We Were Eternal Once

44. California, 2010

Ido not believe in love at first sight, yet I could not deny how I felt the first time I saw Skye.

The waves of the ocean lapped the sand in Ocean Beach, California. The moon rested heavy on the horizon, casting a pallor over the empty expanse.

Empty except for the woman who surfed in the waves.

It was forbidden to surf at night. I’d seen the police try to chase her out of the water more than once, their megaphones pressed to their lips as they yelled curses at her. She laughed and grabbed her surfboard and ran barefoot on the beach, leaving the police in her wake.

She had to be a vampyr. There’s no way a human could see the waves in the dark like she did. And no human could run like that and heft a board so easily.

I watched her every night, marveling at the ease in which she rode the waves.

She approached me one night, her board under her arm. She was all muscle and sinew, the strong cords of her stomach prominent as she shed her bodysuit.

“You going to stare at me or say hello?” she asked.

“Hello,” I said.

“Haven’t seen you around here. Well, other than every night on the beach, staring at me like a creeper,” she said.

“I didn’t think you could see me,” I admitted.

“It’s your eyes,” she said, lifting her hand to pass along my temple. “They basically glow.”

Her eyes were ice-blue, so blue they were almost white. I knew those eyes, and at first I wanted to turn from her for it. Was this another Essemteu that would collect me and follow me?

Perhaps she is not her maker, just as I am not you.

“I am new to California,” I said.

“Cali-forn-ya,” she sing-songed, copying the way I said the name.

“Is that wrong?” I asked.

“No, it’s cute. You foreign vampires always have the funnest accents. Where are you from, Red Eyes?”

“Greece,” I said. “And my name is Melinoe.”

“Never been, Noe. Is it cool there?”

“In the winter and fall,” I said.

She laughed and nodded her head. “C’mon, let me introduce you to the crew. I’m Skye.”

“The crew?” I asked, falling into step with her. She moved up the beach, toward a group huddled around a fire. The beach was littered with them, spots for people to gather around holes in the ground filled with fire. Some slept on the beach, others disappeared into their cars when the sun came up.

“Yeah, the other vamps in the area,” she said.

I hesitated. Would this group be like Alexandria? Like Paris? Or would they be like the Salon of Shadows?

“Avoiding someone?” she asked.

“No,” I said, and I didn’t know if it was a lie. Did I worry I’d stumble upon you on a beach in California? That you would step into my life and tear it to pieces? That the hurt I’d felt when I buried myself would resurface?

I no longer wanted to die, but I did not know yet how to live.

“You’re a shit liar,” Skye said. “If you don’t like it, just bail.”

“Bail?”

“Leave.”

By now we were just feet from the fire. I searched the faces of the vampyrs lit by the flames, not recognizing any of them. Their eyes glowed amber, blue, purple, yellow—no red. Skye shoved her board into the dirt and addressed the crowd.

“Group, this is Noe. Noe, this is the group.”

“Hi Noe,” the group intoned. Skye collapsed onto a blanket in the sand and patted the ground for me to join her. I settled next to her. I did not feel the cold of the night like I did as a young vampyr or a human, but I still enjoyed the warmth of the fire.

“When did you get into town?” Skye asked.

“Last year,” I said.

“You’ve been watching me all that time?”

“No,” I said. “There is much to see.”

“But you liked what you saw and stayed?” Skye asked. There was a suggestion to her words, one that made heat creep up my neck.

“I suppose,” I admitted.

“Hmm,” Skye said, a smile flickering across her lips.

I quickly learned that I wanted to see that smile often, that I would do what I could to coax it from her.

Three days later I stand on the beach, the waves brushing my toes.

“Scared, Noe?” Skye teases. She’s up to her waist, her arms resting on her board.

“I drowned once,” I admit.

“Shit, that sucks,” Skye says. “Did you survive?”

I glare at her and she grins back. She likes when I am surly, she likes to prod—but never in a way that feels cruel. Her barbs are meant to land softly, to prickle instead of pain.

“Well, you’ve survived drowning once, I think you could do it a second time,” she says, stepping away from me.

The first step is the hardest. Before it, I was rooted, my toes sliding deeper into the sand with every lull of the wave. Once I took one step, it was easier to take the next.

Then the next.

Then the next.

Soon I stand next to her, the water to just below my breast. Skye shows me how to balance, how to paddle, how to exist in the waves. We meet under the moonless sky, and with her tutelage I grow.

