Nightfallen

Training Night

"I was beginning to think you weren't going to make it," Jackson said, as I slid into the seat across from him.

"Well, you know how it is," I said. "Takes a girl some time to make herself beautiful, especially after she's had the ever-loving hell beaten out of her."

It was a couple of hours after sundown, and we were in one of Echo Valley's triumvirate of independent coffee shops. Each shop had its own culture; this was Café Trios, the meeting place of hipsters and the bohemian pretentious. Everyone here was so thin and sickly looking that Jackson and I were probably the only ones that didn't look undead.

We sat away from the window, not wanting anyone to notice our lack of reflections. We each had small mugs in front of us, but neither of us drank our coffee. Like so much our kind did, the mugs were just camouflage to blend in with the cattle around us. It was loud enough that we didn't have to worry about being overheard.

It had been three nights since the alley. We'd agreed to meet here tonight, mainly because I'd thought it'd take me that long to heal enough to be presentable.

"You're looking better, by the way," he said.

"Thank you." I smiled. I had to take his word, since the pools of still blood we could see our reflections in were poor substitutes for mirrors.

"Your sire nursed you back to health?" he asked.

"And my sisters," I said.

"'Sisters'?"

"It's a nice way of saying the other girls in my sire's harem."

"How many are you guys?"

"Just me, my two sisters, and Nathan, our sire."

"You seem pretty okay with the arrangement."

"What choice do I have?"

In some ways, death had been liberating. I'd been such a good girl growing up. Too bookish, too much of a shrinking violet, there was no chance I'd be that nuclear-hot, life-of-the-party girl that every boy seemed to want.

But then the Nightfallen found me. I was forever sixteen, and no longer needed makeup for my eyes to look smoky and my lips to be slut red. My skin, so pale before, looked healthy and sun-kissed now. Suddenly I had serial killer self-confidence, and my body moved with a hypnotically liquid grace. These were adaptations, naturally selected, so that I could find victims easier while blending in among the living. Darwinism in action.

No need for parents now. I could have all the nice things I'd seen at the mall and online, either by hitting my headlights on someone or simply taking it by force.

There were trade-offs, though. The ones I had known about included sunlight, crosses, mirrors, and blood. The one I hadn't was how much a sire would loom over my existence.

After the alley, I had limped back to the foreclosed Victorian that had been our home the past couple of months. Getting up its half mile-long, ice-covered driveway, abandoned and unplowed, was difficult.

The previous occupants must have resented being forced out. To spite the bank, they had smashed the fireplaces' marble and the winding staircase's thick, mahogany rails on the way out, making the downstairs look like a haunted house.

They had left the upper two stories untouched, though, and there was luxury in the polished hardwood floors and the decorative plaster of the ceilings. This was our den now. The candles we burned, hidden from the outside world by the blackout curtains we'd installed against the sun, made it look warm and romantic, despite the constant chill.