He tried to speak, but nothing came out except another gurgle followed by a bubble of black blood that formed in his mouth before it burst into a torrent, staining the front of his body. He tried to draw in a breath but couldn’t as blood continued to pour out of him. He shuddered one last time and, suddenly, his body disintegrated into ash.
No one moved for several moments, all staring at a pile of dust that had once been the most feared vampire in the world. I was numb. Not only had I killed this hated man, I had also killed my father. Though he deserved to die after everything he had done, I made a vow to myself that I wouldn’t regret my actions.
Movement caught my eye, and anguish crashed into me. Jameson was still lying on the ground but was beginning to move on his own.
Racing to his side, Solomon and I helped him up, but he pushed Solomon away as he swept me up into his arms and squeezed me against him.
“Are you all right?” I cried as I buried my face into his neck and breathed in his scent.
“I’m fine. He didn’t have a laced blade, but it still burned until my healing took over. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.”
Relief coursed through me, knowing he was going to be fine. A feeling I hadn’t truly experienced since I woke in the burning remains of my aunt and uncle’s farm. I breathed out a sigh as elation began to sink in, then hushed him. “It’s over now, and Prime can never hurt anyone else again. That’s all that matters.”
My lips found his, and we shared a victory kiss as we both relaxed into each other, letting the stress of our relationship bleed out of us and join the pile of ash at our feet.
When we finally pulled back from each other, Solomon clapped Jameson on the shoulder, a smile on his face and tears in his eyes. What he had been through all these years had finally been reconciled with the death of his enemy. He got vengeance for the murder of his wife, and he reunited with his daughter, while also gaining a son in the process.
“We did it,” I said, beaming at them both.
“You did it,” Jameson corrected, and I brushed off his words. None of it would have happened without everyone’s help—everyone, including those who were no longer with us. Grief battled with my emotions as Evander’s face surfaced to my mind. Tears gathered in my eyes for the ally who had become our friend and was no longer with us.
Henry was sitting on a sandy slope not far away, with Alice kneeling beside him and inspecting his head. They both smiled at me, and I knew they would both be all right.
Turning to Catherine to give her a hug and rejoice in our victory, I realized with dismay she wasn’t there. Only a pile of ash remained where I had last seen her, along with her sword. I had momentarily forgotten what would happen once we killed Prime.
I forgot that it would kill all of the vampires he had sired who hadn’t remained pure. My heart ached knowing that I would never get the chance to thank her for her sacrifice and help.
Tearing a piece of my shirt off, I scooped into it as much of her ashes as I could. There was no body for us to bury, but we could spread her ashes into the sea and hope that she was at peace.
“All who have perished today will move on…” The Sea Witch’s voice resounded in my mind, a note of sorrow ringing with her words.
“There has been so much unnecessary death by one man’s madness,” I admitted aloud.
“All of those deaths are on me, and I will make sure they all find peace.”
“Thank you,” I choked out, thinking of my polite vampire friend who had surprised me at every turn with his steadfast loyalty.
“What now?” Jameson asked, looking around the beach at all the piles of ash before moving his eyes to the mostly-empty ships in the bay.
“I don’t know,” I replied truthfully. We hadn’t talked about the future for fear that it would never come. Now that it had, we needed to figure out our next steps.
A tentacle from the kraken curled up through the waves crashing against the beach.
“Go to him,” the Sea Witch urged.
I walked toward the beach and the massive tentacle, trying to swallow my trepidation. I had just witnessed this creature lay waste to more ships than I had ever seen at once. The tentacle reached forward, and with a deep breath for courage, I did the same and touched the water beast. It wasn’t as unpleasant as I thought it would be. Its skin felt like sand, which helped to ease my discomfort.
“I placed a gift on a man who had convinced me he was worthy of such greatness, unknowing the repercussions it would have, and how helpless I would be to stop the curse he would turn my gift into. You have my eternal gratitude for undoing what I could not. My debt to you is deep, and I hope this will help pay for some of the heartache my choices have caused you.”
Confused, I watched as another tentacle rose from the water, and with it, Evander. His eyes were bright green as he stepped onto the beach, completely healed, with no chest wound or blood to be found.
“I am returning your friend to you,” the Sea Witch spoke again, before I could react. “I was able to heal his wound before death took him and, with his permission, returned him to this life with a second chance to right his wrongs. He will struggle with this new existence after years with Prime, but having you and the others to surround him will help Evander find his way. We shall speak again soon, Lavinia.”
With those final words, the Sea Witch withdrew from my mind and the kraken sank back into the dark depths of the sea. Evander stepped further onto the beach, blinking like he had just come out of a trance, or perhaps because he had just returned from the brink of death.
I smiled at him while Jameson wrapped his arm around my waist, pulling me against him.
“Back from the dead, I see,” Solomon greeted, stepping toward him and grasping his shoulder. “Making deals can be dangerous.”
“I didn’t make a deal, I only agreed,” he replied, glancing at me for confirmation.
