by C. L. Quinn
The Days
Fly
C.L.Quinn
Blak Kat Publishing
June 2015
All rights reserved
One
It had been nearly a week now. Sarah stood in front of the fogged mirror in her small apartment and looked over her body. Yes, it had changed.
Without clothes, so that she could see her body fully, she noticed that her muscles weren’t as hard or defined as they had been, and she looked slightly smaller than she had a week ago. The differences showed most in her face, which was narrower, almost emaciated, the cheekbones too defined, her large eyes seemed bigger yet. Even though she had always known that when she stopped her daily dose, her body would convert quickly back to human, it was still startling. So, six days after taking the last sip of Xavier’s vampire blood, it appeared that she was fully human again. Each day, she’d felt the changes as her body reverted to what she was born to be.
“I think I need to eat,” she told the overly slender woman in the mirror.
It felt odd, like she’d lost something important.
As soon as she thought that, she smiled. Of course she had. For ninety two years she had been blood-bonded to one of the most powerful vampires on this earth. Her body had been protected from illness and aging by the tiny amount of his blood that she had ingested each day. The gift of health and longevity, the connection to power and legend, every element of her human life, had been enhanced by Xavier’s blood for nearly a century. So the loss was real, and now, nearly a week after ending her blood-bonded life, her body had purged the last of the effects from Xavier, and she could begin again.
Human. Just like everyone else walking around in this lovely city by the sea. Boston, her parent’s hometown, was now home for Sarah as she worked to accept her human body, the life she’d chosen, and all that it meant to be fully human again.
TWO MONTHS LATER
Spring. Sweet air, softly scented from fresh rain and new flowers. Blue skies were dappled with cotton-ball clouds that gently floated by above newborn grass and baby leaves. Birds fledging, insects sliding out to test the damp ground and moist foliage, people emerging from behind closed doors. Winter was over and life returned in abundance to fair days ahead.
Sarah hadn’t enjoyed springtime in decades. She sat on the ground, uncaring that her jeans were wet from the grass and watched people passing by quickly on their way to their jobs or home to family. People living their lives. Human, like Sarah. Like she was again.
“Are you kidding me? This is how you want to eat lunch? On the ground like a kid? Girl, I have got to retrain you!” Naji barked as she arrived.
Amused, Sarah stood and tried to tamp down her damp and wrinkled pants, but it was impossible.
“I had to feel that grass. Naji, it’s springtime in Boston! And after the winter you’ve had, this has to be the most beautiful day.”
Naji shook her head. “I don’t care how beautiful it is, my three hundred dollar skirt isn’t sitting on it!”
Fair enough. Sarah watched her lovely new friend take a seat on a bench after carefully inspecting it.
Elegant and graceful, Naji sat, her legs crossed immediately, because, she’d once told Sarah, this particular position highlighted her sleek, gorgeous legs and her designer stiletto heels.
“Presentation, presentation, presentation,” Naji had tried to pound into Sarah since they’d met.
Naji was right, Sarah had seen it work over and over for the striking woman with skin the color of coffee with a touch of cream.
Pulling Sarah down beside where she was strategically displayed, Naji clicked her tongue.
“Love, you are not rocking that awesome body of yours!”
“Awesome? Average, at best. And tending towards sickly, I think.”
“No, now, your body is nice, we just gotta fill you out a little more, and that, I can do. Micelli’s, tonight, and wear something sexy.”
Sarah let her eyes roam over the park, past it to the pier, and back to this vivacious woman, the first friend she’d made when she came to Boston a few months ago. They’d bonded instantly when both reached for the same cupcake with sky-high frosting at a bakery downtown. It had been the only one left, and when neither wanted to give it up, they finally ended up splitting it, laughing over their shared sweet-tooth. At one of the bakery’s outdoor café tables, the two women from different parts of the world, with radically diverse backgrounds, found something in each other, a connection neither had felt before. Since that day, the bond had only strengthened.
