Bulletproof (Healer) (29 page)

             
There’s my dad.

             
I run. My feet hitting the ground harder than they ever have before. It feels like I’ve been running for miles before I finally reach his arms. He wraps himself around me and sobs loudly in my ear. He smells like Dad. Sugary and familiar. “Hi dad,” I say.

             
“Welcome back baby,” he kisses my forehead then I succumb to the tears and fold into him. We stand on my doorstep crying for a while. Then Shannon joins and she kisses me and soaks my top in her tears. Then Bruce and Jana are there too. Bruce is dancing wildly, throwing his arms in the air and shouting ‘yippee, Cassie’s home!’ and Jana has her wiry hands around my knees and humming.

             
When the welcome is over, although nobody wanted to let go, dad sighs and lays his hand on my shoulder, “We need to talk.”

              Dad sends Bruce and Jana away to their rooms, much to their disgust. They’re so excited to see me, it warms my heart up. I can’t wait to spend the whole day tomorrow, playing games with them and listening to their naive chatter. Then he dismisses Shannon, this is a father-daughter discussion. “It’s good to have you back, honey,” she says and kisses me on the forehead.

             
When she is away I turn to my dad’s face. Has time apart made me more acutely aware of the details on his face or has he aged tremendously since I left? There are lines across his face that I never noticed before. I speak first, “You knew, didn’t you? About the vampires and mum and Healers?”

             
He nods slowly and I gasp a little. I can’t deny I’m shocked to watch him readily admit that for the last seventeen years he has lied to me, avoided telling me the truth about my mum. If he told me that she was a Healer too, that I wasn’t completely alone in the world, I might have felt more normal. And he let my obsession with vampires grow, unhealthily, whilst knowing they could, would, bring my downfall like they had my mum. “I couldn’t tell you, Cassie, it wouldn’t be fair. I didn’t want you constantly living in fear, wondering when they would come for you,” dad says, he’s still crying.

             
“Instead you lived in fear for me?” I say. “That’s why you didn’t let me do anything? You were scared that they would take me if you let me out of your sight?”

             
“I was right though. The second I turn away, they took you from me,” he says and his sadness is heartbreaking. It was so selfish of me to go looking for vampires like that. I didn’t think about how hard it would be for my dad to lose me. “I didn’t know what to do, Cassie. You have to understand I just tried my best.”

             
“Did you not look for me? Did you phone the police?” I ask, looking around me and realising the house is tidy. There has clearly been no investigation undertaken in this home.

             
Dad sighs, “I knew exactly where you were and who had you but I couldn’t tell the police. After your mother, I learned enough about vampires to understand how dangerous they are. If I sent the police after a vampire, they would come have me killed. I had to protect Bruce and Jana too.”

             
It’s selfish but his words make me feel sad. He let me go, he gave up. I could have died, I should have and he was going to let the vampires get away with it because he needed to keep Shannon, Bruce and Jana safe. It vexes me to admit that he is right. Maurice would slaughter my family if he alerted the authorities to the secret world of vampires. Dad already knows too much if he knows about mum and what they did to her and tried to protect me from the same fate. Knowing this doesn’t stop me wishing he found a way to save me, fought a little harder for his daughter.

             
“You won’t believe me but I knew you’d come back,” he smiles weakly.

             
“I don’t,” I choke. If he knew anything about vampires then he wouldn’t have expected me to ever come home. In his eyes, I was gone forever. Murdered brutally for the magical qualities my blood possesses just like his wife. “It’s not fair. You should have put me up for adoption the second you realised I was a Healer like mum. I’m putting you in too much danger, Bruce and Jana too.”

             
Maurice could show up any minute and behead us all, drain me and make sure he gets every last drop this time. I just hope Rose and Arrow can figure out a way to stop him, just like they found a cure for Gabe, before my family gets hurt. Although I hope this spell won’t  provide such a heartbreaking finale for me.

             
“How did you do it, Cass? How did you make it home? Everything I discovered about vampires, everything they did to your mother... How could you survive?”

             
“It’s a long story,” I sigh, suddenly feeling exhausted. “Let’s just say I had some amazing people to help me.”

             
“We have time,” he says. I want to believe him that life is endless - each moment leaking into the next - but time is precious. You never know when someone you love will be snatched away, never know when your next chance will be your last. My mother didn’t have enough time, neither has Gabe. Living your life like it will never end is a thoughtless way to go. If I had my way, I would never sleep. I’d spend all my fragile time watching, being with my family. Paying attention to every fraction of a movement, all their silly habits. I want to memorise the way they laugh and build jigsaw puzzles, play charades, build dens in the garden with them. I’m so scared of losing them, I never want to let them out of my sight. I realise this is exactly how my dad has felt about me for the past seventeen years.

             
“It was the same vampire who took mum,” I say through gritted teeth. Thinking about Maurice makes me feel sick. They way I let him win me over with his charm. The way I succumbed to his mind washing because it made me feel nice, like wrapping myself up in cotton wool and shielding my eyes from the painful truth. I wish I had been stronger.

             
I continue, “He tried to... woo me. Bought me expensive gifts and took me to Paris. He treated me like a princess then he hooked me up to blood bags and drained me of almost all my blood...” I can see my dad turn pale.

             
“Maybe this can wait until morning?” I suggest but my dad shakes his head and insists I carry on. “I almost died. I’m sure I was only minutes away from death but my friends saved me. I met the most spectacular people, dad. Rose, she’s amazing and Gabe, he’s... well... he’s the best person I’ve ever met.”  It feels like I’ve been stabbed when I realise that my dad will probably never meet Gabe. I want to bring him home, introduce him to my dad as my boyfriend, let Jana sit on his knee but Gabe is being removed from my life right now. “They helped me escape. Rose staked Maurice, the vampire, with wood and left him there butI it won’t last long because he drank my blood.”

