by Amira Rain
Jen helped, too, when she wasn’t off in Sweetwater, paddle boating and playing paintball with her new grandparents. Her long daily trips required that Trevor be gone from the farm for long stretches to keep an eye on her, and Hayden sometimes lamented the fact that he was perpetually a man down because of this when all hands-on deck were needed.
However, Hayden didn’t try to put a stop to Jen’s daily trips because, in a way, he thought they were good. Not only did they keep Jen busy and out of everyone’s hair, so to speak, but he also thought that when the farm was eventually attacked, Sweetwater was the best place for Jen to be.
It was a blazing hot day in July when I outright yelled at Hayden for the first time. I didn’t raise my voice; I didn’t speak to him in a near-shout; I truly yelled.
I’d just gotten home from a long day of fence-building, and I was dirty, and sweaty, and so hot that I continued to sweat even once in the cool air-conditioning that mercifully flowed through the house. Carol was upstairs giving Chrissy a bath. Thinking I’d take a minute to down a tall cup of cold water before going upstairs to join them, I filled a cup from the sink.
I’d nearly drained it when Hayden came home, stony-faced as usual. His expression did nothing to bolster my kind-of-crabby mood, and when we kissed in greeting, it was just a peck. Going over to the sink to refill my cup of water, I asked him if he wanted one, too, and he didn’t answer right away.
“I don’t drink water, Syd. I’m a vampire. Remember?”
He’d spoken those words to my back, and I now whirled around, suddenly furious, and began shouting.
“Of course, I remember you’re a vampire! Of course, I do! That’s the whole reason we’re in this mess! You’re a vampire; and everyone on this farm is a vampire; and our enemies, who want to kill our precious baby daughter, are vampires! I get it. Of course, I remember. I also remember that because you’re all vampires and part of the supernatural world, I somehow wound up pregnant without my knowledge or consent.
My whole life was turned upside down. And even though I thank God every single day for Chrissy, and even though I thank God every single day for you, even throughout this whole mess, and even though I would never change anything that happened, I still remember how it started.
I still remember that it started because my mom had supernatural powers, and your dad was a vampire, and they both agreed to a pact that would change my life forever, without my knowledge. I still remember all that. So, yes, I still remember that you’re a vampire.”
I’d stopped shouting, but now, after a quick lungful of air, I began again. “You’ll have to forgive me for momentarily forgetting that! I guess after a long, hot day of digging fence posts, I just turned into a complete idiot! I actually forgot that my husband only drinks blood! What a total moron I was to forget!”
Finally, out of steam and a bit breathless, I fell silent to take in a few gulps of air, realizing that at some point during my outburst, Jen had come in the house. She was now tiptoeing very slowly and silently through the kitchen, deliberately picking up one foot at a time, appearing to be doing something like a parody of tiptoeing more than anything. Both folding our arms across our chests, Hayden and I ignored her, and soon she was out of the kitchen and making her way down the hallway.
Having remained stony-faced during my outburst, jaw clenched, Hayden now unclenched it just long enough to speak three words directed at me. “You done shouting?”
I snorted. “You have the floor.”
Hayden snorted in return, something he’d never done to me before. “I just have three things to say. Number one, when our parents made the pact that they did, your life wasn’t the only one that was changed forever, and I think you forget this sometimes. Number two, I think you sometimes forget that you’re not the only one making sacrifices to keep our daughter safe right now. We’re both sacrificing.
Yet, I sometimes get the impression that you somehow think I like the life we’re living right now…that you somehow think I like being away from you and Chrissy all the time. Thing number three, I’m going back out on patrol, and I don’t know when I’ll be back. I was intending to put Chrissy to bed with you, but for some reason, all of a sudden, decapitating Warrens is seeming like a much more pleasant thing than being at home.”
He’d begun striding toward the front door even before he’d finished speaking, and I’d realized that I’d made a huge mistake even before he’d finished speaking. Now just wanting to apologize and make things right, I chased after him, grabbing his arm and telling him to wait.
