Darkness Dominates - Chapter 17

Rosie was fast off when her mum, Leola, Jennifer and Darcy were at the dining table. The topic presently under discussion was the sudden change of ‘Guild’ leadership. Jennifer addressed the matter of Julian’s assassination.

“His body’s been deposited in his apartment. I called it in to my colleagues as an unexplained death.”

“Who found the body?”

“I did, Pips, under the pretence of calling round to make routine enquiries about a crime that had been committed.”

“What crime?”

“A non-existent one, Darcy”

“How are you going to explain the white lines on his faces?”

“Easy, Leola – I’ll just suggest that it’s the result of some allergic reaction. My colleagues won’t have any reason not to believe me.”

Pippa was about to ask her three guests if they wanted a coffee, Leola suddenly said “I can’t go back to school with Rosie.”

“Why not?” asked Councillor Trennell.

“There’s too much danger surrounding her and Charlotte. Lynette and Emily will make your daughters their next targets.”

“If you don’t attend, Paula will wonder why. She’ll be expecting you to return at some point.”

“I’m sure that she will, Jennifer, but if I do go back, Pippa’s offspring will have to be turned.”

Looking at DCI Stoneham, Leola added “That condition of me going back applies to your daughter too, Jennifer.”

“I promised myself I’d never bring that side of my life into hers.”

“Well, circumstances have changed dramatically, so you’re going to have to break that promise. Making her immortal is the only way to keep her safe.”

“I’m only turning Rosie for now” said Pippa.

Leola offered no argument against Councillor Trennell’s decision.

“You’re forgetting something” said Jennifer. “Rosie’s other friend – Katy. Her parents are mortal. I’m not sure I can justify turning Katy too.”

“You won’t be turning Rosie or her two BFFs” Leola answered.

“It’ll be me turning the three of them, won’t it?” concluded Pippa gravely.

“You’ll be making your youngest a vampire, but not Alicia, nor Katy” revealed Leola.

Councillor Trennell gave her a nod of agreement.

“When do I turn Rosie?”

“Tonight, while she sleeps, Pippa.”

Without moving her gaze from Leola’s eyes, Pippa rose from her chair. Employing one of her vampire powers for the first time, she reached the staircase’s top step in a microsecond. A strong feeling of apprehension came over as she walked carefully up to Rosie’s bedroom. She was using stealth rather than speed. Pippa slowly turned the doorknob and entered. Rosie had fallen asleep with her I-Phone still in her left hand. A magazine was resting near the foot of her bed. Its pages were opened over where her legs and feet were under the covers. Though shut, her eyelids twitched slightly.

“What are you dreaming about?” thought Pippa.

Inside the question was a realisation she couldn’t escape. Lying in bed, eyes closed was no longer going to be possible for her second daughter. Another query leaped into her head. It was directed at Leola, even though she was downstairs. A minute passed before Pippa felt she was ready to irrevocably change her daughter’s life. She stroked her hair, saying “Wake up, love”. Rosie’s eyes opened narrowly at first, but with each blink they opened a little wider. She shuffled into a sitting position.

“Why did you wake me up, mum?”

Pippa wiped away a tear welling in her right eye before Rosie glimpsed it.

“Forgive me, Rosie.”

“What for”

“I’ve lost Doug – I’m not losing you and Charlotte too! You mean too much to me to let that happen!”

Her eyes opened fully when Rosie watched her mum sprout fangs. She moved further back towards the pillows and headboard.

“This is so a nightmare!”

This was the only reaction she managed to make. Pippa changed her daughter’s DNA fast, so as not to think about what she was doing. The seventeen year-old was out cold in two seconds flat. Councillor Trennell kissed her forehead and whispered “Now you’re safe!” In the time it took Rosie breathe in and out, Pippa was on the landing. She was poised to zip down to the back room again, but her speed whizzed her in the bathroom’s direction. The toilet lid was raised and she spent the next few minutes puking. It was symptomatic of the horror of what she’d done enveloping her.

“So, vampires can be sick” said Pippa, as she flushed the loo.

