Read Damned if I Don't (The Harker Trilogy Book 2) Online
Authors: Erin Hayes
Damned if I Don't (The Harker Trilogy Book 2)
DAMNED
IF I DON’T
the harker trilogy book two
ERIN HAYES
I may be a vampire hunter.
But I’ve single-handedly screwed up big time.
After botching our chance to cure vampirism and the infection that’s killing me, I’m at a loss. My cousin Carl won’t speak to me. The bastard who killed my sister is still alive. And Jude, the amnesiac vampire, says he’s in love with me.
What’s even more shocking is that I love him back.
But the more Jude learns about his past, the more it will tear our relationship and our lives apart. I’m running out of time to find a new successor to become the new Progenitor. Because when I die, it’s game over for all of us.
I Do Believe in Faeries
The Harker Trilogy
Damned if I Don’t
Damned Either Way (Coming Summer/Fall 2016)
Jacob Smith is Incredibly Average
Head Case: A Weird Science Romance (Available on Radish)
DAMNED IF I DON’T
by Erin Hayes
Cover art by the author
Editing by Lindsay Galloway at Contagious Edits
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidences are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2016 Erin Hayes
No part of this book may be reproduced or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
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For my fourteen-year-old self, who sat down to write the original version of this story. I’d like to say that dreams come true and never give up.
That goes for you too, dear reader. Never. Give. Up.
DAMNED IF I DON’T
The Harker Trilogy Book Two
Table of Contents
Edie
Five years ago
“Meghan, Edie,” the nurse says, coming out into the waiting room.
My older sister and I look up at her. I’d been closing my eyes, hiding within the confines of my hoodie while listening to the Ramones with one earbud. I haven’t been able to focus on anything since we’ve been here, but I’ve kept an ear open in case there’s news.
And now there’s news.
Meghan looks up from her laptop. She’s been busy checking the V Boards for anything new. As the Harker, she has to keep an eye on what’s happening in the vampire underworld.
Even when our father is dying.
The nurse’s face says it all. I know it’s bad news before even she speaks. “It’s time. He wants to see you.”
I suck in a deep breath and bite my bottom lip. How can it all come to this? After only four months? Iciness spreads throughout my body at the thought of my father dying. With Mom gone, I’ll be an orphan. Meghan and I will be alone. Just the two of us.
No, no, no, no.
Meghan shuts her laptop with an audible
snap
and quickly packs it away. She moves with precise, almost robotic movements and her face doesn’t betray her thoughts. She’s dealt with a lot of shit in her time, so her stoic expression is one I know well but I would have expected more emotion from her, especially since this is our father we’re talking about.
She gets up from her seat, and I follow suit, noting that she holds herself much more regally than I do. While I’m dressed in a hoodie and a pair of sweatpants, she looks like she just came from an office job, wearing a denim shirt dress and boots. You wouldn’t think that she’s about to say good-bye to her father. She’s keeping herself carefully composed. She’s the Harker after all, she has an image to maintain.
Meanwhile, on the inside, I’m a fucking mess.
There’s nothing I can do to save my father.
My heart thuds in my chest as the door to my dad’s hospital room opens and the smell of sickness and decay hits me. There is no graceful way to die when you have terminal brain cancer. A bit of me wishes that Dad had passed on in his sleep before he collapsed finally, when the tumor caught up with him. I wouldn’t have been able to say good-bye, but maybe it would have been kinder to Dad.
I don’t want to be here. I want to be hanging out with friends at Chipotle, or anything that normal fifteen-year-olds do. I’ve never been normal, but this is taking it too far. Fate is taking Dad away.
Please stay with me, Dad. Don’t leave me.
We walk into the room, and my mind scatters in a dozen directions. First, I wonder if there could have been a better place for Dad to die. The patient rooms at MD Anderson are nice and everything, but surely there’s a beautiful place on his bucket list where he’d rather be. A sandy beach or in the botanical gardens. But it’s too late now.
Then I wonder why there aren’t more people here. My family isn’t exactly very popular or big. Dad is an only child without many relatives, and my maternal side of the family is small, but this last round of sickness came on too quickly for any of them to come. As far as friends, well, the Harkers don’t have many friends as they get older. It’s too hard to maintain friendships people when you’re constantly trekking around the world trying to kill vampires. We’ve never been to a Super Bowl party in our lives. I’m pretty sure we’ve never even been invited to one.