However, he shook me off without even pausing in his stride. “Please leave me alone, Sydney.”
Not a second later, he was out the door, borderline slamming it behind him.
Now angry again, I shouted at him through the door, not that he probably even heard me. “Fine, then! Just stay out on patrol all night! Just stay gone! Nobody in this house will notice a difference!”
Storming back into the kitchen, I began pacing with my arms tightly folded across my chest, feeling mad, guilty, and heartbroken all at once. I knew I hadn’t been fair to Hayden, and I knew that some of the things he’d said were right. This was no small comfort, though, because I was starting to think that everything about our whole marriage was just plain wrong.
Soon Jen came tiptoeing into the kitchen, asking if I was okay.
Pausing in my pacing, I sighed, slightly embarrassed now that I recalled that she’d been witness to my temper tantrum. “Yes…I’m fine, and thank you for checking, Jen…and I’m sorry you had to come home to see me melting down at Hayden like that. I guess I just kind of lost it for a second.”
Hopping up on a barstool, Jen shrugged. “That’s fine. We all lose it sometimes. Especially on super-hot days like today. There was even a guy who got permanently kicked out of the paintball place today, because the owners said that he was having a bunch of anger issues, and they decided he wasn’t a safe person to allow onto the property anymore, because no one with anger issues should be playing paintball.
The paintball place owners reported him to the police, too. And then one of the owners, whose name is Brian, he said to Bucky, like, ‘It’s this hot, humid weather. Whenever the heat index gets up near a hundred, people just start to lose it.’ And Bucky was like, well, he was just like…‘Yup.’ And then I pretty much just repeated him, and I was just pretty much like, ‘Yup,’ too…just because I wanted to put in my opinion as an adult, too.”
Giving Jen a little smile with my anger finally beginning to ebb, I had a seat on a barstool across from her. “I think it was probably the heat that made me lose it a little today.”
“Well, you should come on into Sweetwater with me tomorrow! Me, Bucky, Phyllis, and Wanted are going paddle boating again, and we’re gonna swim in the lake again. That’s what we did today after paintball, just to cool ourselves down, even though paintball is air-conditioned. We still got hot even just walking from the building to the RV. Wanted was just like, panting.”
Having a sudden thought, I asked Jen where Wanted stayed while she, Bucky, and Phyllis were playing paintball. “Because, they don’t just let him play with you guys, right?”
Jen shook her head. “No. No, sir. Dogs are definitely not allowed in the actual paintball-playing place. It could be very, very bad if Wanted bumped into someone playing paintball and knocked their aim off or something.”
“Well, then, where does he go?”
“Oh, he just stays in the office with this lady named Miss Jeannie. She takes good care of him and even has some dog toys for him to play with, too. And guess what else? She even watches other dogs sometimes, too, because she says she’d rather watch them than have them stay in hot cars; so, sometimes, Wanted even has some playmates in the office. He’s become pretty good friends with this one tiny little chihuahua named Bert, and this one big chocolate lab named Arabella. It’s pretty funny to see when Bert barks so loud that he kind of startles Arabella and Wanted and backs them right into a corner.�
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I smiled. “That’s pretty funny.”
“Yup. Bert is only like, five pounds or something, but he’s the boss of all the dogs.”
Feeling significantly cooled off, both in terms of temper and actual physical body temperature, I smiled again, and then got up to go to the sink and refill my water cup. However, while doing so, I had a sudden thought and turned to look at Jen.
“Hey, Jen? Your shirt….”
Her shirt was a white, fitted, cap-sleeved t-shirt with a cotton “lace” overlay on the front and back. And it was not only white, but bright white. There wasn’t a single smidgen of paint on it, despite the fact that Jen had only walked in the house with a bathing suit and a towel slung over one shoulder. Meaning that unless she’d played paintball in her bathing suit, which I thought was pretty doubtful, she’d played paintball in her bright white shirt. Yet hadn’t gotten a drop of paint on it.
