Chapter 10 – Dahlia
Dahlia
I watch as Valtu keeps craning his neck to follow Livia as she hurries along the narrow street and eventually gets lost in the crowd.
“You okay?” I ask him, because that’s what a normal person would do.
“Hmmph?” he practically grunts and looks back at me. Quicker than a flash his face morphs from something terrifying and enraged to blank and passive. “What was that?”
“I said, are you okay?” I press, wanting to see what he comes up with. “You look like you saw a ghost. But like a ghost you wish you could kill all over again.”
He blinks at me, seemingly taken aback. “You got all that? No, no, I thought I saw someone I knew. Someone I don’t like, but someone all the same.”
Would a normal person press him at this point? Or would they let it go?
I decide to let it go and just give him an understanding smile, while he tries to compose himself back into the assured creature he is most of the time.
“Anyway,” he says, clearing his throat. “Here we are.”
We’ve ended up at a bar that has small tables lined up along the canal. Even though I don’t feel a hundred percent secure considering the weird thing we saw in the water, plus the demon on my ceiling, which are probably the same thing, it’s pretty romantic.
I quickly use the washroom inside the restaurant’s main building and when I come out, Valtu has procured a shawl from the restaurant and slips it over my shoulders like a gentleman as he pulls out my chair for me.
The negronis are already on the table and the waiter comes out and takes our order, Valtu getting us a plate of fried squash blossoms stuffed with goat cheese.
“Really, you don’t have to buy me food,” I tell him, gathering the shawl closer to my body. Now that the adrenaline of earlier is wearing off, the cold damp air is more noticeable.
“What if I’m hungry?” he asks. “Besides, I’m sure you haven’t eaten anything if you’ve been feeling sick and sleeping in your clothes. How is the shawl?”
“It’s warm, thank you,” I tell him. I look around us, at the mist coming over the canal.
It’s spooky and ominous, despite a teenager cruising past on his boat, playing hip hop from the speakers.
“Fall came on pretty quickly,” I add, taking a sip of my drink.
It’s sweet, bitter and strong, hitting my taste buds in a way that makes me feel bold. I’ve needed this badly.
When he doesn’t say anything to that, I look at him.
He’s sitting back in his chair and quietly observing me as I drink.
In his navy Henley shirt that shows off his shoulders and muscular arms, and with the slightly seductive look in his dark eyes, I can pretend for a moment that I actually am on a date with a guy.
Like a normal guy. Not a vampire I’m eventually supposed to kill, but some hot as fuck guy on vacation in Italy and I’m just a fellow traveler, looking for a night of romance and sex.
“Yes,” Valtu says in a low voice, clearing his throat. “Autumn falls quickly here. Like a guillotine, overnight.” He pauses, licking his lips and I find myself staring at his mouth. “What is it like back at home for you? I imagine it must feel the same in the Pacific Northwest.”
“It happens a lot earlier. Usually the Labour Day weekend is the signal of the end of summer and start of fall. The rains come and they don’t stop.”
“Do your parents still live there?”
“My parents are dead,” I say too bluntly.
He blinks. “Oh. Fuck. I’m so sorry to hear that.”
Must be strange to be someone who will never die, to hear about the dead. They must feel a type of pity for us mortals.
I lift my shoulder in a weak shrug. I never know what to say. “It’s fine. It was a long time ago.”
“How old were you when they died?” he asks.
“Ten,” I say, looking away. I don’t want to talk about this. I don’t want to feel it, not the anger and rage that comes so quickly, sweeps through me like a brushfire. The fact that it was vampires, like himself, that murdered them, makes this all the more complicated.
“Jesus,” he swears under his breath. “I can’t imagine how hard that must have been.” I can tell by the look on his face that he wants to ask me how they died. People always want to ask and often do.
But he doesn’t. Instead he says, “That must have changed you in so many ways.”
It’s a surprising thing to say because it definitely did change me.
It just feels like no one has ever noticed or acknowledged that.
