Page 20 of Born Wicked

Holly schedules that blood drive for a few days from now. She gets the blast sent out, word starts burning through Chicago like wildfire.

With Dev Roshan and his daughter Lily working in the emergency room, things are finally running the way they should be.

So when I walk out of the hospital on a very chilly but clear Tuesday morning, I don’t feel like I’m completely drowning.

I pull my phone from my pocket and call Jon. He answers after just two rings.

“Since I don’t seem to be a murder suspect anymore and things are finally running smoothly for the first time in literally forever, I wondered if you might be feeling up for a trip?”

“Where to?” He says it in a way that tells me no matter what the answer is, he isn’t going to say no.

“Kansas,” I say simply.

CHAPTERSEVEN

I takedeep breaths in and out as soon as the plane detaches from the terminal and starts toward the runway. My fingers wrap around the armrests, and before I can remember my hands are way too damn strong, I crack the plastic on both of them.

“You haven’t flown much yet,” Jon says from beside me.

I shake my head, and my stomach rolls just a little bit. “I can count every time on one hand. I mean, I’m immortal. If the plane were to crash, I couldn’t even die, but I’m still panicking like…”

Jon places his hand over mine. “It’s okay to be scared sometimes, Juliet.”

The touch is calming. I might not be a little girl, but it’s as if my very DNA can sense that this is the man who created me, the man who instinctually would’ve taken care of me if he’d been able to be there. Slowly, my heart rate calms just a little.

“My parents met in the Bahamas, but my mother was already married to another man,” Jon says, and goodness, he’s good. My brain instantly forgets to focus on my fear and dials in to the words he’s saying. He smirks at my immediate changed state of mind. “My father tried to pay her husband to divorce her, but he refused.”

“Wasn’t the Bahamas, like, crawling with pirates,” I ask, trying to piece the timeframe together.

“Exactly,” Jon says with a smirk. “Now, my mother’s husband was a snitch for the Governor, and she hated that. Despised him for it. Pretty soon, she was hanging out in taverns, which were filled with pirates. That’s where she met my father.”

This doesn’t sound real. This sounds like an over-the-top movie.

But looking at Jon, with his scars, the history in his eyes, I know he’s not making this up.

The plane rounds, and the pilot announces we’ve been cleared for takeoff. Once again, my fingers grip the armrests, and Jon puts his hand over mine again. The aircraft creeps forward and gains speed by the second.

And smooth and easy, we lift off into the air half a minute later.

“Perfectly smooth,” Jon says, looking across me to the window. It’s nighttime, so it’s nice neither of us needs sunglasses. We both watch out the window as Chicago grows smaller and smaller. The darkness of Lake Michigan gets bigger. And when I finally realize that I’m truly on my way back to Kansas, my anxiety shifts.

“What then?” I ask, needing the distraction.

“She took to him right away, and within a few weeks, she disguised herself as a man and joined his crew. She raided with him, fought right at his side. And none of the other crew members knew she was a woman, until she started showing.”

“When she was pregnant with you,” I say with a smile.

Jon shakes his head. “My parents went to Cuba, and there, my brother was born.”

I sit up straight. “So, he’s a vampire too then. Is he still alive?”

“Unfortunately, my parents weren’t ready to give up the pirate lifestyle yet,” Jon continues. “They left my brother with a family who already had a few children. Took me a few years to find out that he died of pneumonia at the age of seven. When he resurrected, the family thought he was a demon. They beheaded him and buried him once again.”

A curse slips past my lips. “I hadn’t really thought of it much, but it has to happen, that Born must die before they’re an appropriate age to Resurrect.”

“And they don’t have the mental capacity to control their urges,” Jon says with regret. “Thankfully, it doesn’t happen often, but it does happen.”

“So, when did you come into the picture?” I ask, needing to move on from this dark and touchy side of the vampire world.