Roses and Thorns

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Disclaimer: I don't own anything from Power Rangers, Ninja Storm or Power Rangers in Space, and I'm not making any money from this fic. I also don't own the original concepts of vampires and wizards

Replies to reviews:

Jorgitosbabe: I think you were the only person to comment on that . I actually had no idea that Lila was going to tell Hunter that until I started writing the scene. An example of one of my characters taking over for themselves . Anyways, thanks for reviewing!

garnetred: The wizard's been quite severely weakened, so he'll be licking his wounds for a while yet. And I've dropped a lot of hints about Cally's power... Hehe . Thankies for reviewing, and I'm glad you liked it

jj-monster: Yeah, computers can be a pain, can't they? The one I'm using at the moment continually crashes on me, so I make a point of saving my work most of the time. And Faye will be thrilled that Cally's back . She has absolutely no idea what do on her own. Thanks for reviewing!

BlueAngel07: Thanks for reviewing, and I'm glad you liked it

CamFan4Ever: Yup, they're finally going back. I've decided to stop torturing them (well, Andros, anyway). Thanks for reviewing!

Author's Note: 96 reviews?! That's something I never would have expected! A couple of weeks ago, I was idly wondering if I would actually get a 100... Looks like I could well reach that target! Thank you so much everyone whose reviewed!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cally's eyes fluttered open, and she stared up at the ceiling.

"Cally?" Faye asked softly.

Cally blinked, then turned her head to the side to look at her friend. "Where am I?" she questioned.

"You're in our house," the orange light ranger explained. "You're safe now." Faye felt her eyes fill, and she wiped her hand across them. But she was relieved that Cally was all right. She felt so tired, though. Probably had something to do with the fact that she hadn't been sleeping very well as she had been so worried about her friend.

Cally frowned, and tried to sit up, but Faye pushed her back down again. "You need to rest," the orange light ranger told her friend. She knew that that hadn't been what Cally had been doing. The violet light ranger looked even more tired and worn out than Faye felt.

Cally let herself be pushed back down, which only further proved how tired she really felt. Usually, the violet light ranger resisted against being forced to take a break or rest. She was perfectly willing to push her body to its very limits, and then attempt to push it even further until she was on the verge of collapsing. Faye supposed that it was quite an admirable quality, but not a very sensible one.

"I'll get some rest if you will as well," Cally responded, closing her eyes. "You look really awful, Faye. How much sleep have you been getting?"

"Don't worry about me, Cal," Faye answered. "I know where you've... been. I know that you've probably gone through a lot."

Cally's eyes snapped open again, and she suddenly looked very wide awake, her eyes glittering in an alert way. A way that Faye had never seen before. "How do you know where I've been?" she demanded.

Faye looked down, suddenly not wanting to meet her friend's gaze, and silently berated herself for saying anything. She should have let Cally know that their secret was not quite the secret it had originally been later, when the violet light ranger had had a chance to rest and get her energy back.

"Faye." Cally's voice held a warning tone in it.

"I was worried about you," Faye told Cally. "I took you to the Power Rangers' headquarters when you collapsed and I couldn't feel you breathing."

"Couldn't feel me breathing...?" Cally frowned, and then her eyes suddenly got very wide. "Oh! That must have been when I was nearly drowned!"

"You were what?!" Faye exclaimed. "Who tried to drown you?!"

"I'm not entirely sure," Cally admitted. "I wasn't paying a lot of attention to what was going on around me. I was too busy trying to fill up the buckets to put out the fire."

Faye blinked. "Buckets... Fire?" she questioned, shaking her head slightly. It sounded way too weird to her. Besides, Cally was terrified of fire. She couldn't even be in the same room as a lit match.

"Yeah, we had to put out this fire," Cally explained. "It was one of the challenges, though the unicorns couldn't tell us that, of course."

Unicorns? Faye thought fuzzily. Oh, yes! Didn't Cam mention that unicorns were the guardians in the Forest of Feelings? Then, the orange light ranger frowned. "We?" she questioned with obvious confusion. She and Cam had seen another person with Cally on the computer screen... But neither of them knew the identity of the mysterious man.

"Andros the red space ranger," Cally explained in a drowsy voice, clearly dropping off into sleep again. She yawned, and forced her eyes open. "He helped me while I was trying to free an animal from a trap, and then we sort of decided that it would be advantageous to the both of us to work together."

