Vampire 01 - Daughter of Darkness

is good. What you do to hurt the family is bad. I am the family,” he quietly added. “It all comes from me.”
    “I’m happy with the way you handled our recent crisis, Lorelei,” he said as we walked farther down the beach. “It gives me the faith in you that I need. Soon all responsibility for our survival will be in your hands.”
    “Ava will be leaving us,” I said. I was resigned to it now.
    “Yes. Her time will come very soon.”
    “Where will she go?” I asked. “To join Brianna?”
    Was he finally going to tell me that?
    “In a way, but that’s thinking too far ahead for you right now, Lorelei. Think only of the near future.”
    He paused and turned toward the ocean.
    “There is so much out there,” he said. “So much that awaits you. It’s important, however, that you never thinkof yourself as less than anyone or anything, that you never think of yourself as evil. Everyone out there does things others disapprove of, but they have to battle for their own survival. Everything living does.
    “In fact, Lorelei, everything living feeds on something else that lives. No living thing on this earth is above doing that. If that’s wrong, then all that lives is wrong. We all participate in survival of the fittest. We didn’t decide that was to be our overriding rule. We were born into it. Every nation, every people, every tribe or religion, struggles to survive and in the end will do whatever is necessary to protect its own existence. They may pretend to care about some higher morality, but when it comes right down to it, it’s every man for himself. Understand?”
    “Yes, Daddy.”
    He looked at me. The moon made his face look as if it was on fire, with his eyes two hot coals simmering within the flames. Just as a candle flame could hypnotize a moth, I was hypnotized by his glow.
    “Do you love me, Lorelei?”
    “Oh, yes, Daddy, very much.”
    “Do you want me to go on?”
    “Yes, Daddy.”
    “Is your heart big enough to conquer anything and anyone who stands in the way, then?”
    I nodded.
    He didn’t speak. He stared at me and then started to walk again in silence, holding my hand. I walked along, but I felt as if I were trailing behind, caught up in the soft light that came from him and followed us along thebeach, to take us quietly back to our beds and our comfortable and contented sleep.
    Later the following day, I thought about our conversation on the beach and his questions. Was I wrong to be so confident about myself and what I was capable of doing? Ava didn’t know about my private walk with Daddy. I was tempted to tell her, because I wanted to hear what her answers were when Daddy told her these things and asked her similar questions. Then it occurred to me that he might not have felt the need to ask her these questions. Maybe he was more confident in her. Although he didn’t say it, I also felt he wanted what we discussed and how we discussed it to be something only between us, so I said nothing about it.
    Our lives fell back into our regular daily activities. When I returned to school, the other students appeared to have lost all interest in and curiosity about Mark Daniels and, perhaps by proxy, me as well. Very few students said anything to me. I began to feel invisible. When I told Ava, she said I was lucky. She admitted to having had similar feelings and being grateful for it.
    “You’ve outgrown them,” she told me, “and they know it, too. When they look at you, they don’t see themselves or someone who cares about the same things anymore. The boys are probably intimidated, and you’ve done a good job of driving the busybodies away. Good for you,” she said.
    I didn’t feel the same way about it, but I didn’t disagree with her. The truth was, it was still quite lonely for me, and I hated that I was still someone looking through a window at everyone else. I was like the poor waif who stood outside the ice cream parlor watching theother, more fortunate kids lick their cones and eat their whipped cream. In class, in the hallways, or in the cafeteria, whenever I heard a conversation about parties or dances or dates girls had, I either moved away quickly or tried to close my ears by thinking hard about schoolwork. It got so I hated getting up in the morning to attend school, and some days, if it hadn’t been for Marla having to go, I wouldn’t have gone.
    I think Ava either saw the turmoil going on inside me now or felt it. One morning, she decided to come to my