In a fraction of a second she was upon the deer, and before it had a chance to kick out, she tore its neck open and drank deeply of the blood gushing forth. "One thing you’ve not mastered," Nathaniel mused, "is staying tidy when you eat. I should put a bib on you before setting you loose."
Having drunk her fill, he told her of the ways one should dispose of the bodies of their victims so as not to draw suspicion or make their existence known to the mortals. He showed her how to bury them, burn them, and prevent their blood drinking from becoming the apparent cause of death that it was.
When they returned to the cottage, she insisted on showering and washed her clothes in the sink. Daisy borrowed a bathrobe from the linen closet, and wore it while her clothes dried in the kitchen. The two vampires sat in uneasy silence in the living room until Daisy forgave him enough to speak again.
"What did you say to Rick before I approached him?"
His head popped up out of his mental wandering, and he said, "Eh?" Then he laughed. "Oh that. I said, ‘See my cousin over there? Could you keep an eye on her while I step out for a few? She’s sixteen and I promised to keep her safe.’"
Daisy swatted the back of his head. "You made him think I was sixteen?!" She shuddered all over. "What an awful person!"
Nathaniel doubled over with laughter and fell off the couch, rolling around dramatically. "When you called him, ‘young man’ I nearly exposed my position in the corner."
He crawled back on the couch, and sprawled out too much, setting his legs on her lap as if they were still kids. She shoved his legs off and moved to a chair.
After a long silence, she asked, "Do you remember when we were younger, and you said some things about vampires about drinking from one another? When you were new to it yourself?"
He stiffened and his eyes widened before he regained composure. "Sure. What d’ya want to know?"
"How much of it was true and how much fancy?"
Nathaniel studied her face, and answered slowly, being careful of each word. "Draining another vampire's blood is frowned upon. Not punishable, necessarily, but not exactly approved of either."
"Isn't it what you said I'd do to you one day?" she asked, and the shift in his posture answered her question. "What happens if someone is, um, 'drained?'?"
"The attacker gains the powers of the victim, and may potentially keep them, but it's rare and only in cases where the victim is killed. Since it’s usually perpetrated by a younger vampire upon an older one, the killing part of it isn't so easy, but if successful, they end up a lot stronger." Nathaniel continued to look uneasy telling her this, and she wondered if he answered only because he was under orders to do so.
"But it's merely frowned upon?" she asked, hoping to drag more of it out of him.
Nathaniel considered how to answer. "Yes. If someone is known to have done it, they tend to not get invited to parties—or cities, for that matter. They're the ones most likely to remain alone, nomads wandering the earth."
Daisy nodded. "Like Cain," she said.
"Yeah, something like that," Nathaniel replied. "Can we do without the Bible references?"
Daisy folded her arms. "How often will I have to feed? It seems I'm hungry every night!"
"How many times did you eat as a human?"
Daisy sighed.
"It won't be that often. Usually after the first few months, most vampires only get hungry once every week or two, but that's on human blood. I can't say how many innocent animals you'll be slaughtering a night."
She scowled at him, drawing into herself on the couch. "What can I do? You know I couldn't live with myself if I hurt someone. It was bad enough listening to the gurgling struggles of that deer out there!" She rested her chin on her knees, and folded her arms about her legs.
"Look Daize, if you're going to insist on this lifestyle," she glared at him, but he continued, "then you're going to have to take the bad with the good."
"What good is there?"
Nathaniel laughed, incredulous. "You mean besides eternal youth and power?"
"Vain and selfish things to desire," she said. "The cost is too high, no matter how tempting the rewards."
"Oh-ho, listen to Daisy, Miss High-and-Mighty," he mocked. "Next you'll be trying to stuff carrots down your gullet. Don't give me that look, I remember your vegetarian days. What were you, twelve? Even your mother looked apoplectic over it all."
She sniffed at him, and stayed curled up. "Just because you can’t control your urges, doesn't mean I’ll allow myself to be subject to this demonic whim."
"Oh, hush up, will you? You may not like it now, but you wanted this once. You call it selfish? Then you were selfish for wanting it."
Daisy could say nothing to this, it only sounded like her own thoughts, eating away at her mind. "Jared said there were others who managed to live on animals and IV bags. Why shouldn't I?"
"It's a funny thing Jared should mention it. Did he also say that most of them went mad after a while? Some of them walked out into the sun only to have their ashes found the next night? How does that fit in with your views of sin? Where does suicide rank?"
Daisy stood, and paced around the room. "That isn't going to be me. You’ve given me a longer life, and so I'll find a way to use it. I'll do the work I always wanted to do to help make things better in the world."
"A noble cause, I'm sure, but you'll need to first get yourself accustomed to being around humans," he said. His eyes followed her back and forth as she moved in maddeningly fast figure eights.
She stopped, staring at him. "Fine, then you'll have to teach me, and once Valerie is satisfied, I'll become a nomad—without the atrocities—and find ways to make this existence worth something."
Nathaniel shook his head, and stood. "Great. Have fun waiting out the day, I still need to hunt. See you tomorrow night." With that, he slammed the front door, rattling it as he left. Daisy spent the day sitting completely still staring at the wall, her mind buzzing with questions, and more importantly, plans.
