Forever for Rose

Chapter Thirty One.

It's so foggy.

My mind, the room, my eyes.

I drift in and out of various stages of consciousness, unable to keep track of time, days, thoughts. It's all just so...foggy. I fade out of my drug induced coma a few times, seeing nothing but eyes when I can manage to get my own opened. My mom's, my dad's, Malcom's, Dalton...

When I can manage to squeeze out words before I'm pulled back into the fog I spit out what I remember. "Danger." I tell them. "They're coming." I cry out. "Save them."

My cries fall on deaf ears, or no ears at all. I'm not even truly sure I speak the words at all. For all I know, I could be dreaming still. Momentary, brief little snippets of almost normal to break up all the fog. I don't know what's what anymore. I only know I'm safe. For now.

When I finally come up for good, I find myself in my parent's hotel. They've upgraded to a bigger room. A two bedroom suite from the looks of it. My own room looks more like a hospital ward. An IV bag hangs to my left, monitors blink and beep to my right. Most importantly though, the people I love stand in front of me. "It's ok, Rosie." Daddy soothes me. "You're with us, you're safe."

I want to cry tears of joy, but I know we don't have time. "How long...?"

"It's been three days." My mom tells my gently. "They gave you some blood to help you heal faster and you've been on some pretty strong pain medications, but you're doing alright."

"I don't care about me." I shake my head, expecting pain but pleasantly surprised when none follows. "The blood rain, we have to be ready for it."

My mom and dad both put hands on my shoulders, like they expect me to bolt off of the bed. "Just take it easy, baby." Dad whispers, brushing my hair away.

I shake my head again. "No, there's no time." I press on. "They're going to attack Castrum. We need to come up with a plan. The Force will be dealt with, but the casters are the real danger anyway. They can subdue vampires in seconds, no way to fight back against them. Elenora doesn't know the man, the scientist, his ultimate plans."

"What are his ultimate plans?" Malcom asks, stroking his chin in my doorway. I want to hug him oddly. I won't though. He's still an ass, even if it was his advice and his little voice in my head that got me back here.

I swallow hard. "He wants to kill everyone."

Before I can elaborate, Dalton and Lance separate, letting a strange man in a white lab coat walk into the room. "How are you feeling?" He asks and I flinch back away from this stranger.

"It's ok." Dalton says quickly, almost taking a step towards me and then staying put instead. "He's just your doctor."

I settle back down, knowing all these people wouldn't let him near me unless it was true.

"Just here to check your vitals and make sure everything is healing up properly." He tells me kindly, moving about the room, checking monitors and changing out my bag of IV fluids.

I tear my eyes from him, something about the way he moves oddly familiar, and go back to my family.

"How did you all find me anyway?" I ask out of curiosity.

"That was a joint effort between Lance, Dalton, and your dad." My mom says, pushing her strawberry blonde waves out of her face. "They narrowed down where you could possibly be by marking off where they knew you weren't on a map."

I nod to her and dad smiles at me. "Your tip that there was a city nearby you really helped. Once we figured out you were near Penndlebrook, finding you was pretty simple."