Chapter Fifteen
I looked down at the letter in my hand. It was dated August 2008, only six months ago. I began to read.
My darling Jessie,
If you are reading this then it looks like I have failed you and lost my fight with the booze. The past year since your mother’s death has been so difficult, and by the time you have finished reading this letter, I hope you understand why.
The letter was several pages long and as I was impatient for details my eyes began to skim over the stuff I already knew. My eyes flew over the grim details of my mum’s fight with cancer and how he was going to tell me when I started university. How he was sorry, so very sorry for writing it down and not having the guts to tell me, and then my eyes focused in and found a word I loved. Luke.
As I write this I wonder, should I stop writing and go and tell you; but you are off buying books for university with Luke, and after all you have been through I haven’t got it in me to take away your happiness and infectious energy. I tell myself it can wait.
Huh! How can I have lived four years of my life loving someone who was lying to me every day? I felt resentment and grief coil tightly in my belly as I remembered those happy days shopping for university books with Luke. I carried on reading.
Of course now I have built this up to be something huge and it is really very simple. My dear; your mother was not your birth mother.
Yes I know this, blah, blah…my anger left a bitter taste in my mouth and I frowned at my attitude. I skimmed until I found a detail I didn’t know and gorged upon it. I read on quickly, devouring the details. So involved was I that I didn’t hear Daniel slip into the room and jumped with surprise when he sat down next to me. I noted his healthy pallor and wondered if my eyes had turned green with jealousy.
‘Was she pretty then?’ I asked.
‘No, I told you, I’m only interested in you Jessie, but I have to feed. If you must know ‘she’ was a ‘he’. There was nothing sexual about it. I fed from his wrist and right now he is probably sleeping off his hangover with no recollection of ever meeting me.’
‘Oh!’ I said, unsure of how I felt.
‘So what’s in the letter then? Sebastian told me the basics, but I expect it feels very different to you?’
‘You might say that,’ I said, a sigh escaping my lips and my eyes dipping back to the letter. ‘Well I’m sure Sebastian told you already that my birth mother died when she had me, because of some witch power surge that gave her a heart attack.’
Daniel nodded and wrapping his arm around my back, he pulled me in tighter to him.
‘Well, then he says how he met my mum when I was eighteen months old and they got married and she adopted me when I was two, which explains the missing photo albums I suppose. But why didn’t they just tell me? I don’t get it? Loads of kids are adopted.’
‘Maybe they just wanted to protect you Jess.’
‘Or maybe they just didn’t have the guts!’ I said.
‘Finish reading Jessie. Does it tell you more about your birth mother? Sebastian said it explained her true identity clearly enough for him to contact your clan in Boston?’
‘Yes, he says he met my mother whilst travelling in Europe and when her visa ran out they decided to get married. Blah, blah, blah! Apparently she initially told him that her family was dead, but then in labour with me she changed her tune.’ I looked up at Daniel and he gestured for me to go on. ‘He says my mother, Karen that is, didn’t believe any of this and didn’t want him to tell me. It’s pretty strange.’
‘Go on,’ he said.
‘Well, it says here that just before she had me she was babbling and excited, said she wanted to call me Angel, which explains the middle name. She told my father that her real name was Rachel Bishop and she had run away to Europe on fake papers. She made him promise to never try and trace her family and said they would take me away from him and that they were very powerful.’
‘They are Jessie, but they can’t take you away now. Don’t worry,’ Daniel said smiling at me.
As I read on, a sense of dread filled my stomach. I knew what was coming. Why had she not gone to the hospital? As I read about her death and my consequent birth, the self-pity evaporated and I cried tears for my dad, felt his loss and confusion, and finally understood the enormity of his pain. I skimmed some more of the letter, over his musings on her story – after all, I knew the truth – and I paused to read the last paragraph.
My dear, I am so sorry to land this bombshell on you, but the main thing to understand is that you are loved. To Karen, you were always her special girl and together we were a great family. I have loved you from the day you were born and will love you into the ever after. Jessie, my Jessie, you are more special than you can know. As a little girl you had an ability to make everyone smile; you lit up my life and amazed me every day. You continue to amaze me, Jessie my girl, and I know that whatever life throws at you, you will fight back. Believe in yourself, as I do in you.
All my love
Dad
xxxx
I sat, unable to move. I’d known my mother was not my birth mother for a week now, so it wasn’t a shock, but the words full of love from my father stirred emotions deep within. I read and re-read the letter, and even found myself touching the paper to my nose to see if I could find any lingering scent of him, but there was nothing.
A soft knock at the door interrupted my thoughts, and we both looked up to see Eva enter the room. Her eyes shifted from the letter in my hand to the tears drying on my cheeks. She then glanced at Daniel holding me tightly and with a grim smile went to pull Sebastian’s seat nearer to the bed. Straddling it, her eyes penetrated mine, searching and probing. A flash of indecision was quickly followed by frustration, and she settled for a wry expression before speaking.
‘Well, you’ve caused a stir haven’t you? I’ve barely been gone twenty four hours and in that time you’ve evaded Dan, hunted down your angelic ex-boyfriend, convinced Daniel to help you track down the girl gang, kicked them about a bit and got yourself thrown in jail. To top it off, you suspended Sebastian’s top bodyguard in mid-air, caused him to attack Sebastian and thereby reducing him to a gibbering wreck. I think we can say a day’s work well done!’ Eva said, a sarcastic smile flitting across her face.
