Desire at Dawn

by Fiona Zedde

  The bathroom was empty. A small white room with cracked tiled floors, two sinks and four stalls along one wall. Olivia tugged Kylie to the first sink, turned on the water, and guided her bloody hands under the sluggish spray. She pressed the soap pump on the wall five times in quick succession then soaped Kylie’s hands, rubbing them together with her own while the blood flowed off their fingers in scarlet streaks into the white basin. The suds were pink and foamy, almost like the strawberry-flavored bubble bath from Kylie’s childhood.

  Strangely, she felt as if she could relax again with Olivia caring for her, being tender with her in a way that no one had in a long time. She swallowed thickly and licked her lips, unknowingly bringing the flavor of the dead boy’s blood to her tongue. She lifted her head and froze.

  Olivia was staring at her, an intent and unreadable look on her face. All the while, her fingers moved tenderly with Kylie’s under the water. She swallowed again, feeling the slow rise of curiosity in her, a need to kiss Olivia and share the flavor of the blood she had stolen, to convince her with kisses that she wasn’t a bad person.

  Olivia’s lashes flickered, then swept down, hiding her expression. Not that Kylie was ever able to read what she was thinking. Olivia bit the corner of her lip, an act of equal parts sensuality and bashfulness that jerked a familiar ache inside Kylie.

  She found that her fingers were trembling, then that Olivia felt her weakness too. She pulled her hand away.

  “I can do it myself.”

  Olivia’s hands stilled. “Okay.”

  She moved to the other sink and finished washing her own hands there. Kylie looked away from Olivia’s face, wondering if she had imagined that flair of anger. Under the water, Kylie’s hands felt cold, and she longed desperately for Olivia’s touch again.

  With a twist of her hand, she viciously yanked the spigot closed. She dried her hands on the back of her jeans.

  “We should go,” she said softly, unable to look at Olivia.

  Kylie felt herself aching with the weight of her wants. Shoulders heavy, neck bent, arms burning to hold Olivia. The air moved briefly with Olivia’s tiny sigh. But she didn’t say anything else, only turned and walked out of the suddenly too-bright bathroom.

  Chapter Twelve

  The ride back to Olivia’s apartment was a mostly silent one, broken by the music and occasional chatter from the radio, the sound of the Jeep’s tires against the road, and Olivia’s quiet breaths. At the parking lot of her building, Kylie got out of the SUV and shut the door with a heavy thud even before Olivia could get out.

  “Did I do something wrong?” Olivia walked around to stand next to her, frowning.

  “No.”

  But instead of walking with her back to her apartment, Kylie lightly touched Olivia’s arm and wished her a good night.

  “Wait! You said nothing was wrong. Why are you leaving?”

  She gave her the simplest answer. “I need to feed.”

  Instead of waiting for Olivia’s response, she walked away. She left behind the tempting dark comfort of Olivia’s apartment to find and keep her own company. Olivia didn’t say so, but she must have been disgusted by what Kylie had done. It was one thing to show her teeth to Olivia as a demonstration of what she was. But it was quite another thing to actually use those teeth in front of her.

  She shoved her hands in the pockets of her jacket and hunched her shoulders. Kylie didn’t know she was heading for the airport until she was in a cab and opening her mouth to give the driver her destination.

  The driver put on the meter and Kylie pulled her phone from her pocket and dialed the number to the private jet company the clan used. By the time she got to the airport, a plane was ready and waiting for her. Less than three hours later, she was locking the doors of the penthouse behind her and stepping into the wide and empty foyer.

  The house was quiet. Kylie’s sneakered footsteps were loud against the tile floor. There were familiar smells in the house, hints of lime and nutmeg, but they were faint; most of the other vampires had gone off for a night of play.

  She walked ahead through the house not knowing why she had even come home. Home. This place with memories of blood splashed on the white tile, sparring or horseplay gone wrong. Julia lying on the piano in nothing but a corset and high heels, humming along while Rufus played one of his songs. Her mother walking down the stairs, an elegant beauty the likes of which she’d never seen before. Silvija challenging her with an icy look.