And now that I was thinking about it, I couldn’t remember her ever coming home in clothes that were anything less than pristine, or at least fairly pristine except for a few food stains. I’d certainly never seen her walk in the house covered head-to-toe in splotches of bright paint, like it seemed like she should be doing every time she went to play paintball.
Glancing down at her shirt, Jen asked me what about it, and I just studied her for a moment before responding.
“Did you wear that shirt to paintball today? It’s so clean.”
Inexplicably, Jen’s face became a little pink, and she raised her gaze to somewhere just above my eyes, shrugging.
“Oh…that’s just because…well, see…see, they give us these jumpsuit type of things to wear at paintball, right over our normal clothes.”
That made sense, and I suddenly actually laughed, in disbelief that I hadn’t thought of that sooner. Of course, they gave paintball players jumpsuits, probably figuring that sending kids home with ruined, paint-covered clothes would be bad for business.
I told Jen that jumpsuits hadn’t even occurred to me. “I guess the heat is making me angry and completely dense today.”
Just then, Trevor came in the house with Wanted, saying that he was heading out on patrol now that his “surveillance” duties in Sweetwater were over for the day. Almost the moment he left, Carol came downstairs with Chrissy in her arms, asking if everything was okay.
“I thought I heard shouting just a bit ago.”
Embarrassed, I told her everything was fine. “I just kind of raised my voice at Hayden for a second when I got home, just because I was so overheated. But everything’s fine.”
With my focus now off Jen’s adventures and back on my fight with Hayden, I developed a slight, sudden stomachache, knowing that things between us were definitely not fine.
CHAPTER 14
True to our mutual promise, Hayden and I didn’t stop speaking again. We did, however, stop saying anything that really meant anything to each other, including I love you.
We fed Chrissy breakfast together the day after our fight, and we had a brief, civil discussion about the weather. Then, we mostly talked to and about Chrissy. That evening, while we fed her dinner and gave her a bath together, things were pretty much the same way. Later that night, I went to bed alone, wondering if Hayden and I had rushed into marriage too fast, or had gotten married for the wrong reasons, tricking ourselves into thinking that we really loved each other just because we both subconsciously thought that us getting married would be best for Chrissy.
Lying awake around midnight, despite being dead tired, I wondered if Kayley had been correct when she’d made her nasty comment about Hayden and me only lasting a year.
Several days went by, and we had another fight. This time, we both shouted. I cried. Losing a handle on my anger at one point, I wadded up a tissue and threw it at Hayden. It didn’t really “connect” with his washboard abs as much as it maybe “briefly tickled” them before floating harmlessly to the ground.
Surprisingly, given the level of tension in the room, Hayden and I both actually burst out with a little laughter, looking from the tissue at his feet to each other. Then, with genuine warmth in his eyes, which was something I’d missed desperately, Hayden actually cracked a grin at me.
“You know, if you want to hurt a vampire, you’re going to have to do a little better than throwing a tissue.”
Wondering if he’d catch me and just hold me if I just suddenly threw myself into his arms, I cracked a grin in return. But then, immediately, Trevor came tearing in the house, saying something about a Warren being spotted near the gate at the end of our long driveway that led to the main road. In a flash, Hayden was gone, leaving me to resume crying alone. When he returned home that night, we fought again, although I didn’t throw anymore tissues, nor did I throw myself into Hayden’s arms, or even have any thoughts about wanting to do so.
A few days and a few more fights later, Carol asked me if Hayden and I might be interested in marriage counseling, saying that she’d be happy to help us set something up.
Feeling completely demoralized that my marriage had reached the point that a family member was actually offering to help me set up marriage counseling, I thanked Carol but said that it would probably be pointless. “I don’t think Hayden’s able to keep an appointment these days, and even if he were, he could probably only stay for, like, ten minutes of it or something.”
