Desire at Dawn

by Fiona Zedde

  Kylie smiled and squeezed the hands around her stomach. “I’d never want to mess up that gorgeous face.”

  Violet and Liam, twins who looked nothing alike but shared the same childlike spirit, never came to her smelling of sex. And she was grateful for that more than they would ever know. They knew she didn’t want sex or any flirtation; they had understood Kylie instantly all those years ago when the question of sleeping arrangements came up.

  With them, she was able to fulfill her basic need to be cradled against other vampiric flesh while she slept, without worry of being taken advantage of during the day. She didn’t know what she had done to receive such kindness from them, but she was grateful.

  “It’s a good thing this gorgeous face of mine is forever,” Violet said in reply to Kylie’s earlier comment.

  “Quiet time,” Liam mumbled in his near-sleep and reached back to pinch his sister.

  Violet flinched and snapped her teeth at him. “Watch it, boy.”

  Kylie smiled and settled down even more between the twins. Soon, she dreamed.

  Chapter Five

  “I’m going to be gone for a while.” Kylie said the words softly so as not to disturb Silvija who was still sleeping—or at least pretending to—on the other side of the large bed she shared with Belle.

  The room smelled of their recent lovemaking, but Kylie ignored that. What she had to say to her mother was more important than any discomfort she had with their intimacy.

  Belle sat up in the bed, holding the sheet against her bare breasts. “Why?” She lightly touched Kylie’s hand resting on the bed between them. “Have you been so unhappy here?”

  Kylie avoided looking at her mother. The question challenged her to tell the truth, to rediscover that brief connection they’d had the previous evening before Silvija interrupted them. Kylie shook her head.

  “It has not been easy,” she said finally.

  Her mother looked stricken. Then her face smoothed itself out. “You know I never wanted this for you.” The words left her mouth in a whisper.

  Instantly, they were both transported back to that evening in Jamaica when Kylie had come sliding down the hill. She remembered clearly the first surging rush of blood in her veins. How she had felt both hot and cold at the same time. Invincible and vulnerable, needing her mama with a fierceness that had stolen every rational thought from her head. She had killed her own grandmother to get to Belle.

  Kylie blinked. She still needed her mama.

  But during the separation when Belle had been taken by the vampires and Kylie was left with her grandmother, they had lost the easy connection they had with each other. Every conversation was a struggle, every suggestion from Belle was a chance for Kylie to rebel, every glance of Belle and Silvija’s happiness just reinforced how she had none of her own.

  Kylie swallowed past the painful lump in her throat. Then she pulled back instead of going closer, tugging her fingers back from beneath Belle’s.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Kylie said. “I’m here now.”

  “Yes, but for how long?” A tight smile touched her mother’s lips when Kylie didn’t respond. “Can you at least tell me why you’re leaving?” Regret and sadness colored her voice.

  Kylie bit her lip, still unable to say a word.

  “Okay. Be careful.” Belle caressed the lushness of Kylie’s hair, tugging at the coils near her ear then releasing them. “If you need anything, please call me.”

  Nodding, Kylie reached out, a spastic movement of her fingers, and touched her mother’s bare forearm. “I’ll be back soon.”

  *

  Kylie arrived in the woman’s Atlanta neighborhood in the late evening. Ten o’clock, Monday night. There was a light crowd on the streets in soft disarray from the remnants of the work day. Happy-hour-wasted executives and long-skirted assistants spilled from the bars and headed for home. Hard rock music thudded from a nearby bar.

  Kylie paid the driver and got out of the yellow cab then stepped back from the curb right in front of the woman’s apartment. She adjusted the backpack on her shoulder to straighten her thin T-shirt belted into loose-fitting jeans. She tugged the light fall jacket closed over her breasts.

  It was a jacket she did not need. But long ago, Silvija and others in the clan advised her to be mindful of what humans were wearing and mimic them. Jackets for the cold, short sleeves for the hot. Vampires didn’t feel the extreme heat or cold so had to rely on watching their surroundings and the humans in it for cues on what to wear and how to act in certain situations.