Faye studied her friend's face closely, idly wondering if Cally thought of Andros as more than a friend. It wouldn't help her relationship with Dustin any if she did. But the violet light ranger's sleepy gaze didn't give any hint of her true feelings.

"You'll have to tell me everything that happened to you there," Faye said.

"I will," Cally responded. Her eyes began to close again, and then they flew open, and she stared at her stomach in surprise, then touched it lightly. "The crystal... It's gone," she commented softly.

The orange light ranger nodded slowly. "It appeared to have dissolved when the machine went wrong," she replied. Then, she clapped a hand over her mouth. Oops.

Cally's gaze shifted to her friend. "What machine? What are you talking about?"

"Um..." Faye dropped her gaze, unable to look Cally in the eye, and fiddled with the material of her top. "See, there were vampires..."

"Vampires." Cally's expression was unreadable, but she clearly wasn't even close to believing Faye. "I hate to tell you this, Faye, but vampires only exist in stories."

"No, they should only exist in stories," Faye corrected. "Cam, that's the green samurai ranger, and I were trying to work out why you'd been taken into the Forest of Feelings at that particular time, considering how long you've been feeling guilty about cheating on Dustin. An ideal time for you to go would have been while you were in hospital recovering from having tried to kill yourself." The orange light ranger frowned slightly. "Round about that time, people started getting murdered... Or, at least, that's what everyone thought was happening."

"But, instead, they were getting turned into vampires," Cally said dryly. She clearly still did not believe Faye, or, at the very least, thought that her friend must have been mistaken somehow.

Faye met Cally's gaze unflinchingly. "Yeah, that's right," she responded. "We worked out that you must have been taken into the Forest of Feelings then for a specific reason, and we wondered if it was somehow connected to what was happening with the vampires. So Cam decided to hook you up to this machine which would let us see what you were seeing."

Cally sighed. "Faye, you must be mistaken..." she began.

"No, I'm not," Faye interrupted. "Let me finish, Cal." When the violet light ranger finally sighed and nodded, the orange light ranger continued, "We watched you and... Andros enter that hut, and that was when we could finally hear what was going on as well as see it. Cam and I watched up until the screen went black because you were unconscious."

Cally nodded slowly. "I remember that," she said softly. "The wizard tried to strangle me. It was only by pure chance that I was still alive. I had enough presence of mind to let my body go entirely limp."

Faye gave a small smile. "You haven't had a very good time of it, have you, Cally?" she asked. "First of all you nearly get strangled by the silver silk rangers, then you become ill and end up in the Forest of Feelings, then you nearly get drowned, then you nearly get strangled again." Faye shook her head. "You must be thinking that someone's out to get you." Faye hesitated, then added, "In any case, the vampires started returning to themselves just after you regained consciousness, as far as I can work out."

Faye watched as the colour drained from Cally's face.

"The bottles," Cally whispered unsteadily. "They must have been inside the bottles." And that was why smashing the bottles hurt the wizard. It wasn't the bottles at all. It was what was inside the bottles!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cam sank back in his chair as he finally got the computer working again, and wiped a hand across his face. Whew. That was a relief. He didn't know what he would have done if he hadn't been able to fix the computer. Oh, wait. He knew partly what he would do. He would try his best to get a new one.

"Son, you are tired," Cam's father said softly from behind him. "You need your rest. Leave the computer and come to bed."

"In a moment, Father," the green samurai ranger responded. "I just need to sort out a few things." He couldn't go to sleep, anyway. That little boy who was no longer a vampire was still asleep on the bed in the rec. room, and there was no other bed to sleep in. Cam could go to sleep in the chair in front of the computer. He'd done it plenty of times before.

Sensei sighed. "Son, you should really not work so hard," he scolded gently. "It will not be the end of the world if you stop a little earlier than usual. The computer will still be here in the morning."

But I might not be. Cam wouldn't tell this to anyone, but his sleep was being disturbed by troubling images every night. And there was the face of a woman who was at once both familiar and strange to him. Try as he might, he could not recall her image to his mind while he was awake.

Cam didn't want to mention this to anyone else. He didn't want the others to think that he couldn't handle his own problems. He admitted that it was silly, but it was also the truth. And, for some reason, he didn't want the others to know. It was his secret, not theirs. They all had secrets, so why shouldn't he have one?

You're being silly, a little voice said in Cam's mind.

