by Amira Rain
“Like a promise from you means anything to me. I trust you just about as far as I can throw you.”
“Well, we should work on that…and this seems like it might be a good opportunity. Just come see for yourself that I’m telling you the truth. After that, we can go our separate ways for the day if you want. I have some work to do, and I have a feeling that you’re going to be wanting some time alone to think anyway.”
“By ‘work,’ do you mean more murders to commit?”
“No…at least, I hope I don’t have to kill anyone else today. I hope we don’t find any more Warren spies or would-be assassins on our property. Mark, my cousins Trevor and Sam, and many other vampires from our group are out right now, setting up perimeter defense and regular guard patrols, which will stay in place indefinitely, so that we can keep you safe.”
“Oh, that’s rich, considering that you’ve now killed two people within feet of me. Can you keep me safe from yourself, Hayden?”
He didn’t even dignify my question with a response, and instead, just raked a hand through his hair once again while heaving a deep sigh. “Just come inside the barn and take a quick look with me. Please.”
Folding my arms across my chest, sure I was glaring at him, I just stood for a few moments before finally agreeing, almost against my better judgment.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I stepped foot inside the barn just in time to see the corpse of the dead woman shift into the large, muscular form of a man within a blink. The severed head changed form, too, becoming the head of a man with a strong jaw and short blonde hair. The corpse’s clothes instantly changed, too, somehow morphing from a navy-blue t-shirt and light-colored jeans in small sizes, to dark jeans and an olive-green shirt that fit the dead man’s large frame perfectly.
Even the tennis shoes that the deceased had been wearing shifted, becoming heavy black work boots. The blood covering the corpse didn’t shift away, though. It seemed to have shifted right along with the dead man, now covering his face as if he had fought with Hayden in his male form.
Feeling slightly dizzy, I just stared at the corpse while my voice came out in a shaky little whisper. “How does it even work? I mean….”
With my brain seeming to be operating in overdrive, yet functioning with a strange slowness at the same time, I couldn’t even finish my thought.
Seeming to sense this, Hayden, who was standing beside me, went ahead and responded to my question with one of his own. “You mean, how does shifting work?”
Still staring at the corpse, bizarrely unable to look away, I moved my head in a slight nod, and Hayden spoke again.
“We Watcher vampires don’t even exactly know for sure. We’ve never had a vampire who was able to shift in our group. The only ones we’ve ever known have been Warrens…but very fortunately, Richard, here, was the last one.
Now it’ll be easier to keep you safe, because my family and I won’t constantly have to worry about one of the Warrens sneaking onto the farm in the form of a lone female supposedly having car trouble, or a child just wanting to buy ice cream from the creamery or something. That’s honestly been one of our fears, although considering that Richard shifted into the form of his sister, I think it was unfounded.”
Although not without difficulty, I was finally able to pull my gaze from the bloodied corpse to Hayden’s face. “What do you mean? Why was your fear unfounded?”
“Well, because it seems like Richard wasn’t as strong of a shifter as we thought. If he was, he probably would have shifted into a form that we wouldn’t have recognized, but he didn’t. I think he shifted into the form of his sister because hers was the only female form that he could shift into.
See, vampire shifters that aren’t very good at shifting can usually only take the form of someone they shared blood with, genetically, before being turned into a vampire, and in Richard’s case, that was his biological sister.
Other Warren shifters we’ve dealt with in the past have been able to shift into literally any form they were able to imagine, completely at will. Until Richard, I’d never seen one get ‘stuck’ in a shift, either. This tells me that the Warrens must really be feeling desperate to send him in as a way of trying to get to you. Or, maybe they sent him yesterday just as insurance in case Christopher failed to kill you by running you off the road.”
“So, was Richard the reason that you had to leave me so quickly after you killed Christopher yesterday?”
“Yes. One of my family members told me that they’d spotted Richard on foot, near our land, but they weren’t able to get him. That’s also another reason that I don’t think he was as strong of a shifter as he would have liked to have been. If he’d been better at it, and able to do it for a longer length of time, he probably would have shifted into the form of his sister long before getting anywhere near our property.”
I turned my gaze from Hayden’s face back to the corpse and severed head, having no idea what to think or believe. And that was when I saw something that finally pushed me from “just maybe, kind of believing that vampires could actually be real” to “believing it and terrified.”
Richard Warren’s face, grim and bloody in death, was facing toward me, with eyes and mouth partially open. This allowed me to see that Richard’s teeth were slowly elongating, becoming the classic fangs of a vampire. Speechless and afraid yet transfixed, I just watched, and Hayden spoke in a low voice beside me.
“After death, a vampire’s teeth develop into how they look when we feed. No real reason for it; it’s just something that happens after death, just like how fully-human bodies sometimes do strange things after death. I’m sorry you have to see this, though, because I’m sure it must be upsetting…but even at the same time, I’m almost glad that you’re seeing this, because now maybe you’ll stop trying to fight with yourself about the fact that vampires are real.”
Feeling sickened, scared, and even a little angry for some reason, all at the same time, I suddenly pulled my gaze from the severed head to look at Hayden. “Don’t you dare…don’t you dare ever try to drink my blood. Don’t you ever even dare.”