  Home. So complicated, and not always welcoming.

  Kylie headed for her room, determined to put the events of the night behind her. It hurt, that possibility that Olivia would turn her aside now because she had seen what she was. Yes, Olivia had tended to her after the fight and after the mistake she’d made, but that meant nothing. She shook the thoughts away, deciding at the last second to head to the pool instead of her room.

  She suddenly craved that feeling of her real home in Friendship, Jamaica. Water against her skin, the starry sky above her, wind in the trees like music itself. Yes, that was what she needed. She had to go outside to the terrace then back downstairs to access the second floor pool. But as she drew closer to the water, low voices reached her. The smell of cloves and the sea. Her footsteps faltered and she didn’t know what to do.

  She tightened her jaw and headed down the stairs. The pool was Olympic-sized and mostly hidden from outside view by large planters filled with tall rosemary bushes. Stairs led down to the sparkling turquoise water that was like a large piece of art on the entire right side of the second floor.

  Kylie walked outside where she took a long and deliberate breath of the night air. It was so different from Atlanta. The air was crisp with the smells of the sewer and of money, of animal gratification and despair. Fall was a deeper bite on the flesh. The sky like a stormy sea. She closed her eyes and clutched the railing leading down to the pool.

  Their words were soft. Love words. Intimate, so Kylie barely heard them. Still, the meaning of the words was unmistakable. She stepped out onto the wide metal stairs, sneakers banging gently on the steps.

  Kylie was hardly quiet, but they didn’t care. Her mother and Silvija lay face to face on white furs near the pool, their bodies, two shades of dark, glistening under the stars. Her mother wore her hair loose, a magnificent halo of dark around her face while Silvija’s was still braided and wound around her head like a crown. They were both naked. Lionesses after the hunt. Their voices whispered and wove like a magical incantation in the night, creating a spell around them that made them seem apart from everything but each other. Silvija touched her mother’s face. Her mother tucked her cheek even more into that large palm like a kitten being stroked.

  She heard laughter. The sound of the Jacuzzi jets on the circular part of the otherwise electric blue rectangle of water, each rush of water seemed to say “you wish, you wish, you wish.” Kylie widened her eyes, trying to push back the sudden prick of tears.

  From her perch on the stairs, she’d never felt more alone. The mother she’d dreamed of reuniting with had no time for her. The love she thought she would receive was denied her at every turn. Always it was Silvija who received that love. Never Kylie. Always it was Silvija’s name on her mother’s lips. Kylie wished. She wished that one day, some of this love would trickle her way.

  She stumbled to her feet, her knee clanging against the metal railing, and turned to leave them alone.

  But even in the twisted coils of emotion that overtook her while watching her mother and Silvija, there was something that had become clear. She did not hate them. She did not despise their love because it was shared between two women. She was simply jealous.

  Yes, she wanted her mother to pay more attention to her. Yes, she wished Silvija wasn’t so important to Belle. But even more than that, she wanted something like what they had for her very own. Something that burned and blessed and made her existence about more than blood and survival. She wanted love.

  The realization stunned h
er. She grabbed the railing that led away from them, went up the stairs, and to the thick, steel door leading inside. Kylie stepped in and closed the door behind her. Stood in the hallway and thought about going to her empty room.

  Love. That was something she was bred to deny herself. Even when her grandmother had talked about finding “the one” and waiting to have babies with them, she always made it sound as if it were a far way away. That Kylie would do well to dismiss any thoughts of that from her mind.

  “You all right, little one?”

  She jumped at the unexpected voice. Too many seconds later, her brain processed the sound as Rufus. He looked stage-ready with his long and beautiful dreadlocks twisted in a braid down his back. He wore combat boots, black skinny jeans, a white T-shirt that showed off his muscular arms and wide shoulders. A smile twitched on Kylie’s face, quickly coming and going. She was happy to see him.

