Black Sunshine

by Halle, Karina

  “Why would he even want to control himself around you?” my father mutters gruffly. “The whole reason a vampire would take someone like you is to benefit from your magic.”

  “Maybe that was part of the plan,” my mother says to him. “Saving her for later.”

  I swallow. Could that have been true?

  “I…I don’t really have any magic,” I say softly. “He knows it too.”

  “You do,” my mother says. “You just created a damn earthquake. We can only pray it didn’t hurt anyone. Thank god this city is made for them.”

  I think about that for a moment, then eye my father. “Then if he’s such a monster, why do you know him? Why does he know you? Surely if you’re such good witches, you wouldn’t be hanging around a monster like him?”

  He looks at my mother and then gives her a grim nod. He exhales softly, looking me square in the eye. “Absolon helped us once.”

  A cold feeling spreads through me, all my knowledge of what he is and what he does.

  A mercenary.

  “Helped you with what?” I whisper.

  “He gave us the location of your parents,” my mother says tightly. “I’m sorry, sweetie.”

  He lied to me. Didn’t he?

  No. He just didn’t reveal the truth.

  Why not?

  I already hated him. It wouldn’t have hurt to hate him more.

  “You’re sorry,” I say. “For what? For killing them? You went behind the backs of the people who are supposed to keep you organized, the guild, and you flat out murdered them. For what? For me?”

  “We didn’t know about you,” my father says quietly.

  “But Absolon did.” My voice comes out in a hush.

  “If he did, he didn’t tell us,” my mother says. “We didn’t know, Lenore, until we heard you crying, and by then it was already too late. Your parents were dead.”

  “We knew you were one of us, though,” he says. “We could tell. We took you with us and never looked back.”

  Why didn’t Absolon tell my parents that I existed? Was it because I was just a rumor to him? Or did he think I was better off dead too?

  A sense of doom settles in my chest, a dull pain.

  I shake my head, unable to grapple with any of it. Exhaustion is pulling me under.

  “Why did you do it?” I say through a yawn, sinking deeper into the couch.

  “Kill them?” my father asks, getting to his feet. “Sometimes the simplest answer is the best for now.”

  “Revenge,” my mother adds.

  I raise my head and look at her, at the flashing moons in her eyes.

  Revenge?

  “Elaine,” my father says. “Keep it cool. We need to get Lenore out of here.”

  I glance up at him. “What? Why? I just want to go to sleep.”

  “You’re not safe here,” he says, reaching down and pulling me up to my feet.

  “If you’re worried about Solon, I’m pretty sure he can find me no matter where I go,” I tell them, my chest squeezing.

  “Solon?” my father asks. “Don’t pretend you know him. You know nothing about him. Nobody does.”

  “Regardless, he’ll find me.”

  After all, I’m his. His blood is in my veins.

  But I keep that information to myself. No use making them worry even more, or worse, fear me again.

  “We’re not just hiding you from him,” my mother says. “We’re hiding you from other vampires, ones that don’t have an agenda, ones that just want the pleasure of killing you and using your blood. Heaven forbid you attract the attention of someone like Skarde.”

  “Skarde?” I cry out. “I heard about him. He’s like the vampire king. I assumed he was dead.”

  My mother’s lips go white as she eyes me. “I wish he were.”

  “And aside from vampires, there’s always Poe and others like him,” my father says, pulling me along to my bedroom. “Poe might be in over his head, but there are those at the head of the guild that will not only punish us, but punish you.”

  “Why me? It’s not my fault I am what I am,” I tell them.

  My mother takes a duffel bag out of my closet while my father grabs my shoulders, eyeing me.

  “Can you imagine a vampire with the power of a witch? Or a witch with the power of a vampire?” he asks. “That’s what you are, Lenore. And even the best ones can’t cause an earthquake.”

  “So they’d kill me?”

  He looks ashen. “I don’t know, sweetie. But I can guarantee that’s what they have planned for us.”

  “I won’t let that happen,” I tell him, my loyalty to my family rising up with ferocity. “No one is going to hurt you.”

