by I D Johnson
Eventually, Jamie realized the sounds of war had been replaced with screaming. Whether it was coming from the shipyard or was only present in his own soul, he wasn’t sure, but the burn victims, those covered in oil, those missing limbs and parts of their faces, large wafts of skin missing from sections of their bodies, they began to fill the hospital. Jamie worked as quickly as he could, helping as many as possible, and while he was tempted a few times to take off his gloves to save a life, he knew he’d be depleted the second his hands came into contact with any of these poor, unsuspecting souls who never had a chance to defend themselves against the surprise attack. He may save one life that way, but he’d miss the chance to help others if he was no longer able to stand, so the gloves stayed on, and he continued to work.
In the back of his mind, his thoughts stayed on Ellie. He hoped her house was far enough away from the harbor that she hadn’t even seen a single airplane, but he knew he wouldn’t rest until he saw her face. Amongst the wounded, he looked for Tommy and was relieved that he never saw the Petty Officer.
He had just finished amputating the arm of a soldier who otherwise wouldn’t have made it when Hildy caught up to him in the hallway. “Dr. Joplin, there’s some people out front waiting to see you. I told them they’d have to wait, that you were busy, but they’re pretty persistent.”
Thinking it had to be Ellie and her family, Jamie thanked her and went in the direction she’d indicated only to see Ellie’s parents, Roger and Lois Whitfield, standing in the middle of a waiting room full of the injured and dying. He rushed over to them. “Where’s Ellie?” he asked before they could even get a word out.
“We don’t know,” Mr. Whitfield replied. “We were hoping you did.”
“She left the house this morning as soon as the first planes flew over,” her mother continued, her expression one of agony. “She took the car, so we couldn’t go looking for her until we caught a ride from a neighbor.”
Panicked, Jamie said, “Well, she couldn’t have gone far.” He remembered how the Buick had been ground to a halt by gunfire and prayed that hadn’t happened to Ellie. “Have you found the car.”
“Yes, but she wasn’t in it.” Roger looked every bit as upset as Jamie felt. “There were… bullet holes... everywhere.”
“All right. Calm down,” Jamie said, but the words were meant for himself every bit as much as they were for the couple before him. “Maybe… she… got out and found shelter somewhere.”
“Dr. Joplin?” Jamie heard a colleague saying his name behind him, but he was too consumed in his own thoughts for it to fully register. Assuming they just wanted him back in surgery, he ignored it.
“We’ll have a look around the hospital. It’s possible she’s jumped in to help.” It seemed like something Ellie would do.
“Dr. Joplin?”
“She could be outside as well, or helping move the wounded out of the shipyard.” The parents were nodding, but tears were streaming down Lois’s face.
There was a sharp tug on Jamie’s elbow. “Dr. Joplin!”
He turned to see Dr. Sidney Cooper, one of his most trusted colleagues, a profoundly morose look upon his face. “Dr. Joplin, Jamie, come with me.”
Jamie could tell by Dr. Cooper’s expression that something was seriously wrong, and his breath caught in his chest. His heart rate increased, and he had to steel himself to keep from panicking. “Dr. Cooper?” he asked, and the doctor shifted his eyes to the ground and indicated with his head that Jamie should follow.
Turning to Ellie’s parents, he said, “I’ll be right back.” Somehow acknowledging that they would also need to know whatever it was Dr. Cooper was wanting to show him would mean something Jamie wasn’t yet willing to recognize.
They wound in-between the wounded on the floor, in chairs, leaning against the wall. “We moved triage into the waiting room down this hall a couple of hours ago, leaving those who couldn’t be helped. I was just double checking we hadn’t missed anyone,” Dr. Cooper explained. “That’s when I noticed….”
“Dr. Cooper?” Jamie said, running to get even with him. “What is it?”
There was no answer.
“Sid, is it Ellie?”
They had reached the room he had indicated, and Sid stepped over a few prostrate bodies. It was clear to Jamie that anyone who was going to need treatment had already been moved out of this room.
He saw her dress before he saw her face and recognized it instantly. It was the red and white polka dot one she loved so well, the one she’d worn when they’d gone to the dance hall only a week ago. She’d said it was festive; just a hint of Christmas color without overwhelming. She was wearing her red heels, and he imagined when she’d dressed, she’d been planning to visit him, not to wind up here, like this.
Jamie didn’t run over to her. From here, he could see that there was nothing he could do, nothing anyone could do. Instead, he took his time, winding through the others, the men and women someone else would cry over later when they made their own discovery that the world had crumbled when they weren’t looking, that nothing would ever be the same.