Thirdly, I wonder if Dad’s comfortable with all of those wires and monitors beeping around him. In a matter of days, he’s aged thirty years. He’s lost so much weight and his skin isn’t the right color. There’s no hair on him.
He doesn’t look like Dad. He doesn’t even look human.
Dad deserves better than this.
“Edie…Meghan…” His voice is soft, raspy as he raises his hand in our direction.
Meghan takes his hand and sits on the edge of the bed. She caresses Dad’s forehead. “We’re here, Dad,” she says. “Edie and I.” She looks up at me. She starts crying now, whereas I think I’m all dried up inside. “Edie, come here.” She waves me over.
The frozen feeling in my legs roots me to the spot. My hands are stuffed to the elbows into the front pocket of my hoodie. I want to crawl under the bed and go back ten years to when both Mom and Dad were still alive.
When I wasn’t facing real world problems like this.
My eyes connect with my sister’s, and her plea in her gaze unfreezes me just enough to move my heavy feet to the bed. One step. Two steps. I find myself on the opposite side of the bed. I take my seat and pick up Dad’s hand. It’s cold and feels like if I squeeze hard enough, it will shatter into a million pieces.
Like my heart.
“Hey Dad,” I whisper.
His face relaxes and he sighs into the pillow. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“I’m so sorry,” Meghan says, her tears spilling onto her cheeks. “I wish…I wish…”
A small smile comes to Dad’s lips. Tiny pauses punctuate his sentences as he labors to breathe in between words. “Don’t be sorry.” He coughs, light little hacks that shake his entire body. “It’s life.”
I want to scoff. Dad knows as well as I do that the lines between life and death are liquid, unfair, and fickle. As vampire hunters, we’ve all seen those concepts blur. In fact, in a desperate moment a few months back, when we first found out that he had brain cancer, I asked if he wanted to be turned into a vampire—even though he doesn’t carry Harker blood, he could live on as one of the undead.
I remember him chuckling.
“No Edie. I don’t want to live like that. I want to be with your mother. And die as you’ve always remembered me.”
Looking at him now, I wonder if he regrets that decision. I’ll have this image of him engraved in my head forever. There will be good memories of him, too, but there will also be nightmares; a different kind of nightmare than I normally have. Vampires are nothing compared to seeing your father deteriorate before your eyes.
My bottom lip trembles. “Dad.”
His gaze lands on me and his smile widens ever so slightly. “Edie.”
I don’t want him to go. I don’t want him to leave me.
“I love you both,” he says.
The tears come. I crumble faster than Meghan, collapse inward on myself. Sobs wrack my body and I grasp his hand like it’s a lifeline. Mine, not his. I will a piece of my vitality into him, to give him strength so he can live a little longer. So that he’ll be there for me. I
need
my father.
Don’t leave me.
I cry until the heart monitor flatlines and his hand goes limp in mine.
No, no, no, no.
Meghan’s crying along with me. She cries until her husband, Graeme, comes in and wraps her up in his arms. He whispers to her, telling her that our father is no longer in pain.
I grit my teeth. He may no longer be in pain, but that doesn’t help the living. We’re dealing with our own forms of pain, and it hurts like fucking hell. Right now, I’m stuck with the realization that not only is my father gone, but that I was helpless to do anything about it.
I’m descended from a long line of vampire hunters and I can’t even save the ones I love.
I couldn’t stop his disease from spreading.
I couldn’t stop his suffering.
I couldn’t do anything.
What good am I if I can’t stop the ones I love from hurting like this?
“Edie, where’re you going?” Meghan sniffles.
I’m almost to the door before I realize that I moved. I have to get some air. I have to rid myself of the memory of Dad’s hand going limp in my own. Of the sound of the heart monitor flatlining.
I just need some space.
“Out. I’m going out.”
She calls after me and so does Graeme, but I push them out of my head and away from me as I wander down the hallways. When I’m in the elevator, I anxiously watch as the levels count down until I’m on the ground floor. When I emerge from the doors and out into the open nighttime air, I gasp, filling my lungs.
A cry escapes my throat as I collapse to my knees.
Dad’s gone.
I’m Edie Harker, the younger sister of the Harker, the greatest vampire hunter in the world.
And I’m fucking helpless.