  “And no one is going to hurt you,” my mother says, throwing my shit in the bag. “But we have to start by getting you out of here. You’ve been gone, but I sensed Poe about the last few days. He’ll be back. Maybe others too. And though vampires wouldn’t dare cross these doors, we can’t risk it.”

  “Absolon crossed these doors,” I tell him.

  “Yeah, well apparently he can do a lot of things, like appear out of thin air,” my father comments bitterly.

  And so can I, I think, keeping the secret to myself. Black Sunshine.

  “So where am I going?” I ask. “I don’t have my purse. No ID, no credit card, no phone.” I don’t bother adding that they’re at the haunted mansion.

  “We’ll put you up in a hotel across town,” he says. “A nice one with lots of security. You choose. Maybe the Fairmont would be good.”

  Wow. I look down at my party clothes. “I guess I’m dressed for it already.”

  My mother eyes me sharply. “Did he give you that jewelry?”

  “Burma rubies,” I tell her with a slow nod, my fingers pressing against the jewel on my chest.

  She looks at my father. “What do you think? Is it bewitched?”

  My father peers at my necklace for a moment and then gently brushes my fingers off the stone, pressing his finger on it. His eyes fall closed for a moment.

  “It’s bewitched,” he says after a moment. He looks at me. “But it’s not to harm you. It’s to protect you. I just don’t know what it is exactly.”

  “Then I’m keeping it on,” I tell them.

  Both of them study me closely, thinking. Then my mother nods. “Okay.”

  It isn’t until I’m packed and in their car, heading through the darkened city streets toward Nob Hill, that I ask them a question that has been burning at the back of my head. News about the earthquake is all over the radio, but driving through it looks like nothing major was damaged.

  “If Absolon is a mercenary, that means you did an exchange. Something in return for my … for Alice and Hakan’s whereabouts. What did you end up giving him? What did he get out of it?” I pause. “Oh my god, please don’t tell me you promised him my hand in marriage.”

  My mother turns from the passenger seat and gives me a severe look. “Are you kidding me? You think we would do that?”

  “Then what did you promise him?”

  My father kneads the steering wheel for a moment. Clears his throat. “We promised him that no slayers would ever kill him.”

  My mouth drops open. “But you just tried to kill him back there!”

  Silence fills the car. My mother shrugs. “Terms and conditions change.”

  I sit back against the seat, surprised once again at who my parents really are. Deep down, I don’t think they’re any better than Absolon is.

  And so, what does that make me?

  Chapter Thirteen

  They say vampires don’t sleep that much. I’m starting to think that’s one of the myths that holds true.

  No matter how tired I am, I can’t drift off to sleep. My eyes keep opening, looking around the hotel room, afraid that there’s someone in here with me.

  But it’s not Solon. I imagine him appearing in the room, using the Black Sunshine to get me, or perhaps just knocking at my door. But he doesn’t appear. And
he’s not who I fear anymore at any rate. Oh, I’m enraged at him, for lying to me this whole time, for being involved in my real parents’ death when he pretended to be all sentimental about it. But I want to see him face-to-face so I can yell at him.

  No, I’m afraid of the things my parents told me. Not so much Atlas, but other witches who mean me and my parents harm.

  And then there’s Skarde. Vampire king. I know nothing about him, and yet he already terrifies me. Every time I try to picture what he looks like in my head, I keep seeing people in dark cloaks, red curtains of thread hanging from hoods and obscuring their faces. I keep thinking I’ll see them in the room, along with the slithering shadows I saw outside my apartment, in the black and white world.

  Eventually I get out of bed and draw up the curtains, lean against the glass and stare at the city of lights below, the line of the coming dawn appearing on the east horizon like a golden slash against deep indigo.

  I feel like I’m on top of the world here. My parents got me a room on one of the top floors, and with the hotel’s location on the hill, plus the large windows, I feel like I can reach out and touch the tip of the Transamerica Pyramid, the city breathing and living and humming below.

