Daisy After Life (Book 1): Perdition

by Demers, Raven J.

  "What are you doing?" Nathaniel stood, leaning against the doorframe. He eyed the pot of canned food with disgust.

  "Perdy's hungry." Daisy said.

  He lifted himself from his leaning position, and walked around her, standing too close as he glanced again at the food, but over her shoulder this time. "Going to play house with your new toy?"

  "Oh hush, you."

  He leaned in. "You really shouldn't play with your food. It's sick. People will talk."

  Daisy swiveled to strike him, but he caught her hand. "You sure have turned violent since you became one of us."

  She pulled her arm free, and looked away from him. It disturbed her how right he was; this truth didn’t lessen her irritation with him.

  "You should at least feed," he said, and pulled open the fridge.

  "There aren't any bags left, Nathaniel," Daisy said as she poured the contents of the pot into a bowl. Again, she questioned the reasoning behind the single occupancy dishes.

  Nathaniel's grinning face peered above the refrigerator door. "No?" he asked, as he lifted up an IV bag.

  Before he could blink, her hands were on it, tugging it away from him. Desperation took over, turning her features monstrous before him. He released it into her grasp, laughing as she drained the bag in gasping gulps. When finally she could compose herself again, horrified by her own behavior, she stared at him. "Where did you get these? I thought we lost them all after we went to the Queen's house."

  Nathaniel's smile turned cocky. "You'd think I'd lose all of our spoils to your pigheadedness? When you took off, I brought the bags here, before turning back toward Valerie's house."

  She could have kissed him at that moment, if he were almost anyone other than Nathaniel. "Clever," she said. "How many do we have left?"

  He opened the door wider so she could see. Her eyes widened. "It should last us a while, at least long enough for you to find a new home for your ... pet."

  Daisy whirled around, carrying the bowl to the dining table in the corner by the kitchen. She went to help Perdy wash her hair. The medical bag helped relieve the immediacy of her hunger, but Perdy's scent, though dulled by a good helping of soap, still caused Daisy distress. She touched Perdita as little as possible, having the child towel off even her own hair, though she struggled at the task and ended up dripping water all over the floor.

  "Come on, time to eat," she said, doing her best not to inhale.

  Nathaniel was nowhere to be found in the lower part of the house when Daisy brought Perdita to the table. "I'm sorry to do this to you, dear, but I need to leave the room while you eat. When I come back to check on you, I should have something for you to wear."

  Daisy shot out of the room as fast as she could, and headed to the attic, where she found Nathaniel lying on the mound of pillows on the floor, staring up into the monitor as a video game loaded. "Can't do it, can you?"

  She said nothing as she crossed the room to the craft shelf. Most of the fabric was gone, and she didn't dare ask Valerie to restock it. She took what was left of the material and began sewing as fast as her hands would allow. Within minutes, she had fashioned a simple sundress. With knitting needles at the ready, she produced a cardigan that would easily suit the child. As she cleaned up her mess, she asked Nathaniel, "Do you know if we’re to provide replacements for what we use here?"

  Nathaniel swiveled his head at an odd angle to see what she meant. "Oh that? Naw. Someone should be by from the house in a day or two to replace everything you nicked."

  "I didn't 'nick' it. Not exactly. If I have to find some way to pay it back or replace it, I will," Daisy said, completely unsure of how to go about that without doing harm to someone along the way. Robbing Peter to pay Paul, she chided, though it wasn’t quite what the phrase implied.

  She ceased breathing and headed back down the ladder to check on Perdita. The child wasn’t at the table, and the front door was wide open.

  I should have heard the door open!

  Daisy ran out of the door without thinking, though some animal part of her warned her not to do it. The warmth of the sun high in the sky, spread out across the grove of trees caused the moisture to cling in coiling humidity. A keening sound came to Daisy's mind, the frantic feral part of herself demanding she run and hide. The sun nearly blinded her, but she squinted and managed to make out the small form of Perdita's body.

  Daisy rushed forward, snatching at the girl, and dragging her naked—she saw the towel laying in the yard some distance away—back to the cottage. Once inside, she slammed the door shut, and slid to the floor, wildly irrational. Perdita scrambled away from the rabid beast laying against the door, white hair streaming down in mad sprays.