  “Yes, I’m good.” She shoved her hands in her jacket pockets, glad for the distraction of his presence.

  “I thought you were still in Atlanta.” Rufus plucked his cell phone from his back pocket and looked briefly down at it before giving his attention back to Kylie. “You finish whatever secret mission was keeping you and Violet down there?”

  Secret mission? Did that mean Silvija and the others never told the rest of the clan what she was doing away from home? That surprised her.

  “I’m not sure.” She shrugged. “It’s confusing.”

  Rufus was the only one she would ever admit such uncertainty to. He was more than a little clairvoyant so she figured he would know what she was feeling anyway. Plus, she liked him.

  “Feel like talking about it?”

  “Not really.”

  “Cool.” He hitched a shoulder. “Heading downstairs?”

  She wasn’t but decided to go. “Sure.” Kylie started walking.

  Rufus fell in step beside her, lips tilted up slightly in amusement. “If you ever decide to say what you have to say, just remember that the conversation doesn’t need to belong to everyone. I’ll respect your privacy.”

  Kylie nodded even though she knew that already. “I’ll remember that.”

  She ended up in the common room where he dropped down on the bearskin rug near the fireplace, tossing his bag to the floor beside him and stretching out in front of the grated and crackling fire. “It’s good to be home,” he said, then glanced at her. “It doesn’t look like you feel the same way.” The flickering yellow flames created shadows and hollows in his already haunting face, highlighting the grave dark eyes, his cheekbones.

  Kylie sat beside him, wrapping her arms around raised knees. The fire felt pleasantly warm on her side. “What is this, an interview?”

  He laughed. “That wasn’t even a question. What’s going on with you?”

  She was tightly wound. She couldn’t help it. The realization that her jealousy was linked to something else that she’d never had in her life and never even knew she wanted had her turned a bit upside down. But it wasn’t like she had come to Rufus for tea and sympathy. He was simply there and it was good to sit with him and allow what she was to fall into the background of things.

  Outside in the city, the hungers and dangers of the world were rampant, beautiful with their savagery, but it was moments like this one when she didn’t necessarily need to take part in it, that she loved. And those moments were what she’d often experienced with Rufus and at times with the twins. And always with Olivia.

  At the thought of Olivia, she almost smiled.

  “Atlanta is what’s going on with me,” she said in response to his earlier question. “There’s someone there. A woman.”

  His eyebrow ticked up. “A woman?”

  The entire clan knew she wasn’t into sex, and had probably assumed that she was only into men. Well, perhaps not exactly an assumption since she’d said as much whenever anyone made even the most remote suggestion that she take a female lover or do more than feed at the neck of a human woman. She nodded. “Yes.”

  “Ah, that’s the confusion.” He nodded with another of his mysterious smiles. The shadows created by the fire moved languidly over his face.

  “Yes,” she said again.

  “I assume it’s with a human?”

  She looked at him. “How did you know?”

  “Because if it was with another one of us, the situation would be dangerous, or at least more dangerous than this. Silvija would be talking about an alliance with another clan, you leaving us, or the clan taking in someone else. We’d have a meeting to discuss the possibility that your lover’s clan might try to destroy ours and claim our territory for itself.”

  After their forced relocation from Alaska where they’d owned practically an entire town, the clan didn’t have much physical territory. Not here in New York. What they had was largely financial. Billions of dollars. Priceless assets. Worldwide influence.

  Kylie stared at Rufus in disbelief. “All this just because I wanted to have sex with another vampire?”

  “Women are emotional creatures. Chances are if you hooked up with another bloodsucker, it would be more than a casual thing.”

  “I think I should be offended!” But she laughed.

  “I think you shouldn’t be.” He crossed his booted feet and smiled back at her, his teeth bright in the firelight.

  Kylie laughed again and dropped to lie beside him on the furs. She poked him in the ribs. He chuckled and flinched back. “Watch it, little one. My fangs are bigger than yours.”

  “Size isn’t everything.”