Oh, be quiet, the green samurai ranger responded. Another reason that he didn't want to tell the others was that they might think that he was ill, and then he would have to go to hospital, something which he wanted to avoid if it was at all possible.

"Excuse me?" a soft voice asked.

Cam glanced up, and saw the little boy who had been the original vampire standing in the doorway of the rec. room. The green samurai ranger gave what he hoped was a reassuring smile. "You're awake," he said, stating the obvious. "Did you sleep well?"

The boy nodded slowly, and walked over to stand next to Cam's chair. Even though he was no longer a vampire, he was still quite pale. The green samurai ranger wondered if he had originally been kept out of the sun.

"Do you remember anything of what happened to you?" Cam questioned.

"Not really," the boy replied. "I know something happened... But I'm not entirely sure what. I just remember being trapped somewhere and feeling scared." The boy spoke quite frankly, no beating around the bush.

That's probably for the best, Cam thought to himself. He's still young enough that something like that happening might have scarred him mentally.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hunter stared at Lila. Oh, no, he was thinking. Of all of the people I could possibly fall in love with... Why Lila

"Please say something," Lila begged. Her nerves were frayed, and she was wondering what on earth Peter was going to say when he found out that she had betrayed their secret.

"What do you want me to say?" Hunter asked. The coldness in his tone surprised even him.

"Don't you believe me?" Lila wanted to know. "I can show you!"

Hunter grabbed her hand before she could move it towards her morpher. "I believe you," he told her. "And I don't know what to say, Lila. This changes a lot. This now makes us enemies. You do realise that, don't you?"

"What... do you mean?" Lila questioned, sudden fear flaring in her eyes.

Hunter let go of her arm and moved his hands towards her shoulders, then shook her a little. "Don't you get it, Lila? I'm the crimson thunder ranger!"

Lila flinched at the pain in Hunter's voice. "But... You can't be!" she protested. "We're supposed to kill..." Horrified, Lila clapped both hands over her mouth. But not before Hunter caught precisely what she was going to say.

The crimson thunder ranger shook her again, hard. "Did Lothor tell you to kill us?!" he yelled. Seeing more than a few people stop to give him odd looks, he lowered his voice again. "You must know that Lothor can't be trusted!"

"I don't know!" Lila protested. "Listen, Hunter. Please listen to me. We thought that this was the only choice we had..."

"We?" Hunter's eyes narrowed. "Of course," he said sarcastically. "Peter has to be the other silk ranger. He is, isn't he?" When Lila didn't answer, Hunter shook her even harder. "Tell me!"

Lila flinched, and looked down. "He is," she admitted in a low voice.

Hunter moved his hands. He was angry enough to hit Lila, and that wasn't something he wanted to do. Not when she was unmorphed and not fighting him. But he was furious! He felt like he had been made a complete fool of.

"Hunter, I..." Lila began.

Hunter shook his head, clenching his fists. "Don't talk to me," he ordered, hiding his feelings behind an emotionless mask. "Don't ever talk to me again."

Lila flinched again. "Hunter, please..."

Hunter backhanded Lila hard enough to nearly knock her off the wall. The silver silk ranger made no move to hit him back, but her eyes filled with tears.

"We're enemies now," Hunter told Lila flatly. "You're no longer my friend, let alone my girlfriend. I trusted you, Lila, and you betrayed me." With those words, Hunter stormed off, his hands in his pockets, every movement jerky with anger.

Lila watched him leave, and then finally allowed herself to cry.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Blake slipped an arm around Tori as they walked along the beach. He smiled softly, thinking about how lucky he was to have a girlfriend like Tori. He was relieved that she had forgiven him for attacking her when he was a vampire. She might claim that it wasn't his fault, but Blake still felt bad about it.

She's so beautiful, Blake thought, looking at Tori out of the corner of his eye, still embarrassed about being caught staring at her. I love her so much... But what's going to happen when we finally defeat Lothor?

Blake knew that they would eventually defeat Lothor. He refused to believe that they wouldn't. They had to defeat him. If they didn't, then the whole earth would be lost. And that was something none of them was willing to let happen.

Tori smiled up at Blake, and rested her head on his shoulder. She was glad that Blake was all right now. She could stay like this with him forever.

"Do you want to go have dinner?" Blake asked the blue wind ranger in a soft tone.

Tori nodded, and Blake moved his arm from around her shoulders, but took her hand and led her off.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Read and review, please!