  "What. Were you. Doing?" Daisy demanded as a hiss, her eyes dancing with anger.

  Perdy held out her hand timidly to reveal an overripe peach clutched there. "I was still hungry," she admitted with guilt.

  Daisy held her breath, the young, human scent only driving the beast's rage within her. "You could get hurt," Daisy said, doing her best to master herself. "I—you should know from the last time, from the shed, I can't go out in the sun."

  Confusion and guilt twisted Perdita’s face. "I didn't know," she said. "I'm sorry."

  Daisy moved guardedly to stand up. Perdy jerked backward.

  "Don't move," Daisy said. "It's better if you don't move. I won't hurt you." She forced herself to resist all impulsive temptations, though the battle against her will proved greater than expected—greater than any time before. She couldn’t afford to be angry, not with Perdita in the house.

  When finally able to think clearly, when the struggle to control herself eased, Daisy examined herself to see how bad the damage had been; too focused on her goal, she failed to note how badly she burned. Stretching out her limbs, she saw nothing but pale, unmarred skin. Her fingers explored her face, but felt only the lines and wrinkles she’d carried for decades.

  Nothing hurt, except for the mild ache in her healing abdomen.

  That's not possible, she thought.

  "Perdy?" she asked. "Stay inside the house, ok sweetheart?" The girl nodded. "Go ahead and eat your peach now, but if you want more, wait until dark when we can go with you to fetch them. I'll be right back."

  Daisy stood, somewhat dazed, and checked herself in the bathroom mirror to be sure she wasn't too shocked at the experience to notice her pain. Nothing. No burns. She wasn't even pink. With careful consideration she returned to the attic where Nathaniel played a game involving a great deal of blood and shooting.

  "Nathaniel?" she asked.

  "Daize. What was all that noise down there?"

  She sat down on the piano bench, facing him. "Perdy went out to get a peach, but she's back safe now."

  Nathaniel glanced briefly at her, and then back to his game. "And?"

  She wanted to ask him. She needed to know how long other vampires could last in the sun, but her intuition told her to keep quiet about it. It might be better if she didn’t give away this secret just yet. "Nothing," she said. "Mind if I bring her up here?"

  "Yeah, I fucking mind," he said. "Keep her downstairs."

  "Fine," Daisy said, and selected a variety of books and games for them to play.

  As she started back down the ladder he said, "Oh Daize. You still have training tonight."

  She stopped mid-step. "I can't, not with—"

  "You'll just have to leave the pet at home," he said and laughed.

  "It's not safe!"

  Nathaniel shrugged, as he wrenched his controller to get his character to commit a particularly vicious act. "If you don't train, we all die."

  Daisy sighed, returned to Perdy, and spent the rest of the day entertaining the child, and managing—with a great strength of will—to not feast upon her.

  After dusk, as promised, Daisy took Perdita out to collect peaches from the trees. The child laughed with open delight as Daisy scaled the tree, climbing out onto far branches to collect some of the harder to reach,
but undamaged, fruit. She hadn't climbed trees in decades. It reminded her of her last foray into an old oak by her house to rescue her youngest when she was a toddler. She'd climb anything at that age.

  Before Daisy finished picking peaches, Perdy had devoured three of them, and Daisy kept the remaining sackful from the girl's fingers. "No more until tomorrow. It's bed time now, and as I said before, Nathaniel and I need to go out for a while. I have ... school."

  Perdy whined, but once dressed in her freshly cleaned pajamas and tucked into Daisy's bed, she readily settled in for the night. Daisy read her a story for good measure, then left the room.

  The vampires stood in the hall, completely still and silent, as they listened for the rhythm of Perdita's breathing to shift to a shallow, even steadiness. The constant control wore on Daisy, and she worried for her small charge.

  They left as quietly as they could, locking the door as they departed. Once outside the house, Daisy ran the perimeter of the grounds to make certain there were no unusual or unwelcome scents. Nathaniel rolled his eyes once she returned to his side. "Ready," she said, giving an anxious look back toward the cottage.

