Desire at Dawn

by Fiona Zedde

  And decided to stay.

  The whys of it echoed in her mind as she slipped from the alley and onto the main street, joining the flow of pedestrians fresh from work and off to their first drink of the night. Kylie felt almost human walking across the main street, Moreland Avenue, next to a pale girl with a Mohawk who strolled arm-in-arm with her bald and pierced girlfriend. A man with dreadlocks and a guitar strapped to his back crossed the street in the other direction and gave Kylie a considering look. He threw a faintly interested leer at her slim body in its party dress, at her wild hair she had fluffed after rising from her pallet on the closet floor. She glanced back at him then away, feeling the usual disinterest when someone looked at her sexually.

  She crossed to the other side of the street where a small café sat just on the corner. The scent of strong coffee and chocolate cake greeted her at the door. A woman walked from the café with a glass of mango juice. She set the juice down at one of the three wrought iron tables that were already occupied.

  Kylie sat at the last empty table.

  “Hi there.” The woman who had brought the juice greeted her with a smile and eyes that flickered over her with curiosity. “Can I get you something, honey?”

  The woman was of average height with glistening ocher skin and wide, interested eyes. A lion’s mane of natural hair bloomed around her face. She smelled like coffee and fresh baked bread, with a hint of the female musk between her thighs. Kylie’s canines tingled. She licked them and tamped down the mild hunger.

  “A small coffee, please.”

  “Of course, honey. Just you wait there one tiny minute.” The woman disappeared into the shop and reappeared a few minutes later with Kylie’s drink. She put a five-dollar bill in the woman’s hand before she could walk away.

  “You can pay later, darlin’. You might want something else.”

  “It’s okay,” Kylie said, refusing the money the woman tried to give back to her.

  After the woman went away, she settled back into the hard iron chair with her hot coffee. She didn’t touch the drink. As a human girl, she hadn’t felt one way or another about coffee, mainly drinking tea at home. But she discovered that once she had been transformed from girl to beast, the smell of coffee, rich and dark and full bodied, was a comfort to her.

  No one bothered her. She sat and watched the evening pass by, ignoring the twitching need inside her to rush back to home’s very necessary comforts. She hadn’t slept all day, and her body felt the lack. But Kylie was more interested in the sad human woman than in her body’s discomforts.

  Evening blanketed the street, the corner, the neighborhood where she sat. The coffee on her table grew cold, but the scent did not diminish. And all the while, she watched the street for a sight of the woman. Her stranger.

  It wasn’t long before she saw her, barely three hours later. A slender woman with low-cut natural hair and an air of fragility about her. She wore sandals, a long multicolored skirt, and a thin white blouse under a red, bolero style jacket. The woman carried a cloth shopping bag over a slender shoulder. Kylie deliberately sniffed. She’d bought strawberries, spinach, a grapefruit, and bundles of asparagus.

  The woman looked all around her as she walked, her head moving like a periscope, taking in everything from the cloud-strewn sky to the bums on the streets, the dreadlocked musician playing on the corner for money, maybe even Kylie herself from her café perch. But even as the woman watched everything around her, her steps remained purposeful and sure. She took the keys from her skirt pocket and opened the outer door to her building, then stepped inside. She kept walking into the vestibule, leaving the door to fall shut behind her.

  Kylie listened to her progress through the building.

  Her heartbeat was strong and sure, a strange counterpoint to her frail looking body. Her breathing accelerated slightly as she walked up the stairs, heart thumping at a faster rate. Her palm rasped against the banister while her skirt brushed the ground with each step.

  She could hear the woman at her apartment door now, keys jingling. She pushed her door open then closed with a weak squeaking of its hinges. A vague tingling between her shoulder blades drew Kylie’s attention away from the woman.

  Someone was watching her. She blinked. Her posture remained perfectly relaxed, but every movement ceased as she took in the sounds, smells, and sights in her immediate field of vision and periphery. She could feel unfamiliar eyes on her, and the tingling between her shoulder blades getting worse.

