Of Light and Darkness: The Vampire's Daughter

a conversation she’d been having with a tall, male Elf.

“Valek!” She shrieked and ran to the center of the square. Several gasps fluttered from the crowd.

Valek stopped walking, glancing around defensively at the ogling eyes.

“Valek! What did you do to her?” Evangeline asked, exasperated, and staring wild- eyed.

Valek saw she had somehow managed to gussy up more than she already had been that evening. Her chestnut hair swirled in loose curls around her pale rounded shoulders. Dark, emerald eyes glimmered under a bed of curled lashes. But all of that didn’t appeal to him so much this time around. It seemed oddly sort of fake, like there was a hag cowering just underneath the layers of sparkling gossamer and ribbon.

He sneered. “I did nothing.”

“Then, what happened to her?”

“Nothing. She’s just exhausted.” He looked down at Charlotte again.

“Why are you crying then?” She reached up to the streaks of blood falling from his eyes.

He was quick to pull away, agitated. Had he really been crying? “I do not know. I hadn’t realized it.” He glared back once more at the watchful eyes staring at them around the village square, noticing how eerily still everything had become. “I believe I am just tired as well. Won’t you excuse me?”

“Can I walk you home?” Evangeline asked.

Valek shot a malevolent glower at the macho Elf still standing in the shadows of the tavern. Evangeline apparently did not waste any time finding another toy to play with.

“I believe your new friend would not feel right by that,” Valek seethed through gritted fangs. “You may hurt his feelings.”

Evangeline’s face burned with a chagrin Valek found neither appetizing, nor appealing.

“So, I think I’ll make it home myself. Thanks.” The urge to kill her was more out of fury rather than thirst, but he kept walking, leaving Evangeline alone in the center of the road.

Valek found himself stalking instead of gliding, like he normally did, back to his home at the far end of the street. It had been a long time since he had gone a full night without blood, though he believed nothing serious would happen to him. Veins throbbing under his icy skin pained him to no end. The anger that pulsed inside him didn’t help the situation either.

All of the lights were still on inside. The door left wide open after he ran out after Charlotte. He made his way back inside and slammed the door shut, barely touching it. He trudged up the stairs. All of the lanterns lining the wall on the way to the second story flickered out, bulbs bursting into thousands of tiny shards he crushed under the soles of his shoes.

Charlotte hung limp in his arms, her still face twitching every so often with a new thought. The floorboards, which normally creaked when Charlotte treaded on them, were silent under Valek’s feet as he made his way into her bedroom. Again, he noted how quiet and still the house felt without her. Charlotte’s bedcovers were still turned down from when she had woken up earlier that evening. He recalled their argument, instantly regretting having it.

He lay her down and removed her shoes. Charlotte was still adorned in her soaking, black dress, her hair clinging in thick pieces to her sleeping face. A nearly invisible shiver made her lower lip tremble, and he knew he had to remove the garment before she caught her death. A discomfort quickly flared up under his skin and if he were alive, he imagined it would have been several shades of chagrin turning him red. He sighed as he bent over her, gingerly fumbling with the pearl-face buttons beginning just below her collarbone, until he was able to slide it completely off her in one fluid motion. Quickly, he pulled the blanket around her, his gaze fixated on the dusty floorboards instead of on her.

He gazed at her again. She finally seemed peaceful; though he knew a million things haunted her behind those pretty eyelids.

He sat on the edge of the bed and watched sleep calm her features. Touching her soft curls, twirling them around his fingers, he listened contently to her complicated dreams, not surprised at all that they revolved around him. It shouldn’t have, but it made him smile. He glanced over at the alarm clock on her bedside table to see it was almost four a.m.

The muscles in his arms felt weak as the thirst started to flare in his throat again. Valek watched Charlotte’s chest expand and contract as she breathed. He leaned down and buried his nose in her hair, breathing in her rosy perfume, listening to the warm vibration of her pulse. It created a sharp, stabbing pain in his gums, his mouth drying up like he had swallowed a bale of cotton.

Lottie, my love, there is more than just the one reason why we could never be together. The angel and Satan’s plaything — together forever, he scoffed.

Though, he did love being so close to something so vulnerable, so real, and so alive, he decided that was what he loved most about her. It was a constant reminder of what he used to be — what had been taken away from him.

He inhaled her scent once more and an unrelenting burning shot up the back of his esophagus again, worse this time. He darted away from her, clinging to the furthest wall. Ruby veins glowed at him under the ivory current of her flesh. He shut his eyes tight against the sight of it. His gums throbbed harder, beckoning him to feed and he covered his mouth firmly with the back his hand, feeling his eyes begin to water.

Slowly, he walked to the door, turning one last time to look at his “Little Lottie,” knowing things were going to change between them forever. The door clicked shut.

He plummeted down the stairs and into the library, now made eerily dismal because of the dying fire. On his armchair sat a white, folded note. He opened it cautiously, already knowing who it was from. Evangeline’s face was creased from the horizontal fold. Her gray-scale eyes in the picture opened with a sad gaze toward him.

“Sorry,” the note sounded in an airy, musical voice, double-toned by a chord lower and sadder, before it vanished in a cloud of purple and gold.

“It is too late for sorry,” Valek muttered and collapsed into his chair. He put his head in one clawed hand and sighed. His lips throbbed with the thirst, and he knew death was imminent in just a few moments. He didn’t even have enough energy to make it back upstairs to his bedroom and close the curtains.

He sat there, analyzing the situation before him. His Lottie, his doll he had treasured and polished for years, the one he saw as eternally innocent, forever a little girl, had finally grown up.

The day he neglected to anticipate had finally come. In the back of his mind, he’d known it was coming. She was womanly. The little girl he’d watched change before his unchanging eyes, year after year after year, had made a change he hadn’t anticipated. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to anticipate it, because he didn’t want to believe she would ever change that way — that she would ever grow up. He mulled this over until the feeling of perishing was finally too overwhelming to ignore any longer.

First, breathing became more difficult as he choked and fixated on the oxygen. He fought with it until he felt his brittle ribs give to the pressure. He moaned softly, careful not to wake Charlotte, as his vision started to haze and then blacken. Soft flesh hardened around his drying bones. A louder cry ripped from him as his spine arched backward, pushing against the death that clung to him as he, himself, had been death clinging to life hundreds of times before.

The room grew entirely too cold and he clutched the sides of the chair, tearing holes in the upholstery with his mangled claws as he heaved. He fought for every last moment, tearing into his consciousness for one single shred of life. But the darkness finally enveloped the vision of the room before him as one final image shimmered before his blazing eyes. Charlotte.

Chapter Six Bedrich, Danek, Kazimir and…Vladislov

Sitting alone in his office chamber, Vladislov watched the world teem outside his window. A phenomenal October sun painted its jack-o-lantern color across the morning sky. The moon had begun to disappear, fading against the periwinkle clouds behind the mountains of the West. His side of the world was now waking up to greet the day as Western civilization tucked itself in for another dark night. Mortal children