Ellie’s eyes were closed, and he might’ve thought she was sleeping if it weren’t for the blood red stain just over her heart, the one misshapen polka dot that did not belong with the others. She was lying on the floor in front of a row of chairs, next to another woman, one Jamie didn’t recognize when he carefully stepped over her. While Jamie would’ve liked to have seen those eyes again, he was glad for it. Better to remember them full of life, full of laughter, full of love.
Tears were streaming down his face as he pulled his gloves off and bent down to touch her. Ellie’s body was still warm, but she had no pulse. It looked to him as if she’d been hit by a bullet, likely through the roof of the car or as she had attempted to find shelter. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of bullets had fallen on Ohau that day. It had only taken one to change Jamie’s life forever.
He heard Dr. Cooper’s voice behind him. “Should I get her parents?” he asked quietly.
“No,” Jamie said quickly. “I, uh, I’ll get them. I want to… I want to make sure she’s… comfortable first.”
“I don’t know if we have any beds available,” the doctor replied.
Jamie turned and managed a smile. “Thank you, Sid,” he said, dismissively, and Dr. Cooper nodded in understanding and left. He would certainly be needed elsewhere, as would Jamie. But the world would have to wait one damn moment while he said goodbye to the only woman he’d ever truly loved.
He took Ellie’s still-warm hand in his and raised it to his lips. How he’d dreamt of asking her to be his wife, of leaving the Ternion behind to start a life with this beautiful soul. Now, all of that was over. This amazing woman, who would’ve been the perfect mother for his children, who would’ve never harmed a hair upon another’s head, was gone with no reasonable explanation, the victim of a conflict that had nothing at all to do with her.
Unable to hold it off anymore, Jamie broke down. He laid his head against her chest and gave into the overwhelming grief. There would be no recovering from this, no magical healing, nothing would ever rectify the hole in his heart.
He had no idea how much time had passed before he felt a strong arm on his shoulder, pulling him up off of the ground. He knew it was Aaron without even opening his swollen eyes. The reassurances his friend whispered that he knew his pain, that it was okay to breakdown, to curse the world, had Jamie sobbing again, and it wasn’t until he thought of Roger and Lois standing out in the other waiting room that he began to pull himself together.
“What can I do?” Aaron asked, once Jamie stepped back and began to wipe at his eyes.
“What can anyone do?” the doctor replied, choking with each word.
Aaron’s eyes were empathetic. “Nothing, but there are people here who need you. People you can save.”
Jamie realized he was right, and as much as he didn’t care about anyone else, he knew he needed to focus. “You’re an
emotional manipulator, aren’t you?” he asked.
“Yeah, not like Hannah, but a little bit.”
“Can you… help?”
“I’ll try,” Aaron said, and a few moments later, Jamie felt like he wanted to get back to work.
“Thank you. I need to go talk to her parents, but I wish there was a bed, some place I could lay her where they wouldn’t have to come back here.”
“I’ll take care of that,” Aaron said, and even though Jamie had no idea what he might do, he believed he would.
With a nod, Jamie went out to face Ellie’s parents, feeling slightly stronger, though the hole in his heart was unbearable, he knew Ellie would want him to carry on, helping as many of these victims as possible. The pain would still be there later, after the work was done. It would still be there no matter how old he lived to be, no matter how many other pretty girls he met, no matter where his life might take him. Ellie Whitfield would live on in his heart infinitely.
Epilogue
Villisca, Iowa, USA, 2014
Jamie was lurking in the shadows, waiting, something he found himself doing more often than he cared to admit. From time to time, his mind would wander back to when he was a six-year-old boy doing everything he could to stay out of the darkness, afraid a creature of the night would come prowling for him. Back then, he never would’ve thought this is how his life would’ve turned out. He’d been hunting monsters for over a hundred years now, and yet, the shock never wore off, not entirely. Sometimes eternal life felt like a blessing; other times, he knew it was a curse. When he was alone, left with only a century and more’s worth of thoughts, he wondered what might’ve happened if he hadn’t ever chased Margie out the door that night, if he’d never Transformed, if he’d stayed a human doctor in Boston and become the surgeon he’d always dreamt he’d be.
Since he’d lost Ellie that fateful day over seventy years ago, he’d never truly given his heart to anyone. He’d found himself incapable of trusting another soul with his own in the same way, and he didn’t know when that might change. Looking back over the course of his life, he knew he’d needed women like Kit and Maryann to show him what love wasn’t so that when he finally did meet Ellie, he’d recognize what it was. Now, he knew he might find love again someday, but until he met another woman like Ellie, if one even existed, he’d spend his time perfecting his skills, making improvements to the Transformation process, weaponry, and technology. Seventy years had passed by in a flash.