  I stare out the windows, watching the sun come up, watching the bay come alive. My eyesight is startlingly good now, so from my perch I feel like I’m seeing things no one else gets to see.

  Eventually though, I bring out my laptop. My parents told me to stay here in the hotel and to not leave, that one of them would come by this evening and that they would call throughout the day when they could.

  But I’m twenty-one now. Since when do I listen to my parents?

  I pull up my Facebook and send a quick message to Elle, telling her I still don’t have a phone but I’m back in town and ask if she wanted to meet for day drinking at the Top of the Mark. Drinks are my treat.

  It doesn’t take long for her to get back to me. She calls me a bitch a bunch of times, so I know she’s still a bit pissed at me just ghosting her, plus is probably a bit taken aback by my choice of location. But she agrees.

  The Top of the Mark is the restaurant bar across the street from me at the Continental hotel. We went there once for my father’s birthday brunch and it was all sorts of swanky. I figured it would be a good place to go. Not only is it close by but I feel safer in an expensive place. I’m aware that people—vampires—like Solon would hang out at these establishments with ease, probably more so than a dingy dive bar, but it’s also for myself.

  See, I don’t know how I’ll act around Elle. Will I want to bite her? Will she pick up on what I am, be afraid of me? I feel like if I’m in a fancy establishment full of white linen, champagne bubbles and crisp words, I’ll be able to control myself.

  Time passes slowly. Maybe it always will now, when it feels like you have an eternity at your fingertips. As I often have been lately, I wonder about my own mortality, what it means, and if I’ll ever truly know if I can live forever. Do vampires die of natural causes at some point in time? Do they ever age? Because I’m only half, what does that mean for me? Will I age slowly or stay forever twenty-one?

  Then I catch myself thinking of the clothing store. Damn. Hope it’s not run by vampires.

  Eventually I take a shower and get ready, then I’m heading across the street, taking in the fresh air. It’s sunny, the sky that impossible blue that SF gets sometimes, and I slip on my oversized sunglasses, wincing at the light. After being indoors for most of the last two weeks, including when I was studying, it feels like a knife in my brain and I’m kicking myself for not suggesting a dark bar somewhere.

  I take my sunglasses off in the elevator, then step out of the doors and into the restaurant.

  Elle already has a seat by the window, sun streaming in.

  Great.

  “Hey!” She waves at me and gets to her feet, running across the restaurant to me. A few heads turn and follow the girl with the piercings and the tattoos, but they’re just snooty diners having a late lunch and there’s not many people in this place.

  Elle pulls me into a hug and I immediately stiffen, trying to hold my breath so I don’t do something weird like smell her or something. Elle is into some weird shit but that would really be pushing it.

  “You look amazing,” she coos at me, holding me by the shoulders and looking me up and down. I thought ahead and wore a long-sleeved tunic and leggings that hide my lack of tattoos. But still, she frowns. “Did you get taller?”

  Shit. I had a feeling I did. All my pants are feeling shorter on the inseam, maybe by two inches.

  I muster a laugh. “No. Maybe you got shorter.”

  She ponders that for a moment. “Huh.”

  It’s then that I realize I’m breathing, and smelling her. Not in a purposeful way but I note the baby powder smell of her deodorant, her Sol de Janeiro shampoo, her natural scent which is something like lilac and musk, and the traces of champagne on her breath. She’s started drinking without me.

  But luckily, all those smells aren’t making me want to bite her neck and drain her of blood, so there’s that.

  “You okay?” Elle asks. “You seem so…”

  “I need a drink,” I say abruptly, slipping on my sunglasses.

  “Well, I already started without you,” she says, walking back to the table. She gives me a funny look over her shoulder. “You’re wearing sunglasses inside?”

  “It’s bright out,” I tell her, sitting by the window, thankful that she’s the one sitting in sunlight.

  “Are you hungover?”

  I nod. “Yeah. Totally.”

  “Your birthday was like two days ago,” she says.

  “It was a big birthday.” I’m glad she can’t see my eyes under these sunglasses, because I have a feeling she’d see all through my lies.