             
“Does your blood make them stronger? That’s why they want you? That’s why they wanted your mum? I’ve tried to figure it all out but that always seemed strange to me, what the vampires actually needed you for...” It’s hard to stomach that my dad has been living a secret life all along. While I sat, mindlessly, reading commercial articles about the smiling, glamorous vampires inhabiting the United States, my dad was doing his own research.

             
I nod, “Yes, my blood, Healer blood, makes a vampire
even
stronger. Wood, fire, sunlight are all poisonous to vampires but my blood can make them immune. And there are others too, like me and mum...” Like Claire. I shudder. The girl who lost everything she once had, the girl that Gabe lost. She is completely unaware of the broken man she has created.

             
Dad lets out a loud puff then looks at me and smiles, “I can’t believe you are really here. The nightmare is over.”

             
I hasten to tell him that the nightmare is far from over. Maurice is still alive and he will be plotting for vengeance against me, my friends and now my family too. That revelation can wait until the morning. “I know, I never thought I’d see you again,” I say and reach out my hand, lying it on top of his. “I missed you so much, dad.”

             
Never again will I underestimate the bond between my father and I. I won’t stamp my feet and scream about the unfairness of my sheltered life. I’ll appreciate every hug, his kind eyes, his bad cooking, his hearty laugh. All those painstaking days in Toulouse, I would lie still praying I would get the chance to be with my family again but never imagining I could grasp this moment so swiftly. It feels wrong that I’m getting my life back when Gabe is about to have his cruelly snatched away from him.

             
“You’ll be tired,” dad says.

             
“So will you,” I say softly, checking out the deep purple bags under his sleepy eyes. Losing a daughter must make peaceful sleep difficult.

             
My dad walks me to my room. It smells fresh like citrus fruits. Shannon must have emptied her frustration with all the cleaning equipment under the kitchen sink. My bed is in pristine condition - it doesn’t look right -  I can’t wait to climb underneath the duvet and kick my feet - make it feel like my own bed again. “Night, my angel,” dad says, kissing my head.

             
“Goodnight dad,” I smile. “Love you.”

             
“I love you too,” he says. “Now please don’t go chasing any more vampires, Cassie, I couldn’t stand losing you again.”

             
“I solemnly swear I’ll never go looking for trouble again,” I say, tucking myself under the covers. I don’t care if I’m fully dressed.

             
“I hope so. I have a hard enough time keeping it away from you,” he closes the door behind him and I listen as his footsteps pace up and down the landing. I hear him whisper goodnight to Bruce and Jana before making his way to bed and then the house falls silent.

             
Except it isn’t silent. The familiar humming still resides here that make a house a home. The sound of water filtering through the pipes and the floorboards spontaneously creaking and no one can explain why. Maurice’s house was impeccably maintained - no creaks or groans from gradual wear. It was alien to me. The sounds of my home hug me and help lull me asleep.

              The nightmares cannot be kept at bay. Even in my own bed, surrounded by family, thousands of miles apart Maurice is still haunting me and plaguing my every thought.

             
I dream he finds me and enters my house with wooden stakes still impaling his body. There are bloody images of him killing my family. First Shannon then Bruce and Jana and finally I watch him bludgeon my father before he turns to me. His evil face, like the one inked onto Gabe’s skin, is staring into my soul. I am riddled with guilt at the pain I have caused, the pain he has administered. He comes towards me with a sharp needle in his fist, his fangs bared and dripping with the blood of my loved ones. He is about to kill me when I hear Rose cry. I turn around and Rose and Gabe are lying on my bedroom floor - bleeding to death. Then I wake up.

             
I’m awake, sweating and panting. I must have screamed because I’ve woken dad up. He’s standing in the doorway with a pained expression. There must be nothing worse than watching your child, or anybody you love, suffer whilst being completely incapable of taking the pain away. I know how that feels, I remind myself, I’ve done that every day of my life - watching my dad panic and worry without knowing how to reassure him that it will all be okay, that I will be alright in the end.

             
“It’s okay, honey,” he cradles me in his arms, rocking my back and forth like he did when I was a child and I’d cry for my mother, like he does for Bruce and Jana when they have a nightmare about witches and goblins only it’s different because the monsters from my dreams are real. “It’s okay, sweetie.”

             
He sits with me for hours until I resolve to pretend to fall asleep so he can go back to bed. I’m scared that by closing my eyes I am inviting the bad images back in but I manage to keep them away long enough to watch the sun rise and the morning light pour into my bedroom.

             
Even if Maurice never comes for me, it’s going to take a long time to get back to normal. I’ve seen too much and finally tasted the mortality that I craved but it’s left me feeling breathless and antsy whenever I think about it.

             
I trudge down to the kitchen. Bruce and Jana are giggling, mouths powdered with toast crumbs. Bruce is dressed in his neat uniform - there is now strawberry jam embroidered on his collar. I should be going to school too, to learn about logarithms and the French imperfect tense. I wonder what dad told the school about my extended period of absence. If he didn’t tell the police I was missing, what did he tell people?  They would certainly notice that Miracle Girl wasn’t around.

             
“Good morning,” Shannon smiles at me and hands me a plate of grilled cheese. In the same way she does with my dad when he is unhappy, Shannon is caring for me with food. “Did you sleep well, honey?”

             
I nod, “Eventually.” The black suitcases under my eyes tell a different story though.