Sighing, she realized that sitting here on this bench, her first spring fully human again, talking about getting dinner, was the first time she’d really felt that she was living the life she was supposed to live.
Dinner in a popular restaurant with Naji, who would keep the conversation amusing and boisterous, who wouldn’t let her shy away from meeting new people, was exactly what she wanted to do. Without knowing it, Naji was teaching her to live like a human being again. Naji had no clue at all that the vampire world Sarah had lived in all of her life even existed. Luckily, she was going to stay that way.
Sarah had been blood-bonded to a vampire, not just any vampire, either, but an ancient, enormous, incredibly powerful vampire that had been on the earth for the better part of a thousand years. Xavier was first blood, a rare race of vampires born vampire, not made from vampire blood. He was handsome, perhaps the sexiest man she’d ever seen, and a womanizer, drunkard, arrogant…and kind.
But she’d been ready to step out of the endless life she’d lived for too long in the vampire world. She’d prepared and was now ready to live as humans were meant to do, day by day.
And that included aging. She hadn’t done so since she was twenty-nine years old and bonded by blood to Xavier so that she could remain twenty-nine forever.
Eight years ago, when she first considered leaving the blood-bond, she had been standing before the old mirror in her bedroom. Her fingers had moved across her cheeks as she scanned her face…such smooth skin and rich brown hair. That would change if she decided to do this. She would age and eventually die.
Life, with an expiration date, as it was meant to be.
Until recently, her days had been unchanging, day to day life in service to a first blood vampire was all she had ever known. Sarah was a sixth generation blood-bond behind her mother and father, who had been with Xavier for the previous century. They were both gone now, left the vampire world the way that most blood-bonded humans eventually did.
Released from service at their own request, they’d moved out into the world to finish their lives, grow old, and die. It was the way most blood-bonds chose at some point. Living forever, endlessly youthful, it turns out, isn’t as great a gift as people would imagine. At some point, there needed to be purpose, accomplishment, and change.
“What is going on in that pretty little head of yours?”
Naji’s voice broke into Sarah’s reverie. Smiling, she placed a hand on Naji’s knee.
“Nothing that a good meal and night out with my girlfriend can’t fix. You’re on. But Naji, you know I don’t do sexy.”
“Let me change that. I’ll come by with a few things and we’ll have you va-va-va-vooming all over that joint. I’ll bring out the wildcat in you.”
Now Sarah laughed. “Me? A wildcat? You’ve been smoking something again!”
Naji grinned, her perfect teeth artificially whitened to beyond anything natural. “You haven’t seen my work. I’ll pick you up.”
“Okay. I just have a few more errands to run and I’ll be home in time to stand listlessly in front of my closet and wonder what the hell I’ve gotten myself into.”
“Sarah, you hardly went out last month. It’s past time, and you know I can hook you up.”
“I’m not looking for a hook-up, Naj. You know that.”
“No, I know you tell me that. But I’d be doin’ you and a lot of hot men in Boston a disfavor by letting you spend your weekend nights alone in that shoebox you call an apartment.”
“I’ll trade up, when the time comes.”
“Yeah, well, for now, you need to redecorate.”
“Redecorate?”
“Um, hmm. With a six-pack and a long hard one.”
Sarah pushed off the bench. “You are incorrigible!”
“I am. Now come with me and I’ll get you a hoagie and some fries. You do have a hot little body, but you need a little more meat. I mean the kind that comes when you zip a man’s pants down, but for now, we’ll settle for the hoagie.”
Coming from the world of vampires, a very erotic community, frank talk about sex never bothered Sarah.
What did bother her was that Naji was right. Sarah’s sexual experience was probably on the same level as a girl in high school. She’d been in an oversized protective mansion for her entire life, so her romantic relationships numbered exactly zero. Sex, well, four times, and all singular events. Naji was right, she needed to explore her own human sexuality. But not tonight. It was only the second month of her new life, she just wasn’t ready for that intensity of new experience.
