Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ Crystal ❯ Chapter 30

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Crystal, Chapter 30:


The trip back to Boston wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been.  Grandfather’s blood took the edge off our hunger, but I could tell that Johnny was feeling it a lot more than I was.  He was pale and he wore sunglasses to hide his eyes, which flickered back and forth between brown and black.  Paul had booked us three seats in a row near the windows.  My dad sat somewhere closer to the front of the plane, although he got up when the seat belt sign was turned off to come back and check on how we were doing.

Johnny ignored my father, and pulled his blanket over his head, as much to tune the rest of the plane out as to protect himself from any sun that might reach him from the tiny window.  Grandfather’s blood and Johnny’s own stubbornness protected him from the sun.  Johnny leaned against the window and pretended to sleep.

It was a good excuse not to have to eat.  I slid my untouched tray across to Paul, who sat by the aisle, so that he could finish both our meals.  He had offered his blood, more than once, but I didn’t need it and Johnny didn’t want it.  “Switch with me,” Paul said, when the flight attendant had cleared away our trays.  Johnny hadn’t moved for the past two hours.

He stood so I could scoot out and he could take the middle seat.  Johnny glared at him from beneath the blanket when Paul quietly held out his arm.  “What are you doing?” Johnny asked in a low voice.

“You need to drink,” Paul said reasonably.  “I’m here, I’m offering.  Take it.”

“Get away from me,” Johnny growled, turning his back.

Paul sighed.  “Don’t be an idiot,” he said.

In a flash, Johnny turned around and drew Paul down in a headlock, as if they were fooling around.  His blanket just happened to fall over the both of them, hiding them for mere seconds.  Then it was Johnny’s turn to stand up, leaving Paul to slump over onto his empty seat with the blanket on top of him.  “Now who’s the idiot,” Johnny muttered, as he stepped past me and stalked down the aisle to the bathroom.

I had to say, Johnny did look better.

Paul moaned softly, and rubbed his neck.  Johnny wasn’t an idiot by any means.  Paul’s neck looked red, but it was not cut and bleeding like the first time Johnny had attacked him.  “Shh,” I said, pulling the blanket back over him.  “Go to sleep for a while.”

Seeing Paul’s ravaged neck spiked my own bloodlust, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t control.  Grandfather’s blood would keep me level-headed for a few more days.  My dad walked by on one of his frequent trips around the plane.   He spied Paul asleep across two chairs and gave me an approving smile.  “Good,” he said.  “He’s taking care of you.”

Johnny chose that moment to brush by him.  He roughly shoved Paul’s slack form upright and into the window seat so he could sit next to me.  He gave my father a cold stare.  “I’m taking care of Crystal,” he said firmly.

I cuddled into Johnny’s side after Dad went back to his seat.  Johnny kissed his fingertip and put it on my lips, and when I kissed it back, I made a tiny nick at the tip, turning my kiss into something more, something better.  Johnny smiled indulgently at me.  “You like that, don’t you?” he murmured.

“Mmm,” I agreed, closing my eyes.

Paul didn’t wake up until we landed in Boston, which was Johnny’s plan, I’m sure.   My dad had to catch another flight out of Boston, so we said good-bye at the airport.  “Call me if you need me,” Dad said.  I nodded.  I liked having Dad in my life, in all of my life, but I didn’t want to push the extent of his understanding of what I was, of what our entire family was.  Hopefully, Grandfather’s whammy would hold.

Johnny nodded stonily to my father, not offering to shake hands.  He hadn’t liked having his own whammy superseded, and I suspected he would gladly put it back in place, with a little blood to seal the deal, if I so much as gave him the word.

We got Paul some much needed liquids and followed him down to the subway.  Uncle Robert’s car was still at his apartment, so we planned to spend the day there before driving back to Lockwood.  Paul hadn’t complained about Johnny’s rough treatment on the plane, and he kept his distance now, finally figuring out that Johnny was jealous.