I no longer fear the water. I do not breathe, so how can I drown? If I swallow water, it will come right back up, just as all things that were not blood do. If I slip into the water, I have a rope to guide me to my board. If it breaks?

I am a vampyr. I can not die, even if I want to.

“Okay, this one has promise,” Skye says. She says that every time a wave comes our way. I’ve shrugged each of them away, finding some reason not to attempt to surf.

“Perfection is the death of progress,” Skye says as the wave moves under us, ignored by me.

“What does that mean?”

“Sometimes, the only way out is through,” Skye said. For a flash she is a blue haired woman with metal in her eyebrow and lip, then she is Skye once more.

Through.

When the next wave comes, I paddle and stand as she showed me. The wave knocks my board and I fall, toppling into the water. It’s a swirl of churning water, the taut rope around my ankle pulling me with it.

I surface at last, grabbing for my board, dragging myself onto it.

“You okay?” Skye shouts.

I paddle out to her, glaring at the shore.

I take the next wave. And the next.

And the next.

Until I finally stand, the board rolling with the wave, my balance maintained.

“The only way out is through,” I tell the waves.

I didn’t think of you once.

“These are my digs,” Skye says, opening her arms to her apartment. She lives in a shoddy one close to the beach, with walls so thin I can hear her neighbors breathe.

Posters cover most of the wall, obscured by the surfboards that lean against it. She has so many of them, there’s barely room for her furniture. Her couches are aged, falling apart at the seams.

“It ain’t much, but it’s home,” she says, pitching her voice low and imitating an accent like the ones in the south. I tilt my head at her.

“I know it’s rude to ask a lady her age, but I have a feeling you’re pretty old, Noe.” She collapses onto her couch and more stuffing bulges from the seams.

“Very old,” I agree.

“Like…older than television?” she asks, her lips quirking.

“Yes.”

“Well, I am not. I am thirty-four, and I was turned when I was twenty-two. So, young for both a human and a vampire. Kind of a funny story, you see. I got swept into this, like…occult group outside of LA. I was rebellious, my parents were super religious. Ran into the wrong crowd, learned about familiars. Charmed a dude into changing me, then bailed.” She grins at this, as though she’d won something, tricking the vampyr that turned her.

“Boogied down here to SoCal because it’s more my speed. Dropped the goth thing, became my own woman, found the crew here.”

Skye tells most stories like this—a flurry of information, hidden behind vagueness. She gives the impression of knowing her without actually knowing her. I marvel at the way she places her words and what she decides is worthwhile to say. I’ve always chosen silence, as it always seemed safer.

Now? I am unsure.

“And you like it here?” I ask.

“For now. I think one day I’ll have to grow up, get serious, figure out how to live.

Eventually I’ll run out of money. But what do you do—get a job?

All the older vampires I’ve met are old old, like have property they bought thirty years ago when land was like a dollar. What are us new kids supposed to do?”

She is asking a question that I am unsure if I want to answer.

“Sorry, I’m on a tangent, I know. I was told I had ADHD when I was a kid. At the time, they thought only boys had it—joke’s on them. Looks like being made immortal didn’t change that part of my brain.”

I sit next to her on the couch, sinking into it. It’s deep and warm and smells like the ocean, like Skye.

“Is Skye your first name? Or did you get a new one when you were made?” I ask.

“My first name? Oh, my human name. Hah, no—it was Chastity. Like I said, real religious parents.”

“Which religion?”

“You know, that’s a fair question. Everyone assumes the default, that they’re Christian. But there’s a ton of religions, aren’t there?”

“Are they not Christian?”

“They are.” She grins, her gaze tracing my face, resting on my lips.

I kiss her, because I’ve been wanting to. I’ve wanted to know what her lips feel like against mine. I want to know how her body feels, how she tastes. I’ve been wanting to try her since I first saw her run from the cops, her dark blonde hair streaming behind her, a wicked smile on her lips.

She kisses me back. It is brash, it’s consuming. She bites my lip until it bleeds and groans at my taste.

“Fuck, Noe,” she says, her tongue tracing the spot. She crawls into my lap, her hips grinding into mine. Her shirt is off, her bikini top following.

I bite into the flesh of her right breast and she screams, her fingers knotting into my hair. Her neighbors bang on the wall.

“Ignore us,” I command, returning to lave at her blood. She tastes like the ocean and the sky and the sand and freedom. She tastes like all the things I’ve never known before.

