Today was Monday, February 19th. Five days had passed since the chaotic events involving my near-execution, the plane crash, and being stranded in the desert.
After returning home on February 14th, not much had happened since then. Everyone who got detained in the war to spare my life is still recovering in their detained, healing sleep, so the grand mansion has mostly been infected with a more gloomy, depressing atmosphere, compared to its usual joyous setting.
Meanwhile, I've mostly been busy catching up on my college courses, while Kai has been preoccupied with military affairs. Although he has been secretive about it, I overheard that war was spreading much more rapidly across different dimensional worlds than anyone had originally anticipated. To keep myself occupied while Kai dealt with these important matters during their private meetings, I decided to attend college today, as I hadn't been there in a while.
In the middle of typing, my Professor asked as he was packing his papers into his briefcase, "Are you ready to leave?"
"Yes, I'm just finishing up this last sentence in my diary," I replied, typing in the last words for today.
There wasn't a thing I didn't log that my vamp children wouldn't be able to read on my laptop someday.
As I struggled to stand, Darlene offered, "Here, my lady, let me help you!"
Quickly, she came over and assisted me from the lower rows of seats where I was sitting. I usually sat in the upper rows, but my pregnancy and swollen feet made stairs difficult to tackle.
"Kai isn't around," I reminded her as she helped me up by my forearm. "Call me Victoria."
Worried, she glanced at my Professor as he gathered his belongings to leave. "I heard nothing," he remarked, winking at her with a reassuring smile.
Once my Professor was transformed into a vampire, his rank would be far above Darlene's as Mr. Collin's guardian. With that in mind, I understood why she kept addressing me so formally. If Professor Hank reported her informal behavior to Kai, Darlene risked facing punishment. Lenient about certain matters, Hank didn't consider it a serious issue worth reporting.
"I'll get your stuff, Victoria," Darlene softly muttered.
With everything ready, we left the building and got into Professor Hank's SUV to leave. I sat in the front, while Darlene relaxed in the back seat behind me.
Once we pulled onto the main road, Hank offered, "You may play the radio if you like."
"Any requests?" I asked as I started to browse through the stations.
"Choose whatever you like," Darlene chimed in with her reply.
"Maybe I should play my playlist from my phone," I grumbled when I couldn't find anything good on the radio.
My Professor chuckled at me and recalled a fond memory. "I remember after picking you up from the orphanage, you tried to play the radio, but you didn't have any luck with it because, while you were trying to use it, the radio broke."
"I remember that ironically happening to me. For a second, I thought I broke it!" I giggled, recalling the memory.
"No, it was only a bad wire," he chuckled. "Or maybe radios just don't like you."
"Very funny!" I laughed in near hysterics at his joke.
Just as I was retrieving my phone from my purse, a resounding honk came from the horn.
As I looked up, Hank yelled, "Hold on!"
He swerved the vehicle, narrowly dodging a head-on collision with a black pickup truck. Tires squealed as the truck hit the driver's side, throwing Darlene and me against the sides as the vehicle skewed across black ice. Loud, grinding metal sounds pierced our ears as the back end of the SUV skidded sideways and violently threw us off the road.
"Aah!" Everyone screamed as we plowed through thin, bare saplings.
Along the sides, the vehicle slewed, scraping across thicker tree trunks and dried bushes. Beneath us, uneven ground and rocks grated against the metal bottom. As I noticed a huge tree trunk ahead, I closed my eyes before feeling a violent slam. Darkness crept over me as the echoes of the collusion resounded in my ears.
"Ooh!"
I slowly lifted my eyelids when I heard an eerie groaning from the seat beside me.
"Professor..." I gasped when I saw a tree branch had pierced through the windshield and somehow impaled his gut after bending downward from the impact.
"Darlene!" I cried out but heard no response from her. "Hang in there, Professor."
Shaken up and feeling distraught, my shaky hands fumbled to unbuckle my seatbelt, and then I peered around my surroundings. Inside the woods, the SUV had crash-landed within the thickness of a leafless bush, right next to the thickset tree we narrowly missed. Unfortunately, a branch from the tree had impaled my Professor.
"Ah!" I groaned, feeling a throbbing pain along my ankle as I scanned inside the interior for my phone.
In the back seat, Darlene was unconscious while blood rolled down the side of her cracked skull, staining her blonde curly locks in red.
"Vict... Victoria..." Hank tried to speak in a broken whisper. "Runn..."
"I won't leave you," I adamantly insisted.
Just as I was about to mentally call Kai for help, the passenger seat's door was yanked off its hinges and was tossed away like a frisbee.
"You just refuse to die!" Tyler ferociously growled, yanking me out of the vehicle by my hair. "No matter how many times I've tried, you just managed to stay alive! You've survived the first car accident, the serpent attack, then the plane crash, now this car accident, and not even the desert did you in!"
"Ahhh!" I screamed as he hurled me into the icy blanket of snow across my side.
I sat upright, stammering through my broken words, "You... caused... the plane crash?"
"You heard me right, darling," Tyler admitted, grinning to his ears, his eyes only growing more menacing with rage.
"Do it now!" he yelled at the man I recognized working for him.
"Help!" I screamed for Darlene to wake up as the man's boot kicked me down on my back. "Leave us alone!"
He stood on my chest and leaned down as this shiny thin instrument caught my eyes. A sharp needle was harshly jabbed into my neck, and I screamed, feeling a hot sensation burning into my flesh when the unknown serum traveled within my veins.
"Relax, sweetheart. It's only a light dose of my venom to shut you up from mentally calling Kai," Tyler chuckled as his advisors and guardians joined in with their three granted humans.
"No, please!" I outcried, witnessing my belly shrinking in size.
I felt the vamp babies' body mass rapidly decreasing and their movements faltering fast.