Authors: Nerine Dorman
Chapter 5
Oh, to be Young Again
Trystan had new neighbors. Or, rather, new people had moved into the old Schroeder house across the road. Unfamiliar voices rang out.
Pressed against his lounge window, he wished he’d bothered with cleaning the glass that had, by his estimation, not been washed for almost a century.
Had he really been here so long?
When he wiped at the window, the dust coated his almost translucent skin with a fine, chalk-like layer that persisted, no matter how much he wiped his hand against his jeans.
Not much could be seen through the broken slats of the shutter covering his window, but those young voices had unsettled him. Earlier, Anabel had thrown open the upstairs shutters so the windows blazed with warm, yellow light and now feet thumped on the wooden floors next door.
More than anything, it was the subtle shift in Essence that had aroused his curiosity. Although one individual seemed almost extinguished, two hummed–the one a riot of pent-up potential, containing more energy than he’d sensed in a very long time.
Eyes closed, he did something he rarely would, and
reached
with his mind, sorting through a tangle of thoughts. A mother, the dull one. She did not interest him in the least. Her energy points were blocked or leaking away into the aether.
The son was marginally interesting, darting about the property bursting with fascination, almost able to
reach
himself, so alert was he.
The girl, however, caught his fancy. She was the one who scintillated, although she kept herself contained, cautious.
How would it be to drink her, assimilate that power?
He locked down that thought. Hunting too close to home would be worse than foolish. The others would find him if even the hint of a mysterious murder so far away from the cities made the news.
Then again, young women sometimes ran away from home, didn’t they?
She carried a burden of resentment, which could be pushed–manipulated to serve his purposes. Her young blood flowed fast and she would be prone to making rash decisions.
Trystan slammed his hand against the wall. Why must it always boil down to his need for blood, for energy? Couldn’t he just enjoy another person for who they were instead of wanting to eat them?
He could always return to his kin in the big cities. He could abase himself before the elders and plead with the council to grant him some clemency for his crimes.
Thou shalt not drink the heart’s blood of your brother and sister. Thou shalt not imbibe of their Essence.
He could still hear that dreadful voice boom in his ears. No. He was better off out here, away from the accusing whispers and stares.
Blood calls to blood. Always.
Across the way, his new neighbors were so alive, so enticing, even in their very human dysfunction. Trystan tried to recall what being alive felt like but struggled to evoke all but the basics. There had been London’s dirty streets. He’d worked for an innkeeper, had cared for horses in the stables and also scrubbed floors. His name had been different, then. Matthew–when he had been alive. Yes. The straw, the warm, horsy snorts, it was a blur. He could no longer remember what it felt like to be warm, unless he drank the blood of the living. He dared not indulge too often. The others might discover him–drag him back to atone.
My guilt has bright green eyes, like tourmaline, like verdigris. When she smiles, my heart wants to start beating again and the soft fall of her auburn hair feels like a sheath of silk running through my fingers. Her teeth are very sharp when she bites and, when she laughs, I would do anything for her.
Antoinette was long dead and, of course, only he was to blame. Trystan shoved the memories as far back down as possible.
That was the thing about sticking around so long. He couldn’t exactly call it living, could he? There was so much to remember it was almost too easy to bury the things he didn’t want to think about.
Trystan bit his lip and resumed his watch through the gap. Silhouetted figures moved upstairs in the house. Voices were almost distinct enough to understand.
The need to be closer to these people drew Trystan out of his house as soon as he was sure it was dark enough. He rarely walked through the village, preferring the anonymity of his ’48 Hudson. The fewer who knew what “that strange one at number nine” looked like, the better.
The ground was still warm beneath his bare feet, the gravel of the road pressing painfully into his soles while he cat-footed across the street.
Trystan hated being out in the open, and felt too exposed and soft without his car’s metal encasing him–his exoskeleton.
Old Anabel had her wolfhound locked in the house. He made sure of that before he slipped between branches in the hedge, although he bit back a curse when thorns caught in his hair and stabbed into his shoulder.
He used to watch over Anabel, years ago, until they chopped down the fig tree after that summer they used to meet once the sun set.
Trystan had not been back since and could not recall how long ago that had been, save that Anabel was now well into her fifties, by his reckoning, although he wasn’t about to knock on her door to ask her, either.
So brief–these mortals–like bright flames attracting the moths with their heat and light, only his kind was adept at extinguishing this fire. Sometimes even vampires got singed.
Trystan waited for a good few minutes before leaving the relative safety of the hedge. He
reached
out again. The girl had gone upstairs, alone. Good. The boy was back downstairs, with his mother, Anabel and the dog, in the lounge–even better.
All he would do was take a look.
The climb up the side of the house proved easy. Over the years, the old fig tree had sent out lateral branches. They had not been trimmed back, although the original stump had rotted to nothing, and provided all the handholds he needed to reach the wraparound balcony.
The floorboards creaked as he put his full weight down and he froze, listening. The girl must have heard something, for she did not move, either. He could almost taste her on the other side of the thin layer of brick that separated them.