  But Kylie kept her eyes on the woman’s door, one hand relaxed near her cold coffee, the other lying on her thigh. She only smelled humans. None of the vampire kind were close enough for her to smell. Did that mean it was a human watching her? The thought relaxed her. She released a breath and flexed the hand on her thigh. It was only a human. She shrugged off the unease like a dirty cloak.

  If there was anything Silvija and Belle had taught her since being with the clan, it was confidence in the strength of her own body. She felt nearly invincible at times. Not always against other vampires but definitely in comparison to a human. A human who would find it just about impossible to harm her.

  This feeling of invincibility was something that Silvija had often warned her against. And this was a caution Kylie ignored. What could a human do to her? She flicked her fingers in the air, dismissing the danger. Kylie looked up at the woman’s window. The echoes of a light glowed from behind her curtains. Beyond her sight, the woman moved about the apartment in the midst of her evening rituals that Kylie longed to see.

  Her phone rang, a quiet sound that Violet, the tech wizard in the clan, told her was inaudible to human ears. Kylie answered the call.

  “Hello, Mother.”

  For a moment, there was only silence on the other end of the line. A reprimanding lack of sound.

  “Kylie, we were expecting you home last morning.” Her mother’s voice was low and tight. Worry with a trace of anger.

  “I’m okay, Mother. I wasn’t able to make it back before morning. I found somewhere to lay low for the day.”

  “And someone?”

  The tone made Kylie bristle. Her mother always wanted to know if she had slept with anyone, either human or vampire. “No. No one.” It was none of her business. Just because her mother was having regular sex that made her forget about everything and everyone else didn’t mean Kylie needed to do the same.

  “You must be exhausted then. Come home. I don’t know where you are, but it’s not good for you to be so far from us.”

  “I’m fine, Mother. There’s no need for you to worry.” If worry was even what Belle was feeling about Kylie’s disappearance. Since being joined with her mother and her new family, Kylie thought it was more a matter of ownership, Belle wanting the world to know she had a daughter and her daughter was here with her among the clan. This creature that was twice of her blood.

  “I do worry, Kylie. Come home.”

  Kylie waited a beat before replying, toying with the idea of staying away even longer. “Okay. I’ll be there before bedtime.”

  Her mother released a breath. “Good. See you soon.”

  When Kylie hung up the phone, she had no intention of doing what her mother suggested. But, against her will, she remembered the unpleasantness of the long morning in the closet, unable to sleep all day, the heaviness in her body, and the dimmed reflexes that came from not getting enough rest.

  She’d already spent a restless last few nights at home, chafing in the confines of the Manhattan penthouse once she’d decided she would try for the ruby and diamond necklace on display in the Atlanta museum. A necklace once worn by a long dead Russian czarina.

  It had been beautiful on the television. In person, it was even more so, a chain of rubies, each four carats, each surrounded by a ring of small diamonds and linked by four-petaled diamond flowers. It was something Kylie would never consider wearing, but the challenge of taking it had pulled her from her boredom, distracted her from the resentment and anger that seemed
to always live in her chest. Then she had done it. Child’s play.

  But with one call, her mother had pulled her mind back to the anger and unease. And as much as she didn’t want to go back to them just yet, she knew she had to. She narrowed her eyes to peer through the woman’s curtains. But she was still out of sight. Kylie turned away from the woman and got up from the table. Between her shoulders prickled again, but she shrugged off the eyes.

  Fuck off.

  She looked around her on the street, daring any of the humans to make a move against her. She would tear their hearts out and drain the useless organs dry. Scowling, Kylie slid a dollar under her coffee cup and started to walk.

  Chapter Three

  Kylie opened the door to the clan’s stronghold with her key, typed in the alphanumeric code, and waited a few seconds while the security system verified her identity with a voice scan.

  Their security was tight. Not just because the clan leader was paranoid, but because almost eight years ago, most of the vampires had been wiped out and the house where they lived completely destroyed. The security breach had been an internal one, someone they all trusted, so Silvija had created fail-safes throughout the entire structure of their new home, continuous scans and secret contingencies that ensured no single clan member had the power to open up the stronghold to danger.

