I hold the blade tightly in my hand as I think about what I need to do.
“Come here,” he growls and when I don’t step forward, he moves toward me.
Even slowed down, he’s quick and I barely get a chance to step backward before he’s on me. His fingers dig tightly into my throat as he turns and slams me into a wall. His free hand tears the knife from me before his fingers sink into my hair and yank my head to the side. My heart is pounding out of my chest as his fangs rip into my throat. I grab for my gun, but he snatches my hand quicker than I can react, forcing me to use my other as I pull the weapon free and try shooting him in the stomach. The bullet misses as he tears from my throat, clearly afraid of what my gun can do, unaware it’s just regular bullets in it.
“All I’ve ever done is try to love you, and this is how you repay me!” he growls.
I will not win this fight. No matter what I do, I can never escape this monster. It was foolish to even try.
Just as his hand grabs onto me, nails clawing into my chest and shoulder, I see movement behind him.
Blood coats me as Marcus swings the knife I’d dropped through the air, removing Watson’s head from his body in one quick swipe. The body hesitates for a moment longer before his knees buckle and he drops to the ground as I stand there in shock.
I don’t know if it was the fixation on me or the bullets to his head, but he never noticed Marcus’s presence until it was too late.
I’m still standing there, gun held tightly, as Marcus grabs me and pulls me into his arms.
“Oh god,” he whispers as his fingers dig painfully into my back, but I don’t even care. He paws at me, grabbing and pinning me to him as he holds me there, refusing to let me go. “Oh fuck… Finn…”
I’m shaking as I reach out to him and grab on. “He’s dead?”
“He’s dead. We’ll fucking burn his body. Send the fucking ashes to the moon if I need to. He’s dead.”
The tension leaves my body as I sink into him and feel like I can finally breathe. I can take a breath for the first time in what feels like years.
“I’m so sorry it took so long. He had the vampires that he turned watching for us and the three of us had a bit of a struggle. But they’re dead and so is Watson.”
“He’s dead.” My nightmare of thirteen years is finally gone but I can’t seem to wrap my head around it.
“Whatever you did slowed him down. There’s no other way he wouldn’t have heard me enter the house,” Marcus says.
“I shot him with the special bullets right in the head.”
He kisses the side of my forehead. “Good job.”
“Finn alright?”
I turn to the door to find an exhausted Karsyn and an extremely disheveled Claude. His stupid-expensive clothes are all shredded and bloody.
“I think so,” Marcus says as Claude leans on Karsyn who glances at him but doesn’t promptly shove him off.
“Just because you might have saved me doesn’t mean I have to like you now,” Karsyn says. “I could have easily handled them myself.”
Claude just grins at him.
“Thank you, guys… all of you. Thank you…” I say, meaning it more than they’ll ever know. Words can’t express what I’ve endured. No one will ever truly know the hell this man put me through. He wasn’t happy enough with torturing me, he had to make sure I never forgot him, that I knew he haunted me when I thought I was safe.
And now…
Now he’s dead and I don’t even know how to comprehend it. I don’t know how to wrap my mind around the fact that I’m free. I’m finally free from the oppression. I can finally breathe again.
I tuck my head against Marcus’s chest as he squeezes and kisses me before attending to my wound, and I just let it all go. Every emotion, every fear, every single thing that forced me to live in dread and terror, and just shove it away.
Because he’s dead. He’s finally dead.
“Orin?” I ask in a panic.
I can’t believe I forgot about him with everything that’s happened.
“He was alive when we left him, but he was severely wounded. He was in good hands with Brooks, okay?”
I nod. At least he’s not dead. I already don’t know how Orin will be able to handle knowing that it was Watson, someone he knew quite well, who did this to me. I’m sure he’ll beat himself up over it even though it’s clear Watson had been watching me longer than any of us knew.
“Let’s get people on this and incinerate the body,” Marcus says.
“Yes. Please. This fucker isn’t coming back to life ever again.”
“I promise,” he says.
It’s over.
It’s finally over.
I can finally breathe again.
Epilogue
FINN
Marcus saw to it himself that he could watch the body burn. While vampires can’t come back from having their head cut off, we’d never come across a vampire like Watson before. Sadly, we didn’t have much on him due to Miller’s death. We still don’t know much about the origin of true vampires or how they came to be even with Miller’s tale. None of it seemed realistic, but then again, we had vampires who could turn humans by giving them their blood.
By the time we returned to the house, Orin was nearly fully healed. He grabbed me and apologized to me again and again, like any of this could have been his fault. We have no idea how long Watson had been watching me. He knew my mother, so there’s a chance he started back when I was young and would go with my mother to her work. But Orin feels like he put Watson into my life no matter what I say. Hopefully, time will help him see that there’s nothing he could have done. Orin was just trying to find the best doctor for me; there’s no way he could have known what lay beneath the surface. Hell, we all trusted him. For years, I believed he was a lifesaver because, without him, I never would have been able to walk.