The rumbling and swirling noises were heard as Jennifer met her coming out of the bathroom.

“That was me after my first kill, Pips” she revealed to her.

“I can’t believe what I’ve just done” yelled Pippa.

DCI Stoneham couldn’t give her “it was the right thing to do” speech.

“If it’s any help, I’ll be saying the same thing when I have to turn Alicia.”

There was no way it could be, but this was only reassurance which sprang into Jennifer’s mind.

Darcy had moved into the kitchen when Pippa and Jennifer returned to the chairs they’d briefly vacated. Leola was using her area of the table to examine the highly-sought after weapons she’d found. Two tea towels individually covered her hands as she picked each one up. One of them still had a speck of Julian’s blood on it. Pippa was intrigued by the mythical status the daggers had obtained. Thinking about this gave her a respite from dwelling on what she’d been forced to do to Rosie.

“So, these are what will end your daughters’ lives?”

Leola laid them back down on the table.

“A single stab each will do the trick.”

In spite of trying to sound cold and emotionless, Councillor Trennell could sense her inner conflict.

“You’re in two minds, aren’t you?”

“Not about what I’ve got to do, but where it has to be done.”

Leola swiftly returned the daggers to the carrier bag’s interior. Once she’d unravelled the tea towels from around her hands and neatly folded them, she grabbed the bag’s handles. She left the back room, followed by Pippa.

“Where are you going?”

“Back to ‘The Red Moon’...however, I need to talk to you first.”

“What about”

“It’s private, so I’m going to need you to close the back room door.”

Though she was within her rights to remind Leola whose house this was, she shut it with her left hand. Her stare never shifted from her eye contact with Leola, however.

“So, why do you need to speak to me privately?”

“The first day I attended Rosie’s school, she found out about my ‘Guild’ ring. As a result, I tried to hypnotise her.”

“What do you mean you tried to?”

“That particular vampire ability didn’t work on your daughter.”

“I thought it did”

“Well, she’s immune – and before you ask me how this is possible...there’s only one way it can be.”

“Continue.”

Twice opening her mouth, Leola found either lead-up to this revelation lame. She dove in with confronting Pippa with this truth.

“Doug isn’t Rosie’s dad – her father’s a vampire.”

There were many ways Councillor Trennell could’ve reacted. The one that followed, Leola was half-expecting. An almighty slap was delivered to the teenage immortal’s cheek. It propelled her back into the house’s front door. Luckily, it took the full force of the impact. It was still attached to its hinges. Leola was a tad dazed. Despite being on her back, the daggers remained inside the bag. Clutching its handles, she got up, to hear Pippa yelling “Get out!” Leola’s hesitation to move led to Councillor Trennell screaming the same two words again. Before zooming away, Leola gave the vampire widow one last momentary glance.

With the same speed as Leola had used to get away from the house, Pippa headed back upstairs. Outside Rosie’s bedroom door, she turned and slid down to a sitting position. When the underside of the bottom touched the carpet, Pippa gradually began crying, her whole face juddering as the tears streamed down each cheek.

In the final days of her second pregnancy, Pippa was finding it harder to mask her guilt over her one night stand. The feeling had doubled because it had led to Rosie being conceived by a stranger, instead of her husband.

It was a Thursday when her waters finally broke. She was at the supermarket with Jennifer. She’d come over to help with the shopping. Three false alarms were why she was offering to help, plus she was using this get together as a way of making amends. Like most friendships, rows were inevitable. It had started off as a difference of opinion. As both of them were at different stages of their pregnancies, their hormones were soon jazzed-up. It escalated into a shouting match. Four days of cooling off made both women come to their senses and realise how daft their argument had been.

“Jennifer, could you bend down for me. The baby moves every time I start doing that.”

She kneeled and began checking the bottom shelf of the aisle containing sugar and other baking ingredients. WPC Stoneham had looked through three rows of boxed brown sugar before saying “Got it! Is this the brand you wanted?”

“Yes,” she said, “this is the...”