Sitting up to the island with a mug of coffee between her hands, Carol said that ten minutes would at least be something. “It would be a start, anyway.”
Stirring sugar into my glass of iced tea, I shrugged. “What would we even tell a marriage counselor anyway? That a murderous coven of vampires is completely ruining our relationship?”
“No…I don’t think you’d have to go into those kinds of specifics. I think you could just tell a counselor that the two of you are having trouble communicating without shouting, and that you’d like to learn better ways to communicate.”
Suddenly deeply embarrassed, I asked Carol if our shouting matches had been bothering everyone.
She said no. “Not ‘bothering,’ exactly…that’s probably not the right word. Concerning maybe would be. I know Mark and I have both been concerned, and we both just want to help you and Hayden.”
Still embarrassed, I went back to stirring my iced tea. “It would take at least an hour to drive into Sweetwater, spend ten minutes with a counselor, and then drive back home…and Hayden just doesn’t have that kind of time these days, which is part of the whole problem. He doesn’t have any time for me and Chrissy.”
Carol said that Hayden and I wouldn’t even have to drive into Sweetwater. “I know a therapist that works with individuals and couples, and because she works with a lot of agoraphobic people who are unable to leave their homes, she’s completely used to making house calls. She could come here and see you and Hayden with no traveling necessary.”
“And what happens if she’s attacked by a Warren as she’s driving onto our property or something? Or what happens if she happens to see some of our vampires attacking or killing some of theirs? It just seems wrong to invite somebody onto a property knowing full well that there’s a chance of them getting hurt, or at a minimum, they might have to have their memory erased.”
Carol murmured that that was true. “I think we could take a calculated risk in this case, though. After all, we did have several dozen senior citizens onto the property for a barn party.”
“Right, but that was before the Warrens started really escalating their attacks, and that was before a decision was made to close the farm to the public for the rest of the summer.”
Carol said again that that was true. “Even with that being the case, though, I don’t think it would be morally wrong to invite a counselor here to the house. We’d keep her safe. But it’s, of course, completely up to you and Hayden. I’ll give you the counselor’s number, and you can call her, or not, or you can even have me give her a call for you if you want. I saw her for a while years back after my first husba
nd died, and she really is a wonderful counselor.”
I said I’d give it some thought, and this seemed to satisfy Carol.
I really did intend to give the counseling issue some thought; however, I kind of changed my mind about that after having a conversation with Sam that night. Basically, we got into a general discussion about the Warrens and two small-scale attacks that day, and Sam said something about how Hayden was definitely trying to “send their leader a message.” I asked Sam what he meant by that.
Leaning back against the sink with his arms folded loosely across his broad chest, he shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. I just mean ‘sending a message’ by the way that Hayden’s killing all the Warrens we find, I guess.”
“So, instead of just a stab to the heart, and then ‘off with their heads,’ he’s still been taking his sweet time with things?”
Sam said yes. “And he’s actually making sure that it’s all witnessed by another Warren, so that that one can run back to Axel Warren and tell him what’s up. Like, today, for example, when we spotted two Warren spies near the forest. We chased them inside until we got deep into the forest…maybe even a mile or two. Then, once we got them, Hayden had the seven of us running this particular patrol with him physically restrain one of the Warrens while he went to town on the other, making sure that he had a pretty drawn-out, painful death.”
Picturing it in my mind, I felt disgusted, and maybe Sam could see this on my face, because he was quick to assure me that the vampire who was killed so brutally deserved it, saying that he probably even deserved more.
“See, he was one of the recent Warren recruits from that coven in Utah…and, Sydney, the vampires who got kicked out of that coven were kicked out for a reason. They were not very nice people out there, and they did very bad things. Some of them, including the one Hayden killed today, were not only draining humans dry, but were also involved in a cult thing of sorts that hurt kids…and I mean, hurt kids in the very worst possible ways. So, please don’t waste any disgust or pity on a vampire who deserved even worse treatment than he got.”