Naji stood and stretched out her long legs, glancing at a group of three men just passing on the sidewalk. She let her dark eyes, ringed with bright eye-liner, the kind men called bedroom eyes, move slowly over each man, top to bottom, and lingered on the area just below their belts. Then she slipped her fingers through the long dark ringlets that surrounded her face, fluffing the curls to draw their attention.
Sarah felt the air around all of them rise several degrees when Naji turned, her lips in a sensual smile as she took Sarah’s arm and walked away from the three men. They hadn’t moved.
“And that’s how you do it, my dear friend.”
Shaking her head, Sarah had to work to keep up with Naji, who was taller by several inches and moved like she was late for a date with God.
“I don’t have that. But I truly enjoy watching you work it.”
“We’ll get you there. The raw material is all here, we just have to bring it out.” Naji stopped and sifted several strands of Sarah’s dark hair though her fingers. “This is lovely, but we need to bring out your eyes. You need some highlights. Come with me.”
“I can’t, I have to…”
“Uh, uh, uh! You have to come with me!”
Sarah mentally accessed her list of tasks, decided she could do them before work tomorrow, and shrugged. “I am yours to mold. Consider me a big lump of clay.”
“Well that’s elegant! Get in the car.”
Sarah shook her hair and scanned her image. She was blonde!
“Perfect. You are now officially a fucking goddess!”
Naji looked extremely pleased. “I’m so good at what I do. Now, where do I start next?”
Pushing her hands out in a defensive gesture, Sarah stood. “Naj, I don’t think I can take anything else right now. I need to recover from this makeover. I mean, it’s amazing, but really a big change.”
“You bet it is, love.” Naji had a habit of randomly adopting a British accent. She was a self-professed anglophile, which made Sarah laugh.
“Have you been to England?” she’d asked Naji after they first met.
“Nope. It’s on my bucket list, though.”
“Bucket list? You can’t have a bucket list at thirty, surely.”
“Baby, you don’t know how long you’ll get in this old world, things change on a dime. Here today, a memory tomorrow. So, yeah, I got a long bucket list, and nearly half already marked off. Guess what item number one was?”
Sarah had only known Naji for about a week at that time and was afraid to say. “I really couldn’t.”
Naji had sidled in close to her and raised her eyebrows several times quickly, a sparkle in her eye.
“Sex with three men at once.”
“Really? And you’ve done it?”
“Uh, huh. And guess what is at the bottom of the list?”
“Sex with three men at once again?”
“You got it. Only I might change it out. I’m straight as a pole, but I’ve always wondered how it might be different with a woman. We’ll see. Like I said, things change on a dime.”
After a few more outrageous conversations like that, Naji’s indomitable personality and spirit won Sarah’s heart, and she knew that they would be good friends. From that moment forward, they were.
Naji interrupted Sarah’s reverie.
“All right, Sarah. I’ll drop you off and pick you up tonight at seven. Don’t do anything to that blow out. It’s sexy and tousled, so don’t you make it flat and managed, okay? Tonight is my treat.”
“No, you’ve done me the favor, I’ll get dinner.”
“Don’t counter me, love. I’ve got this. Besides, it’s all on my expense account anyway.”
“You are loving this promotion.”
With a wide smile, Naji nodded. “Absolutely. I run that entire showroom now, and it’s finally just as it should be. The new car and expense account are nice, but being able to make that place the way it should have been all along is my real joy. And not answering to anyone. Like Cleopatra, I was always meant to rule.”
Laughing again, Sarah glanced out the window of Naji’s prized corvette. The city was coming alive after one of its toughest winters, and watching people return to the outdoors, their effervescent joy at the end of snow and cold days, filled her with such a sense of well-being. She was here, finally, living as part of her own race. Leaning out, she breathed deeply of the fresh air and closed her eyes to just immerse herself in this moment.