  “Welcome, Kylie,” chimed the security system’s feminine, electronic voice.

  The door clicked open with a heavy, unlatching noise, like a bank vault. Beyond the thick, modern-looking door was another door. This one made of mirrored glass. She typed in another code. The glass lifted, finally allowing her access into the nineteen-room penthouse apartment that housed the clan.

  The house was massive. A three-level penthouse in the skies of Manhattan with ten bedrooms, windows in every room except the bathrooms, and a large gathering space at its center where clan members could rest their eyes from the world. All the windows were three inches of reinforced, bulletproof mirrored glass that went from clear to black at the touch of a button or the right verbal command.

  From the outside, the house looked like a white and glass cube perched on top of yet another high-rise in the city. Terraces surrounded each level. An observatory, helicopter pad, and sparring deck were on the roof, and there was an outdoor pool on the second floor. The offices—Silvija’s and the security room with their weapons and live feed on the security monitors—were on the highest floor.

  Home sweet home.

  She didn’t make it very far down the long, wide hallway before she heard the sound of footsteps hurrying in her direction. She linked her hands behind her back, striving for nonchalance while she simultaneously hoped and did not hope it was her mother. Breath left her throat when Belle rounded the corner.

  “Kylie.”

  Her mother was beautiful. One of the most beautiful women Kylie had ever known. She had a long neck, tilted cat eyes, and a full mouth made for scowling rather than smiles. A strong beauty. As a child, Kylie remembered feeling almost blessed when her mother, sullen and gorgeous, smiled just for her. Belle was taller than most of the women in their small Jamaican district and even most of the vampires in their clan. Except Silvija, of course. Her slim, willowy body was on display in simple blue jeans and a yellow blouse that looked like sunlight against her dark skin. Her kitten-heeled shoes tapped against the tiles with each step. Today, she wore her hair in small, tight braids in a snaking pattern on her elegant head.

  Despite the emotional distance between them, Kylie felt a spurt of gladness. A remnant of the years of being without her, when Belle was living as a vampire a world away and Kylie was growing up without a mother. Twelve years of her absence.

  “Mother.” Kylie gave her mother the smile she thought Belle wanted.

  She wasn’t prepared for the hug, the arms that swept around her and pulled her against a body smelling like the Caribbean Sea. Of home.

  “I was worried,” Belle said. “We all were.” Her voice was low and tender, her Jamaican accent still thick and warm.

  Kylie looked behind her mother, knowing, before her eyes confirmed it, that there were no others rushing out to meet her after her night and day’s absence from New York. Kylie smiled, a tight stretching of her lips. “I’m all right. Nothing is going to happen to me.”

  Belle pulled back, looking down into Kylie’s face. She touched her cheek, stroking the tender skin under Kylie’s eyes with a thumb. “Sometimes I think you want me to worry for you.”

  Kylie gave her that smile again. “Never.”

  “Where were you? It shouldn’t have taken you so long to come here from New Jersey.” Her mother watched her, a light of curiosity in her eyes. No suspicion, merely waiting for her question to be answered.

  “I just lost track of time, that’s all.” She pulled back from her mother’s embrace and started down the hallway. Her mother fell in step beside her.

  Without speaking, they walked together to the main gathering room, a type of family room that had all the particular comforts of the eight vampires who shared the penthouse: Silvija, Belle, Julia, Ivy, Violet, Liam, Rufus, and Kylie.

  In the middle of the large room, Kylie’s chair hammock was suspended by bolts from the ceiling. One quarter of the floor space was covered in Julia’s bearskin rugs, overlapping white and brown bear pelts from animals the small vampire had killed with her bare hands and fangs.

  One wall was nothing but bookshelves and, built into the actual shelves, two seating spaces facing each other, especially created for Violet and her twin, Liam. Rufus’s seventy-inch flat screen TV took up space on the high wall above a scattering of half a dozen armchairs. In a large corner of the room sat a platform bed, neatly made and with a chessboard sitting on a wooden tray in its center. Silvija and Belle’s never-ending game.

