by Amira Rain
Early that evening, after I’d had a long day selling from-scratch apple pies and fresh doughnuts out of the creamery with Carla and Karissa, I came home to find Mel sitting on a barstool in the kitchen, with the side of her face on her folded arms. She wasn’t sleeping, though; her eyes were open. She just looked extremely bummed.
Having a seat opposite her, I asked her if she was okay, and she lifted her head with a sigh.
“Well, I could be better. I just got a speeding ticket. My first.”
I sat puzzled for a moment. “I thought you already got one…right when you first started driving. That’s what Jen told me, anyway.”
“Yeah. That was my dad’s idea…to tell her that I got a ticket right when she and I first started driving. He thought it would help to keep her safe by making her become a very conscientious driver, because she would want to continue feeling superior to me. I guess his plan has pretty much worked, too, although never mind the suffering I have to endure being constantly taunted by Jen about a ticket that I actually never received. And now with my supposed ‘second’ ticket, I’ll never hear the end of it.”
“Well, maybe she doesn’t have to know about it. I won’t tell her, anyway. Her thinking you already got one ticket is probably good enough.”
Mel gave me a little smile. “Yeah. Especially now since it’s the truth.”
Although Jen had the top spot when it came to the friends I’d made since coming to the farm, I’d also become pretty close to Mel and Carla. In fact, I’d started hanging out with Carla at least a few times a week, either at her house or mine. Sometimes, we even went into Sweetwater together, to go shopping or see a movie.
At first, I’d tried to keep all these hangouts kind of under wraps, thinking that I’d hear more jealously-induced anti-Carla talk from Jen if I didn’t. However, when Karissa asked me in front of Jen at the creamery one day what Carla and I had thought of a certain movie we’d seen together in Sweetwater, Jen hadn’t said a peep, being true to our agreement to keep the subject of Carla as an off-limits topic. She hadn’t mentioned her since then, either, not even once.
Just about counting down the minutes until Hayden would arrive home that evening, I worked making and selling apple pies and doughnuts out of the creamery with Karissa, Jen, and another girl named Sasha that day, continually telling myself that even if Hayden and I weren’t able to see each other much during the rest of my pregnancy, things would still be okay.
After all, visits were better than nothing, I kept saying to myself, and maybe Hayden wouldn’t even be gone very long. Maybe it would only be a week or two before he found a leader to take over the new Watcher community, and then he could come home. It’ll all be just fine, I kept telling myself. Except that when Hayden got home that evening, it all suddenly wasn’t.
CHAPTER 22
The moment Hayden walked in the front door, I just about threw myself into his arms. And before I knew it, I was sniffling with my face pressed against his chest. “I just want you here, home, for good. I just don’t want you to leave again.”
I couldn’t deny that pregnancy hormones had been making me extremely and frequently emotional, even embarrassingly so. A few days earlier, I’d come to accept that I clearly had something of a little problem when I’d burst into tears in response to Jen simply showing me an adorable video of a mama dog with her puppies.
That same day, I hadn’t been able to hold back another rush of tears when an older woman buying pies at the creamery had insisted on giving me a fifty-dollar tip, saying that people had helped her out when she was a young mom-to-be, and she always liked to “pay it forward.”
After these tear-fests, I’d managed to keep my wildly-swinging emotions in check for a few days, but now back in Hayden’s arms after having missed him so much, I just couldn’t stop my eyes from overflowing.
“I just want you here with me until the baby is born…and even for a few months after that. I just don’t want you all the way down in Indiana.”
Cradling me to his strong chest and rocking me almost imperceptibly, Hayden spoke sweet, comforting things near my ear in a low voice, until eventually, my tears stopped.
Feeling like the baby had already arrived, and it was me, I lifted my face from his chest, apologizing for my tears. “I just can’t help them sometimes, lately.”
Gently taking my chin in one hand to look deeply into my eyes, Hayden told me to never be sorry for crying around him. “Ever. I love you, Sydney, and this is what I’m here for…to comfort you and be strong for you, when maybe you’re not feeling too strong yourself.”
“I’m definitely not. In fact, the past few weeks, I’ve been feeling like a complete emotional basket case. And then when you told me last night that you’re going to have to stay down in Indiana for a few months….” Wincing, I fought another rising wave of tears. “I just don’t think I can do this, Hayden. I just don’t think I’m strong enough to be apart from you. Not for a few months, but probably not even for a week. I just don’t think I’m strong enough.”
Hayden said that he thought I was. “In fact, I know you are…because any girl strong enough to go through a pregnancy that she didn’t even have anything to do with, is strong enough to go through anything.”
“I’ll have to take your word for it…because the further along I get in my pregnancy, the more emotionally weak I’m starting to feel. So, I can’t imagine what a basket case I’ll be by month nine. I’ll probably be so tearful and crazy by then that you won’t even want to visit me.”
Hayden said that there was no amount of tearfulness and “craziness” that could keep him away from me. “I don’t even care if you cry the entire time I’m home. I just want to be able to see you as often as I can, and I’m going to. Indiana isn’t that far of a car ride away, and it’s even quicker if I run. So, you’d better get used to having me home for visits often.”