“The Sea Witch healed him and then returned him as a gift to me,” I explained, eyeing him as I tried to work out what she had done to wipe his slate clean. “You are not as you were before.”
Evander nodded, running a hand through his hair as he turned his eyes toward the horizon. His jaw muscles clenched as he tried to put to words what had been done.
What did he agree to?
“She said I could start this life anew, but if I choose to go back to the ways of my old life, I would perish just as the others had. She made me pure,” he confessed.
We all stared at him, stunned by the revelation. I suspected it was not going to be easy for him, and in a twisted way, I hoped it wouldn’t be. A person sometimes needed to struggle in order to gain strength. Evander was already strong, but I wasn’t sure he was strong enough to survive losing everything he had ever known, no matter how much he wanted to be better.
I smiled and walked closer to give him a hug. So much death had occurred on the island, I was glad life was also found. Life was precious, and we needed to live it to its fullest. It’s what my mother would have wanted for us, along with everyone else who had fought and died so the rest could live.
Their sacrifice would not be forgotten.
Evander squeezed me for a few moments, then pulled back, and I noticed that his eyes were drawn to the piles of ash which seemed to be everywhere on the beach—the fine particles were blown by the breeze, intermingling with the sand.
“The Sea Witch assured me that everyone has found peace,” I reassured him as Jameson pulled me back to his side.
“Even Prime?” Evander asked, glancing at me from the corner of his eye.
“I did not ask, and she did not offer that information,” I answered truthfully, swallowing hard.
If I was honest with myself, I hoped Prime was suffering in whatever afterlife there was, but another part of me knew that his mind wasn’t well. Though it didn’t excuse his transgressions, it helped to let all of the hatred go. He had spent his vampire life searching for something he only found with my mother, so a small part of me hop
ed that he had found peace in some way.
“There is nothing left for us here,” Solomon announced, making his way toward a rowboat that had been tied to the dock. How it had survived the fighting was beyond me.
We made it back to Eaton’s borrowed ship in exhausted silence, and then began preparations to set sail and return to Port Valor. We needed to tell our friends that the fight was over and that we had won—though, not without great losses.
As the sails unfurled and the breeze caught them to pull our ship out of the bay, I handed Evander the piece of torn shirt with ashes wrapped in it. I explained whose they were, then left him to grieve privately and put her to rest in whatever way he saw fit.
Finding Jameson on the top deck, we both stood silently against the railing, wrapped in each other’s arms. We might not have had a plan, but we were alive and together. That would be more than enough to get us through the coming weeks and figure out how we wanted to live out the endless years that lay ahead.
Epilogue
One year later…
So much had changed since we defeated Prime, but at the same time, it felt like we had always been together. We fell into a new normal that was so natural, it was hard to remember anything before we found peace.
After we arrived back at Port Valor, a small group of us headed back to Port Victory to rebuild. Nathan had found love with one of the women from Ruth’s estate, so he and Nettie stayed behind, but we visited each other as often as possible, and I marveled at how quickly Nettie grew every time we saw them.
Henry and Alice had a sweet baby girl they named Catherine in honor of the woman who had saved Henry’s life. We later learned that while they had been battling at sea, a vampire had Henry pinned down and was seconds away from ending his life when Catherine had stepped in, cutting the vampire’s head clean from his neck. Maggie and Timothy still lived with them, and their family was happier than I ever knew was possible.
Even though it shouldn’t have been, the most shocking revelation was seeing Tobias and Ruth find love with each other. Shortly after things settled, Solomon asked to be called Tobias once more, wanting to put that part of his life behind, but I kindly declined, referring to him as Dad instead. That had brought the brightest of smiles to his face.
Tobias had also taken charge of helping Evander find his purpose. They started a new shipping business with the old pirate ships. Along with transporting items to the islands, they made many trips to the mainland, bringing people back in hopes of populating our beautiful lands again after all of the losses we suffered. Jobs were hard to find on the mainland and, when the once-abandoned businesses and vacant positions were offered to those who wanted to move, it made the process of bringing new people a lot easier.
As I sat on the beach in front of the house Jameson had built for us, I thought about our future. We had started a sugarcane farm in my uncle’s old fields, and it began to prosper in the spring. Though none of it was ready to be harvested yet, it kept Jameson busy and happy. He wasn’t good with idle hands, and the work wasn’t too strenuous or time-consuming.
“What is my lovely wife doing out here, all alone?” Jameson whispered in my ear as he sat next to me.
“Enjoying the sun and thinking about my hard-working husband.”
We had also decided to get properly married when we arrived back at Port Victory. The ceremony was small, but it was all we had needed and a day I would cherish forever. When we had first returned, a priest and a group of around twenty residents had appeared to us. The priest had hidden as many as he could beneath the church the night of the first attacks, and they had already begun to rebuild the main parts of town before we arrived.
The Sea Witch hadn’t reached out to me since we killed Prime, but she had sent her kraken to keep an eye on my dad and Evander’s shipping endeavor. They had spotted him several times during their travels, always when they were in trouble with either heavy storms or regular pirates.
