This is one of the earliest chapters I wrote, and what happens here drives all the events that follow throughout the rest of the story arch. Everything is there: drama, passion, mystery, murder, and secrets that the characters will do anything to keep.
Chapter Four: I've Got a Secret
Raul
Raul
She glowed. All her tattoos and piercings just made her even more beautiful. Her body was so fragile and small, but she had decorated it to show she was fierce. And her hair, black as night, made those china blue eyes of hers stand out like pieces of the brightest sky. A study in contrasts, that was what she was, and it was stunning.
“Sybill.” My lips said her name silently as I walked out of the coffee shop. I shoved my hands down deep in my pockets as though warding off the chill, echoing the actions of the people I passed, though I haven’t truly felt the cold in years. Not since the change. We do love warmth, though. We crave it.
It was tempting to stay there, basking under her gaze, feeling human again just for a fleeting precious few hours. However, a glance at my watch reminded me that I had only an hour before the public library closed and I wanted some more music to fill my voracious appetite. Claire Marie would buy me whatever I wanted—movies, music, books, clothes—she had a seemingly inexhaustible fund to draw upon, but I knew where much of that money came from, and I felt dirty each time I held something bought with it. Moreover, I hated owing her. It made me feel trapped somehow, bound even more tightly to her with golden chains. The library was there for everyone, rich and poor alike. It was an equalizer.
I stayed a while, perusing the collection, picking out a few old Joni Mitchell CDs, plus The Lumineers, Imagine Dragons, The Decemberists, and Young the Giant. For a few moments, I also paused in front of the New Books display before plucking Neil Gaiman’s American Gods from the Recommended Reads shelf. I have read it before. Several times, in fact. But I love picking it back up and reading it all over again. He’s got such a gift for saying what’s true and universal in new and surprising ways. I carried my selections to the desk and waited patiently for the librarian to scan them all.
When she handed me back my checked out items, she looked at me sharply. “Anyone ever tell you, you look a lot like that actor…what’s his name…Christian Slater?”
I shrugged, not making eye contact, shoving everything down in my bag. “Yeah, I hear that sometimes. Not as much as I used to, though.” Then I looked up to make sure she promptly forgot my face.
Chewing my lip, I went back out into the night. My hunger was starting, but I didn’t want to give in. Still, I couldn’t face going back home yet. Claire Marie might not have even had time to notice I was gone, and I wanted her to feel it. Feel the emptiness. Understand just a little of how she’d made me feel when she left.
I walked the streets, thinking about the nearness of Forest Park. It would be so easy to find what I needed there. So easy.
Forest Park is the largest city park in the entire United States. Our house was on its doorstep. Claire Marie had made that choice very carefully, just as she calculated everything else she did. There was a steady nightly stream of winos, addicts, and sex-trade junkies, all hiding in the dark, and if a few of them went missing, well, the city cops felt like that was their own damn fault for being reckless. Make it look like a mugging gone wrong or an overdose. That’s all I had to do. It was easy. And no one much would miss them.
I never asked Claire Marie how she could justify it to herself. In life, I’d been vegan. Ha. That was a laugh and a half. Vegan. Try being a vegan vampire. Not.
Yeah, okay, I could kill a deer or something. There were plenty of those in the park too, but they tasted bad. It would keep me alive, but barely. No. I needed blood. Human blood. All my moral principles were pointless. My only consolation was the thought that I was cleaning up the streets. Plus, I didn’t need it as often as you might think. Once a week was enough. Claire Marie had a supplier and kept the refrigerator stocked. But the refrigerator was too far away, and I was hungry.
No. I refused to give in. Instead, I clenched my jaw and walked to a bus stop, taking a seat on the bench and getting out my book. Just like anyone else waiting for the bus. I pulled up my coat collar, trying to look as though I was huddling for warmth, and lit a cigarette, reading, not looking up at the people who passed by.
I found one of my favorite passages and read it aloud in a soft whisper, knowing no one would be listening. No one listens to someone waiting at the bus stop. My stomach rumbled then just as the bus pulled up to the curb, and I knew I couldn’t get on board without doing something awful. Something impossible to contemplate.
“God dammit,” I growled, stuffing the book back in my bag. I wasn’t going to be able to wait any longer. I was dangerous. This was her fault too. She never warned me. Never told me what it would be like. “Damn her to hell.”
Leaping to my feet, I shoved my way past the commuters. “The park,” I told myself. “Just get to the park.” It wasn’t far.
That night I found just what I needed on the footpath near the skating rink. Just outside the lights, he was lurking in the shadows, shooting up, and I felt his pain, his desperate loneliness. What he was really wanting was oblivion. I gave it to him. And as I felt the warmth of his blood flow through my veins, for just a few fleeting moments I sensed the cold, was nearly human. Then he went still and the moment passed. I dropped his body by a tree, licking my lips before turning back to walk out of the park once more.
My feet took me down late night streets, and I didn’t look up to even notice where I was going until I found myself across the street from that same coffee shop. “What am I doing here?” I whispered to myself, slinking back into the shadow of an overhanging awning as I gazed over at the storefront. The lights shut off inside and two people walked out together.
One of them was her. Sybill. She was just locking the front door. Another employee was standing with her. They exchanged words, then parted. And she walked off alone away from all the bus lines. My eyes narrowed in surprise. Surely she must live close then.
Following her was the last thing I’d planned on. Yet here I was, following her all the same. I told myself it wasn’t stalking. I was making sure she got back all right.
Why did it matter to me? I couldn’t tell you. All I know is that it did.
I had an idea in my head of the type of place a coffee shop girl with tattoos lived in. Someplace run down on a dark street. So imagine my surprise when she stopped in front of an expensive high-rise building, got out her keycard, and walked in the front door. These apartments have to cost more per month than she made in three months as a barista. How did she pay for that place? Was she living with someone rich? Somehow, I didn’t think so. She had that air about her of someone who lived alone, maybe with a cat.
Sybill was turning out to be a mystery. One I wanted to figure out.
Lighting a cigarette, I stood at the corner in the shadows for half an hour or so before turning away at last. Time to go home again.
The night bus passed me as I waited to cross Euclid Avenue, and when I slipped into the tree covered path that led the back way through the gardens, I smiled to myself, feeling for the first time in a long time that I was excited to see what tomorrow would bring. I had a secret. Its name was Sybill.
Copyright © 2013, Delia Remington. All Rights Reserved.
No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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