  “That’s what the little ones always say.” He grinned wolfishly and snapped his teeth at her.

  Kylie rolled onto her back and smiled up at the ceiling, enjoying the quiet with him. Home was moments like this.

  “So what are you planning to do about your human?” Rufus asked.

  Wasn’t that the ultimate question?

  “I’m going to stop seeing her.” A heaviness descended on her chest at the thought. Yes, Silvija had told her to leave Olivia alone. And truth be told, it was probably safer for Olivia.

  “Why?” Rufus propped himself up on one elbow and watched her. “Do you think that’s the best thing to do?”

  Yes. Kylie kept the word trapped in her mouth. “I want her.”

  “Then take her.” He smiled. “Although we are supposed to live until the end of days, nothing is promised. Someone could take your head and your entire world tomorrow.” His gaze darkened as memories moved behind his eyes. Or maybe he was seeing the future to come.

  Kylie fell silent. Thoughtful. This was about more than just Silvija’s ultimatum. She had nothing to offer Olivia except blood-filled nights and dark days.

  “You could always turn her, if that’s your concern.” He said it so casually that it almost fooled her.

  Kill someone. Take responsibility for them. Live with their hatred of you until one or both of you turned to dust. She saw how her mother hated Julia. And she knew how she felt about her own maker, that natural born loathing that sprung between a maker and a child. She shuddered at the thought of Olivia feeling like that about her. And somehow too, she balked at the thought of killing Olivia. Yes, she was dying now, but even her abbreviated life with cancer was better than what Kylie suffered through every night.

  “No,” she said softly. “I could never do that to her.”

  Rufus shrugged and smiled at her. Kylie got the feeling that he knew something. Something important that he wasn’t telling her. He sat up on the furs.

  “I’m getting hungry. You want to head out for a bite?”

  “Sure.” The alternative was to lie around the house and run the risk of encountering her mother and Silvija caught in their haze of love. “I’m ready whenever you are.”

  Their hunt was fruitful. They didn’t have to go far before they found an evening meal. A pair of lovers walking through the park under the streetlight, holding hands and laughing about something only lovers cared about.

  The man was a p
retty toffee shade with a brutal boxer’s face, but with the boring walk and bearing of a gentleman. He wore a leather jacket over a black cashmere sweater and slacks. His woman was equally gorgeous. She had waist length black hair, skin like the lead in Kylie’s favorite pencil, and beautiful cream-colored teeth. Her gray sheath dress came down to her calves and met the shaft of sumptuous black leather boots. Very stylish.

  Rufus never killed the humans he fed from. She had learned that early on. Instead, he preferred to take them, give them tiny bites of pleasure that made them forget themselves, made them give themselves over to him with small sighs of delight.

  “Any one of us can kill,” he told her once. “But it takes a special skill and patience to leave them alive, wanting more, wanting you.”

  He liked to take at least two per night, snacks that amounted to a meal and left them as alive as when he’d found them, only with bites in inconspicuous places and barely a coherent memory of how they got there. Kylie decided to do the same.

  They walked toward the humans with the penthouse at their backs, moving in silence through the night and toward the cooing couple. Rufus took the man without asking which one she’d prefer, bumping her shoulder and pushing her toward the woman.

  They parted just enough to allow the pair to walk between them. The couple barely noticed them, they were so caught up in each other. They smelled delicious as they passed, like garlic and fine red wine. She and Rufus came back together then turned as one to look at the humans, to move lightning-quick and grab them. One after the other. The woman gave a sharp scream before Kylie slapped a hand over her mouth and dragged her into the trees. She wanted privacy.

  Rufus’s man only struggled briefly before falling under the spell of Rufus’s hypnotic eyes. Kylie didn’t have persuasion in her arsenal. Humans were drawn to her kind, she knew, but it usually took seduction—honeyed words or an adept tongue. She had neither of those things so she simply dragged the woman down into the leaves scattered on the hard ground and slipped a hand under her skirt, to her hip.