‘I didn’t hunt Luke down. I just went to the cricket club for some time out and he was there... and I didn’t attack him for ages...’
‘Oh well! The fact that you waited a while before you jumped him makes a whole lot of difference! Do you honestly think that helps Jess? If Dan hadn’t turned up when he did, goodness knows what would have happened, especially since it seems that Luke is not the human we thought he was.’
‘Leave her alone, Eva. She didn’t think Luke would be there. I got there in time, so no harm was done. If I hadn’t had you brainwashing me all that time, I’m not so sure I would have resisted the scent of Ellie for more than a heartbeat. Anyway, Jessie would have come across him sometime, and she has to learn to live with her free will; we all do. She’s coping amazingly,’ Daniel interrupted.
‘Yes, so well that she can convince you to break the rules and hunt down those girls with her,’ Eva continued.
‘Look, we’ve already been through this. I knew the risks, but I also thought Sebastian might allow it in order to help Jessie come to terms with her new life,’ he answered.
Eva stood up abruptly, and the chair wobbled for a second as she flitted gracefully to the huge stone window. Standing in the shadows of the heavy curtains, she peered out into the dismal, drizzly morning light, and sighed gently.
‘OK, lecture over. I have to say Jess, I wish I’d been there to see you levitating Aaron. I always despised that creep. He had an issue with women. I’m so glad you were his undoing,’ she added as she turned round, the start of a smile lightening her face.
‘I think he was going to rape me, as well as bite me,’ I said quietly, thinking of his twitching slumped body smashed against the
cell bars.
‘Yes, he would have. That’s how he likes to get his power trips,’ Eva said, as her eyes turned steely with a sudden coldness.
‘Shhh, you don’t need to worry about him anymore. He can never hurt you again Jessie,’ Daniel whispered quietly, the muscle in his cheek twitching.
‘And no vamp in the whole of the North will dare try and touch you again, once Lucius has spread the story of how you reduced Aaron to the gibbering wreck he’s become,’ Eva added, grinning wickedly.
‘But I didn’t do that. If it hadn’t been for Sebastian I would have been dead by now. My hold on him faltered the minute I realised what I was doing.’
‘Yes but Sebastian’s secret weapon is just that; a secret weapon, Jess. He’s ordered Lucius to make out it was all witch craft, your witchcraft. Remember you are to talk to no-one about Sebastian’s shield,’ she answered.
‘Great! So now everyone’s going to think I’m an uber-powerful witch, when I can barely move a mug!’ I said.
‘You are powerful Jess, you just have to learn how to use it, and Sebastian’s working on getting you a tutor and making contact with your clan in Boston. In the meantime, we need to get you home and you need to forget that twisted ex-boyfriend of yours.’
‘He’s not twisted,’ I said, immediately jumping to his defence.
‘Dan told me what he called you, how he spoke to you. He left you dying, knowing we would change you and now he blames you for being one of us. I never did get angels… strange things,’ she said with a grim expression.
I looked at Daniel and back at Eva. I tried to forget about Luke, tried to calm the confusion of feelings, but I just couldn’t quite let go of Luke and I wasn’t sure I believed his emphatic outburst at the cricket club. There had to be a reason if not, why had he been watching me, as I was now sure he had. Why had he left me to live on as a vampire, if his job would surely have been to stay with me whilst I died and left him forever?
These were questions I needed answering, but I could no longer ignore the fact that my heart beat to another rhythm now and my feelings for Daniel were growing by the day. He was steady, a constant reassurance in my somewhat bewildering life. Maybe the blood bond was responsible for my developing feelings, but I also couldn’t dismiss his argument. We were drawn to each other in the club that very first night. My unfaithful heart had quickened as I watched him. I was drawn to him before his blood had saved my life. I’d called out to him before I even knew how.
Luke was an angel, I still couldn’t take it in, but I was a vampire and Daniel was a vampire. Daniel was a part of me now, and I a part of him. I had to forget Luke. I would.
I may not be a hundred percent happy with my transformation into a vampire, but I was half-witch too. My mother was a witch, as was my grandmother and grandfather. I’d lost one family, but I had gained two more.
I looked up at Eva’s open friendly face, smiled and immediately felt myself drawn to Daniel. He was standing very still, like a marble statue, a Greek god maybe, his dark hair rumpled, his face creased with concern as he watched me warily. Here was my family.
‘I’m tired. Let’s go home,’ I said quietly, reaching up and touching his cheek gently.
Epilogue
He comes to me in my dream; in the between times, when I gaze at him half awake, half asleep from my Victorian bed. I’ve seen his wings unfold in the moonlight, silhouetted against my window, and I wonder what the students in the house opposite would think if they happened to look up and see him. An angel staring in at me, his great wings unfolded before he silently takes to the night and disappears once again.
My heart is torn into ragged pieces. A part belonging to the mother who chose death over life, another part embraced and protected by the parents who loved me unconditionally and now lie side by side under a tombstone, unaware of the daughter I’ve become.
The remains are jealously fought over by an angel who wouldn’t let me die a normal death, an angel who deserted me in my hour of need and yet shadows my every night; and the vampire who gave me a new life. The man I’ve come to love, and who brings sunshine to my eternal days.
Who I’ll choose and what I’ll become are choices that lie down untrodden paths. Paths I will have to tread soon, but for now I sleep.
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Wondering what happens next to Jess? Curious about Witchcraft, the sequel to Witchblood?
Then read on for the first chapter from Witchcraft.