My words struck my ears as something between a threat and a plea.
Frowning, Hayden said that he wouldn’t. “I doubt I’ll ever even be tempted to.”
“But if you’re supposedly a vampire—”
“I am, but I doubt I’ll ever even be tempted by your blood, because I usually stay so well-fed on the blood of wild animals. Any vampire who does the same usually never has more than a passing thought to drink from humans.”
Having not expected this response, I said nothing, and Hayden continued.
“Think of it this way. After eating a whole pizza, or at least enough to keep you feeling stuffed for the whole day, what’s your reaction to seeing a cheeseburger? If you’re well-fed, you might feel some passing interest, but probably not enough to make you feel outright tempted to eat the cheeseburger.
If you’re still full on the pizza, a thought to eat the cheeseburger might not even cross your mind. Now, if you’re starving and see a cheeseburger, it might be a whole different story…but I and my family members are hardly ever starving, or even close. In fact, being around humans as much as we all are, we make it a point to not be.”
“Look. I can’t have a discussion about pizza and cheeseburgers standing in front of a bloody corpse and a severed head.”
“And that’s fine…just as long as you understand what I’m trying to say.”
“I do, but….”
Suddenly, a wave of dizziness and nausea crashed over me, and my face felt hot and then cold. When my stomach began doing some funny, lurching little flips, I began to feel in danger of losing my big breakfast, and I told Hayden I just needed some air.
“Just help me get out of this barn, please.”
He did, guiding me out of the barn with an arm around my shoulders. Once outside in the fresh-smelling spring air, with warm sunlight on my face, I began taking deep breaths while leaning agai
nst the side of the barn for support.
Hayden soon asked if I was starting to feel better, and I said yes, but then realized that he still had his arm around my shoulders. Irritated by this, or maybe more by the fact that I really liked the feeling of his arm around my shoulders, I suddenly kind of fought my way out from beneath it, flinging it aside.
“Please don’t touch me. I’m….” Not really sure what I was, or what I was trying to say, I paused before continuing. “I’m just not sure what I think about you yet…or this whole thing between us. This whole ‘magical pregnancy’ situation.”
Hayden snorted. “Well, that makes two of us.”
Surprised, I didn’t answer right away. I hadn’t been expecting this response at all.
“So…you’re not exactly thrilled with the whole situation that’s happening right now?”
Once again, Hayden snorted. “I never wanted this. I just couldn’t stop it.”
“So, you don’t want the baby I’m carrying?”
“I never said that.”
I practically spat my next words at him. “Well, you may as well have.”
With that, I suddenly began stomping away from the barn, feeling somehow deeply hurt, although I couldn’t even understand why. I didn’t even want to be pregnant myself, so I wasn’t sure why I should be upset that Hayden didn’t want me to be. If he’d had no control over me somehow being magically impregnated, and if he’d never wanted it to happen, which seemed to be the case, it wasn’t like I expected him to be thrilled.
After all, he didn’t even know me, not to mention that maybe he hadn’t planned on having a child until much later on in his life, like maybe when he was married. Even still, though, while I stomped away from him, I felt tears prickling behind my eyelids.
After a few moments, the sound of heavy brown work boots thudding in the dirt some distance behind me told me that he was following me, and I whirled around, telling him not to.
Coming to a stop a few feet away from me, he scoffed. “I can’t even follow you up to the house to make sure that you don’t get sick or pass out or anything?”
“No. I want to be left alone. Please don’t follow me.”
He lifted his broad shoulders in a shrug. “All right. Your call.”
I turned and once again began stomping away from him before my eyes had a chance to become any mistier.
When I arrived back at the house, I continued my hurt, angry stomping into the kitchen. However, I came to a dead stop, just a bit startled, when I saw Mark standing at the sink, scrubbing one of the pans I’d put in the sink to soak before I’d left the house. Looking just as surprised to see me as I was to see him, he looked at me with wide eyes for a moment, but then seemed to recover quickly, saying good morning with a small, polite smile.
Then, without waiting for a return greeting, he asked if I’d been on a “walk around the house.” And for some reason, just a certain little look on his face, I could tell that he was desperately hoping that that’s as far as I’d gone. I was obviously going to have to dash his hopes.
In response to his question, I said no, folding my arms across my chest. “I actually walked as far as the barn, where I witnessed one of the most horrific things I’ve ever seen in my life. I witnessed a person being stabbed and decapitated, which, being that you seem to be the head of this family, I’m sure you knew was going to happen. And I don’t mean that you knew that I would see it, but I’m sure you had to have known what was going to happen to Richard Warren. I’m sure that Hayden had to have told you what he planned to do.”
Mark set the dirty pan back in the soapy water, along with the dish scrubber, shut off the sink, and then dried his hands on a dish towel before turning to look at me with a slightly sheepish sort of expression that told me everything I needed to know. My accusation wasn’t baseless. He had known that Richard Warren would be killed in the barn.
