The Vampire's Special Daughter Page 18

  Suddenly sobbing silently with relief, I knelt and grabbed Johnathan, hearing my dad shouting at me at the same time.

  “Chrissy, run!”

  Unlike when Paul had shouted this to me, I actually did what I was told this time. However, after just a few paces back up the trail, I stopped suddenly, turned back toward the fray, and yelled. “Dad! Jake is the spy! Jake is!”

  My dad was currently quite busy pinning a Warren to the ground, punching him repeatedly, but a lightning-fast glance and a nod in my direction told me that he’d heard me. Needing no other assurance that he wouldn’t try to attack Paul, I took off with a bloody, apparently lifeless Johnathan in my arms and began sprinting up the trail.

  Sobbing again, I sprinted as fast as my legs would go, knowing that I had to get Johnathan to Nora fast in order to save him, if he wasn’t dead already. I had no way to tell, at least not without wasting precious seconds to check to see if he was breathing, but I knew this could certainly be the case. He wasn’t moving at all or making a sound, and I just didn’t like the way he felt in my arms. He felt completely limp, like a pillow full of cooked spaghetti noodles.

  I’d been running for a few minutes when a shout coming from somewhere behind me made me stop and look. Running faster than any human ever could, Trevor was barreling toward me. Almost afraid he was going to crash right into me, I stepped aside, although I shouldn’t have been worried. He slammed on his brakes, literally dragging his heels in the dirt when he got near me, and came to a stop at least three or four feet away from me.

  “Everything’s under control back there, and your dad doesn’t want you alone in the woods until Jake is caught and dealt with. Now, give me Johnathan, and then hop on my back for a piggyback ride. We’ll get Johnathan to the house in no time.”

  Immediately, I did what he’d asked, and within seconds, we were heading to the house at warp speed, which was to say, vampire speed.

  When we arrived at the house, Jen wasn’t home, mercifully. Carol called Nora, telling her that Johnathan was hurt and to drop everything and run over as fast as she could. Not even a full minute later, Nora arrived with one of the newcomers, who was a young woman named Cassie, saying that Cassie had worked as a veterinary assistant for a while.

  Setting a still-limp Johnathan on the island, Nora and Cassie looked Johnathan over quickly, with Cassie first pressing a folded, clean dish towel to try to stop the bleeding from the knife wound across his chest. Back on the trail when I’d been carrying him, I’d tried to do the same with the front of my t-shirt, but it hadn’t worked, and my t-shirt had become soaked with blood.

  Cassie soon declared that Johnathan had a broken wing as well, and Nora finished listening to one side of his chest with her stethoscope.

  “He’s breathing, and his heart is still beating, although erratically. We need to get him to the vet’s office in Sweetwater.”

  Cassie suggested that they just run, instead of taking a car. “It’ll be quicker.”

  Nora agreed, and after wrapping Johnathan in a bath towel and cradling him to her chest, she and Cassie both soon flew out of the house.

  After breathing a huge sigh of relief that Johnathan was still alive, I turned to Trevor and Carol and began spilling out a very condensed version of the whole story with Jake, Paul, and the Warrens.

  After I was finished, I told Trevor to please run and go tell my dad everything. “I just need to make absolutely sure that he’s not going to try to hurt Paul if one of the Warrens tells him that Paul is really a Warren or something.”

  Nodding, Trevor began flying out of the house. “Got it.”

  Once he was gone, I collapsed over the island and began crying my eyes out for what felt like the millionth time that day. I cried for Paul, and how I hadn’t trusted him, and I cried for Johnathan and his big, brave heart. I also cried for Jen, and how badly her own heart was going to hurt once she found out about Johnathan. Every so often, silently, Carol rubbed my back, seeming able to sense that I didn’t want to talk anymore, just cry.

  Very fortunately, Jen still hadn’t arrived home yet when Nora called me from the vet’s office about a half-hour later.

