Vampire 01 - Daughter of Darkness

volunteer personal information. Maybe she really was Daddy’s mother and he had inherited his good looks from her. In our house, beauty seemed to be a fruit you could pluck when it was time to pluck it.
    Ava was very attractive and very sexy. She could suck the eyes out of admiring men, young or old. I could hear them practically panting as we walked by, Ava seemingly floating, her head up, her eyes forward. She looked oblivious, as indifferent as some goddess might be, even though she was far from it. She always gave me the impression that she expected nothing less than admiration, even idolization. Walking with her was almost a sexual experience because of the way she flaunted herself. Intheir virtual-reality worlds, the men who saw her were already in the throes of heavy lovemaking.
    Would I ever have Ava’s self-confidence? Her arrogance? I knew I was expected to have it. I couldn’t be my father’s daughter if I didn’t.
    Ava stood there in her soft silk nightgown, her ample bosom firm, her neck curved smoothly into her shoulders. Even when she had just awakened, her complexion was vibrant. As long as I could remember, she had never had a skin blemish and certainly not a pimple. Even though she did use it, she really didn’t need to put on lipstick. Her lips were naturally a rich ruby. She never went to a doctor or a dentist; none of us did, for that matter. When I asked Mrs. Fennel why none of us ever needed any sort of medical attention, she simply said, “Good genes.”
    Good genes? How could that be? From what I understood, I didn’t share those genes, and neither did Marla, but we didn’t go to a doctor or a dentist, either. Ava said it was because of the foods and drinks Mrs. Fennel prepared for us. She said Mrs. Fennel was better than any doctor or dentist. That was nice, of course. Who wanted to go to a doctor or a dentist? But it wasn’t enough of an explanation for me. Why had Mrs. Fennel told me it was genes? What did she know about our genes?
    Like Marla’s, my origin was a mystery. All I really knew was that I had been plucked out of an orphanage, just as she was. Whenever I tried to find out anything specific about myself, I was always told not to think about it.
    “Don’t dwell on what makes you different and apart from this family. If you do, you’ll be disowned,” Mrs. Fennel warned.
    I certainly didn’t want that to happen, but my curiosity about myself seemed only natural, and my classmates often asked me personal questions. I ignored them or simply said I didn’t know, which most of the time was true, but it was always uncomfortable to say it.
    “How could you not know that?” they would ask, astonished.
    Meg Logan smirked and said, “You’re just a big mystery wrapped up in a secret. Enjoy yourself, but keep away from us. You’re like someone with Alzheimer’s.”
    That was painful to hear and did make me feel foolish. Why couldn’t Mrs. Fennel or Daddy help me with some of these questions so I wouldn’t look like such a freak in school? Goodness knows, I didn’t want to feel different or in any way alienated from my father and my sisters. If anything, I wanted to be just like Ava. I was always trying to imitate her walk, the way she held her head, even her smile.
    Was it wrong for me to be in such awe of my own older sister? Was it natural?
    Right now, a quick movement in her eyes told me she saw how I perused her body the way some art student might gaze upon a statue in a museum.
    “What else do I want from you? I want you to stop behaving like some lovesick teenager.”
    “I’m not.”
    “You’re not?” She stared a moment and then shook her head and smiled. “Okay, what’s your problem today,little sister? The boy you have a thing for at school won’t look your way?”
    “I don’t have any problems, and I don’t have any thing for any boys in my school,” I said, realizing too late how defensive I sounded.
    She laughed skeptically, sat on the edge of my four-poster dark walnut bed, and then threw herself back on my oversize pillow. We rarely had what I would call a close sister-to-sister conversation, from what I understood those conversations were like when I saw them on television or heard girls in my class talk about their older sisters. Ava had stepped too quickly into the surrogate mother’s role Brianna had played, but maybe, now that I was older, she would be different, I thought. Her life was different. Why wouldn’t mine be as well?
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