Pippa let out an almighty yowl. Jennifer put the box of sugar back on the shelf and clutched her right arm. The f-word was spoken eleven times in rapid succession. She bellowed it when visited by a whopper of a contraction. She panted for several seconds, and then felt something wet splash against her ankles. Jennifer heard it too and looked downwards to investigate. A puddle had formed on the aisle floor.

“I’ve pissed myself” said Pippa in a mortified tone.

“You haven’t, Pips” replied Jennifer. “Your waters have broken!”

A member of Sterling’s staff out amongst the aisles was ordered by Jennifer to find Doug. She occupied herself with the task of ringing for an ambulance for Pippa. It took several minutes for one to enter the car park. Doug climbed into the rear of the ambulance as the stretcher Pippa was laying on was lifted on board by the paramedics.

Jennifer stayed behind to contact family and friends about the imminent arrival of her friend’s baby. The first person she called was Doug’s sister.

The contractions got more intense halfway through the ride to the hospital. Her puffing picked up pace as the vehicle went over an uneven stretch of the road’s surface. More cries of pain, plus expressions including tightly-shut eyes and gritted teeth made Doug more anxious. He was holding her hand, but her squeezing was starting to diminish the circulation in his. Doug bore it so as not to add to her pregnancy stress. When she did let go of it, he had to shake and rub it vigorously.

A gathering of medical staff surrounded the stretcher as it was pushed towards the maternity unit. She found their wall of reassurance somewhat smothering, but her body hurt too much to pay that much attention to feeling hemmed in. Doug watched the delivery of his second child, unaware that it wasn’t actually his. He saw the medical staff help her through the act of pushing and breathing in and out. Seventeen agonising pushes later he heard a smack and then the sound of a newborn baby crying. He only saw it fully after the umbilical cord had been cut. One of the nurses who’d been by his wife’s side came out and told him Pippa had given birth to a girl. This was the first confirmation of the child’s gender he’d received. Technical problems with the ultra-scan had kept the baby’s sex a mystery until this point.

Being permitted into the delivery room couldn’t have come soon enough. Doug hurried in there, stopping when he spied Pippa cradling the child. He walked to the right-hand side of the bed she was in. Doug kissed them both on their foreheads. He was gentler with the baby’s, because hers was smaller.

“She’s got your chin” Doug said proudly.

Pippa was expecting him to say that she had her eyes or nose. A closer look on her part showed Doug was right. Her newborn’s chin was physically similar to her own. She touched it softly.

“What are we going to call her, Pips?”

Noticing how red the baby’s cheeks were, she answered “Rosie”.

Right after naming her child, Pippa revealed her right breast’s nipple. She lifted her 4 minute-old daughter up towards it. Rosie’s tiny lips covered it and she began ingesting her mother’s milk for the first time. Her eyes remained open as she suckled the teat. Pippa stared lovingly down at her newborn.

17 birthdays onwards, she was staring again at her daughter. On this occasion, her motivation for doing so was the new bombshell Leola had delivered. It was hard to get her head around. She was already wondering whether Rosie had inherited any biological traits common to vampires. Hearing that idea being spoken inside her head briefly made her think she was going insane. In the normal world, it would sound crazy. Yet, she now knew of a world inside the real one, and there was no way of detaching herself from it. She was suddenly burdened with the knowledge that Rosie didn’t have a human dad – she had an immortal one.

Whilst eating her breakfast, Rosie asked “Would you mind if I asked Jake to come for dinner tonight?”

“I thought you told him you wanted some space to grieve!”

“I can so do that and still see him.”

“Yeah, that’s fine Rosie.”

Councillor Trennell checked the time on her mobile phone’s display. She wanted how much time she and Rosie had to get ready.

“We’ve 11 minutes left to get sorted” she announced to her daughter.

Rosie had to leave the second slice of toast on her plate. She spent the next six minutes getting into her uniform. A text was sent to her I-Phone by Katy as she put on her school shoes. Rosie read it aloud.

“No way”

“What is it?”

“Katy’s going on a date with Nerdy Nigel! Like for real!”

“I wish you wouldn’t call him that. He’s a good lad and a lot brainier than some of the schoolboys round here.”