  “Johnathan’s going to be okay. He’s had fifteen stitches, and some IV fluids, and his heart is now beating normally. He even opened his eyes briefly before the doctor put him to back to sleep to work on him.”

  With my eyes once again filling with tears, I exhaled in a rush. “Oh, thank God. Keep me and Carol posted, Nora.”

  After having ended the call, I’d just finished filling in Carol when Jen walked in the house, took one look at me in my bloody shirt that I hadn’t yet changed, and dropped the water bottle she’d been holding, gasping. “What—”

  “Johnathan’s going to be okay, Jen.” Rushing over to her, I repeated myself just to make sure she understood. “Johnathan’s going to be okay.”

  Immediately, she dropped to her knees, wailing, and it took me and Carol at least a minute to convince her that despite all the blood on my shirt, which I really regretted not having changed, Johnathan really was going to be okay.

  Finally, Jen lifted her blotchy, tear-stained face. “One of you…please take me to him. Take me to my son.”

  She soon left the house with Carol, who was going to drive her to the vet’s.

  Utterly emotionally spent, I went upstairs, peeled off all my bloody clothes, and stood beneath a hot shower spray for several minutes, not moving, crying, or doing anything. With my limbs beginning to feel like they were filled with lead, I couldn’t.

  Eventually, I regained enough strength to work some shampoo into my hair, wash and rinse my body, and get out of the shower, wrapping myself in a towel. After making my feet drag me into my room, I didn’t even dry my hair with the towel before pulling on a pair of pajamas and getting into bed. With my eyelids closing, I willed myself to stay awake until I heard some word about my dad, Paul, and everyone else. However, my will wasn’t quite strong enough, and at some point, I fell asleep.

  My bedroom was almost pitch-dark when I finally woke up some hours later. After pulling myself up to sit, I switched on a bedside table lamp, with the knowledge of everything that had happened earlier flooding back into my brain.

  I didn’t know how long I sat in my bed in the dim light, just trying to process everything, when a soft knock sounded on my half-ajar door.

  “You awake in here, sweetie?”

  It was my dad, and when I called out yes, he came inside my room, asking me how I felt, and if I was all right.

  I said that I was just fine. “But what about everyone else, though?”

  My dad pulled a chair over to my bed and had a seat. “Well, let’s see. Johnathan is awake and quacking a little; Jen is relatively stable, too; all of us Watchers are okay; and Trevor and Sam and a few others are disposing of five deceased Warren bodies right now…plus one other.”

  Pretty sure who that “one other” was, or had been, I spoke in a quiet voice. “So…Jake?”

  Swallowing, my dad took one of my hands. “Yes. I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

  I felt like someday, I might shed a tear or two over the loss of the kind, fun, loving Jake that I’d fallen in love with. But, emotionally spent as I still was, it wasn’t going to happen at present. And, I realized, it might not happen at all, because I now knew that kind, fun, loving Jake had been nothing more than a fraud.

  In response to what my dad had said, I just nodded. “It’s okay.”

  He soon sent a text to someone, saying that he had to tell them it was okay to come up, and then took my hand again. “This is the one time that I’m going to allow a young man into your room before you’re married…and I want you to remember that, Chrissy. This is the one and only time. I’ve told Paul to keep the door fully open, too, and come back downstairs within five minutes. I kind of can’t believe I even agreed to this at all, but I knew you’d want to see him first thing when you woke up…and he’s been pretty desperate to see you, too.”

  �
��So…you forgive him for being a Warren and hiding it, Dad?”

  He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “After the way he defended you today, Paul and I are good.”

  Just then, right on cue, Paul entered my room, and my dad rose from his seat, glancing from me to Paul with a little wariness in his eyes.

  “Five minutes, kids. Then, if you want to come downstairs together, that’s fine. But only a quick, five-minute reunion up here. And, Paul, you can just hop right in the chair, here. Don’t even dream about getting into bed with her.”