  "She'll be fine," he said. "Let's go. Tonight: tracking."

  The wind whipped her hair back as they ran. "We already learned tracking," she said.

  "No. This is Tracking, Lesson Two. How to track our own kind," he said.

  Daisy frowned at him in confusion. "Why would I need to know that? Are we not shunned if we take the life of our own kind?"

  Nathaniel laughed. "There are more reasons to track besides feeding. Or are you thinking of turning cannibal?"

  Her face soured at his comment, and she ignored him for some time, though they ran relatively close along a straight path to the city. When the downtown lights of Atlanta came fully into view, she asked, "Who are we tracking?"

  He shrugged. "Whomever we find. You pick as soon as you get sight or scent of your prey. I'll follow you from here on out." True to his word, he fell back several yards until she could barely make him out over her shoulder.

  She called back to him, softly, though he could hear, "Let’s pray we don't run into Addie. I don't think I can track a psychic."

  From behind her in the far distance, she heard a papery laugh.

  Daisy started her search from the rooftops, hopping from one to the next, and scaling buildings. Nathaniel had told her Atlanta had more vampires than most of the other major cities in the South. Queen Valerie had a way of attracting attention through her parties. Daisy guessed her sadism also appealed to the more vicious and bestial among them.

  Focusing on the streets below, she could pick up no fresh scent. Perhaps, she realized, she was giving herself away with her own. At a high rise, she stopped, clinging to a wall, to gain a broad view of downtown. Headlights and taillights moved in orderly rows along the streets, she imagined them Christmas lights, rows of white, rows of red. The pedestrians bustling along the sidewalks didn’t see her hiding in the shadowed corner of the building, its brick facade making an excellent perch with its varied depressions and protrusions.

  Frustrated at not picking up any signs, she let her senses range out, attempting to detect her supposed teacher. He’s not doing much teaching, tonight. Couldn’t I do this alone? Daisy thought, assuming Nathaniel felt somewhat similarly about her.

  Strange, I don't sense him either. That fact made her nervous, and she moved back along the path she had come, though it proved more circuitous and indirect than she first realized.

  As she landed in a crouch on the uppermost balcony of an apartment building, scaling up rough concrete depressions toward the roof, she lost sense of her surroundings. The disorienting impact of something large slamming into her side sent her rolling up and over the ledge. She sprawled out on a balcony below, and skittered into a semi-controlled stance on her toes and fingertips.

  Nathaniel stood, brushing off dirt he picked up from somersaulting on the roof. He laughed, and glanced back at the shattered clay pots, their plants and soil spilling out onto rough tile.

  Daisy snarled, and lifted herself up to standing, though her body remained a taut instrument, ready to pounce. Nathaniel lifted his eyebrow, smirking at her. "Forgot one thing," he said. "You don't yet know how to hide your scent, do you?"

  Her gaze turned murderous. She knew him too well. Nathaniel had forgotten nothing, this was one of his games.

  "Aw, come on, now," he said. "Don't you want to know how to do it? It's a lot easier than you think."

  Daisy folded her arms, and lifted her eyebrow. "Tell me, then."

  He softened his stance, grinning at her. "Do you know how to get from one point to another when you're running or jumping?" She shrugged a shoulder, slightly. "You think about it, and it happens, right?"

  She nodded once in agreement. It did feel like that, she realized, almost like thinking about a goal and suddenly having achieved it before being aware it happened, especially when speed was a factor. A series of human movements, but at almost the speed of thought. He saw the understanding dawning in her eyes, and said, "It's kinda like that. Except you're doing your best not to think. You're emptying your mind of who you are, even as you follow your prey. Like turning off a light switch."

  Daisy balked. "That's too simple an answer. Just think it?"

  Nathaniel shook his head. "Sounds easy, and it gets easier with practice, but it's hard at first. When we hunt humans—"

  "I don't hunt humans," she countered.

  Nathaniel took a deep breath to keep his temper. She was being particularly difficult with him, and she knew it. Frankly, I should have taken his head off after his little stunt. He continued, "When we hunt humans, we're vulnerable to our own kind. Our scent is alluring, it draws in our prey. We have to be everything we are to attract them, like pitcher plants or fly traps, but when we want to track each other, we must remove ourselves from the hunter within us. We must step outside of it."

