The Day Shift - Prequel Short Story
Aggressive rock-and-roll music spilled from the speakers of the home theater system, filling the recreation room with the beats from the movie currently playing on the big screen. I’d taken a spot on the couch in front of the television while a gang of my friends ran a Netflix and Chill marathon.
I only felt enough kinship for three other vampires to hang around me for any prolonged amount of time.
Angela and her boyfriend, David, had been pals to me for two years, sweethearts ever since I’d transferred in from a San Antonio coven with sloppy leadership.
Our other mutual friend, Nicholas, was half asleep beside me with a bowl of popcorn in his lap.
I stole a handful while he watched the back of his eyelids instead of the television.
“Did you check the assignment roster recently, Em?” David asked while gazing at his phone screen.
“Um, no. Why? Did they change?”
“Oh yeah. They sure did.” Angela giggled. “You might wanna have a look.”
Her laughter aroused my suspicion until I slipped out my iPhone and logged into the system.
Emmaleigh Whittaker—Security—0800-1600
I groaned in irritation. No one wanted the mid-shift, its hours comparable to a human caffeinating their way through the graveyard shift. While the rest of my friends and comrades slept warm in their beds, I’d be at a computer console, staring at the alternating images of our coven’s security feed.
Boring, dull work, thankless and underpaid—easy money for some of the guys who liked staying up late but an exercise in frustration for the rest of us. While we didn’t slink away to snooze in coffins by daylight, most vampires preferred to be asleep long before the sun touched the horizon.
“Dammit. I was supposed to have this week off.”
“Keep looking,” Angela encouraged me.
With my thumb, I scrolled down to see the name below mine.
A thrill, excitement mingled with dread, raced its way up and down my spine because I’d suffer my eight hours of security detail alongside my former mentor, the sexiest vampire in our coven.
The man oozed so much sex appeal that it’d be worth enduring the shift in silence.
Adrian Kennedy wasn’t a very social guy. Among the older vampires in the Dartmouth coven, he was known for his dependability and power, as well as a stoic personality. He kept the neophytes in line and guided our combat training, keeping all of us ready to defend our home.
Seeing him assigned to duty wasn’t uncommon, but he rarely occupied a spot on the roster.
The guy always worked, perpetually busy and overseeing operations from the office upstairs alongside the other coven leaders.
We had four in all: a master of operations, a master of combat, a master of liaisons, and the vampire lord, who ruled the entire coven.
They were all teachers in a way, each one responsible for some aspect of educating the neophytes occasionally inducted into our undead family.
One led the day-to-day life, one taught us to use our gifts, and the master of liaisons taught us the crucial, need-to-know, bullshit diplomacy that kept us out of hot water with the shifters and humans.
I didn’t envy Diana the job of being an ambassador between the covens and other supernatural species.
And I didn’t envy Adrian having to teach neophytes not to underestimate their newfound strength and break a human’s ribcage with their pinky fingers.
It took years to hone their control once newly awakened with their vampire blood, so most weren’t set free to walk the city streets alone until they hit their first birthday as one of us.
Angela grinned over at me. “Lucky girl.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. This means I’ll have to actually sit there and study the feeds. No reading or friendly chats.” I sighed. “No Facebook. No texting. No Candy Crush.”
David snickered. “Can’t be worse than your last watch when Peter hit on you the whole time.”
“He did everything but whip it out and stroke in front of me,” I grumbled.
“You should have reported him to or Diana or Stevens. Or hell, even Kennedy. He’d be housebound for weeks if they knew.”
“Agreed,” Angela murmured. “Diana would have murdered him. Don’t enable his bullshit next time you’re stuck together. Anyway, it’s bedtime for us. You’d better try to stay up if you’re going to be on the mid-shift tomorrow morning.”
Knowing they were right didn’t change my reluctance to report one of the coven’s golden boys to the higher-ups. If they didn’t take my word for it, I’d be in serious trouble. Word would get back to Peter, and I’d be alienated.
And life at the Dartmouth coven was my second chance.
Angela kissed my cheek. “Anyway, just think about it, sweetie. Goodnight.”
Angela and David filed from the room after collecting their pile of movie cases, and then I left Nicholas to his own fate.