  There was a light on in the woman’s apartment, the chirp of conversation from a television show. It sounded like the woman was walking around the apartment, wearing the same path in the hardwood floor, instead of paying attention to the television.

  Something in Kylie beat faster at the thought of seeing the woman again. Although it seemed ridiculous now that she had made such a long journey simply to see a human she’d never spoken to, she trembled with eagerness.

  Kylie didn’t wait for traffic to subside before stepping into the street to cross to the other side. Cars honked. A couple holding hands on the street corner gave her a curious glance before quickly looking away.

  She crossed the street to the woman’s apartment and glanced over her shoulder before leaping up and scrambling up the dark face of the building to the sixth floor balcony. The woman was inside. She could hear her quiet breathing, smell that delicious fragile sadness of hers.

  On the balcony, Kylie slipped her backpack over both shoulders and leaned against the railing, looking down over the street as if she belonged there. No one had seen her quick climb to the balcony. She didn’t quite move faster than the human eye could detect, but she knew her speed would trick them into thinking they were seeing things. From her own experience before she had been turned, she knew the trick well enough. One moment, a creature was in one place, and the next, it was in another.

  Even after seven years, she was still not able to think of herself quite in those terms. The first time she saw one of them, the fear nearly ran down her leg in a scalding shower. Her mother. She had beat Julia bloody, slamming her body into a tree until Kylie thought for sure Julia, whom she had initially thought was creepy and a little forward, was dead. But even as Julia trembled and bled from Belle’s abuse, a light flashed in her eyes, like she was enjoying the blood gushing from her body nearly as much as Belle was.

  “What are you?” Kylie remembered crying out, heart racing in her chest as she stared at the mother she hadn’t seen in over thirteen years.

  Belle, cold and blood-splattered, only said, “I am nobody you know.”

  Kylie had no idea that later she would be one of them. Vicious. Bloodthirsty. But even with her transformation, she did not truly consider herself one of the vampires. She was still Kylie, an almost orphan who once had a grandmother she loved. Kylie nibbled her lower lip until she drew blood.

  As if responding to her sharp but fleeting pain, the woman inside the apartment whimpered. Kylie heard the sound of tears, sobs tearing from a delicate throat, then the rustle of clothes. The woman’s footsteps headed away from the balcony. Seconds later, the sound of the shower broke the silence, the delicate tapping of water flooding against tile.

  Kylie slipped into the apartment then and went immediately to the closet where she had spent that singular night. She made herself comfortable in the small space while the woman finished up in the bathroom. Within minutes, a cell phone rang. The human walked quickly into the bedroom, wrapped in a towel, to answer the call. Drops of water slid from her body and splashed against the floor. Kylie heard each drop and licked her lips, suddenly thirsty.

  “Hello?”

  The woman’s voice was a surprise. Deep where Kylie had expected light. Like a teacher’s. A voice used to commanding respect in a classroom or lecture hall. Southern. Hot and firm at the same time. “Yes, this is Olivia.” She paused, listening to whoever was on the other end of the line. “Of course I’m all
right. Are you sure you didn’t mean to call my mother?”

  Seconds later, she disconnected the call without saying anything else. The small phone clacked against the bedside table when she put it down.

  Olivia. She silently tasted the name on her tongue. Olivia. She pursed her lips on the first syllable, licked her palate on the second, bit her lip on the third as she said her name. Olivia.

  Olivia didn’t move when she put the phone down. Kylie imagined her staring into space, her large eyes unblinking under the inky brush of dark lashes. In the closet, on the improvised pallet, Kylie wondered what it would be like if Olivia looked at her. What would she see?

  Then Kylie heard Olivia rouse herself from wherever she had gone in her mind. The mattress sighed when she sat on her bed, drying her body with a towel. She smoothed lotion into her skin before slipping between the sheets on her large bed. Olivia did not fall asleep immediately nor did she read. Kylie would have heard the sound of pages turning, anything other than the slow, even breathing and stillness.

