“Thank you.” Tanner showed up then with his daughter Rose. She’d told him earlier what Grandda had asked of her, and he was happy that Grandda would not be alone when he drew in his last breath. “When I see you again, Grandda, I’ll have a lot of stories to tell you. And maybe I’ll bring along some pictures too.”
“You do that, son. You bring them all along. Your grandma, she’ll be just as pleased to see them too, I’m betting.”
Hugging him again, Blake held onto him for just a little longer than before. And when they separated, there was no need for words to be spoken. It had all been said. All of it had been gone over. Grandda was going to be at peace with his lady wife.
Walking home, not staying around for the rest of them, he walked into the house and held tightly onto Shadow. He’d never been ashamed of being sad or crying, but this time was harder than ever before. Holding onto his own lady wife, he told her how much he loved her and what Grandda had done. Then, holding onto her hand, they went up to bed and held each other some more.
~*~
Tanner had no desire to see his old friend pass. He loved Ollie like he might have his own father had he known who he was. And even though there were centuries of difference in their ages, it had mattered little to either of them when it came to their tight bond.
“You’re ready for this?” Ollie told him that he was more than ready for it. “I don’t want to do this, as I’m sure you’re aware, but I would do most anything for you, and I think you’ve known that too.”
“Had I known who had allowed my sister to pass on, I would have called that person to have spared you. But she’s gone and—”
“It was I, Ollie. No one but myself could take away such great magic like I used. She called me late one night, telling me that she could no longer stand to live with herself. Bea was a great woman, and it was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. Until today.” Ollie nodded. “You enjoyed your dinner with your family?”
“I did. I didn’t like them knowing at first, but now that it’s done, I can’t thank you enough for doing it.” Tanner told him that it would have been the only way he’d have been able to do it. “My sister, did she say much when you got to her?”
“She was not one to mince words, your sister.” Ollie laughed. “Yes, I can see your mind working, and you are more than likely right about the things that she said. But there is something she said to me that I’m only just remembering. Bea told me that someday I’d be called to do the same for you. That you’d wish for your body to be returned to the earth with your lady wife.”
“My Rose, she thought the world of you, Tanner. You and that little pixie of yours.” Flora had long since left him. She had found her mate after all this time and had gone to stay with him. As it should have been. “Will I feel anything? When I pass, will I feel any pain?”
“Nay, never again, my old friend.” As Tanner began pulling his magic back from Ollie, he told him of his plans for the town. “I plan to make a gardening place for special flowers that the queen has shared. And the ones that Flora left for me to plant.”
“That’s good. The town can always use a little color.” Ollie was getting weaker, his body beginning to shut down, the bond between them nearly at its end. “You don’t be doing anything foolish now. You hear me? That family of mine, they’ll be needing you still, I’m thinking.”
Rose held onto her grandda’s hand as he began to breathe a little slower, his heart slowing as well. They both watched him as he laid on the bed that he’d shared with only one woman, and the one that his Rose had gone away in.
Ollie opened his eyes and looked past the two of them as they sat there with him. Him smiling had him turning to look as well. There was nothing there that Tanner could see—but then, he wasn’t on his last breath. When Ollie spoke again, he wasn’t speaking to them any longer. He had, for the most part, moved on.
“There you are, my darling love.” His entire body was so weak now that it surprised him to see Ollie lift his hand up for something, or in this case, someone behind Tanner. “I’m so glad that you came for me. I have so much to tell you.”
When his arm dropped, he knew that the man was gone. Rose cried quietly for her loss, and Tanner, for the first time in more centuries than he could remember, shed bloodied tears for his loss as well.
“He asked me to ask you something when he was gone. Then he made me promise that if you should answer me that I was to take it to my grave.” Tanner knew the question before she asked it of him. “Grandda wanted me to know how old you are. And—and this is really important—how the two of you met.”
“I’m literally as old as this earth. I was here, walking as a vampire, long before this world was found. Even the babe in the manger was born late in my lifetime.” She nodded and waited, the tears still wet on her cheeks. “I’m nearly eleven thousand years old, my child. I am the first vampire that came to this world. Not the oldest of my kind, but the first one to come here to live.”
“How did you meet my grandda?” Tanner thought for sure she would have asked where he’d been born. Where, in his case, he’d been made. But she didn’t, following her grandda’s lead and only wanting to know what he deemed important. “Grandda said that it would be important for me to know. But again, I wasn’t to tell a soul the truth.”
Tanner looked down at the man who he’d befriended so long ago. Ollie was a good looking man; the years and the magic had given him a good afterlife. When he thought about the time that they’d met, it brought a smile to his face. A sad one, but a smile all the same.
“Ollie was nothing more than a babe when I first saw him. He was in the yard that is now where the cemetery is, lying on a blanket that had been hand stitched by his own mother. The quilt that he lays on now.” Tanner could still see his face, the look of curiosity there. “I think he was less than a year old and just learning to crawl. His own mother was a devious sort of a woman, mean when it struck her, and she was alone. But sweet as honey when she had people around to impress.”