He monitored the activity over the Intelligence Assistance Communicator, or IAC, he had implanted in his eye that allowed him to talk directly with any member of his team, as he held his position. At an Eidolon Festival, Vampires were allowed to do as they pleased, so long as they didn’t harm any humans against their will. Tonight would be different, he knew. He could feel it in the November air, and it wasn’t just the chill of an oncoming winter that let him know the world was about to shift and change again.
Jamie had spent the last half-hour standing beneath a tree, waiting to see if he was given any directions from Aaron, and not only had he been thinking of his beloved Ellie, he thought about Margie as well. It was true they’d never seen eye to eye, but she was an outstanding Guardian, and since she’d been assigned as Leader to the entire Australian continent, she’d been a little nicer to her younger brother. They didn’t chat much since they were worlds away, but she was happily married and had three children which were grown now and had also Transformed. Jamie was proud of all of them, though he supposed he could do a better job of saying so.
After Pearl Harbor, he’d been deployed to the European theater where he saved thousands of lives. He’d returned to Kansas City to work with Jordan and Janette again, along with Aaron, Hannah, Christian, and a few new recruits they’d acquired over the years, including a goofy guy named Elliott who’d driven Jamie crazy at first but now he counted as a friend. He’d survived a couple of Aaron’s crazy girlfriends, now ex-girlfriends, including Eliza, who was on the team now in a crucial role he hoped she didn’t mess up when things started going down, and Aaron, who was now the Guardian Leader, after Jordan’s untimely death and Janette’s retirement, was sure things would go down tonight.
It was actually Janette’s family that made the situation so volatile. The LIGHTS team had it on good authority that Cadence Findley, Janette’s granddaughter, would be arriving at the Eidolon Festival shortly, and the shift he felt in the air stemmed around the beautiful brunette who didn’t have any clue who she even was.
From that night on, everything would be different.
From that night on, everything would change.
But Jamie had been there before, through the trying times and the days when he was on top of the world. Whatever this new reincarnation of LIGHTS brought with it when Cadence Findley’s path finally crossed with all of theirs, Dr. Jamie Joplin would be ready.
“The eagle has landed,” Jamie heard Hannah call out over the IAC, and he knew that was Elliott’s ridiculous signal that Cadence had arrived. Jamie held his position in the shadows, watching her come into view, knowing whatever direction she headed, her trajectory was bound to intersect with his eventually, sending him out of the shadows, into the moonlight, fully prepared to take on whatever monsters he may encounter on the other side.
A Note from the Author
Thank you so much for reading Jamie: A Vampire Hunter’s Tale Book 2. Over the years, Jamie has become one of my favorite characters. He’s definitely the kinda guy I’d like to have around in tough spot!
If you enjoyed the book, please leave a review on Amazon. Leaving reviews lets other readers know whether or not they may also like the story. It also helps me qualify for promotions as some sites have a minimum number of reviews.
The Clandestine Saga, the series this book is based on, picks up where Jamie leaves off. You can find links to all of the books in that series in the “Also by ID Johnson” section of this book. There is also another series, The Chronicles of Cassidy, which includes the same characters. This series is written for teenaged readers, but lots of adults enjoy it as well.
Please consider signing up for my newsletter so you can find out when new books are released. The next book in this series, Elliott, will be out in the fall of 2018. You can read Saving Cadence, a novelette based on the Eidolon Festival mentioned in Jamie, for free when you sign up for my newsletter using this link: https://claims.instafreebie.com/free/Ej6IH
Thank you for your continued support of my writing!
Also by ID Johnson
Stand Alone Titles
Deck of Cards
Cordia's Will: A Civil War Story of Love and Loss The Doll Maker’s Daughter at Christmas
The Journey to Normal: Our Family's Life with Autism (nonfiction) Beneath the Inconstant Moon
The Clandestine Saga series
Transformation
Resurrection
Repercussion
Absolution
Illumination
The Chronicles of Cassidy (Based on The Clandestine Saga)
So You Think Your Sister’s a Vampire
A Vampire Hunter’s Tale (Based on The Clandestine Saga)
Aaron
Ghosts of Southampton series
Prelude
Titanic
Residuum
Heartwarming Holidays Sweet Romance series
Melody’s Christmas
Christmas Cocoa
Winter Woods
Waiting On Love
Shamrock Hearts
A Blossoming Spring Romance
Firecracker!
Reaper’s Hollow
Ruin’s Lot
Ruin’s Promise
Ruin’s Legacy
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