When the sun went down, we headed back towards Lockwood.  “Can I drive?” I asked, and both my boys said ‘No.’  I didn’t really want to, anyway.  I grinned.  Nice to see they agreed on some things.

Paul pulled up to the house, and my mother flew out of the front door to give us all hugs.  Even Johnny permitted her to hug him.  She peered into my face, trying to tell, I think, if I had been changed.  We had not told my parents everything that had happened or was about to happen, but my mother could guess.  “Are you all right?” she asked me.

Kenny came out, giving me a quick kiss on the cheek while I was still in my mother’s embrace, then shaking hands with the two boys.  They all carried our luggage into the house, leaving my mother and me alone on the front steps.  “I’m still me,” I told my mother as much of the truth as she needed to hear right then.

Johnny came back out.  “I’ll take her under the water on the Equinox,” he said, challenging my mother to disagree.  She paled, but she nodded.  That gave her a few more days with me as her human daughter.  Again, not exactly true, but close enough, thanks to Grandfather.

“Donny!  Johnny!”  Two little boys pelted down the stairs as we went back inside—two boys who should have been fast asleep at this hour.  Me, they ignored.  Brothers.

Paul caught my glance and his lips quirked up.  He had been ignored, too.

“Don’t you have somewhere to go?” Johnny asked him pointedly.  He had one kid in each arm and still managed to look formidable.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Paul said to me as he left.  Johnny scowled.

It felt good to be home.  I sighed as I flopped down on my bed.  In a few nights, my bed would be under the water.  I’d better enjoy this one while I still could.  Johnny came in after helping my mom tuck Kevin and Ian back into bed.  I moved over so he could lie next to me.  “Up for a hunt?” he asked with a little smile.

Was I!  I jumped up, eyes shining.  I couldn’t wait to try my new skills out in my old neighborhood!  We headed out through my window.  I still didn’t know that little trick of Johnny’s—how to unlock a locked door or window.  Then again, I had never tried.  Next time.  It was exhilarating to run through our own woods, past the cemetery and around the lake.  Johnny took me to the log house he said could be ours.  I had never really paid attention to it before.  It looked like a throwback to an earlier time, which was the point, I guess.  I loved it!

“Can you really buy it?” I asked Johnny.  The house was dark and empty now.  Its current owners had long since moved away but the house remained unsold.  Johnny opened the front door so I could see the inside.  The electricity had been shut off, but my changing eyes allowed me to view the open central room with its giant hearth with little problem.  The bedroom was off to one side, and a surprisingly modern bathroom had been added at some point.  There was no kitchen to speak of, but then again, we wouldn’t be needing one.  “I love it,” I said.

We walked slowly to the lake, in no particular hurry for blood yet.  Over the years, a few more cottages had sprung up as Lockwood loosened its restrictions on who could buy land near the lake.  The cottage, tiny and green and closed up tight for the winter, still brought a pang of nostalgia to me.  It would always be our place.

We sat on the beach in the dark, watching the clouds cross back and forth, obscuring the moon.  Not tomorrow night, but the next night Johnny would finally bring me under the water.  I remembered the first time Johnny had brought me here.  I was six, and Mommy had been fast asleep because, I realized now, Johnny had taken too much of her blood.  Johnny told me stories about Elizabeth and Emily and all his friends from long ago, and I remember thinking how sad he sounded.  “I’m glad you ended up with me,” I said softly, causing Johnny to glance at me curiously.  “Your father asked me which one of us chose the other.  I know I chose you, but did you really choose me?  Would you rather have been with Elizabeth, or one of the others?”  I didn’t know where all this was coming from, but I had to get it off my chest.

Johnny laughed silently, but he hugged me tighter.  “You.  It was always you.  I didn’t know it then because I didn’t know who I was.  If I had, I would have stayed away from all of them and never met you.  If I had remembered what I was, I would never have let myself fall in love with a human.  But I didn’t know, and I followed my heart until it finally led me to you.”

“That’s very poetic,” I said.  “But it doesn’t answer the question.  If one of the others had been able to change like me, would you have stayed with her?”