  Kylie tried breathing as Olivia breathed, consciously raising her ribcage to the delicate sounds of Olivia’s respiration. It was another two hours before she slept.

  *

  Kylie slipped from her hiding place, knowing she would not be able to sleep during these peak night hours. After fighting so long for sleep, Olivia held on to it with the ferocity of a child. She lay still under the sheets, not stirring at all when Kylie crept through the apartment.

  Everything about this existence was still new to her. The strength of her body. Its hungers―her eyes flickered to Olivia―especially its hungers. Her teeth tingled, a pleasant ache that spurted saliva in her mouth and made her fingers curl into a cool fist. She had taken a man at the airport, so she wasn’t hungry. She remembered well how it had been to tear into his neck and suck on the hot fount that jetted into her mouth. What she felt for Olivia was not that.

  It felt so different from simply wanting a meal. There was that hunger yes, but there was also a possessiveness. She wanted no one else to have this woman. She wanted to touch her and to be the only one to experience that privilege. Kylie tilted her head at the mystery of it, confused at her own desire.

  To distract herself from it, she looked around the bedroom, seeking out details she had missed the day before. The bedroom’s brick walls were covered in lush tapestries of the same gold and burgundy color scheme as the rest of the apartment. But where the living room was littered with books, travel knickknacks, pieces of art that smelled like they’d come from different countries, there was nothing personal in the bedroom. No family photographs, school trophies, or well-worn blankets. Simply the massive bed with a leather bench at its end, a deep red throw on the bench, two shoulder-high bookshelves that created an artificial doorway into the bedroom. A game of Scrabble set for two players sat neglected on the leather bench, and a large mirror in its heavy-looking antique wooden frame hung on the wall opposite the bed. Nearly everything looked new.

  Despite the lack of personal touches, the bedroom felt warm. A pulsing heat that welcomed her, intruder that she was.

  On the bedside table sat a book with a dark purple velvet cover. A journal. Kylie picked it up and opened it to the page marked with a green ribbon.

  Everything exists between one moment and the next. An ill-timed step into the street. A marriage proposal. A phone call. “You have cancer.” The words rang unacknowledged in my head as if meant for someone else. The doctor said other things, her tone an endless cheerleading parade, outlining the benefits of my type of cancer, a cancer she preferred since there was a greater chance of defeating it. How could she be so cheerful delivering this news?

  But the alternative—pitying condolence—was worse. “We can get this thing gone,” she said. “We’ll get it out with a lumpectomy, chemotherapy, and radiation for six weeks every day, and everything will be fine.”

  But now I’m not fine. As I write this, I feel the tears coming up to choke me. This isn’t fair. What did I do wrong?

  Kylie closed Olivia’s journal. Her thumb brushed the thick purple velvet cover, stroking it gently as she watched the woman sleep. Dying. Olivia was dying.

  She looked up from the journal to the woman on the bed. Sleep softened the lines in her face, made curves of the angular body mostly hidden under the dark sheet. The mirror reflected Kylie’s image back at her, a literal thief in the night, snooping through the private thoughts of someone who did not know her. Kylie scowled at herself in the mirror and saw a fiend scowl back. Sharp teeth resting lightly on plump burgundy lips. Her wide eyes, heavy-lidded and harmless in her round face. The thick dandelion of hair that brushed her shoulders.

  In the bed, Olivia shifted.

  Kylie stilled. She thought of what it would mean to die. For real. As an eighteen-year-old in Jamaica, living with her grandmother who had sheltered her from everything, death was just another word. Even after Belle had disappeared from their lives when she was so young, it had never occurred to her that she was truly gone. Kylie had not seen her mother’s body—or any dead body—to impress upon her the horror and permanence of death.

  And now that she was a vampire and death did not touch her at all except the kind that she delivered herself, she found it nearly impossible to contemplate it seriously. But here was the human woman, Olivia, sick and dying. She quietly replaced the journal on the bedside table and walked away from the bed. But she did not leave the room. Kylie dropped to the thick rug on her belly, head spinning as she imagined Olivia dead.