  Belle sat on the bed and Kylie sank to the floor at her feet, deliberately not sitting in the space her mother shared with her lover. The tiles were warm through her dress. She pressed her palms to the floor on either side of her thighs, reminded of the small closet where she had spent the previous day. The scent of sadness. The shoebox that smelled like dried flowers. A delicate feminine shape under the sheets.

  “I hope you’re being careful when you lose track of time,” her mother said. “Please. I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.” Her voice was low and soft, her eyes wandering over Kylie’s face with love.

  Kylie allowed herself to bask in its warmth. She bit the inside of her lip, a childhood habit of distress she never got over. She was suddenly overwhelmed by the urge to throw herself in her mother’s lap and confess everything that happened in the last few hours. “You shouldn’t worry, Mother. I’m fine. I always am.”

  Her mother leaned back into the headboard, slipped off her shoes, and curled her knees up in the bed. “I’ll always worry for you, Kylie. You’re my baby. That will never change, no matter how strong you get, or how old.”

  Her eyes were warm and luminous in the artificial lights in the room, and for a moment, Kylie felt like the center of her mother’s world with Belle’s attentions firmly fixed on her.

  She smiled. “I—”

  Silvija’s aggressive scent invaded the room seconds before she appeared in the doorway. “Belle, they’re having Shakespeare in the park tomorrow night. You should come with me.” Her mother’s lover looked at Kylie with a slight smile. “Ah, Kylie. I’m glad you made it back. Your mother was getting gray hairs over you.” She slipped gracefully into the room, effortlessly powerful in her bare feet, loose jeans, and a V-neck T-shirt.

  Kylie touched her mother’s knee, already withdrawing with the presence of the clan leader. “I think she’s fine now.”

  Silvija sank down into the bed beside Belle and pressed a kiss to the crown of her head before draping her long body across the large surface. Kylie felt out of place, as if she were no longer needed. She got to her feet.

  “I’ll see you later.”

  “You don’t have to go anywhere,”
Silvija said.

  “I know, but I need a shower. It’s been a long night and day.” Without waiting for either of them to reply, she left the room.

  Halfway to her room at the upper level of the penthouse, she paused, wondering if she was overreacting. Even after seven years of living with the clan and with her mother, she had never adapted to the situation with her and Silvija. The two were lovers. They were married. They loved each other in a way that Kylie couldn’t even begin to imagine. But knowing that and letting go of her jealousy were two separate things.

  Her mother was with another woman. That was disorienting enough after everything she’d learned about love and relationships in Jamaica. But worse than that, her mother only seemed to have time for her wife, and none for her own daughter. Kylie bit her lip, then turned to go back to her mother, to apologize and try to be part of the family everyone else seemed to be happy to share.

  The door was open, just like she left it, but Silvija and her mother were closer now. Belle sat in front of Silvija with her head bowed, a hint of a smile on her face while Silvija loomed behind her, hands on Belle’s arm, her mouth near Belle’s ear. She spoke softly, but Kylie heard every word.

  “I’m going to peel off your outer layers, slowly.” Silvija’s voice came in an intent growl. “And feast on you until there’s nothing left but the juice on my chin.”

  Kylie froze in the doorway, unable to look away from them. Belle laughed, but the sound quavered, like a violin under the first stroke of the bow. “I didn’t know you were a cannibal too,” Belle murmured as Kylie forced herself to turn and jerkily walk away.

  Her face was cold with embarrassment. After all these years, their intimacy still bothered her, still disturbed any amount of peace she’d gained while being with the clan. She consciously lost Silvija’s response in the quick tap of her feet against the tile. Sometimes their happiness was just too much to bear.

  Kylie turned blindly down the hallway heading toward her room. Senses scrambled, she didn’t realize there was someone else there until it was too late. Too late to avoid the crashing of bodies, hands on her arms steadying her. Ivy.