THE FINAL
After a few moments, I felt Paul gently trying to pull my hands from my face. “Chrissy, please…just listen. Just look at me. Please.”
Still crying, I refused to let my hands be pulled, and Paul sighed, taking his hands off of mine.
“All right, then. If you won’t look at me, then at least please just listen. I never, ever meant for you to find out about me this way. Please believe me when I say that I never wanted to betray you or hurt you. Or both.”
I was glad that he’d said both, because I’d been thinking it.
“I never meant to hide my true self from you, but I had to. It wasn’t like I could just walk into the farm and announce, ‘Hey, everyone! I’m a Warren, sent here to spy on you all!’”
There was a brief pause, and I heard Paul sigh before he spoke again.
“I come from a large coven of Warrens in Indiana. From an early age, I never felt like I fit in. I didn’t like the way that my father and the other men acted. I didn’t like what they did to people in various cities and towns in the area. The Watchers, though…the nearby group of Watchers that always tried to stop them…they were my childhood heroes. I always wanted to be just like them, protecting people.”
Not sure at all that I could trust a word that Paul was saying, I said nothing, and he continued.
“However, for all my Watcher-worship, by the time I was in my early twenties, my father had convinced me that I was destined to follow in his footsteps. I was destined to fight the Watchers, just like he’d always done. After all, he always said, what right do they have to tell us what vampires in our coven should do? This made at least marginal sense to me at the time; so, I allowed my dad to turn me into a vampire, and I got the Warren tattoo as a symbol of my loyalty. Not long after, though, I realized I’d made a huge mistake. I knew that I could never hurt innocent humans, not even just to drink a bit from them and then erase their memory. I also knew that I could never fight against the Watcher vampires, who defended and protected them. My only problem when I realized all this was that I knew my father would never simply let me go. See, all Warren covens are a bit like the mob. You don’t just walk away with all their secrets. You either stay, or they kill you to silence you…and I knew that my father would have no problem doing that to even his own son, because his mentality has always been the Warren coven as a whole above any single person.”
Again, there was a pause, and I heard Paul take a deep breath before continuing.
“Once I realized that I just didn’t have it in me to be a Warren, but maybe wouldn’t survive leaving, I fell into a depression. It was around this time that my father got word that one Hayden MacGregor, from a Watcher community in Michigan, was ‘hiring,’ so to speak, new Watcher recruits to grow his community in response to a nearby Warren community getting larger. To make a long story short, my father talked to the Sweetwater Warrens, and they all agreed that I would make the perfect spy, because unlike with the Sweetwater Warrens, none of you Watchers here on the farm would recognize me as being a Warren myself. When my father proposed this idea to me, I agreed to become a spy, knowing that this was my only way out. So, my father forged some documents, and got a few vampires from a non-Warren coven in the state to claim me as one of their own so that I would have a non-Warren history when vetted by your dad.”
Listening to Paul, I’d long since stopped crying, and I now finally lifted my face from my hands. “And just how long were you planning on deceiving my dad after coming here?”
Standing in front of me, Paul heaved a sigh. “I was always going to tell him, and I still am going to. All I ask from you, Chrissy, is for just a little more time. Then, when the time is right…when your dad trusts me enough…I’m going to come clean to him. I’m going to tell him the truth, and tell him that I’m fully committed to renouncing my Warren kinship and becoming a Watcher. I’m also going to tell him that from the day I first arrived here on the farm, I’ve been giving my contacts from the Sweetwater Warrens the wrong intelligence. I’ve been trying to confuse them about the timing and direction of different guard patrols, and I’ve been trying to keep them off the property in the first place by making up different lies to make them think that a Watcher attack on their own compound is imminent…all because I want to protect everyone here on the farm, and prove myself as a Watcher. I really hope you can believe me about all this, because it’s the truth.”
Folding my arms across my chest, I snorted. “And how do I know that you’re telling me the truth? How do I know that you’re not just lying to me just to keep me quiet until you and all your Warren friends finally launch a full-scale attack on everyone here at the farm?”
Unsure of what to believe at present, this seemed like a real possibility.
As if he thought the mere idea was absurd, Paul just gave his head a small, slow shake, looking at me with sad eyes. “You just either have to trust me, or not, Chrissy.”
“No, you’re actually wrong about that. I don’t have to do anything.”
Except find my dad, I thought, suddenly tearing off up the trail.
