Vampire 01 - Daughter of Darkness

park where we can look out at the water,” I said.
    “Not that easy around here.”
    We drove until he found a place to pull over.
    “Now what?”
    “I wanted to see the moonlight break out over the water. Not that long ago, I walked on the beach in Santa Barbara with my father, and we stopped to look at the moonlight. It was a fuller moon, but this is pretty, too.”
    “Why did you get so sad on me so suddenly, Lorelei?”
    I tried to hide my face from the illumination ofpassing cars, because I could feel the tears on my cheeks, but he saw them and reached for me.
    “Lorelei, what’s wrong?”
    “I can’t take you to see my father, Buddy. Ever.”
    “What? Why not?”
    “It wouldn’t work out well for either of us.”
    “Why are you saying this now? What are you talking about? You’re not making any sense.”
    “My father is a very different kind of person.”
    I paused to think about what I had said. All my young life, I had thought of Daddy as a person, because almost all the time, he was no different from anyone else. He was talented and very intelligent. He had great charm and was very good-looking, but no one, least of all me, who loved him so much, could look at him and not think of him as a person. Despite everything, I couldn’t think of him as being a creature of darkness. What I had seen him do frightened me, but as difficult as it would be for anyone to believe, I had accepted it, almost the way someone whose father was a convicted criminal might accept his father, love him, no matter what crime he had committed.
    Tonight, now that I had been brought to the point of doing what my sisters called fulfilling themselves and giving Daddy what he needed to survive, I was forced to see him as who and what he really was and not what I wanted him to be. My sisters were able to live with it and go on to fulfill whatever destiny was out there for them to fulfill. That was still a secret for me to learn about myself, and about them as well, but it wasn’t enough right now to comfort me, despite what they might think.
    After all, they had not fallen in love with someone, cared deeply for someone, and been asked to deliver him to Daddy. Ava had put me in this position. In a real sense, she had blackmailed me by threatening to tell Daddy I had developed a relationship with a young man, something expressly forbidden. My desperate need to keep Daddy’s love had brought me to this moment, had me bringing Buddy so close.
    I did not understand what it was inside me that had caused me to turn around. I felt confident that whatever it was, however, was what made me different from my sisters. Ava had sensed it, and if I thought back hard enough, I think Brianna had sensed that about me as well. Ava implied that what I was to do with Buddy was my only way to show that I wasn’t significantly different enough for Daddy to disown me.
    “How different a kind of person can he be, Lorelei?” Buddy asked. He thought a moment. “Is your father into organized crime or something like that? Is that why he’s away so much and why you have hesitated to bring me around until now?”
    His suggestion seemed a perfect means of escape for both of us. “Yes,” I said.
    “Oh.” He sat back like someone who had just been told he had terminal cancer.
    “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gone this far with you,” I said. “This is all my fault.”
    “No, no. Look. I’m not in love with your father. I’m in love with you.”
    “It can’t be, Buddy. He won’t permit it, and he’s… dangerous.”
    “Dangerous? Is he a Mob hit man or something?”
    “Something,” I said.
    “Well, I don’t get it,” he said, his voice more full of anger than confusion now. “Why did your sister bring you to my uncle’s house? What was all of this about her agreeing to my being brought to meet your father?”
    “She’s done things he wouldn’t approve of, too, and I basically blackmailed her.”
    Lying and deception were coming so naturally to me, I thought. I really was so good at it that I’d even believe myself. It made me realize that although there was something in me that made me different from Ava and Brianna, there was also much in me that made me the same.
    “Well… I don’t care if your father’s a criminal.”
    “Your wonderful family will,” I said.
    “This is crazy. You spoke so highly of him back at my uncle’s house, Lorelei. You made him sound terrific.”
    “I know. I guess that’s the father I wish