Orin explained that Watson told him that he needed more time with me and my arm and that he’d run me home when he was finished. When Orin pulled into the driveway, he was immediately attacked. He thinks Watson had been planning on killing him and then staging it to look like we were both already home when I’d been taken. Thankfully, his plan didn’t work out.
Though I’ve lost the man who made it so I could walk again, Charlie spent many years of her life studying under Watson. With Watson’s passing, all of his belongings will be turned over to her since she plans to continue his work and research, which means I don’t have to go without a doctor to repair my arm and leg.
“Got the cookies?” Marcus asks as he comes out of the bedroom. We’ve moved back home, and while I think Orin misses us and I miss his huge TV screen and housekeeper, I’m glad to be home.
“Did I eat the cookies?” I pause with one aimed toward my mouth.
“You were supposed to put them in the container.”
“I did. Then I reopened the container and ate them. It’s not like most people from the party can even eat cookies. So I was just helping.”
He snorts. “Let’s go.”
“Yes, yes, McFangerson.”
He sighs and heads out to the car, leaving me behind to grab the present, dogs, and the cookies. I guess that’s what I get for calling him by his real name.
I juggle everything as I head out to the car that I find backing down the driveway without me in it. “You’re not funny!” I shout after him.
He rolls the window down. “I can’t hear you.”
“Come back for me!”
“I’m not sure I want to!”
I try to flip him off, but nearly drop Aria’s birthday present, so I stop jostling everything around just for a fun ol’ finger flick. “If you don’t come back, we’re going roller skating on my birthday and you can’t say no.”
He slams on the brakes and I sigh as I head out to the car. He mockingly glares at me. “How could you even joke about that? You know that stresses me out.”
I grin at him as he takes the bags from me. “The words
‘roller skating’?”
He shudders like it physically pains him. “Please, stop. Do you just like hurting me?”
“I… I do,” I admit.
He takes the cookies that he made after I told him that I couldn’t make cookies or follow recipes, but I could eat the cookie dough. When he threatened to put blood into them, I had to take over. Thankfully, by then they only needed to be placed on the baking sheet.
“Everyone’s going to love the cookies I baked,” I say.
“You’re going to lie to everyone?”
“It’s not a lie. I baked them.” Which is technically true.
He glances over at me as I pack the dogs into the back. “You’re pure evil. They say vampires are evil but they’re not. We become evil when we have to deal with people like you.”
“Good. I like it when you’re a bit evil.”
I get into the passenger seat, deciding it’d be best for him to drive. Once into the driver’s seat, Marcus backs out onto the road before heading toward the lake house. I guess Marcus and me talking about it made Aria miss the childhood vacation spot.
“I’m not sure how I’m going to feel when I walk in and think about all the places you tried making me taint,” I say. “You even tried sticking me in the fridge.”
He beams, which is weird and kind of creeps me out, but he’s clearly proud of himself. “I hope when your dad pulls the watermelon out of there you think about my balls.”
“No… please… don’t.”
“And when they lay the cake on the table—”
“Dammit, McBitey, stop!” I cry as I cup my hands over my ears. “Happy thoughts, happy thoughts.”
Hela leaps into the front seat, thinking that I’m being funny, and begins biting at my fingers. “Save me, baby!” I cry as I lift her in the air and kiss her stomach. She wiggles around and then bites my nose as Artie decides licking me in the face is the perfect way to fix this situation.
“Hey! Gang up on him, you two, not me!”
“Nah, they worship me. They will never go against me.”
I stare at him, clearly not convinced as I set Hela down on my lap. Marcus reaches over and holds his hand out. I almost give him my prosthetic hand but I stop. Not because I don’t want him to hold it, I’ve gotten so much better about that, but because I want to feel his touch, so I reach out with my right and take his. He squeezes it gently as we drive.
When we arrive, we park and head inside. Claude greets us first now that he’s wormed his way into my family. Basically, Aria thinks he’s hilarious and amazing and invited him, but I don’t mind.
“Hey, beautiful,” Claude says and then plucks Hela out of my hands.
“He was talking to the dog and not me,” I say as I narrow my eyes. “Whoa… Claude… do you have a victim… I mean partner?”
“Alexei and I might have gone on a date.”
“Alexei told me you tricked him into it.”
Claude snorts. “I did not! He’s lying now!”
I snicker because Claude really does seem convinced that he had a great time. I honestly think they would be great together if Alexei could handle being with him.
Orin rushes over to us and grabs me in a death hug. He does this every time he sees me, like it’s now mandatory to risk my life for a hug even though I’m safer than I’ve ever been. But I’m always so happy to see him well that I really don’t care and hug him back just as hard.