Tanner looked at Rose and wondered if she’d want the washed out version or the truth. He decided on the truth. Unvarnished and dirty. Looking at her, he let her see what had unfolded that day. That horrible day that had nearly ended the entire Whitfield line, and his life as well.
Lying on the blanket, Ollie had watched him sneaking into the yard. His prey then was not the child, but the mother. When he was close enough to snatch her away, only long enough to stave off his hunger, young Ollie had warned him that danger was approaching from a different direction.
“The ax hit him in the back. Not quite severing him in two, but nearly so. His mother had seen me too and wished not just to end my life, but that of her infant son as well. She hated Ollie with a passion that I could never understand. When the ax was raised a second time, this time to have it plunged into my own body, I snatched up the child while removing the head of his mother.” Rose said nothing but waited for him to go on. “I was able to repair his body enough so that he would live. Then I took him to a hospital, where I knew that he’d get the best of care.”
“There is more, isn’t there?” Tanner nodded, settling the story in his mind so he’d not forget any of the details. “Please tell me, Tanner. Please?”
“Ollie’s father never knew what happened to his son. He didn’t even ask as he buried his wife without a word to anyone other than that she’d broken her neck. Neither of them were nice people. Noncaring about anyone but themselves.” She asked him why he’d saved him. “You think that him saving me wasn’t enough, dear child?”
“I think that rather than just warn you, he took the blow that was intended for you. While she would have killed Grandda, the ax hit him instead of you.” Tanner told her she was much too smart for her own good. “So Grandda has told me many times over the years. Well?”
“Ollie didn’t just warn me, but he tripped his mother when she came f
or me, and the blow fell upon him instead of me. She wasted not a second in pulling the bloodied ax from her son to come after me, using her foot to take the thing from his near lifeless body. Do you know what she said as she came after me?” Rose shook her head no. “She said that when she finished here today, there would be no spot for my kind to hide and that she’d not have to raise a brat that she hated more than her own husband. I felt it was my duty to take it all from her. And I did.”
“He didn’t know the entire story, did he? I have a feeling that had he known he’d not want me to know the story. Grandda rarely spoke about his parents, but when he did, there was never any mention that they were cold and heartless.” Tanner told her that was the way he should tell his family when asked. “Now I have a question for you, my friend. You don’t have to answer it, but I’d like it if you did.”
“Time will tell.” She nodded and smiled at him. “You loved her, didn’t you? My grandma. She was, at one time, considered your mate. You gave her up for my grandda so that he’d have his family.”
“As I have said, you are much too smart.” Covering Ollie up with the same stained blanket from that day, he stood up to leave. “You will take this to your grave, will you?” She nodded. “I thank you for that.”
As he left the house, going to his home that he had shared with Flora, Tanner thought of what the young child had thought. Nay, he’d never been in love with Rose. He’d loved her, yes, but he was never in love with her. Tanner thought it good that she had a romantic ending to the tale that had brought her grandda and him together.
Sitting in his darkened room, he pulled out the papers that he’d kept for nearly all his life with the Whitfields. They were papers that told of the first million young Ollie had made. The way he’d been smart in his investments. The number of people that came to him for advice. It had all been lies. All of it. Ollie knew it, of course, but knew that someday the fortune would come in handy.
Tanner had told him when to invest and into what. Buying shares in little known companies that would bring him more cash than he’d ever seen. Over the years, the decades with his friend and his wife, they’d made and lost more money than most countries had. Because Tanner, then Ollie, knew that someday he’d have a son of his own. And that son with a lovely wife would have six sons. Then those six would meet and be mated to women who would make them happier than Ollie had ever been. Because to Ollie, that was the way it should have been. Making your children better off than yourself.
Tanner had never loved Rose as her granddaughter thought. Nor did he love Ollie like a man to a man. He loved them because they had never once turned him away, nor did they judge him when they knew that he was a monster of the night.
“Oh, Ollie, what am I to do now?” There was no answer because the man was gone. “I shall meet the sun soon. After I take care of your grandson, Joey.”
Chapter 12
The funeral was the biggest one he’d ever seen. Blake held onto Shadow as she stood by him at the gravesite. Grandda had been a larger than life man, and he seemed to be that way in death as well. Blake thought about the memento that Shadow had put in the casket with him, just before it was closed.
“He’ll give it to Rose, his wife.” Blake, touched by the beautiful thought and the hummingbird that she’d made for him, told her that he loved her. “The one that he bought from my first show, that’s going to stay with Oliver. He cried, which made me cry when he tried to give it back to me, and I told him that.”
“Dad is going to take this very hard today.” Shadow said that she thought that everyone would. “Joey left. Did he tell you goodbye?”
“He did. I gave him some money, change, so he could call us collect when he could. Joey said that he didn’t have any use for a cell phone, nor did he think he’d care what was on social media. I’m going to miss him.” Blake told her what his mom had said. “I believe her, don’t you? I’d like to see him settled and happy. I don’t think he has been for a very long time.”