*
It occurred to me after a few paces that Paul might try to follow me, catch me, and kill me to keep me quiet. However, glancing backward, I saw that he wasn’t running after me, and was instead just leaning against a tree with his face in his hands.
Even though he was a Warren and spy, and even though I still wasn’t sure that I could believe a single word he’d said, the image of him like that, against a tree with his face in his hands, made my heart ache for some reason. However, instead of making me slow or even turn back around, this ache just made me run faster, suddenly desperate to just get the hell away from him so that I could think clearly. I was also desperate to find my dad and tell him everything, knowing that he’d be able to tell if Paul was telling the truth or not.
For a while, I just kind of zoned out, with my overloaded brain seeming to just need some respite from shock after what I’d just experienced over the last hour or so.
However, presently, while I continued running, I found that despite not wanting to think about anything, I could only think of one particular thing. This was that even though Jake had never told me he was the spy, I’d felt afraid of him, whereas even though Paul basically had told me, via his tattoo, I hadn’t felt afraid of him at all, at any point after I’d found out the truth. I’d felt hurt, yes, and I’d felt betrayed, yes. I’d also felt angry, and I still did. And, in fact, somewhere in the back of my mind, that anger was only increasing the further I ran. But, still, I wasn’t afraid. Not of Paul. Even though I now knew that he was actually a Warren, and a spy at that, I still knew deep in my heart that he would never hurt me. Maybe he was really telling you the truth, I thought, slowing my pace a little. Because you obviously still trust him, at least on some level.
I had no idea how far I’d run when another thought occurred to me. I’d run way past the area where my dad’s guard patrol normally came through. In fact, I wasn’t a hundred percent certain that I was even on our property anymore. I could only guess that maybe I’d missed my dad by a few minutes or something, maybe having first run into the woods just after he and his patrol guards had left the area.
Wondering what I should do, I slowed to a jog, realizing that the path soon came to an end in a small clearing in a particularly dark area of the forest. Above, the treetops were so dense and closely-spaced that they blocked out most of the sunlight.
Having been to this clearing a few years earlier, while exploring with Mel and Jen one day, I remembered that there was a cluster of huge rocks to one side, which we’d all sat on for a while. Thinking that maybe I’d now sit on one of these rocks again, just to kind of try to get my bearings and catch my breath before probably returning home to call my dad, I continued toward the clearing, although now slowing my jog to a walk, in part because the ankle I’d sprained was beginning to hurt a little. Not long after, I heard furious quacking coming from somewhere behind me, which made me nearly jump out of my skin in the quiet forest. I’d completely forgotten that I’d left Johnathan behind when I’d fled from Paul.
Turning to look down the trail, I heaved a sigh. “You scared me, Johnathan. I don’t know who else I thought would be quacking in the forest, but you just startled me for a second.”
I could hardly blame myself for having been a bit startled, because my nerves were just shot by now, to say the least.
Still quacking furiously, Johnathan continued up the trail toward me, waddling faster than I’d ever seen him go. A little bit embarrassed, I realized that because of my short-ish legs, a little white duck had nearly outrun me.
When he reached me, I scooped him up and held him to my chest, then able to tell that he was breathing extremely rapidly. Feeling terrible that I’d made him chase me down, I kissed the top of his head, telling him that I was so sorry. “I didn’t mean to make you run like that, buddy. I really didn’t. I didn’t know you were following me, just trying to catch up.”
Quacking weakly in a low sort of tone between breaths, as if to admonish me for my inconsideration, Johnathan rested with his little head against my chest. Thinking that he really had to be the tamest, smartest, sweetest little duck in the whole world, I just talked to him for a short while in a soothing voice while petting his soft feathers.
Once his breathing had at least mostly returned to normal, I told him that we were going to go have a seat on a big rock for a minute. “Just until my hurt ankle feels a little better.”
I turned, intending to stroll the last couple of feet to the clearing. However, something made me freeze, and that something was actually five somethings. Just two or three feet away from me, blocking my way to the clearing, stood five muscular men I’d never seen before. They weren’t vampires from the farm. I had a pretty good idea that they were vampires, though. This was because one of them, the tallest of them, who was standing in the middle of the group, had a black W tattoo in the center of his throat, and the W had wings.
While I struggled to breathe, this man leered at me. “Hi.”
Instantly, just acting on pure instinct, I turned to make an attempt at fleeing. However, before I could take even a single step, the leering man, who I assumed was the ringleader of the group, grabbed part of my t-shirt and whirled me back around to face him and the others.