“It’s good you’re here. Do you want to move back in with me?”
“Not yet,” I say.
He pulls back and gives me a serious look. “Can I move in with you?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Come on. Just for a little bit.”
Marcus shakes his head. “You know, at one point I actually wondered if you were a creep because you were following Finn everywhere. I’d just hear the pitter-patter of your feet the entire time we’d move around the house.”
Orin stares at Marcus like he’s contemplating how hard it’d be to get rid of him. “Anyway. Aria’s not here yet because she loves being late. Said she’ll be here shortly which could mean five minutes or five hours.”
“Of course. I’m going to take the dogs out to stretch their legs. We’ll be back for the party,” I say as I put the cookies down and Marcus literally tosses the present toward the present pile.
We head outside and start walking toward the lake together. “Did you think about your naked ass on that counter when you put the cookies on it?” he asks.
“I bleached it.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“Shhh, Marcus. Just be handsome. This… cocky thing you have going on isn’t very cute. It’s kind of cute but not super cute.”
He unhooks the dogs from their leashes and they take off running. Artie just gallops around while Hela runs as fast as her tiny legs can go to keep up with him. She’s failing miserably.
“You know you love it,” Marcus says as he grabs my arm and pulls me in for a kiss. I lean into him as I press my lips against his before giving him a grin.
“Only a little bit. I’m so excited to be back at work next week. Did you guys miss me?’
“Yes. I cried every day while you were gone. Karsyn even caught me in the bathroom sobbing ‘I have to wait four more hours to see my love. How will I ever survive?’” He says it so dryly that it’s clear he didn’t give a flying fuck.
“That’s sad.”
“I know. But sometimes life is just devastating when you’re not there to annoy me.”
“I don’t know if I ever thanked you enough for sticking with me. You didn’t have to stay with me, but you never hesitated. Even after your life was in danger, you stayed by my side.”
“That’s because I love you,” he says. “And I would give up everything to keep you safe.”
He’s always been too wonderful for me. “I’m glad you didn’t have to.”
“Me too,” he says before kissing my cheek. “Your sister’s here.”
“Ew.”
“I know.”
“Let’s go.”
As we head toward the house, I hold on to Marcus’s hand and just breathe in the fresh air. I never realized how much Watson had invaded my life, my thoughts, and my dreams until he was gone. I don’t know that I’m back to normal yet. I don’t know if the nightmares will permanently go away, but I know that every time I’m upset, every time I wake from a bad dream, Marcus will be beside me.
“Let’s hope she brought her boyfriend to torture,” I tease.
Marcus grins at me. “I like how I’m steadily making you more evil.”
“I was born evil. It just wasn’t until I met my soulmate that I was able to show it.”
I lean in and kiss him, thankful that we can continue our lives together without that threat hanging over us. But I know that if our relationship could make it through that monster terrorizing us, it could make it through anything.
“We’ve made it through so much together,” I say.
“Of course. We could make it through anything,” Marcus says.
“Anything?”
He looks over at me. “Of course.”
“You’d do anything for me?”
“What part of ‘of course’ don’t you understand?”
“Guess where we’re going tomorrow?”
He narrows his eyes before realization hits. “No. I will never roller skate with you ever again.”
“The couple that roller skates together stays together.”
Marcus sighs, which instantly starts making me laugh, and soon he’s laughing as well.
“But seriously. No.”
“We’ll see.” Still laughing, I bump into him before pressing a kiss against his cheek, feeling happy to face a future with the man I love by my side.
Author’s note
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Acknowledgments
While writing the first book, I was unsure of where I was going with the second book. This isn’t surprising, I rarely plan. But something Meredith King said to me helped me build this plot in a way I never imagined. Let’s just say she had the best idea that made my idea snowball into something so much more. So thank you, Meredith, for that wonderful idea!
I also need to thank Courtney, my editor (and so much more). Without Courtney, I’m not sure where I’d be. Lost, probably. She’s helped me so much through every step of the way. I’m so grateful to have her help me!
I want to thank my mom who has always been extremely supportive of me and my books. I couldn’t do this without her!
I want to thank Kat, who alpha read the book as I wrote it, offering great insight as I worked.
A huge thank you to Savannah who not only helped with the beta but was there to help me with so many other things. She’s also always there as a friend when I need her!
A huge thank you to Sam who has been beta reading for me for quite a while and always has amazing ideas and a talent for catching the little things.
Thank you to Mildred and Claudia for your help with the beta and the support!
And lastly, I need to thank Lori who works hard on the proofread! She always does such a great job!
What I write on here could never show how much I love and appreciate the team of wonderful people who help each book shine. They do so much for me, and I appreciate each and every one of them. I am so thankful to have them with me every step of the way. I couldn’t do it without them!
How to Elude a Vampire (VRC: Vampire Related Crimes Book 2) Page 30