New Discoveries
Daisy imagined vampires would fill a cottage with ways to pass the interminable moments of cloistered days. When Nathaniel left, she occupied herself exploring the grounds until the tickle of pre-dawn sent her scurrying back inside. She found little with which to occupy herself during the daytime.
Nathaniel had been right, now she had fed on human blood, however cold, she no longer felt the urge to sleep. A long run around the acres of land surrounding the cottage did nothing to tire her, she could run endlessly so long as she stayed fed. Besides the magazines in the bathroom, which she read, and the newspaper several weeks out of date, also read, there seemed to be nothing for her to do.
The cottage was spotless, so there was nothing to clean, and yet there were no books, crafts, or anything else of interest. If only I had some yarn to knit, or a book to read! She explored each room thoroughly, searching through closets, under beds, and inside drawers. When she thought she’d searched every last corner of the space, she found the attic ladder in the ceiling, though it took a jump to grab the pull.
Daisy climbed one stair at a time, filled with anticipation, but going slowly so as to hold on to the excitement of it in case it proved as uninteresting as the rest of the place. She’d marveled at the unblemished state of the cottage, not a mote of dust to be found. The same could be said for the attic, but as she looked around, she discovered the treasures for which she had spent the morning searching.
Each wall held a short bookcase rising to her waist, built to fit the underside of the sloped roof. One set of shelves held books, another held board games and puzzles, another had craft and art supplies, and the last supported a television with movies and video games available to play on the attached devices. A mound of pillows lay in a neat stack before the latter.
The best part of the room stood in the center: an antique upright piano with sheet music arranged with two bookends holding them in vertical formation. The sun beat down on the layer of shingle
s above her, making the attic warmer than the rest of the house. The heat filled her and Daisy reveled in it, and walked to the piano with reverence.
How had they moved it in here? she wondered.
The opening for the ladder appeared far too narrow to allow for the instrument to fit. Whatever method didn’t matter, because now she had something to do.
Daisy stroked her fingers across the polished mahogany case and the letters of the lid made of inlaid mother of pearl. She lifted the cover to reveal the keys beneath. The keys were made of yellowed ivory, and though they reflected the diffuse light from below, they showed signs of wear—deep grooves formed in some of the keys from the fingernails of a player who loved this piano for decades.
Daisy thumbed through the compact stack of sheet music available. It had been years since she played, her fingers having become too pained and curled from arthritis to do more than play "Chopsticks" with her grandchildren. The first piece that caught her eye was Chopin's Mazurka Opus 63, No. 1, with its sly, flitting notes dancing between playful and contemplative. She studied the sheet, and touched the keys tentatively. The sounds rang out true and perfect, the owner of the piano kept it well in tune.
As she played the number, her fingers flew over the keys and all attempts to maintain the natural tempo abandoned to her own wild speed. The layers of sound fell over her in an unusual harmony, she slowed to allow the instrument's hammers to give their ringing strikes. When she finished it the first time, she began again, following the intended syncopation, and giving it the same inflection that she admired in Marian Pivka's performance of the same piece. As she played it the second time, her mind picked up subtleties she’d never noticed when human, and in a third run through, she added extra elements to it Chopin had never written—a call and response between Chopin's original voice and the unseen suitor who chased the dancing keys across the soundboard. With each additional flourish, the song took on a greater richness, the somber notes mingling with the flirtation of the piece.
Daisy played it a few more times, creating different embellishments, trying it in different keys, and then picked out a few others of Chopin's pieces: the Nocturne no. 1 and Impromptu Op. 66. She then sought other types of music, and picked one from random, grabbing one from a musical she remembered as a child. She continued in this way for a long while, not paying much attention to the passage of time.
When finally she decided to give the piano a rest—she wasn’t tired in the least—she noted the shift in the light from downstairs. With careful attention she returned all of the selections to their original places.
Downstairs, she searched for a clock, but found none. When she stopped and paid attention to her inner voice, she could tell how long it had been since the sun had passed its zenith. In a little more than three hours, the darkness would return, and so would Nathaniel. Curious to see how accurate this internal clock would prove, she risked pulling back the curtains in the living room. Sunlight spilled forth over the carpet, and instinct told her to jump back.
Out of longing for her old body and its ability to bask in sunshine, she reached her hand out and counted, but when she got to thirteen seconds her skin was only red, and so she held herself there against the pain and continued. This time it took nearly a minute for the sun to burn the skin until it began to peel. When she drew her hand back, she licked at the wound until the skin repaired itself. With a numb awareness of her own changes, she closed the curtain. Should I tell Nathaniel? How long does it take for others to burn?
Daisy returned to the attic, and rummaged through the craft supplies until she discovered knitting needles and a box filled with skeins of yarn in varying colors. She seated herself on the pillows and knit a sweater from memory, although winter was many months away. The back of her right hand stung a little as she worked it, but the discomfort faded, as did the pink splotches.
The work proved far easier than she recalled, and in less than twenty minutes she had a child's sweater completed, where before it would have taken half a day or more. This would fit Perdy perfectly, she realized, and a part of her ached to see the child again. Her mind drifted over thoughts of the girl, and then of her own children.
