Rose By Any Name

Chapter 2: Charmer

The first thing you noticed was the smell. Pleasant, light, some tantalizing combination of black tea, pepper, vanilla, and cinnamon. It filled your world in its gentle embrace, calmly pulling you out of the blank white ethereal dream of nothingness. The next thing you noticed was that you were not lying down in a bed. In fact, you were being gently held. Carried with your head nestled under a chin, your cheek resting on someone's chest.

"She's waking up," rumbled Chan's voice from above you, the vibrations of it against your face. "Y/N? If you can hear me, squeeze Binnie's hand."

It wasn't until then that you realized that one of your hands was engulfed in another. You focused all of your energy, what tiny tendril remained, on squeezing that hand as tight as you could. It wasn't much.

"She's awake," Changbin said. "But very weak. Rose, we're taking you to our house. I'll explain why later. Try to sleep."

You couldn't muster the energy to so much as begin to form a protest. Chan's arms flexed, squishing you closer to him.

Changbin let go of your hand. "Her heart is sluggish, Channie. We need to hurry."

You felt the world fall away into darkness again.

Minho glanced from you to Chan and back again three times before he spoke. "She shouldn't be this weak. Something is wrong."

"We're not going to solve it here," Chan replied.

The three vampires had exited the Forlorn Rose with you in Chan's arms, utilizing the magic placed on the door to transport them to the edge of their home territory. Because of their own magic preventing them from appearing directly on the front stoop, however, they were a good several hundred feet from their front door. Changbin nor Chan were known for their speed. While Minho was known for his, he was still weakened by the extended time with no power.

So they were left to walk, albeit quickly, to their front door along the gravel driveway. The sun was long set. Trees lined the driveway on either side, some needing a trim since they hadn't come back often. In fact, they hadn't been there much at all.

Soon enough, the house loomed on the hill above through a break in the trees. It was an old farmhouse, built before the turn of the last century. It had been bequeathed to Chan in a will from a friend who had chosen to leave this earth permanently a couple years prior.

After being turned at the end of his life as Wolfgang, Chan had deliberately chosen to make the best of his many new lives. He had gained many friends in the vampire community, on both sides of that horrible fence some still erected between the two societies. He hadn't only made friends there, though, having found himself in the company of many supernatural beings.

It was why so many of his fellow Kpop idols had chosen that lifestyle as well. Chan had made it his home.

The house hadn't been updated much since it was built. It still relied on the dozen chimneys poking out of its gabled rooftop for heat. Electricity was available only in a few rooms, drawing off of solar power and batteries to store it. The plumbing thankfully worked.

These issues and more plagued the huge house, whose additions of two wings had added triple the original house's five bedrooms.

The resulting structure resembled a house only if you didn't look at the other two-thirds. It wasn't even painted the same color, the original house peeling white, the older addition on the left a deep brown, and the newest addition a sage green. It was into this portion of the house that the three sped into.

Chan headed straight for the nearest bedroom in this portion of the house, a guest room with a king sized four-poster bed covered in dust plastic. There was nothing else in the bedroom aside from the bed and a door that led to the ensuite bathroom. The bed had soft white sheets, a deep burgundy duvet, and was piled high with four down pillows.