Pirates still roamed the seas, but none as powerful as the vampires we had defeated, and that was all right with us. There would always be bad in the world, and we had come to accept that.
“How about we head to town for dinner tonight and meet Alice and Henry?” Jameson suggested, drawing my attention once more.
“As long as Dad and Ruth come along with Evander. Let’s get the whole family together.”
Jameson smiled, all dimples. “Anything for my wife.”
When he stood from the sand, he pulled me up with him and guided me back to the house. I turned back one last time to watch the setting sun, taking in a deep breath.
We had done it.
We were safe, we had our family, and we were happy.
Exclusive Chapters
Jameson
Living on a tranquil island sounded like a great idea when I first moved to Port Victory. There were less people and a more than decent view, along with plenty of farms to find work. I knew that if I ran into trouble finding work in the fields, there was always the ships I could join at any time and live life on the sea.
Thankfully, I had found work on a prosperous plantation, and enjoyed the quiet life I’d been living for the last few years, but over the last several months I felt like I was missing something.
I had a few friends on the farm, mainly a man around my age named Henry, and an older one named Nathan, but it wasn’t the same as having someone I could come home to each night after a long day’s work. My heart yearned for more, yet I had no one to tell for fear of being thought of as weak.
The owners of the farm where I worked passed away the year before, leaving their less than capable son, Pierce, in charge. He had no idea what he was doing, and sooner or later the entire plantation would likely fail.
Those thoughts made me nervous, so much so, I wanted to run back to the mainland, back to where things weren’t so limited in resources, yet, I never found the ability to walk away. Especially, after the day Lavinia Maycott crossed my path for the second time.
I was on my way to bring the plow in, after a long day that had lost me a shirt and ruined my best work trousers, when she stumbled into my path. Literally stumbled.
Instinctively, my arms reached out to catch her. “Are you all right, miss?”
A strawberry hue blushed her cheeks as she gazed up at me, and I realized how closely we were pressed together. Something completely inappropriate, and that could get me killed depending on her standing in our society. Still, I held her.
She seemed familiar to me, and if I had met her before, I’d been an idiot for not paying closer attention. Judging by the fancy dress she wore, she definitely wasn’t one of the house maids.
Finally, she pulled back, putting a proper distance between the two of us. “Yes, I’m fine. I’m just not used to these shoes and got tired of waiting inside for Pierce. I should have known better than to venture out. I’m sorry to interrupt your workday, Jameson.”
My throat cleared. “I apologize, my lady, but I seem to have forgotten your name.”
With a small laugh, she nodded to the machine behind me. “Well, that’s understandable, your head was under that same plow last time I was through here. My name is Lavinia. Pierce gave me a tour of his plantation a few weeks ago, but you were rather occupied when we passed through the barn.”
I finally recalled seeing her. I’d only glanced up for a moment when another worker addressed Pierce and her. I’d been introduced to the woman before me, but I’d had muck all over me so I hadn’t bothered getting out from underneath the plow. Though, I couldn’t remember why Pierce had been showing her the farm.
“So, you have business with Mr. Ambrose?” Even though it was none of my business, a part of me needed to know exactly why she had been there, and had come back. More importantly, how I could see her again, because I had yet to lay eyes on her in town, and never crossing her path again suddenly didn’t sit right with me.
“Oh, well, I guess you could call it business. My father introduced me to him and Pierce is
supposed to be courting me, but he seems to be a rather busy man,” she explained, with what sounded like relief.
Even though she didn’t appear to be happy with her current arrangement, it didn’t matter. If she was promised to Pierce, she was off limits, and that made my chest tighten in an unexpected way.
Our eyes locked one last time before a hand slammed down on my shoulder, breaking whatever connection there was between the woman I would never have and me.
“Jameson,” Jacob said sternly, as if I was in trouble. He worked alongside me in the fields and was overly cautious about everything he did.
“Jacob,” I replied calmly. I hadn’t done anything wrong, so there was no reason to feel guilty.
Lavinia waved, breaking the tension between me and Jacob. “Hello, I’m Lavinia Maycott. Jameson was just answering a few questions I had about how the farm worked,” she continued, covering for whatever may have been wrongly interpreted by anyone watching us.
“Have all your questions been answered, Ms. Maycott?” Jacob asked.
“I believe they have.” Lavinia’s eyes met mine once more. “Thank you for your assistance, Jameson.”
My head dipped slightly. “You’re welcome, Lady Lavinia. Do you need help back to the manor?”
Jacob tensed beside me, and I knew it had been the wrong thing to ask, but I wasn’t ready to end my time with her, knowing I might never see her again.
Her smile was genuine, and brought a light to her face that made me want to run my fingers across her cheek, and bury them in her thick ebony hair. Her presence was filling a void that had been growing within me, and I worried for my sanity.
“Thank you, but I do believe I’ll be fine on my own.” There was a bit of pride in her voice that did nothing to ease the expanding ache within me.
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