She pictured the faces of her daughter and sons as they grew from birth through adulthood. Two of them had children of their own, one in college.
At first she considered ways in which she might visit them, or at least watch them as they lived and worked and played. She knew revealing herself would upset them, horrify them, and worse—put them in danger of her own kind.
My own kind. A shudder of revulsion went through her, and she started in on a pullover, never once bothering to look at a pattern.
Nathaniel knocked at the front door. When Daisy let him in, he glanced at the stack of clothes—some knitted, others sewn—in a bundle by the couch. "Woah, you've been busy," he noted. She kept her face blank and locked the door behind him. "I see you discovered the attic."
"It would’ve been nice to be told about it before you left," she said, her voice icy.
He cocked a grin at her, "Nah, it's more fun to find it for yourself."
Daisy softened, thinking about her exploration of the house, and the elation at the discovery of the ladder leading up. "Yes," she said, "I suppose it was."
Nathaniel nudged the bundle with the toe of his boot. "What's all this supposed to be?"
"Clothing for Perdy. She has nothing but the clothes I brought her in, and I would imagine it's quite hard for her aunt to pay for another child's wardrobe with so many children of her own."
"Daisy," Nathaniel said, his tone filled with concern. "I know you liked her, but it's not a good idea to go see her."
She said lightly, "I'm not going to see her, you are. Just drop the bundle by the back porch with the attached note, and she'll have her new clothes by morning."
Nathaniel folded his arms. "They are watching us, you know?"
"Let them watch," she said, and moved to sit on the couch. "Send me on a task nearby, and drop them off when they’re focused on me."
Nathaniel removed some objects from his long coat, and tossed them at her. Without flinching, she caught them. Two more IV bags.
"Those are for you. One tonight, another one tomorrow," he said, and leaned against the doorway to the hall.
Daisy set the bags down on the coffee table. "What about you?"
"I hunted this morning, remember? I won't need to feed again for a while."
She did nothing to hide her disgust, but put the extra bag in the fridge. The first one, she resigned herself to drinking, but only out of sight of Nathaniel.
When she finished the pint, she came back out and found him waiting by the front door again, one finger hooked into the fabric tied around the bundle holding it in place. "Ready?" She gave a nod. "Let's go."
They made their way swiftly to Esperanza's house. When they were near, Daisy remained down the street where a band of teenagers walked through a park, talking. She pretended to hunt them, while Nathaniel swung himself over Esperanza’s fence in the back yard.
Within seconds he was back at her side, and he said, "Tracking. Lesson one.
Despite his irritation with this side errand, he still grinned at her. Daisy imagined he thought of himself as a good tracker; for all she knew, he might be.
Nathaniel pulled a strip of cloth from a pocket inside his coat. "Smell it," he said.
Daisy stood straighter. "I'm not a hound, Nathaniel."
He laughed. "No, your sense of smell is stronger. Bigger olfactory bulbs. We have extra rods in our eyes, too, like cats."
She stared at him in disbelief, but he was right. Even as he held it several steps away from her, she first smelled the immediate fragrance of Nathaniel: leather and musk, pepper and ash, and a sweetness like almond oil. Beneath the initial scent though, was something more. Daisy snatched the sock from his hand and breathed in the richer, more pungent odor of a human. Her scent, definitely female, although she couldn't discern how she knew, told
the story of a healthy young human who ate a vegetarian diet and went jogging several times a week.
As she allowed the story to unfold about the human's life, she knew where the young woman might jog. Daisy ran, with Nathaniel trailing after her, calling her to wait. She shook off his attempt to grab her, and ran faster toward a suburban neighborhood filled with daffodils and maple trees.
A pond nearby hosted a family of ducks, a remarkable fragrance in the city, which she recognized from her treks in the wilderness with her husband, although then it was bland by comparison. Now it blazed as a signature painting the picture of a park with a pond and azaleas and pine. They came to a stop outside the park, and Daisy saw the jogging trail.
The air blew from the wrong direction, but Daisy focused on the few people hanging about the park in the evening. None of them were running. At a leisurely pace, Daisy walked around the park, trying to find the woman. At one point a breeze blew and she discovered the place where the scent remained strongest. It’d been at least a day since her visit, but the faint reminder of her former presence lingered on a park bench.
Slower now, Daisy walked around the area of the bench in hopes of seeking out the woman's trail when she left the park the day before. At first, she thought she found it, but came to a dead end where all traces of her were lost. Back from the bench she tried a different trail, and though it seemed promising, it became a circular loop. When she reached the bench again, she plopped down, defeated after her unexpected excitement.
Nathaniel sat down next to her, his legs spread wide, his arms along the back of the bench. "What was all that about?"
"We were tracking, weren't we?" Daisy's irritation remained plain on her face.
"Ah, that. I only intended for you to tell me what you got from her scent. Then I was going to give you more information." Nathaniel sucked his teeth and stared at the stars.
"That's an annoying habit," Daisy said.
Nathaniel dropped his gaze to look at her. "Sucking my teeth?"
Daisy After Life (Book 1): Perdition Page 9