s*t*a*r*s (Kindred Series-2)

s*t*a*r*s 7 - pt 124

             “ShadowWalk or we are going to die and leave our kids without mothers, do it for Spence and Rylee, now JO!” orders Emma, closing her eyes.

 Jo feels Emma kicking back pushing them away from the car, Emma prays that Jo made them intangible. 

 Casting the spell, Jo hears the explosion that finally sends the car plummeting over the edge. Unable to keep the spell’s hold any longer, Jo solidified herself and Emma just as they slam against the ground, knocking the wind from both of them.  The last image Jo sees before passing out is the fire ball of flame disappearing into the churning river below.

s*t*a*r*s/J*A*D*E*S

             The sun is beginning to turn the world golden again, but Jo doesn’t think she’ll ever feel the light in herself again.  Jo, who’d always come through, who’d always seemed to be able to save the world, had finally failed.  She’d left Emma an hour ago at her new home.  Rylee had held her for a long time but Jo didn’t feel the hug.  She got into her car and drove.  She hadn’t been sure where she was driving to until she’d arrived there.

             Dirty, grimy, covered in blood; Jo looks as if she’d just been through hell.  She stares at Amy’s building, standing on the sidewalk, staring at the house, unsure if she even belongs here.  Did she deserve to love someone like Amy after having failed so miserably today?

             She had failed.  For everything she’d ever done good in life, she had failed a friend.  Good intentions be damned; Jo Wheaton wasn’t omnipotent, and she knows that, yet deep down, Jo had thought she would have been able to save Sam.  The sole thought that had plagued her when she was on the flight back to LA was...  If only….

             If only they’d foreseen this, if only these insanities had never transpired, but she knows that no amount of wishful thinking will ever make things right.  What if she’d been human today?  What if Bev had never shot her up with the cocktail that turned her back into what she’d been meant to be?

             Then Jo stops the thought short, no. 

             One of the truths of her relationship with Amy had been that Amy hadn’t accepted her for what she had been, a vampire, or a hybrid; something other than human.  It had been a point of contention for years, but Jo had been what she’d been, and Amy had never been okay with it.  Yet, when she’d been turned again, Amy was the one to tell her that this was who she should be.  The cog of recognition between them clicking into place.  That they were who they were, no ifs, ands, or buts and they did love one another. 

             Amy, the woman that was in that house right now, had accepted her, loved her, let her be who she is, even if that is this hodge podge of a human being.  So that choice, of becoming human again, had been the right one, the only one to make if being turned again is what brought Amy back to her.  Jo lets out a rueful laugh into the lightening day.

             Jo takes a haggard breath and moves towards the back of the building, pushing open the door.  Wrenching off her shoes, seeing blood on her left foot, but not caring, not wanting to wake Amy, Jo goes to the guest bathroom to try and clean up before she collapses.  She takes in the fact that the place is almost done, the smell of plaster and fresh wood collided with the smell of fire and gas that clings to her.

             Staring at herself in the mirror, not sure she even recognizes the woman staring back, dried blood on her upper lip, Jo put her mangled hands under the warm water, wincing at the pain.  She’s not healing, her body acting as if it needs a new infusion of blood.  Jo closes her eyes and tries to kick start that part of her but she can’t, maybe it’s psychological, thinks Jo.  Splashing water on her face, she tries to scrub the blood off, but it seems rather futile, since Sam’s blood is on her soul also.