  Daisy said, "I'm surprised you can manage it at all, Nathaniel."

  He grinned, but his eyes narrowed. "Close your eyes," he commanded.

  She did as instructed, and Nathaniel, who was right next to her, disappeared to her sense of smell. His pepper and almond scent vanished. She opened her eyes only to find him standing in the same place, unmoving.

  "It should be easy for you Daize. You do all you can to not be one of us," he mocked her.

  Daisy turned her gaze away from him, staring out at the street below. She tried to empty her mind, to push away the distaste at being the monster he made her, but it only made things worse. Daisy shook her head, as the need for blood came rushing up to her awareness. Nathaniel said, "Try again."

  She remembered her daughter talking about some Eastern mysticism she’d read about, taking a bit after Daisy’s own Yankee mother. Alison had told her to release the self from the mind, until the chatter ceased. Daisy attempted to empty her mind, but her original resistance to her daughter's teachings came back—after all, it was an insult to be empty-headed—and she found her mind flooding with nothing but extraneous thoughts. No thought is extraneous, she said to herself.

  She turned to Nathaniel and shook her head. "Daize, just try to think of something that isn't a part of you as a vampire."

  Daisy let her focus go again, relaxing into a meditative state as she stared at the streets laid out before her. The memory of her recent dream came floating back. She imagined the sunlight on the crown of her head as she sat in her chair, she remembered the warmth of her grandchildren in her arms. All thoughts of being a vampire fled, as she raced forward into her memories of the sun and of life.

  "Yes," Nathaniel said, and Daisy flicked her eyes back to him, losing all her concentration. The strawberry sweetness of her body's fragrance returned to the rooftop.

  "No," she said, disappointed in herself.

  Nathaniel smiled genuinely. "You did it! It only lasted a moment, maybe, but it's a start. Whatever you were thinking of, that's your key."

  Daisy lo
oked away from him, back out onto the street. "How does this work, then? Won’t tuning out the hunter remove our ability to hunt?"

  "Ever taken an aimless stroll, and end up running into someone you were thinking about only moments before?" he asked.

  Daisy shrugged. She had on occasion experienced something similar, but she didn’t put much faith into it as anything more than a happy coincidence, and occasionally as a part of God’s plan when it had been particularly fortuitous.

  "It's like that. You let your senses guide you, without trying to guide them. You let go of the need for pursuit, and amble along. Or run, if you can. It takes practice to sustain it, and we can be easily distracted, as you well know. Once your scent is out of the picture, you just have to be good at the being quiet and unseen parts." He grinned. "Which I am."

  She stared at him, and tried again. Thoughts of the warm sun suffusing her skin and scalp returned, and when her scent faded, he grinned at her. She managed to hold her sun-thoughts as she said, "This works well enough. So long as we're not tracking Addie."

  Nathaniel shrugged. "The same principle might apply to mind readers, too, but I doubt it."

  She glanced out at the city sprawl. "I haven't picked anyone up. Not here. Maybe we should move on."

  A slow smirk spread across his face. "Oh, I think you'll find someone’s coming near."

  Daisy examined his position, and turned toward the wind, where he’d directed himself. A familiar scent, sweet and welcoming, tempted her. Rose soap and oatmeal, a blend she now associated with danger, mingled with a distinct frangipani note. She shinnied down the series of balconies and wandered aimlessly in the right direction.

  In Shadows

  Nathaniel followed behind Daisy as she made her way down from the roof and ambled toward the familiar scents of two viperous vampires, one of whom shouldn’t be allowed to roam the city. Daisy thought of sunshine as she peered from a distant corner in the shadows of a tall building.

  Jill's petite, wiry frame held Guilherme against a wall, stroking his cheek. They spoke to one another, but the words were lost at a distance. Jill licked his face and bit at the cheek she’d stroked. He looked as though he sobbed, but couldn’t produce the tears for it. Her fingers laced into his brown curls, now washed clean of the black blood, which had matted it when Daisy last saw him.