Too soon, the car came to a smooth stop.
“Here you are,” Naji announced. “I’ll be here at seven sharp.”
Sliding out and closing the door, Sarah fished her keys from her bag. “I will be ready. Thank you for the re-do. I needed it, but I wouldn’t have had the flair or the courage to do this myself.”
“It was my pleasure. Tonight.” Naji revved the engine to a soft growl as she pulled away from the curb too quickly and moved into traffic, gone in seconds.
Sarah loved her tiny one-room apartment, which was three floors up with no elevator, but she enjoyed the climb to reach it. Every time she entered her apartment, she always had a little tingle in her belly that this was all hers and that she was home.
Scanning the room brought satisfaction as she looked at the pale, flowered sofa, multiple layers of off-white tulle over the windows, and above the bed. The place looked like a fairy’s bedroom, which suited her newly developing sense of style. She had Jacob to thank for the wonderful furniture.
Her old friend had come from Africa to help her settle in to her new life. He’d used compulsion to get her an entry level position as an ER doctor at Massachusetts General Hospital. Her credentials alone might not have done it, since she’d never practiced in a hospital setting before, so she’d needed a vampire’s help to begin. From here on out, her true job history would serve for a reference, but Jacob’s skill gave her the opportunity to work as a doctor, earn a living now that she was responsible for her expenses, and take care of people who were injured or ill and needed her.
After helping her settle into her new life, he’d headed back to Zambia to his village near the Victoria Falls. He had a lovely blended family, four first blood children, and the love of his life waiting for him. If she needed any more help, he’d told her to just call, but she didn’t plan to. She would manage her life just like everyone else in Boston did.
After pouring a glass of red wine, and dropping onto her softly patterned sofa, Sarah let herself relax completely for a few minutes before she had to go search for appropriate clothing for her night out with the queen of sexy.
Naji lit up any room when she walked into it. Sarah had spent her life in a quiet mansion in Paris, taking care of business for an extraordinary man. She was accustomed to blending into any room, and she was okay with that. It wasn’t her personality to seek notice. Tonight would be fun only because she really enjoyed watching her new friend get her groove on.
Shaking her head, Sarah finished off the wine and stood. She wondered if she herself had any groove. Time to dress.
Sarah’s head was still pounding, even after four hours sleep. Naji had kept her out far too late, and while they’d had a wonderful time, Sarah had the early shift today and the precious sleep she needed had been torn in half.
As she hurried through the wide double doors, she nursed a huge, hot cup of coffee. In France, she’d barely indulged in beverages other than water and wine, but since working long hours in the emergency room here in Boston, she’d adopted the habit, and pleasure, of highly caffeinated coffee to help her cope with long hours, late nights, and often high stress shifts.
But she loved it. This was the life she’d wanted when she left Paris. It was hard work, but so much more satisfying than she’d ever imagined. Challenging and raw, the busy moments intertwined with quiet ones, intense drama followed by appreciated dull downtimes.
Last night had gone exactly as she expected. Blonde hair hadn’t changed who Sarah was inside; she was still the quiet, introspective observer she’d always been. Watching Naji work the room, and the two men that she really had invited to meet Sarah, had been a blast. But it was Naji who took a tall, caramel-skinned man home for some after-hours R and R.
Slipping off her jacket, she slid on the white coat that she would wear for the next twelve hours or more. Her mind went to the handsome man Naji had kissed and made promises to before she drove Sarah home last night.
Sex, she thought. She hadn’t had any in over six years. As a blood-bond, it was not easy to meet men. With her responsibilities to Xavier and his household, and her studies over the past seven years, there hadn’t been much time anyway. Most of the time, sex was tucked into a corner of her mind as something that, eventually, she would like to explore. Never at that time, and it was never imperative. Now, though, with life so real and so limited, it had been on her mind again. And this time, with some sense of urgency.