The Night the Vampires Came

Chapter 1 - Bonus Content - Unofficial Epilogue

Author's Note: This is an unofficial bonus chapter and it's just for fun. Once again, this chapter contains major spoilers for Darkly Devoted.

(Unofficial) Epilogue

It was almost midnight when I sneaked back to the hotel room I was sharing with my parents. I fully expected to give me a lecture about how late it was, but they were both sound asleep in their bed. I could hear my dad's snoring which always sounded like two rusty mechanical gears grinding against each other from the living room of the two-bedroom suite.

Good. I wasn't ready to talk to them about Holly tonight.

My dad was snoring so loudly that I realized I could sneak into the shower and wash my hair without waking them. As I stared at my reflection in the cloudy bathroom mirror, I realized that I finally looked at something close to happiness. It's been over a week since Joseph and Grace died, and I once thought I would never feel normal again.

But it's funny how life goes on, even in these desperate times, perhaps like that fish that crawled out of the ocean — humans can adapt to anything.

I felt guilty for feeling this way, even as Holly awaited news of what happened to her parents and brother. My mother was probably still grieving over Grace, and my father needed to find a new place for the three of us to live.

Yet, for what it was worth, at least our family was reunited. It was a miracle that the doctors got that Lumin to my mother in time, considering she was locked inside our house. How in the heavens did she get help within 72 hours? Would I dare hope for that kind of divine grace for any of my other friends or Holly's family?

My eyes drifted to the pillbox that was jutting out of my mother's makeup bag. No, I snapped at myself. Stop asking questions. Just accept that a good thing happened for once, something that I didn't deserve but which the universe deigned to give me.

I couldn't stop my hands from reaching into that little make-up bag with the zebra print and retrieving that pill case. It was a seven-day course. I saw a handwritten note from a doctor plastered over the bottom of it so there could be no mistake that the user would follow the instructions.

Take one a day for seven days with water.

One a day. I opened the pillbox. There were two pills left. How could this be possible that she had two pills left? That meant she only started taking these pills five days ago. The Blight Rain infected her over two weeks ago.

No matter how I turned the dates around in my mind, the numbers didn't work. Lumin pills only worked for 72 hours after the fact. That was unless these weren't Sylvirua pills.

I cracked open the pill case and picked up the last pill, the one she was supposed to take two days from now. I knew what I would find even before my eyes saw the small T engraved into the casing of the tiny green and white tablet that almost seemed to glow in the flickering light of the bathroom.

Swallowing hard, I finally understood why no one else got out of Windflower Springs, not Holly's family, not the bus driver who dropped me off on Mott street so long ago, not Mr. Weintz, the owner of the 7-11 or the doctors who stayed behind to work that hospital by Holly's house. They were all gone. Everyone was dead or turned.

Except for my mother.

I heard Joseph's voice in my head as I put the pill back in its case with trembling fingers.

They say the Lumins Terciel made were bloody amazing. Do you know how the Yagerin ones stop working after the infection has been around for 72 hours? The Terciel ones keep going.