“Neither do I. He was such a curious child. Now that we know he was hiding something more, having an eidetic memory, I can understand more about why he asked about so many things all the time.” That had been a surprise to everyone, including the teachers that thought he was a troublemaker when he got bored with his classes. “I’m so glad that he was at the pack school when it was figured out. There is no telling what sort of trouble he might have been in from being so smart.”
Joey had never been a troublemaker—it had been prejudiced teachers that had caused him to be bullied and in trouble. Every time he thought of those former teachers having to hop from one job to the other after they were fired, he had to laugh. They had really thought that his grandda was nothing more than a sugar daddy to Shadow.
As they sat down with his parents, all his brothers and their wives together, he saw someone taking pictures. He thought it was rude but then realized that it was Mark, one of Joshua’s sons, who worked for a big newspaper as a writer.
Blake wanted a copy of it, if for no other reason than that they were all together. It had been difficult over the years to get many of the immediate family together. The pictures that had been set up on a sort of slide show at the funeral home had been sad and sometimes funny. His grandda had been a character all his life.
While the sermon was going on, Blake took that time to look around at the people there. It made him smile to see so many people in loud print shirts and mismatched ties. Grandda would have loved that. He had always said that death should be a celebration of one’s life, not one where people were mourning the loss of someone. He and his brothers had wanted to do the same, but Mom had said she’d prefer that they didn’t. But they all had something pinned to their suit coats that had been something from Grandda. His was a small ring that had been his sister’s.
It had been a revelation to find out that Aunt Bea hadn’t been his real sister. They had grown up in the same place and had been adopted out to the same family. For some odd reason, Grandda had kept his last name as Whitfield, and Aunt Bea had adopted his last name as well. He often wondered if the people that had adopted the two of them thought they were blood related.
When the sermon was over, Blake and his brothers, who had carried their grandda to his final resting place, helped shovel the casket with the fine dirt. It had been his request to them to do that. He said it would be their only chance to throw dirt in his face. They had all laughed with him, but it had hurt too.
They were all headed to his mom and dad’s house after this. They were going to have food catered in, and plenty of help from the people around the town. Dad was staying close to Mom, and he didn’t know which of them was more upset. They both looked like they’d lost more than an old man who aggravated them and made them laugh.
There were plenty of seats both in and outside the house. Blake took one of the chairs that were on the deck and sat there watching the younger kids playing on the swing set. It was about time to replace it again, he could see. The slide was dry and cracked in places, and the seats on the swings were taped up to keep the kids safe.
“I’ve been thinking I need to get me a new one of those.” Blake told his dad he’d been thinking the same thing. “I have a question for you, son. You don’t have to answer it right away, but I wanted to know what you’re thinking about with all that room you have at your home.”
“Nothing. Not unless Shadow wants to adopt some older couple that would like to move in with us. You and Mom thinking of that? I’d be over the moon if you were to do that.” He told him what Mom had said about Joey and him finding a mate. “You want him to have the entire house then.”
“I do. I love that boy as much as I do you boys. All of the grandkids, as a matter of fact, but Joey, he’s been dealt such hard blows, and I want him to not have to think us old people are cramping his style or whatever it might be called these days.” Blake laughed, then stopped when Dad glared at
him. “You making fun of me, Blake?”
“No, sir. I was thinking of you and Mom cramping his style, but you don’t have a problem cramping mine.” Dad flushed bright red. “I’m joking with you, Dad. I’d love to have you there with us. And I know that Shadow would. Now that Grannie is working and staying at the nursing home, I think she misses having someone besides me around.”
Dad laughed then. “Grannie sure has whipped that place into shape. I have never in all my life seen a bunch of old people out on the lawn at five in the morning doing stretches to the upcoming sunrise. I think they live a little longer because of her.” Blake agreed. “And having pack pups come by and sit with some of them sure does help. To see some of them sitting in their wheelchairs petting a wolf— Well, it does my heart some good.”
“Mine too. She’s got them working on blankets too. And Shadow is putting them in her shop to sell. The money is then divided between those who worked on it. It gives them some spending money when they head to the store for stuff. I never would have thought that a simple trip to the mall could be so heartwarming to so many people. Did you?” Dad said he’d not. “The mall walking helps in the winter months for them. I think Grannie has a waiting list a mile long for people all over the country wanting to be in her place. She finally put up the new sign. Grannie’s Home has a nice ring to it too.”
They talked about the move and the swing replacement. But Blake had a feeling that there was something more that Dad was working up to. Blake didn’t mind waiting on his dad to get there. He would never just blurt out the problem but would work all the details out in his head before he spoke a single word about it.
“Your mom and I have been talking about something. Now, you don’t have to tell me your opinion right off the bat. I want you to stew on it a minute or two, all right?” Blake nodded. “I was thinking that I’d go back to college and earn me a degree in lawyering. I was thinking on being mayor at the next election. It will give me something to do and get out from under your mom’s feet wherever we put our hats.”
Blake: The Whitfield Rancher – Tiger Shapeshifter Romance Page 14