“No, no, honey…we’re not going to run. If you try again before I’m done talking to you, things will go very bad for you. You understand?”
Still cradling an unnaturally silent Johnathan in my arms, I nodded mutely, unable to speak, even to say a simple yes.
Seemingly satisfied with my response, the man I was starting to think of as Ringleader took a step back from me and slowly surveyed me from head-to-toe, leering again, before speaking. “Now, we know there are only two red-headed girls at the farm, and we also know that one of them is Hayden MacGregor’s niece, and the other is his daughter. Which are you?”
Knowing that the Warrens had wanted to kill me, my mom, and my little brothers for years, I figured that my best bet for staying alive was saying that I was Jen, so I did, forcing myself to speak.
“I’m the niece.”
Folding his arms across his chest, Ringleader sneered. “Liar. That question was just a test to see if you’d be honest with us, and you failed. We know that the MacGregor niece is all of about ninety pounds soaking wet, and you’ve got thirty or forty more pounds of meat on you. You’re the MacGregor daughter…and now we know that you’re also a liar, which isn’t good for you. See, we Warrens tend to punish liars…very slowly and painfully.”
Completely unable to help myself, I began backing away from the Warrens, yelling. “Paul! Help me!”
I began shouting Paul’s name again, but Ringleader had lunged forward, shoving a palm against my mouth to stop me.
“Now, none of that, honey. Yell one more single syllable when I take my palm off your mouth, and I’ll cut your tongue off right where we stand. Understand me?”
Trembling, with tears welling in my eyes, I forced myself to nod, and Ringleader took his hand off my mouth.
“Good. And thanks for the little clue, too, by saying Paul’s name. Now I know just how far deep with you Watchers he’s gotten. He’s actually dating Hayden MacGregor’s daughter, I presume. Can you believe that, boys?”
Ringleader glanced over each of his shoulders at his four fellow Warrens, who were now standing just slightly behind him because of his lunge. Shaking their heads, each of the four seemed to express that no, they couldn’t believe that Paul was dating Hayden MacGregor’s daughter.
Ringleader turned back to me, folding his arms across his chest again. “Now, as for you, I bet there’s a lot about our good friend Paul that you wouldn’t believe.”
Realizing that Ringleader didn’t know that I knew that Paul was a Warren spy, I had a sudden idea and just let it rip before I lost my nerve. “Actually, I know everything about Paul. I know he’s a Warren, and I know he’s a spy. I’m okay with it, though. In fact, he’s gotten me all onboard with it, so I’m kind of a spy now, too. See, I hate my dad, and I’ll do anything to take him down, including helping all you Warrens. That’s why Paul trusted me enough to tell me—”
“Nope, honey.” Ringleader shook his head at me. “None of this is going to fly. We know what Paul has been doing. We know that Paul hasn’t been loyal to us, let alone loyal to the point of getting Hayden MacGregor’s daughter on our side. We know that Paul has become a defector. He’s given us the wrong information about guard patrols five different times now. He’s also given us false information about supposed impending attacks on our compound. We know all this thanks to a new little spy friend we recently recruited not too long ago, a spy aptly named Jake Warren, as if he was just destined to be one of us. One hell of an ambitious young vampire, that Jake. Ran into me on his way to the farm, here, the day all the new recruits were showing up, and right away, he said he wanted to work for us. ‘I admire you Warrens’ style,’ he said. ‘I’ll help you folks for a while, and then you help me wipe out all the vampires on the farm so I can set up my own little Warren coven and have all sorts of power.’ Instantly, I liked the kid, and my boss liked the sound of him, too. So, we decided to work with him on a trial basis. Now, this isn’t to say that we entirely trust our new little spy friend, but…we trust him enough at this point. Not enough to reveal to him that Paul is actually a Warren, and from what coven, but I guess enough to trust him over Paul when he gives us the correct patrol schedules and all that; put it that way.”
I stood in absolute shock, unable to speak or even really think clearly. One of the men behind Ringleader suddenly cleared his throat in a way that made me think that he might be trying to warn Ringleader that he was starting to say too much.