She drags me onto the floor and we tangle in each other, our bodies writhing, our teeth and tongues everywhere. When I am between her legs, she clamps them onto my head, holding me captive, not letting me go until she comes over and over again.

She shows me positions and things I’d never seen before, never done before. Toys that vibrate, objects that she slides into me until I am gasping her name.

We are like that all night, until the sun starts to climb.

“Stay,” she breathes, unable to fight the pull of the sun. “I’m not done with you.”

I stay that night.

And the next.

And the next.

Skye ducks from the cafe, pulling her hat further down her face. As if that would disguise her from anyone. She does nothing to hide her dark blonde hair, knotted from the ocean salt that never washes out.

She turns down an alleyway, moving quickly.

We are supposed to meet for a dinner hunt in ten minutes. She’s going to be late.

Well, she would be late if I weren’t following her.

When she gets to our spot she lets out a breath, pushing her hat up her head. She smiles a bit, relaxing against the wall.

We have not left Ocean Beach in the last four years. Skye insists she’s not ready, even as the town grows larger and the tourists flood in the summer.

“This is where I found myself,” she claims. “I’m not ready to go into the wild, you know?”

So we stay.

She lets me upgrade us to a small beach home. She doesn’t know how I’ve secured it, though she’s asked plenty of times. I’ve only compelled humans in front of her once before, that first night we slept together. Her closeness to other vampyrs makes me wary of sharing the secret of the gift.

That, and the fear she’ll never master it as I have.

I step from the shadows and she smiles at me. “I’m the early one? What a change of pace.”

“It isn’t so long a walk from the cafe,” I say.

Her smile is gone, her eyes full of fury. “You said you wouldn’t do that anymore.”

“You wore a disguise,” I say, flipping her hat from her head with my finger. She grabs it before it can fall, shoving it back on.

“A disguise is when you actually try to look different. I wear hats all the time. And that’s beside the point—you promised.”

“Who is she?” I ask. I hate the desperation in my voice, I hate the way it pitches upward. It’s vulnerable and weak.

“A fucking friend, Noe. A friend! I know that’s a foreign fucking concept to you,” she spits.

“Jesus fucking Christ, do not look at me like that! Am I supposed to feel bad for hurting your feelings? As if mine mean nothing? Fuck you, Noe. I’m sick of tiptoeing around you.” She turns abruptly, marching away from me.

She returns to the beach bungalow several hours later. I wait for her apology, for the angry makeup sex.

Instead she stands in the doorway, her face resolute.

“Noe, I love you, but I cannot be with you anymore,” she says. “I’ve spoken to my therapist, and…this isn’t healthy. You need help.”

I stand and reach out for her but she jerks away. “Wait…” I start.

“No. I mean it this time.”

I try to take her hand and she steps back again.

“This! This is what I mean! You’re not listening to me!”

“We can talk about—”

“No,” she interrupts. “We’re not talking about shit. I’m done.”

“I’m sorry, Skye. I just--”

“No. I’m not listening to you.”

“I’ll sleep somewhere else the next few days, and then—”

“NO!” she yells, and then she shoves me. It’s barely a push, not enough to send me even a step backwards. But it is enough to give me pause.

“I am not her, okay? I will never be her! Whoever fucked you up, whoever you were with before me. Everything I do falls short of this fucking…mythical creature you were with before me. I’m sorry I’m not perfect, okay?

I’m sorry I don’t speak five hundred fucking languages.

I’m sorry I’ve never been to Egypt or Germany or wherever the fuck you’ve been!

I am not her, I will never be her, and you will never have a normal relationship as long as you try to rebuild her!

Is she dead, Noe? Is that what happened?

Did your lover die and so you’re trying to turn me into her?

Well, I’m my own fucking woman. I didn’t escape a religious cult and then a weird gothic cult just to end up trying to be someone I’m not!

“You will destroy every relationship you try for until you get the fuck over her. Do you hear me? You are the reason for your suffering. Not me, not some group of fucking vampires, not whoever made you, not your ex…you. Remember that.”

Then she slams the door and leaves.

For good this time.

It hurts in a way I did not expect. I met Skye with guarded disinterest, but the more she pulled away, the more I dragged her closer. I do love her—did love her—but not as I loved you.

I sit on the couch, running through her words.

She is right. No matter how many groups of vampyrs I find, no matter how many women in the sitting room of my own, no matter how far I travel, there is still you.

I will never be free while you live.

You made me, but I can unmake you.

You are somewhere in the world, and I am going to find you.