The door leading onto the balcony was flung open and she stepped out. Normally humans weren’t so brave. Their dull senses sometimes allowed them an inkling when his kind was about.
The girl was about his height. Wide gray eyes were set in her oval face framed by shoulder-length hair a color neither fully blond, nor copper.
She noticed him and jumped back but he did not leap off the balcony yet, as instinct urged. He stood still, observant, ready to vanish into the night in an instant.
The girl recovered her composure first and approached him. She smelled of honey and he fought the need to close the distance between them. She stopped a meter before him, that gaze flicking from his face down to his too-long nails. The thrum of her pulse was the sound of the ocean breaking on rocks, which made him think of the taste of salt on his lips.
The hunger stirred in his belly, hot and fierce–this girl was one of those rare individuals found once every hundred years. She burned on an aetheric level.
The perfect victim. He could drink her down to the last drop of her Essence tonight and not need to hunt for weeks, perhaps months if he were clever about it.
Or, she could take the blood and it would catch, something malicious in him suggested.
“No,” Trystan said in a low voice. “I won’t.”
“Excuse me? What did you say?” Her eyes were so large, gray streaked with green accents. He could stare into them for eternity.
His mind made up, he twisted, gripping the railing to drop over the edge of the balcony, landing with nary a sound on the grass below. Then he made the mistake of looking up, and was once again transfixed by her gaze.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Trystan.” Now that was a stupid thing to go and do.
He did not look back again, as he passed through the hedge, just one more shadow escaping in the night.
Chapter 6
The New Kids
Mrs. van Zyl had warned them the Friday already that two new students would be starting at Rubidge Private Secondary School the following Monday–two kids from Cape Town.
She had intimated they had suffered some sort of trauma and would be boarders and please would everyone be kind to them. They had only arrived late on the Sunday. Apparently their car had broken down on the N9 National Road outside of Graaff-Reinet, so Etienne only caught his first glimpse of Helen and Damon Ashfield at breakfast on Monday.
Oh, the brother would be teased all right. He was a skinny pale boy with freckles, and a shock of red hair tumbled into his eyes. His expression was permanently bemused, as if he still couldn’t figure out where he was and where he was going.
Helen did not look like a hopeless loss, however. She’d pinned her strawberry blond hair back with pretty sparkly clips and she had nice legs–her blue jeans fit her well. She’d never bother looking at Etienne, though. Nearly all the girls treated him with a mixture of pity and contempt. Except for Arwen, of course.
Helouise and some of the other matrics–nice enough girls–had taken the newcomers under their collective wing, so Etienne didn’t dare approach them. He wished Arwen was here, though she would no doubt have been making some biting comments by now.
Etienne worried about Arwen. Since the incident with her tarot cards three days previously, she had not returned to school. A family member had collected her that very day. She had not called or texted–which was very unlike her, so he fretted.
He’d sent a short text this morning and had received no answer. Computer literacy classes were after their tea break, so he could only hope to send her a proper email then.
The new kids noticed him for the first time when they were lining up in the quad before filing into the hall for assembly.
To give Helen some credit, she had tried not to stare. Damon, on the other hand, had sneaked furtive glances until the last possible moment, even spinning around a few times once the grade eights were finally seated.
Their headmistress, the rather cadaverous Ms. Engelbrecht, went through her usual, tedious drill with a Bible reading and the same, tiresome hymns pounded away on the piano by one of the music teachers. Their school was, after all, still nominally Christian, and old Engelbrecht never let them forget that.
Helen and Damon Ashfield were officially welcomed and Etienne cringed on their behalf when they were made to stand in front of the entire school. Damon’s complexion almost matched his hair color.
Ms. Engelbrecht did this to all the new students. He remembered his own humiliation all too clearly. His dubious welcome had been even worse because he’d started halfway through grade eight, when most of the kids had already had ample time to form their little cliques. They’d laughed when he’d stumped up onto the stage. He’d thought, at first, that this was some cruel practical joke aimed specifically at him, until Arwen informed him he certainly wasn’t the first, or the last.
Poor Arwen. Like him, she had also been a newcomer. Only, she’d been ill for the first month of school–acute peritonitis brought on by complications from a botched appendectomy–and had gone through exactly what he’d experienced. Although he was a hell of a lot shorter than the average kids his age, thank God his parents hadn’t seen fit to name him after a character from a fantasy novel filled with elves and walking trees. Even now he wasn’t quite sure which was worse.
Perhaps he should just call Arwen on the landline,but he was wary of her father, a stern man who frightened him half to death.
Stupid, of course–the old man wouldn’t be at home during the day.
The rest of the assembly passed without incident, save for the attempt some person behind him made to trip him on the way to mathematics. When Etienne turned around to catch the culprit in the act, all he got was Jean-Pierre and his friends trying to look innocent. His own ferocious scowl had no impact.
A confrontation with them wasn’t worth his trouble, so he quickened his pace while trying to ignore their endless nudges from behind. If he had longer legs...and if wishes were horses.
Helen was in this class. She arrived out of breath, ten minutes into the lesson, which did not please Mr. Bayly.