  Paul gave my dad a little nod. “Yes, sir.”

  My dad soon left, leaving me and Paul alone to embrace, which we did with me firmly sitting in my bed, and him firmly sitting in the chair.

  Finding that I wasn’t quite completely emotionally spent after all, I buried my misty-eyed face in Paul’s shoulder, telling him that I was so sorry for having not trusted him.

  He immediately shushed me, telling me that he was the one that was sorry. “I hid my true identity from you, your dad, and everyone else on this farm. I should be begging forgiveness from you all.”

  Holding him tighter, I shook my head. “You did what you did because you had no other choice. You were right when you said that you couldn’t have just walked up to the farm, announcing that you were a Warren.”

  “‘Were a Warren.’ Past tense. I like the sound of that, Chrissy.”

  He soon told me that he loved me, and I said it right back, adding that I was ready for a real, committed relationship with him.

  “As long as you still want that, too.”

  Scoffing faintly with his eyes twinkling in the dim light, he pressed a brief kiss against my lips. “Do you really have to ask?”

  A couple of hours later, I called Jen at the vet’s office, where she was spending the night with Johnathan and an overnight nurse. After she’d reported that Johnathan was “getting better and better by the minute,” I told her I was so sorry that he’d gotten hurt.

  “Even though it wasn’t really anyone’s fault but the Warrens’, I still can’t help but feel like it was mine somehow.”

  Jen scoffed. “Please stop. Johnathan is okay, and what happened to him definitely wasn’t your fault. These things just happen sometimes when you’re a hero duck. That’s part of Johnathan’s official name now, by the way. Johnathan Polka Dot Hero Duck MacGregor.”

  I told her I loved the name, then fell silent for a moment or two before speaking again. “Three heroic males that I love protected me today. Paul, my dad, and my nephew, Johnathan.”

  I only heard silence on the other end of the line for several moments, followed by sniffling, and then finally, Jen’s voice.

  “Sorry. I’m just so proud of my son.”

  Slowly, over the course of the next two days, life on the farm got back to normal. On the third day, when Jen brought Johnathan home from the vet’s office, she was greeted by me; all other family members; Paul; David; and a banner I’d hung in the kitchen, proclaiming Welcome home Johnathan and Jen in lime-green lettering covered with silver glitter paint.

  Smiling while holding a quietly-quacking Johnathan wrapped in a blanket, Jen surveyed the sign, and then turned to look at everyone assembled. “Thanks, everyone. But aren’t you all forgetting something?”

  Everyone exchanged glances, appearing puzzled, and Mel asked Jen what she meant.

  Walking over to the island, where everyone was gathered, Jen heaved a sigh. “Aren’t you all forgetting to say about how I’m always right about everything, specifically people, and specifically when I get the feeling that specific people are hiding things?”

  Suppressing a smile, Mel suddenly pulled a large white card from behind her back and set it on the island. “Gotcha. We thought you might be expecting us to acknowledge your stellar track record when it comes to reading people, and we didn’t forget that we needed to say it to you. In fact, we put it in writing for you.”

  Written in the same lime-green paint that was on the banner, the front of the large homemade card read: We all admit it. Jen is always right about people. The inside was signed by every family member, plus David and Paul, despite the fact that David and Paul had never had much of an opportunity to express anything indicating that they didn’t believe in Jen’s rightness about people.

  After looking inside the card, Jen set it back on the island, beaming. “Thanks, guys. This will be framed. Believe that.”

  Johnathan suddenly quacked loudly a few times, and everyone laughed, with Carol saying that Johnathan obviously believed Jen.

  Once the laughter had died down, Jen carefully set Johnathan in the empty wooden fruit bowl, then leaned over the island on her elbows. “Well, guys, it’s been a good day. I got to bring Johnathan home, and I got the card I’ve been waiting my whole life for. Oh, and also, I just adopted fifteen peacocks and eleven cats for us all to share.”