He wouldn’t burn on the couch, even after the sun rose high and blanketed the world beyond our luxurious mansion with golden light.
The entire manor and most of its outbuildings had been sun-shielded, the windows tinted beneath some sort of substance that neutralized the UV rays.
I could wander into the kitchen at two in the afternoon without so much as a mild sunburn.
As far as residences went, the manor was the height of sophistication and a dozen times more elegant than the San Antonio plantation where I’d spent the past three decades of unlife.
I’d never fit in there, but when a new leader had taken over the coven, the atmosphere had taken a dive for the worse.
That’s when my sixth sense had told me to get the hell out of Dodge, and I’d secretly put in a request to the elders for permission to move.
Almost everyone I knew back home was dead now. I’d probably be dead along with them if I hadn’t escaped when I did.
The memory dragged icy fingers down my spine, but I shook it off and jogged past the heavy, cobalt drapes darkening a corridor filled with affluent decor. Taking the stairs to my second-floor bedroom put glossy, golden oak beneath my booted feet.
Lavish rugs muted my footfalls once I reached the second-floor, west corridor. Shades of slate, plum, and dark rose surrounded me, compared to the golden pastels of the lower level. My bedroom came next, a definite improvement over the drafty, plantation-house room I’d once inhabited down in Texas.
The corner bedroom afforded me a stunning view of the shoreline with its endless blue stretch of ocean.
I hadn’t lucked out with a balcony like David and Angela, but I had the best personal bathroom in the manor, with a deep, stone basin surrounded by gleaming tiles in varying shades of gray and gemstone colors.
After a shower, I usually settled at the vanity to brush out my hair.
It had grown long, waist length in only a year. I’d have to cut it again soon.
After changing into my pajamas, I sprawled across the bed and read for hours until the clock read noon and my eyes wouldn’t stay open another second.
***
Wednesday morning arrived as if the week had flown by, and I wasn’t sure if my excitement or dread was to blame.
Watches had no dress code unless we were under threat, so I dove into the walk-in closet and combined comfort with style, pairing my best ass-hugging jeans with a blue, cashmere sweater.
Angela helped me braid and twist my hair back from my face.
Streaks of pink, purple, and teal stood out against the pale blond.
“All of this effort, only to be ignored,” I muttered. Of course, it was a watch, not a date. We’d each be absorbed in our own screens anyway.
“You’re better than me. You won’t catch me in that room in anything more than leggings and a hoodie,” Angela said.
“Maybe I should wear leggings,” I muttered.
“It’ll show your butt off just as much, if that’s what you were going for.”
I took her advice and changed to leggings and a sweater with enough length to skim my ass without covering it completely.
“Perfect. Red is your color anyway.”
I blew her a kiss as I headed out the door.
The security suite was situated on the ground floor at the eastern end, a circular room with a domed roof and no windows.
We kept a small armory inside, the gun cabinets stocked with everything from small arms to large-caliber rifles.
A larger, more impressive armory was located in the adjacent guest house.
A large, curved screen hung on the wall above a computer desk. Every common area in the compound had a camera, and each feed displayed across the monitor.
Adrian had arrived early, and he was flipping through each one in turn. “You’re late.”
“I’m five minutes early,” I argued.
He grunted an unintelligible response and moved across to the lockers. Taking my cue, I crouched beside him to inventory the items inside the box. None of the other officers counted the rounds and explosives—ever—but he made it a point to document each magazine and all of the grenades.
“Think you can stay awake this time, Whittaker?”
I wanted to glower at the smug jerk, but it was kind of hard to be irritable when gazing into the face of vampiric perfection.
Adrian’s gray eyes shifted colors, sometimes pale as moonlight and, other times, dark as storm clouds.
Tonight they appeared almost silver. He had a perfect mouth made for kissing, with full and firm lips.
Then there was the dark hair he wore in a wavy, fashionably messy mop.
I’d seen older, black-and-white photos of him with it arranged in neat waves to his shoulders.
His face said mid-twenties, but his eyes told me he’d lived for centuries.
“I didn’t fall asleep,” I grumbled. “I was just resting my eyes.”
“That’s not what Peter said.”
My back stiffened.
That little, lying asshole.
Well, technically he was right, since I’d feigned sleep at the end when outright rejection had failed to deter him.