  “So, then tell me about it,” she says, pouring me a glass of champagne and handing it to me. “Wait, no first, we toast to you turning twenty-one, baby. Welcome to the club.”

  I raise my glass and clink it against hers, keeping my movements gentle. I nearly broke my toothbrush in half this morning, so I need to be aware that I have more strength than I used to.

  “Thank you,” I tell her, and my nose starts to sting from the feeling of tears building up at the back of my throat, emotions suddenly running through me. All those nights in the house and I thought I would never be in this situation again, thought I’d never see my only friend, be free in this world, pretending to be normal.

  But I know I’m not really free.

  That this is a pause in my life, just like the pause between the lust and the bloodlust. Soon I’ll have to make decisions about how much of my old life I can have back without endangering myself and my parents.

  My guess is not much.

  “Lenore,” Elle says after she has a sip. “Cut the shit. What’s happening?”

  I shake my head, wishing I could tell her everything. She’d never believe me.

  “I had a fight with my parents,” I tell her, which isn’t a lie.

  “Oh,” she says, making a face. “I’m sorry. On your birthday? That sucks. And you were stuck out in the desert with them.”

  Just then the waiter approaches our table, an old reed-thin man with a thick mustache. He eyes the two of us with quiet disdain. Probably isn’t used to girls like us as his normal clientele.

  “Hello,” I tell the waiter.

  “Can I see some ID?” he asks me in a clipped voice.

  I glance over at Elle, brows raised.

  “Well, it’s your lucky day, sir,” she says to him. “Because she just turned twenty-one.”

  He gives me a bland look, expecting me to get my ID out.

  “I forgot my ID at home,” I tell him. Not my home, but Solon’s home.

  “Well, then I’m afraid you’re not allowed to drink,” he says to me as I push the sunglasses up on my head. The light is still bright but I ignore it, keeping my eyes locked with the waiter’s.

  “How
about you just believe me when I say I’m twenty-one,” I say to him, continuing to stare at him with the most intense gaze I can muster. Believe me, believe me.

  He hesitates.

  Or I’ll kill you, I add for good measure.

  The waiter flinches. Blinks. “Okay. Forgive me for asking.”

  Then he turns and walks away, shooting me a frightened glance over his shoulder.

  Elle barks out a laugh. “What the hell was that?”

  “I’m not sure,” I say, slipping my sunglasses back on. I shrug and take an elegant sip of my champagne. I’m not lying either. I don’t know if I just compelled him like a vampire, or persuaded him with magic. All I know is that it worked.

  I have to admit, it felt kind of good.

  “You know, you’ve always had that way about you,” Elle muses, picking up the menu. “Men and women always fall for it.”

  I hesitate before asking. “What way?”

  She glances up at me and wiggles her fingertips around, making circles. “You. Just being you.”

  I take another sip of my drink, swallowing the bubbles down. “And you? Do you fall for it?”

  Elle snorts. “You wish.” Her eyes go back to the menu. “Man, I want to order everything on this menu, but this shit is expensive.”

  “I told you, it’s my treat.”

  “And this is your birthday.”

  “Get me drinks at the bar later,” I tell her. “Another, cheaper bar.”

  My necklace starts to feel hot against my skin, so I absently curl my fingers around it, feeling it warm between my fingers.

  “New necklace?”

  I glance at her as she’s eyeing my necklace.

  “Yeah, birthday present,” I tell her warily.

  “Well, let me see, move your hand.”

  I let my hand fall away and she gasps. I took my earrings out last night—the holes already closed over by morning—but I kept the necklace on.

  “Holy shit. That looks hella expensive. Is that a ruby? And diamonds?”

  I nod. “Probably fake.”

  “Who gave it to you?”

  I have to lie. “My parents.”

  Her forehead creases. “Your parents? Gave you a ruby necklace? That does not look like something parents would give their daughter, that looks like something a high-rolling sugar daddy would give his lover.” I nearly snort over her description of Solon. “And your parents would never give you anything so classy. You? In diamonds?”