The only people who ever would have noticed, who would have paid attention, were my parents.
I nod and take a bigger sip of my drink.
“I think I’m going to need another one after this.
” I tap the side of my glass as I put it back down.
“I don’t blame you. I’m sorry for the conversation going into an unhappy topic,” he says. He looks to the kitchen which seems very busy yet somehow the waiter comes straight out and over to us. No doubt I just watched Valtu compel him.
“How are we doing?” the waiter asks in English, suddenly extra attentive. “Need another drink? Your food is coming shortly, so sorry for the wait.”
Valtu nods and gets us another order of negronis. I guess I’m on a mission to get drunk tonight and I think he’s on that same mission.
He watches me curiously as I have another large sip of my drink.
“For what it’s worth, Dahlia, I think you’ve changed into an incredible woman.”
I would have laughed at that cheesy line if only he didn’t look so sincere. “You didn’t know what I was like as a child,” I tell him. “Most people only change for the worst when horrible things happen to them.”
“Most people get stronger,” he says quietly. “Most, but not all. So which one were you? Did you get stronger? Or did you change for the worse?”
I tap my fingernails along the glass, noticing the chipped black tips of my shoddy manicure. “Both.”
Because before my parents died, I at least had love in my life, from them. I had love and I was innocent. After they died, all love for me was gone, and my innocence was lost.
I became a killer.
“Who took care of you after they died? Where did you go?” he asks.
I suck on my lip for a moment, wishing I could tell him the truth, so that he could really see why I’d changed. “I went with an uncle.”
A lie. Bellamy came from nowhere. I’d only known him for a couple of weeks before my parents died.
He came to visit, stayed nearby. He had a lot of interest in me and my parents humored him but it came from a place of unease.
Looking back, I wonder if my mother had feared him.
My father definitely didn’t like him. But they explained that he would be hanging around because of the guild.
They didn’t tell me why at the time, nor did they seem to want me to have anything to do with him.
Then they were murdered.
I found them in the kitchen after school one day.
The blood…there was so much blood. That’s what I remember the most. It was broad daylight and the blood was everywhere and later I would scream because these fucking vampires didn’t even bother to feed from them. They just killed them and left the blood, like it wasn’t worth tasting.
“I take it things weren’t so happy under your uncle’s care,” he says carefully, and I can feel his eyes on me, studying me. I don’t want to give anything away but I feel this need to let it out.
I shake my head, not wanting to meet his gaze.
I stare at the dark waters of the canal instead.
“I didn’t know him well. I was in shock, obviously.
He took me to this small town, on a cove, in the middle of nowhere, northern end of the island.
New school and new everything. I had money, you know he had money.
But he…” I try to find the right words, “he was fake. He never really cared about me. I found that out later. I thought that because he took me in, you know, that it meant he would be a parent. But I don’t think he ever saw me as a human being.
We had a falling out a couple of years ago and I learned how counterfeit our relationship was. I had always been…disposable to him.”
“Do you still talk to him?”
I’m about to shake my head but I stop. I tell the truth. “I wish I didn’t. He has this…hold on me that I can’t explain. It’s like even though I know he doesn’t value me as a person, I still want his attention. Pretty pathetic if you ask me.”
“That’s not pathetic, Dahlia. That’s just…human.”
“Then sometimes I wish I wasn’t human.”
His eyes glimmer darkly. “You don’t want that.”
I know he’s speaking from experience but sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be a vampire.
To have that edge, to not have to play by society’s rules.
Maybe if I had known how I was different, why I was different from everyone else, I wouldn’t have become what I am.
Vampires seem to own that, they revel in it, in being different.
I barely feel human most days, barely feel like I exist here at all, and it kills me deep inside how not normal I am.
Even sitting with someone else, having drinks and a conversation and taking part in society like everyone else feels utterly fucking foreign to me.
“What are you thinking about?” he asks quietly after I’ve stewed in my head for far too long.