  A flare of scent flashed her eyes up, narrowed them. She leapt to her feet and rushed silently through the apartment and to the balcony.

  Ivy.

  The other vampire stood in the darkness outside of Olivia’s home wearing black. Kylie could smell gun oil and tempered steel. She carried a gun and at least one knife.

  Kylie drew the door shut. “What are you doing here?” She kept her voice low.

  “Following you.” Ivy was matter-of-fact about her presence on the balcony of Kylie’s human. “Belle worried that you would get into trouble.”

  “How much trouble can I get into staying with a human?” Kylie drew herself up to her full height, which was at least three inches shy of her mother’s six feet. “I’m as safe here as if I were at home.”

  “Someone is watching this apartment.”

  Kylie twitched with surprise. “What?”

  Ivy raised an eyebrow, declining to repeat herself.

  “Are you sure?” Kylie looked around the building, seeing only the familiar café, the humans going about their lives. Panhandlers, drunks, hippies, a few hipsters with their eighties haircuts and clothes.

  “Someone has been watching this apartment.” Ivy spoke slowly as if to make sure Kylie understood every word. “I’m sure they saw me climb up here from the street. I’m sure they’re watching us now.” Then she frowned, narrowing her gaze at the apartment. “This place smells funny.”

  Kylie opened her mouth to ask Ivy again if she was sure about them being followed. But she had been wrong when she asked her that the first time. Ivy, if nothing else, was precise. She was careful and methodical, serving as Silvija’s right hand while Kylie had been with the clan.

  “Did someone follow you?” Ivy asked.

  She shook her head although she wasn’t completely sure. None of the humans from the museum where she’d stolen the necklace had followed her as far as Little Five Points. They hadn’t followed her at all. She hadn’t sensed or smelled any other vampires tracking her. Both times in Atlanta, all she’d detected was humans. Harmless, inconsequential humans.

  “What have you done aside from follow this human?”

  Kylie didn’t bother to deny what Ivy stated as fact. “I didn’t do anything else.” She didn’t think Ivy would take an enlightened view of her theft from the museum.

  Ivy stared at her with blade sharp eyes. “Nothing else?”

  “Nothing.” Kylie didn’t look away, didn’t flinch. />
  The excursions to galleries, stores, and shops were her own secret indulgences. Shiny things she took and gave away or discarded, depending on her mood. Suddenly, a dark shape vaulted over the balcony. She hissed and drew back, fists flying up before she recognized Violet.

  “They are watching this building, and definitely this apartment in particular,” Violet reported. “They didn’t follow me when I left.” Then she wrinkled her nose as if she caught wind of a bad smell. She hitched a dismissive shoulder then winked at Kylie. “Hey, little one.”

  Kylie looked from one to the other, not quite knowing what to say. They looked so certain of what they had reported, but why would someone be watching Olivia? Why would someone be watching her? She thought again of the things she had taken before and wondered if she had brought trouble to Olivia’s front door. She bit her lip and leaned back against the brick exterior of the building while Olivia slept peacefully inside.

  “It’s probably nothing,” she said.

  Ivy crossed her arms. “Your mother wants you to come home.”

  Kylie’s jaw tightened at the unexpected statement. “Why?”

  “You know why,” Ivy said the same instant that Violet gave her a significant look.

  “This is a crazy little town, Kylie.” Violet’s purple eyes flashed in the dark. “If someone is watching the human, they could see you. But if someone is watching you….” She let her voice trail off.

  But she’d painted a vivid enough picture with those simple words. There was no need for her to go on any more. Kylie’s mind supplied well enough the image of someone, on the hunt for her, gutting the woman and drinking her blood. Collateral damage. Kylie shifted restlessly against the rough brick.

  “I’m not leaving.” She crossed her arms over her chest to match Ivy’s posture.

  “You don’t have a choice here, Kylie.” Ivy’s voice was firm.

  Desperation clutched at Kylie’s throat. Being with this woman gave her the most peace she’d had in a long time. She didn’t want to give it up just because her mother said she should.