Page 11 of The Vampire King's War

Christian had seen what looked like knots in the threads of all the souls. Perhaps this was one of those knots that Christian had to move through in order to get to where the Harrows were now. Christian shifted uneasily. This moment felt intimate somehow. He shouldn’t be privy to this. But just as he thought to find a way out of here and back on his journey there was a soft knock on the door and both Christian and Jack turned towards the noise.

Joanna Harrow stood in the doorway in a pair of khaki pants and white tank top. Her hair was tied high on her head in a messy ponytail. She wore no makeup but she was breathtaking in Christian’s perspective.

“Jack,” she said simply. One of her hands was resting on her flat stomach, but something about the way she was almost cradling her belly told Christian she was pregnant.

Pregnant with Julian?

Immediately, the sensation that he was seeing something private came upon Christian again, but his feet seemed rooted in the ground. He had to see this in order to pass forward.

Jack’s eyes lowered to her hand and he seemed to know, too, that she was pregnant. He dropped his feet from the desk to the ground and the book slipped from his fingers. There was this mixture of joy and dread on Jack Harrow’s face that had Christian puzzling.

“Are we…” Jack began and stopped. His Adam's apple bobbed up and down wildly as he swallowed.

Joanna gave him a tremulous smile and a single tear ran down her cheek. “When that strange little girl prophesied that we would have a baby when the doctors had told me that we couldn’t…” Joanna swallowed as if emotion clogged her throat and caught her words there for a moment. “As much as I told myself I didn’t believe here, I did.”

Strange little girl? Sophia… could it be her? Telling them the future?

Jack got up and came over to her. He enfolded Joanna into his arms. He rocked her. “Listen to me--”

“She said we wouldn’t be there for him, Jack,” Joanna’s voice was strung out with grief.

“Listen--”

“That he’ll have to look to others to be his parents, his friends, his guides, everything,” Joanna sobbed.

“But she also said that he would be happy, Joanna. After everything, he would find the person he was meant to be with and that--”

“That it would change the world,” Joanna whispered. Tears still tracked down her cheeks as she held her husband close.

“Yes, change the world.”

Suddenly, Joanna was shaking her head and pulling back from her husband. “No, Jack, no! We need to be there for him! The future isn’t set! We should give up our explorations! We should just teach! Stay here and teach! Where it’s safe and--”

Jack didn’t say anything, just looked down at her and there was something in his expression that made her cry harder. Silent tears that had her shoulders shaking.

“We can’t outrun fate, Joanna. You know that.” Jack ran a hand up and down her spine. “Anything we do will lead us to the future we will not want.”

“Then how do we protect our son?!” Joanna hit his chest with her fists.

“We teach him all we know. We surround him with people who will love and care for him. We make sure he has everything he needs,” Jack stated emphatically.

Joanna closed her eyes, squeezing out a few more tears. “But he won’t have us.”

Christian’s eyes itched with unshed tears of his own. His face felt hot. His hands were clenched into fists.

Don’t worry, Christian thought. We’re going to get you back.

The world blurred again and he was being wrenched forward on the “tow rope” once more. Christian believed now that the blurs were the Harrows’ lives, not physical places he was passing through. These were things that had defined those lives, or times things perhaps he needed to see. He looked back on his memories of the Harrows now and realized that they had known that they were going to be taken from their son. Sophia had come to them.

Did they realize that they were going to die? Joanna begged Jack for them to just teach and stay away from adventuring. Sophia must have told them something definite. But the journals we found didn’t mention this…

There was always this sense of this moment meaning everything. The Harrows had lived life to its fullest. They had acted like that moment could be the last moment. His parents and many others had remarked on that. Not that the Harrows were afraid of death, but just that they lived with a passion that few people could match. It was so much easier to sit back and watch television and tell yourself that you would do that thing tomorrow.

The Harrows didn’t know how many tomorrows they would have. They did live up to their promises to prepare Julian for the life we led and finding Daemon.

The “tow rope” jolted to a halt once more but this time it was less jarring to Christian as he was expecting it. He was back in the Ever Dark again and, once more, in a place that he recognized. It was the main gate to Nightvallen.

He remembered Julian and him getting inside this amazing city. Christian felt that sense of wonder, the same as when he’d first seen it and couldn’t quite believe it. Jack and Joanna were staring at the gates, their heads tilted back to see the tops of the towers and spires and domes above the huge pale stone walls.

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