  Carol, who, of course, as a vampire, hadn’t been eating anything, suddenly began choking, seemingly on thin air. Mel clapped her on the back a few times, and once she’d recovered, Carol looked at Jen with watery eyes.

  “Sorry. For a second, there, I thought you said that you just adopted fifteen peacocks and eleven cats.”

  Jen nodded. “I did. For us all to share. The vet lady told me that they all got taken to the shelter, because their owner, who was this elderly guy who had a peacock farm, suddenly passed away, and nobody wanted his animals. So, I was just like, ‘Well, this is a no-brainer. My family will take ‘em.’ See, they’ll be like ‘community pets.’ The cats are used to being outdoors, so they’ll go in one of the barns. The peacocks are outdoor pets, too, and they’re rather adventurous, so we’ll just let them roam all around the farm. Although I guess maybe they’ll want a barn of their own, too, at least just to sleep in, probably. We can call that barn the ‘peacock barn’ so that everyone can tell it apart from the ‘cat barn.’ This’ll be important when the deliveryman comes with the seven hundred pounds of cat food and peacock feed that I ordered.”

  Looking a little pale, Carol said nothing, but Mel piped right up.

  “Jen, you should have at least asked us all about this, particularly Hayden, or at the very least—”

  “I didn’t, though. And you want to know why? I’ll tell you. First, no one should ever turn their backs on orphaned animals. Not even for a second to think things over. The second reason I didn’t at least ask everyone about the new animals, particularly Hayden, is because considering that a duck just recently literally saved his daughter’s life, I just knew that he’d say yes to all the new animals anyway. Was I wrong, cousin Hayden?”

  With all eyes on him, my dad just quietly sighed. “It is a big farm.”

  Squealing, Jen suddenly jumped, triumphantly throwing a fist in the air. “The animal transport vans will be arriving any minute now.”

  Mel and Matt’s three little boys and my two little brothers had all been napping on their own little portable cots out in the living room, but Mason had woken up; and now, sleepy-eyed, he stumbled into the kitchen.

  “New animals coming?”

  With her eyes twinkling, Jen said yes. “Lots and lots. We’ll have this farm turned into a zoo in no time.”

  Mel snorted, though smiling a little. “You mean more of a zoo than it already usually is?”

  Ten months later, ducks and peacocks freely roamed the backyard while Jen and David got married in the pond. And not beside the pond, as David had once wondered, but in the pond, as Jen had said she wanted. With the skirt of her voluminous white dress floating in the pond scum, she held Johnathan during the ceremony. Wanted, who, by this time, had learned not to terrorize the ducks, happily walked around the pond wearing a doggie tuxedo shirt, stopping to sniff at random things every now and then.

  That evening, at the reception, which was held in the “peacock barn,” Paul and I slow danced beneath a canopy of twinkle lights. Over the previous ten months, he and I had fallen madly, deeply, and completely in love, and we’d
even talked about the possibility of marriage a few times. In fact, even though I wasn’t supposed to know, I’d learned that he’d had some kind of a “serious talk” with my dad recently, and I had a little idea that Paul might have asked him for permission to ask me to marry him.

  Wanting to maybe get some kind of a hint or a sign confirming this, I glanced over at Jen and David, who were feeding each other cake at the wedding party table across the barn, then returned my gaze to Paul, smiling. “Think that’ll really be us someday? A happily married couple?”

  Grinning, he pulled me closer. “Yes…and maybe even sooner than you think. And that’s all I’m going to say about that.”

  Grinning in return, I rose up on my tiptoes to give him a kiss, then set the side of my face against his chest, happier than I’d imagined even in my wildest dreams.

  THANKS FOR READING!

  ***

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you so much for reading all the way to the end.

  If you enjoyed the final book then it then it would mean so much to me if you could leave a review on Amazon. Even just a sentence would be amazing!

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  Amira x x

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