Johnny’s eyes clouded over.  “I don’t know,” he admitted.  “It wouldn’t have worked with any of the others.  None of them really understood what I was, and even if they had, I don’t know if any of them would have wanted to be like me in the end.”

I smiled.  “Not like me.  I never wanted anything or anybody else.”

“Good.”  Johnny’s melancholy mood lifted, just like it had on that long ago night when he brought me here and told me about his past.  He laughed.  “That means you chose me.”

I poked him in the ribs.  “Of course I chose you, silly boy.”

We ran up the steep hill to the top of the dirt road and on to the bridge, where we dangled our feet over the water until we got bored with it and ran on, to the cemetery, where it all began.  “Hello, Emily,” I said to the grave marker for little Emily Crew, who drowned at age six during the Civil War era.  She could have been like me, maybe not so strong in the blood, but she might have been able to change.  Johnny had thought so.  But she died before he ever had a chance to find out.

Johnny silently followed me from grave to grave as I made my way through the cemetery.  The names were as familiar to me as my own, and I knew now that most of them were family, like me.  A lot of them had been killed, purposely or accidentally, by Johnny over the years.  We stopped by Johnny’s grave, the one he had been buried in centuries ago when his first love had thought he’d drowned.  Old Jack had gotten him out as soon as night fell, but he still returned to this spot every so often, to remind himself of the past that almost was.  I touched the weathered stone, so overgrown with greenish lichen that the words were mostly indecipherable.  I knew them by heart anyway.  His name, spelled with an ‘i’ instead of the more prevalent ‘y’ of the time, and his date of death, but not birth, and the bare remains of the phrase ‘. . . and follow me.’   How apt.

He knelt in back of the sinking gravestone and removed a small rock which I had always thought was part of the support.  There was a small depression there and in it, a metal box.  He opened the box to reveal his treasures:  shiny pebbles which I realized were jewels, a heart keychain which I had given him one Christmas when I was eleven, and a crumbled dried flower, also from me, from our first summer together.  There were other things in there, too, but the flower really got to me.  “You kept it?” I asked, struggling to keep tears from my eyes.

“You asked if I chose you,” he said, quietly putting the box away.  “Over and over, year after year, I chose you.”

“We chose each other,” I said.

We stayed in the cemetery a little longer, not speaking, until Johnny asked me, “Are you hungry?”

“I could eat,” I said, grinning.

“Then let’s go.”

We ran past my house, past the little library and on towards Lockwood town.  Uncle Robert’s house was dark and silent, as it should be at three in the morning.  I thought for a minute Johnny was going to go in and pay a visit to Paul, but he just stared at the house, then went by.  We also bypassed Ellie’s house.  I had to remember to call her tomorrow and tell her I was back.

Out past the Walmart was a new development, new blood.  We headed there for our post-midnight snack, and I felt no guilt whatsoever slipping into a stranger’s house to sip some blood.  Johnny’s talent let us bypass alarm systems, too, as I learned as we crept past a steadily glowing monitor panel.  That was certainly handy.  I planned on having a long talk with Grandfather one of these days on the mechanics of it all, but for now, I just enjoyed the benefits.

Johnny left me at home and went to sleep under our own lake for the day.  “Tomorrow night, then one more,” he said, promises in his eyes.

I slept as long as I could in a household with two little brothers and a mother who hadn’t seen me in almost a month.  Eventually, I had to get up.

“I made you breakfast,” my mother said, although it was closer to one in the afternoon.  “Your favorite.  Strawberry waffles.”

I stifled the urge to gag.  “Thanks.”  I sat down and drank a little bit of the tea she had made for me, but I couldn’t bring myself to taste any of the food.  “Must be jet lag,” I lied.

“You look—different,” my mother said.

I sighed.  She was going to find out sooner or later.  “I’m changing,” I said.  “See?”  I opened my mouth so she could see my newly sharp teeth.  I was proud of those things, wasn’t I?