Very unfortunately, “often” didn’t turn out to be nearly often enough. For the first month he was gone, Hayden was only able to come home twice, for about forty-eight hours each time. Heading into his second month in Indiana, he told me that he wouldn’t be able to come home again for a couple of weeks.
After being “fairly well subdued” for a time, the group of Warrens down there had welcomed new members into their group, and then had stealthily attacked a tiny village called Collingswood, leaving three people dead from being drained of blood.
The newspapers and the police had dubbed the suspected serial killer that they thought was responsible for the murders the “Indiana vampire,” because he used some surgical instrument, they thought, to drain victims of blood before taking it from the scene.
What the supposed killer was doing with the blood, the police didn’t know and refused to speculate on; but the newspapers, especially the tawdrier ones, thought they knew for certain. Vampire Psychopath Drinks Blood of Victims was one headline on a “strange news” website that covered the Midwest.
In the article, the writer at least made it clear that it was only “speculated” that the serial killer was drinking the blood of his victims. Even still, people in Indiana were scared, and with good reason, all the while not knowing that the website’s headline was one hundred percent true.
Needing more help in dealing with the Warrens, Hayden had Sam and a few other vampires from the farm come down and stay with him and the new group of Watchers to help. However, even though Hayden probably could have used the help of all vampires on the farm, he was determined not to enlist more than the few he already had, because he was still concerned about the possibility of an attack on the farm by the group of Warrens who had settled in Michigan.
My best guess was that after having two of their family members killed, one right after another, in their pursuit of killing me, they had just decided that they couldn’t risk it again, and probably never would. Hayden called my thinking “incredibly naïve,” later apologizing for saying it as “harshly” as he had, even though he really hadn’t. Nonetheles
s, just being told that my thinking was “incredibly naïve” made me a little misty, no huge surprise.
At any rate, whether I was truly naïve or not, my vampire escort whenever I left the farm continued. And, in fact, all non-vampires who lived on the farm now had to have a covert protective detail, too, including Carol, who’d moved in with us after Mark had asked her to marry him. “We just can’t take any chances that one of the Warrens could try to kidnap one of our people, intending to try to ransom them for you or something,” Hayden had said, and Mark had heartily agreed.
As a way of trying to distract myself from missing Hayden, I threw myself into work at the creamery, taking long shifts almost daily. It was October now, and autumn activities on the farm were in full swing, with pick-your-own apple picking and seven-days-a-week hayrides going on. With all the people from Sweetwater that these attractions brought in, we were continually busy in the creamery kitchen, hardly able to keep up with the demand for doughnuts, apple pies, and other from-scratch baked goods.
Although she still enjoyed baking things in her glorified toaster oven, Jen didn’t join us employees at the creamery much. For one thing, she thought that people “yelled” at her for “messing stuff up” too often, which was sort of true, even though I’d actually never heard anyone outright yell at her.
For another thing, Jen wasn’t too keen on working at the creamery because more often than not, Carla was there. Like me, she often took long shifts, saying that she just liked to stay busy, and since she wasn’t that strong of a vampire, and couldn’t be much help out on daily patrols around the property with the others, she just figured that the creamery was a better fit for her.
I was kind of glad that she wasn’t well-suited to take part in the daily patrols, since this meant we got to spend a lot of time together. Carla wasn’t only a hard worker, but she was just plain fun to work with, too. Often, during times when things were slower, I felt like I was actually being paid just to “hang out” more than anything. Once Carla and I really got to laughing about something, which was often, the time seemed to just fly by.
One day around closing time, after a day of laughing nearly non-stop, Carla took on a more serious expression while wiping down the countertops. And, after a minute or so, she stopped in her task, asking if she could ask me a question. Wondering what she wanted to ask me that had her looking so serious, I said sure, and she took a deep breath before laying it on me.
“I guess I just want to know…well….” Clearly a bit uncomfortable, she tucked a strand of her glossy brown hair behind one ear, avoiding my eyes, before continuing. “Sydney, do you think it’s a little weird how Hayden’s been spending so much time in Indiana while you’re pregnant with his baby?”
Stunned by her question, I didn’t know what to say at first, but finally, after a few moments, I found my voice. “He has to be down there. The Warrens are killing people in cold blood…innocent humans. One of their victims a few weeks ago was even a fifteen-year-old girl. So, no…I don’t think it’s ‘a little weird’ that Hayden’s been spending so much time down there. I’m not saying that I like it, but…it’s necessary to keep innocent people safe. It’s necessary to save lives.”
“But…don’t you ever wonder why Hayden didn’t send someone else down? I mean…I’m sure that Sam or Trevor could have served as interim leader of the new Watcher group or whatever…and adding a few more of our people to one of them, it just seems like Hayden really wouldn’t have had to leave the farm at all.”
I’d actually thought about this before. However, knowing that Hayden was something of a control freak, especially when it came to dealing with Warren enemies, I’d come to the conclusion that he probably just hadn’t seen him sending Sam or Trevor to be interim leader of the new group as an option, at least not one he could live with.