“And he’s not a vampire” added Rosie.

This was clearly a hostile reference to her discovering their existence. Pippa didn’t make an issue out of it. Her daughter still had her entire school day and the early evening to think of herself as human. Councillor Trennell knew that after 7pm, Rosie’s whole world would change. It was this realisation that suddenly made her question whether it wise to agree to Jake coming over for tea at her house. Unfortunately, to refuse would just lead to Rosie asking why. For the moment, she felt it best to say nothing. Bringing a potential boyfriend back for dinner was normal. Pippa felt that after what Rosie had been through, she deserved that type of normality.

During the mid-point of her car journey to Rosie’s school, Councillor Trennell switched on the radio. The local news bulletin had already begun. It was halfway through the headline concerning the murder of her husband.

“Efforts to catch the killers of supermarket manager Doug Trennell are continuing today” said the newscaster. “DCI Stoneham was unavailable for comment, but it is believed that they are narrowing the search for the two young women. Alvenshire Constabulary have offered a reward of £6,000 for any information leading to their arrest and conviction. They are also advising members of the public not to go near these individuals, should they see them. The suspects – Emma and Sophie Walsh – are deemed dangerous and should not be approached.”

“You’ve so got that right” Rosie said to herself.

Pippa then heard a moment’s pause and the rustling of a sheet of paper. The latter sound had been picked up on the microphone in front of her.

“We have just received breaking news” said the female newscaster. “Mayor Dennis Anthony has announced his resignation. We are now taking you live to a press conference in front of Alvenshire County Council headquarters.”

“What?”

Councillor Trennell immediately found the nearest kerb space to pull into. She turned the radio up as Mayor Anthony prepared to speak.

“Though I have only been the Mayor of Alvenshire for four and a half months, certain decisions I have recently made went against the values that formed part of my mayoral election campaign. I can therefore no longer remain in office, knowing I have betrayed these ethics. At the heart of this decision is the fact that I have turned a blind eye to activities going on within a council housing scheme championed by Councillor Gilbert. I have contacted the authorities and an internal investigation into this regrettable situation will be taking place very soon. I’ll be announcing my successor as Mayor this afternoon. I will now take a few questions.”

Pippa switched off the radio before the first one was asked. She gripped the steering wheel a little tighter than normal.

“Listen Rosie,” she began “you’re going to have to make your own way there from here. I’m needed at work immediately because of...”

“Mayor Anthony resigning – so get it, mum” she said, unfastening her seatbelt.

She took hold of her satchel and got out of her side of the car. Pippa leaned over as far as she could.

“Switch your I-Phone on at home time, Rosie! I’ll be calling you to let you know whether or not I can pick you up. Have you got your house key?”

Rosie searched her pockets. Feeling it inside one of them, she answered “Yeah, I’ve got it.”

“Right, I’ve got to go. Like I said a moment ago, I’ll let you know what the situation is, after three this afternoon.”

Rosie almost spotted the silver ring on her mum’s left hand. A burglar alarm on the exterior of a nearby house was triggered. It diverted her attention just as the finger it was on came into view. When she turned her face to where her mum had briefly parked, Pippa’s car had driven away.

Councillor Leonard was stood outside Pippa’s office door when she got there.

“I was worried about you, Pippa. You left that meeting so suddenly and...”

“This isn’t the time to talk about this, Tim!”

“You’ve heard, then!”

“The whole county has, Tim.”

“Did you hear the bit about Councillor Gilbert?”

“Hopefully, he’ll be the next one to go after Mayor Anthony.”

“Listen Pippa, you’re needed in the conference room.”

Tim then noticed the ring she had on too.

“That’s an unusual design, Pippa”

"Never mind about the ring – why am I needed in the conference room?”

“We all are. It’s to do with Mayor Anthony’s replacement.”

“Why do we need to be there to hear who it is? We’ll probably find out who’s taking over from him sometime this afternoon!”

“We already know who his successor is”

“Okay Tim, I know you’re dying to tell me – so who is it then?”

“It’s you, Pippa.”