“Let me see!  Let me see!”  Ian climbed up into my lap so he could get a better look at my teeth.  “Like Donny!” he said, pleased.  I’d forgotten.  Kevin was in kindergarten now, but Ian only went to playgroup three days a week, and today was not one of them.  “Can I get Donny teeth?” he asked.

“Not yet,” I told him, much to my mother’s dismay.  “You have to be grown up first.”

“Okay,” Ian said, hopping down to go play.  He had already put the subject of my sharp teeth out of his mind.  So much for my five seconds of fame.  I was back to being the boring big sister.

“The Equinox is tomorrow night,” my mother said after Ian left the room.  “I can’t believe all I have with you are these two days.  It’s not enough.  I don’t want you to go.”

“Mom, I’m not going anywhere.”  Not true, if Johnny bought the log house.  “Nothing is going to change.  The water will help me to control my bloodlust, that’s all.”  Also not true, exactly.  The water was my heritage; it’s what would give me my power.  Blood did the same thing whenever I could not be under the water.  But I couldn’t explain that to my mother.  She knew nothing about water deities and supernatural powers.  She only thought I was a vampire.  “I’ll still see you and Kenny and the boys all the time.”  That was true.

“If you survive.”  My mother’s voice trembled.

“I will.  I’ve seen it.”  Sort of.

The relief on my mother’s face was evident.  “Let’s not talk about it anymore,” she said, smiling and clearing away my uneaten breakfast.  “Do you want to go shopping?”

We went to the big mall where Johnny had let me taste teenage blood, was it only a few months ago?  First, we picked up Kevin from his big school.  I should have been in class, too.  But my mother had arranged to have me home-schooled for my senior year, because I had missed almost the entire first month already.  The school thought it was due to health problems.  Yeah, I was allergic to the sun.

I still felt pretty good now, though.  I could be around people without wanting to tear their hearts out, and the sun felt pleasantly warm, not like an open furnace.  Grandfather had said it wouldn’t last, however, and as the day wound down to late afternoon, my bloodlust started to spike.  “I think I have enough clothes to last me through the week,” I joked, holding up two bulging shopping bags.  Shopping was therapy for my mom, and she laughed along with me.

Paul’s car was sitting in our driveway when we got back.  He jumped out as soon as he saw us, and carried our bags into the house.  Kevin and Ian, having no other male figure to idolize at the moment, climbed all over Paul, talking non-stop about their day—and my teeth.  Paul shot me a cautious look.

“It’s all right.  They won’t say anything to outsiders, will you, boys?” I asked, giving them my best glare.

They both nodded eagerly, then Kevin realized, and shook his head.  No.  Ian shook his head, too.  “We promised Johnny,” Kevin said.

“What will you do now that you’re here?” I asked.  Paul followed me into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of milk.  He sat across from me at the kitchen table and shrugged his shoulders.

“I have an interview at my father’s company in Boston next week,” he said.  “I’m hoping to get his territory and more or less take over for him.”

“So you’re staying in Lockwood indefinitely.”

“Yes.”  He gave me a grin.  “Who knows?  Maybe I’ll find someone while I’m here.”

Family, he meant.  Besides me, he meant.  “Ellie has a crush on you,” I said.

“Ellie?  She’s still a child.”  Paul dismissed my half-serious suggestion.

“She’s the same age as me,” I reminded him.

He shook his head, smiling wryly.

My mother came in to start supper.  “You’re staying, of course,” she said to Paul.  “I’m making a special meal for Crystal.  All her favorites.”

I groaned.

“Ask Paul about her favorite food,” came a voice from the doorway.  Johnny.  He was not happy.  He came around to my side of the table and stared at Paul.

“Johnny, won’t you stay for supper, too?” my mother asked, pretending she didn’t understand Johnny’s caustic remark.  “We’re having ice-cream for dessert.”

Johnny took the chair next to mine.  “In that case, I’ll stay,” he replied, never taking his eyes off Paul.
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