Confused and mildly angry by what I was pretty sure that Carla was insinuating, I just stared at her for a long moment. “What are you trying to say?”
With a sigh, she put her cleaning cloth on the counter, pulled down the metal gate over the serving counter, and then asked me to join her at a little table in the back of the creamery, where we sometimes sat down to take breaks or eat lunch. A little reluctantly, although not just because it was still fifteen minutes from closing and I was afraid that we’d miss a customer, I said okay.
Once we were both seated at the little table, with a bottle of water that Carla had pulled from the cooler for me, she said she just wanted to first tell me something about her past. “My past, specifically, from before I came here to the farm. See, I’ve never even told anyone all the details about this, because I guess I’ve just never trusted anyone here at the farm as much as I trust you.
And by ‘trust,’ I don’t even mean ‘trust’ like how people usually mean it…I just mean, like, I haven’t ever felt comfortable enough with anyone else to tell them the details about this incredibly painful, humiliating thing that happened to me.”
With my mild anger having cooled a bit, I asked her what had happened, now just more intrigued more than anything.
With her eyes seeming to hold some deep sadness, she looked down at her hands for a long moment before lifting her gaze to my face. “I met this guy…this man, actually. He was twenty-three, about Hayden’s age. He’d recently been turned into a vampire and was a member of a coven in Ohio. Long story short, we fell in love, and he said that he wanted to have a baby with me before turning me into a vampire so that I could ‘join him in eternity.’
Wanting to make him happy, and wanting a baby myself, I got pregnant. And for a couple of weeks, everything was wonderful. Conner told me that I’d made him the happiest man on earth. He’d made me the happiest woman on earth…and when our baby was born, we’d be a happy family forever. Or, so I thought.
Needless to say, though, things didn’t exactly turn out like that. Maybe only two months into my pregnancy, everything kind of got all blown to hell.”
“How?”
Again, Carla looked down at her hands briefly, looking extremely sad, before looking up at me again. “Conner started leaving all the time…kept saying that he had to go on these ‘missions’ or something in order to keep the coven safe. A few different random things made me a little suspicious, though, and I eventually found out that he was cheating on me with some vampire chick. They were in love, and Conner was just using me to have a child that was biologically his. After I had the baby, they both planned to kill me.”
Horrified, I said I was so sorry, and Carla said thanks.
“Fortunately, I found out about the plot in time, and I went to one of the elders of the coven, and she believed me, and she told me that she and the other elders would never let Conner kill me. It was too late for my baby, though. Whether it was from the shock of finding out what I had, or something else, I soon had a miscarriage.”
Again, I said I was so sorry, and again, Carla said thanks.
“I can think about what happened without crying now, but I was really shattered at the time, to have lost my fiancé and my baby all in the same week. From that point on, I started not thinking very clearly, and I asked the coven elders to turn me into a vampire so that I could take revenge on Conner and his girlfriend.
To make a long story short, the elders agreed, and I became a vampire, but it soon became clear that I wasn’t a very strong one, at least not as strong as I needed to be in order to kill two other vampires, which, in my grief-stricken craziness at the time, was what I felt I needed to do.
Ultimately, though, that didn’t even matter anyway. Conner and his girlfriend had fled the area, and no one knew where to find them. So, after just spinning my wheels for a while, I decided that I had no choice but to simply start over fresh and make the best of my now-eternal life. So, I did.
I came here, and I have kind of ‘healed’ a little, although I’m never going to be the same. I was hurt too badly; I was used too badly; and I lost too much. Now my mission in life is to just make sure that what hap
pened to me never happens to another girl…at least, not while I’m around.”
I told Carla that I was so sorry for what had happened to her, and I really was. “Hayden isn’t a guy like Conner, though. He truly loves me. I know he does. And he’s definitely not cheating on me. I’m sure I would have sensed it by now.”
Seeming suddenly flustered, Carla quickly said that she hadn’t told me her story because she thought that Hayden was cheating on me. “I don’t have any proof of that; I haven’t heard anything about that; and I don’t think that he is.”
I asked her why she’d told me her story, then. “I know there had to be a reason for it, especially since you were asking me those questions about Hayden right before.”
Carla said the reason was simple. “Even if they’re not cheating, vampires use human women to give them children. They do this a lot, actually, essentially just using the women. Then, right after the baby is born, they either break up with the woman or kill her.”
“Hayden would never do that to me.”
“That’s what I would have said about Conner before I found out about his plot.”
“But Hayden didn’t even want to become a father at first. He was less than thrilled, trust me.”
Carla shrugged. “That doesn’t mean anything. He might have warmed to the idea, and thought things out, realizing that a child might be beneficial to him after all. He is his father’s son, and I’m sure you’ve heard all about that. I have. Just like his father thought, maybe Hayden eventually came around to the way of thinking that perpetuating his family line is important.”
“But, if that were the case, then why would Hayden be pretending to be in love with me? If he’s only in thisto have an heir, then he could do that anyway without having to be my boyfriend, because obviously, I was already pregnant when I came here.”