Before Mark could say a word, I told him that I already knew what he was going to say. “Your expression says it all. You knew what Hayden was going to do. Which leaves me with just one more question, I guess, and it’s this. Knowing what you knew, and knowing what someone might see if they stumbled into the barn, like, maybe a certain someone who’s new here and who just wanted to explore the farm….” Becoming a little agitated just thinking about it all, I took a deep breath and let it out slowly before continuing.
“Why on earth didn’t you try to prevent me from seeing such a horrible scene? I’m sure you had to have known that me going out to explore the farm alone this morning was at least a possibility. So, why didn’t you tell me not to go near the barn? You even wrote me a note with other instructions. Why couldn’t you have included something about the barn? Or is it just that you couldn’t be bothered to? Maybe you just didn’t care what I’d see, or how sick and scared it might make me.”
“That’s not true, Sydney.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me not to go near the barn? Why didn’t you write a line or two of warning as part of your note or something?”
Wearing a weary, resigned sort of expression that I couldn’t quite fully read, Mark straightened up from his lean against the sink, stepped around me to pull a note from a magnet on the fridge, and then handed it to me.
Baffled as to what his point could be, I scanned the note, which read Dad, We arr owt of frozin waffils, buttr, and sawsige. Looking up from the note to Mark, I told him that I’d already seen it on the fridge and had read it earlier that morning. “And it’s clearly from Jen to you. So, what does this have to do with—”
“Other side. Turn it over.”
I did, and almost immediately, my face warmed. This side of the note was written in Mark’s handwriting, and it read PS, Sydney- Feel free to take a stroll around the house if you’d like, but please don’t go far, and please don’t go anywhere near the big red barn a short distance away on the property. We store pesticide for our corn crop in there, and recently, we had something of an accident, and there are a lot of toxic, undiluted chemicals everywhere. They could be very dangerous for you, especially since you’re pregnant. Please just make sure to steer clear of the barn for your health and safety.
While I re-scanned the last few lines, just too embarrassed to look up quite yet, Mark spoke in a quiet voice. “The truth is that we’re an all-organic farm, and we don’t use pesticide on any of our crops…but I thought a little white lie was worth it if it would keep you away from the barn. I did care what you might see, and how sick and scared it might make you.”
With my face hotter than I’d felt it in a long while, I looked up from the note but didn’t really know what to say other than a simple sorry, so that’s what I said.
Mark gave me a small smile. “Don’t be. It’s not your fault that you didn’t see my note. In fact, I’m going to have a little talk with Jen about reusing notes that aren’t directed at her. See, she has some…I’ll say, really, really severe struggles with reading, so she often doesn’t notice when she’s reusing very important notes that are intended for someone else.
If she noticed your name at the top of the note at all, I bet she figured she was even doing you a favor by sparing you the struggle of having to read something. She sometimes doesn’t realize that it’s not as big of a challenge for everyone else as it is for her.”
“Well…at least she tries to write.”
Mark gave me another small smile. “That’s true. She does try to write, and she tries her best with sounding things out, and I’m very proud of her for that. I do have to say, though, that sometimes texts from her are a bit easier to puzzle out than her handwritten notes. Autocorrect helps. An awful lot sometimes.”
With my hot face cooling, I smiled. “That’s good.”
Mark smiled back, but then his expression changed to one much more serious before he spoke again.
“I’m really sorry for what you saw at the barn. I’m sure it was awful…especially for someone not used to vampire combat and the resulting carnage.”
I fought a shudder just recalling it. “Yeah…it was pretty bad. Bad and surreal, I should say, especially when I saw Richard Warren’s severed head start to grow fangs. It was just so….”
I didn’t even know what it was “just so.” Just so unbelievable. Just so horrifying, maybe. Even just thinking about it, I began to develop a feeling of unease.
Possibly sensing this, Mark said that we didn’t have to talk about what had happened in the barn anymore if I didn’t want to. “We can talk about what you think about the rest of the farm if you’d like.”
I said that I would like that, very much, and soon Mark and I were sitting on barstools at the granite-topped island in the middle of the kitchen, talking about organic farming while I sipped a glass of lemonade. Presently, I asked him about the Ice Creamery, asking him where the dairy cows were on the property, but he said there weren’t any.
“We get all our milk and cream from an Amish farm a few miles away. We do churn our own ice cream, though, and use a lot of our own fruit to flavor it, and it makes for a pretty lucrative little business. We also make homemade fruit pies and sell them out of the Ice Creamery in the summer and fall, too. The profits are split by everyone who does farm work, or who works in the Ice Creamery, although this isn’t the only way people make a living around here.
A few of us, like me, have different jobs working in Sweetwater, and most everyone gets a salary for keeping the community safe, with the exception of Jen, some other kids who aren’t vampires yet, and a few women who haven’t been turned yet because they’re not yet finished having children.”
“So, if all vampires get a salary for keeping the community safe, then is the farm business kind of a cover so that people in Sweetwater don’t wonder where everyone gets their money from?”
Mark cracked a small smile. “Maybe something like that…but everyone just generally likes the farming business, too. See, when you only sleep an hour or two a night, you need to have a lot to do in order to occupy your time.”