Apparently picking up on this, although without even giving a backward glance to his companion, Ringleader gave his own throat a clear, gaze on me. “Anyway. We didn’t come here today to spend all day chatting with you. We came here to kill Paul. Care to make this process simpler by telling us his whereabouts right now? I’m just guessing that you, as his girlfriend, might know. And, if you do, but you just don’t feel inclined to tell us, well….” Leering at me again, Ringleader pulled some sort of a dagger from his belt. “There are ways we can get you to tell us where he is. And when we’re done with you, maybe we’ll even carve up your little pet duck. Not for dinner, though, you know, because we’re vampires. Just for fun.”
Just then, a rustling in the trees to my right made us all look in that direction.
From between two tall sycamores, Paul stepped out, stony-faced. “Let her go.”
With his face lighting up with what appeared to be pure joy, Ringleader looked at his four companions. “You believe this? How easy was that?”
Paul spoke to me in a low voice. “Chrissy…start running back to the house.”
Now convinced of Paul’s innocence, I shook my head. “No…I’m not leaving. They’ll kill you.”
“Well, they’re going to try to kill me whether you’re here or not. So, I want you to run back to the house. Right now. I’ll hold them off.”
“No. I’m not—”
“Chrissy, go!”
“No!”
“All right.” With his earlier look of pure joy now having become replaced by a frown, Ringleader looked from me to Paul. “Enough of this. She had a chance to run, and we might have actually just let her go, but she didn’t take it. Clearly, she wants to be a part of this. Maybe she wants it to all go down like Romeo and Juliet, with both of you dying together.”
“Don’t you even dare touch her.”
Ringleader snorted. “Oh, we might do a little more than just touch her. Now that I’m thinking about all this, what a better way to show Hayden MacGregor that us Warrens mean business than by killing his very own daughter, and right on the border of his very own property, no less. The elders have wanted MacGregor’s kids dead for years anyway.”
The companion of Ringleader who had cleared his throat earlier now did so again before speaking to Ringleader in a low voice. “Besides…we have to kill her now. You told her about Jake.”
Swallowing, Ringleader turned a vivid shade of pink. “You’re right, Blaine. I guess I goofed. And maybe we won’t tell the elders about that, okay?”
Flexing his fists, Jake stepped out from between the sycamores. “Run, Chrissy.”
Ringleader suddenly drew his dagger back as if preparing to slash at me with it. “No. She’s not going anywhere.”
In the next second, several things happened at once. Ringleader’s four companions began charging Jake, blocking him from reaching me. Ringleader began sweeping his dagger in a downward arc toward me. Screaming, I flinched, closing my eyes. I didn’t let go of Johnathan, though, still cradling him protectively. However, within a fraction of a second, he suddenly wasn’t in my arms anymore. It felt like he’d just burst right out of them. There was no other way to describe it. Before I could even process what might have happened, I heard Ringleader yell, and I opened my eyes, gasping at what I saw.
Flapping his wings furiously, Johnathan was biting at Ringleader’s face, and viciously enough to have already drawn blood. However, Johnathan was bleeding, too, profusely, clearly having taken a dagger slash that had been meant for me. The entire front of his chest was crimson.
Johnathan’s assault on Ringleader lasted only mere moments before Ringleader swatted him away, this movement slamming him to the ground, where he remained, suddenly motionless. Crying out, I began kneeling to pick him up, but Ringleader grabbed my face to stop me.
“No, you don’t. Now it’s your turn.”
*
I screamed, thinking that I might be exhaling my last breath. However, Johnathan’s assault on Ringleader had given Paul the few moments he’d needed to charge through the four other Warrens. Now, with some sort of a guttural, ferocious growl, he was charging at Ringleader, fangs bared. Scrambling backward, I saw naked fear in Ringleader’s eyes, but just for a moment, before Paul leaped through the air and tackled him, throwing him backward at least ten feet.
Not half a second later, movement to my right made me whip my face toward the sycamores, and I saw the most welcome, beautiful, blessed sight I’d ever seen in my life. My dad. Along with Matt, Trevor, and Sam. All of them charging into the fray, making a beeline for the four Warrens that Paul had charged through.
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!
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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!
This would be a review of the whole series and it would be a big help if it was left on the amazon page for book 1 so others can discover the series too :)
Thanks in advance and if you want to see more of my work, just head over to my author page (link below)
AMIRA RAIN AUTHOR PAGE
Thanks for reading and making “the vampires baby series” a bestselling series on Amazon.com!
See you in the next book
Amira x x
And if you want more books like this, you can see all the LATEST books from myself and the Simply Shifters team at the below link. This takes you to our full Amazon.com author page :)
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