but she couldn’t distinguish between them. Worse, she couldn’t make herself climb the slim ladder in front of her.

Struggling to tap down her phobia, Rose shut her eyes for a moment. As she groped for courage, the world calmed around her.

“Think, Rose,” she murmured under her breath. “Your name was kept out of the papers when you were born. No one knew Malcolm and Florence Hayes had a baby except the people who came to your private christening. Your birth certificate was destroyed. There is no record of you living anywhere at all—just like Drago.”

Rose squeezed her eyes tighter and concentrated again.

“You’re destined to be with him in another time and place. Go. See what Drago has planned for you.”

To her surprise, a clear vision materialized in her mind. She was back at her spirit writing session when she was seven. And she remembered the vision she’d managed to conjure that night. She saw herself falling off a building when she grew up and turned twenty-one. Now the source of her vertigo was clear! As a child, the premonition of her falling had been horrifying enough to spawn the phobia.

Also in the vision, she saw herself obeying Drago’s plan and fulfilling his instructions so that they could be together.

I know which demon is Morvina now.

Rose opened her eyes. Gone was her fright. Inhaling, she began to ascend the narrow ladder. Because she was able to climb the rungs quickly and with more confidence, she managed to steal silently underneath Morvina. The demonic witch had her hands around Drago’s throat.

“Say your goodbyes!” raged Morvina.

The sorceress was about to twist Drago’s head off when Rose fisted the tops of Morvina’s boots and gave the strongest yank of her life. The heave knocked Morvina off balance. The witch reached for the ladder rung. Meanwhile, Drago pulled a knife from his trouser pocket. In a flash, he clamped Rose’s hand around the handle and both of them severed Morvina’s head.

It tumbled out of sight as did her body.

Cringing, Rose climbed two more steps into Drago’s arms.

“Thank God,” he murmured in a ragged voice.

She clung to him and to the ladder with equal ferocity. When she looked up at him, he still wore a dire expression.

“It’s time for you to do as I tell you,” he said firmly.

Horror raced through Rose anew. “I already know what you want me to do.”

“How?”

“I relived the premonition I had when I was seven.” Her voice was shaky.

Taking her hand, he pressed it to his lips. Rose tried not to think about the fact that they were teetering seven hundred feet in the air.

“It’s time,” Drago said. “If I don’t make you disappear, the police will hunt us down. And they won’t stop until they find us.”

“Where will I go?” Rose asked urgently.

“Someplace wonderful.”

“What’s going to happen to you?”

“I’ll join you at that wonderful place eventually.”

She took in a breath. Then she buried her head against him and shook her head. “I don’t want to leave you.”

“You trusted me from the minute we met.” His voice grew emphatic. “Now you need to trust me one last time.”

“Promise me we’ll see each other again,” Rose whispered.

“I promise.”

She locked eyes with him. Drago’s gruesome face hovered inches above hers but in her mind she could picture him in his normal, handsome state. Tenderly, he put a hand to her face. Even though her grasp on the sharp edge of the spire was making her fingers bleed, she refused to let go. They dangled there until a voice from the street reached them through a bull horn. “Let your wife go, you monster!”

“They may start shooting at me,” Drago said as a tear slipped down his scaled nose.

A tiny voice inside Rose reminded her that she belonged to another time and place.

She exhaled. It was time for Rose Hayes Carlisle to die.

“Goodbye for now,” Drago whispered.

She lifted her mouth to his lips and despite how frightening he was, kissed him deeply. Then she pulled him off the ladder. On a hushed prayer, both of them fell freely. Hurtling downward through space, a prolonged silence greeted her. The seconds ticked by. Drago tumbled out of sight. Wind sped past her.

Then Rose became unaware of everything as her world went black.

PART 2

CHAPTER 33

One hundred years later

D
rago ended his phone call and leaned back in his office chair. Sighing, he swiveled it around and gazed out the window at London’s twinkling skyline. Situated in the city’s banking district, Drago’s sleek office had become his second home over the years. However, on tranquil evenings like this one, he let his thoughts drift back to the parting kiss Rose gave him on the ladder of the Woolworth Building. He put a hand to his heart. Their separation caused him severe pain even now. He didn’t have his beloved wife anymore. Since then, he’d prevented any woman from bringing him joy.

Drago’s nostrils flared as he recalled the details of that fateful night. After he and Rose plummeted off the building, he made her vanish in mid-air. Then he’d commanded her to travel to a secret location.

Teleporting.
Isn’t that what magicians called it today? An act sub-par illusionists faked but could never accomplish.

True teleporting involved a body dematerializing from one location and rematerializing in a different spot in an instant. That’s what he had done in 1913. He’d relocated Rose from the skies of New York City to someplace safe. In that confidential location, Rose lay in a dream state. Resting like a beauty in bloom . . . fully protected by Drago’s magical handiwork.