Forever Night (Darkness Falls Book 3)

Epilogue

Three years later.

I walked into the communal lounge of the Riverbank Care Home, nodding to several familiar faces as I passed. It wasn't a large room, but it was tastefully decorated in shades of light blue and muted pastel, with soft, striped armchairs occupying every corner, all arranged so they were facing a widescreen TV. A woman clutching a doll sat in one of the armchairs. Noah sat in the other.

As I did every visit, I took a moment to watch him before he realised I was there. Only three years had passed since I'd rescued him from that death-choked mausoleum, and though he'd put back on the weight he'd lost, there was still a hollow fragility to him that made him seem years older than he really was.

Even now, though I'd visited him many times, I found it hard to believe that this was what he'd been reduced to. The glasses on his nose were a permanent fixture now, and he'd begun to develop a paunch, sagging over the waistline of his trousers.

He turned suddenly, spying me over the back of his chair. I hadn't made any noise but he'd still known I was there. Somewhere inside him, buried deep, deep down, a slither of his old hunting instincts still remained.

His face lit up. "My girl!" he exclaimed.

I came to perch on the arm of the chair, putting an arm around his shoulders. "How are you doing, Dad?"

He blinked up at me, seemingly confused by the question. Sometimes little snippets of his old self resurfaced, but the memories were never whole and the result could leave him angry, even violent. Today was obviously a good day.

"Why don't you ever bring that husband of yours to see me, eh?" he said.

"He's working."

Noah waved his hands. "He's always working."

Actually, he's asleep at home. He can't come and see you during regular visiting hours otherwise he'd burn up in the sun because he's a vampire, but you don't remember any of that.

Noah's mind had never fully healed after what Rachel had done. Some days he was functional, other days he was too distraught and confused to see me. One thing was constant though – no part of him remembered that vampires existed or that he had once hunted them. That part of his mind had shattered into pieces too small to recover.

Some days he asked where Ava was and why she wasn't coming to visit him, and I had to make up some lie about her working so I didn't have to watch that awful sadness come over his face as he remembered she was dead. Other days he knew she was dead, and he grieved for her as if her death had only just happened. When I'd first started visiting him, he hadn't known me. He'd been convinced that I was dead, that Jenny Simpson, my poor murdered lookalike, had really been me, and I was the imposter. But I kept visiting and kept trying and, gradually, pieces of his sanity began to reconnect. He knew who I was, but he had no recollection of the bitter animosity that had once existed between us. And I had let all that go. I'd hated Noah once, but I could no longer blame him for things he didn't remember. He wasn't that man any more, and he'd suffered enough for his crimes.

Noah gently patted the growing swell of my stomach, and smiled. "The little one's a kicker."

"You're telling me," I said, smoothing a hand along the place where a small foot pressed against my stomach.

Noah copied me, laughing quietly as he felt the baby kick again. "Have you thought of any names yet?"

"We haven't decided anything, but if it's a girl, we're thinking maybe Ava," I said.

Wistful tears blurred Noah's eyes and he took off his glasses to wipe them away. "She'd have liked that," he said, his voice gruff with emotion.

I nodded and the baby kicked again, as if in approval.