Vampire 01 - Daughter of Darkness

curse and a blessing that we could get whomever we wanted. She had said that someday I would understand how it could be both. As I sat there in my room, enjoying my reminiscing about Buddy and at the same time frightened that Daddy, Mrs. Fennel, or Ava would see that enjoyment in my face, I thought I understood what she had meant.
    A real relationship between any of us and some boy was a threat to Daddy and therefore the family. Buddy was very attracted to me. I wanted him to be, but Ava was right. How could I afford to fall in love? What would come of it? How could I, like any other father’s daughter, ever have a serious relationship, ever get engaged, marry, and move away to have a family of my own?
    If I had had a close friend, and she had been there with me, she would surely have asked how I could put my love for and loyalty to my father so high above my own wishes and dreams, even my own needs. After all, didn’t everyone need to have someone love him or her, someone other than a father or a mother, a sister or a brother? Or was it just romantic drivel to believe that someone out there was meant to be your life partner, your soul mate?
    From reading, from history class, and even from stories Daddy had told me, I knew that there had been a time when young women lived in such a confined and restricted world that it was impossible for them to find soul mates, real lovers. Their parents arranged their whole lives. Those young women became wives andmothers and never experienced the thrill of romance, the excitement of self-discovery. Did they die because of it? Did they suffer and go crazy? Here and there, there were probably some who did, but on the whole, they lived full lives, had and loved their children, and although they didn’t fall in love, at minimum, they developed cordial, respectful, and maybe even deeply devoted relationships with the men they were forced to marry. They lay beside each other in cemeteries just like passionate lovers who married, spent their lives together, and passed away.
    So, too, my sisters and I could not have boyfriends, go to proms, press flowers and pictures into albums, write love letters, carry on endless soft and loving phone conversations, get engaged to someone we loved and who loved us, or have a wedding that fulfilled our hearts. Our destinies had been prearranged as well. Would we, like those young women ages ago, put all of those romantic ideas in some closet and forget them, or would they haunt us forever? Was that part of the destiny that awaited me?
    I stared at myself hatefully in the mirror. Suddenly, everything that was attractive and beautiful about me annoyed me. If I had been born plain, if I had no more sexual power in me than someone like Ruta Lee or Meg Logan, wouldn’t I be better off? If I hadn’t cried out when Daddy and Mrs. Fennel were walking past my bassinet, would some ordinary childless couple have adopted me and soaked me in their love? I’d have probably fallen in love with some likewise ordinary young man and had a wedding and children. I’d have no other destiny than the destiny most young women had. I wouldgrow old without any illusions about myself. I’d probably not battle against age, either. I’d accept it and be satisfied with an epitaph that read, “She was a good wife, a good mother, a good woman, who made friends easily and never knew the meaning of real unhappiness.”
    But would I have really been happier never to have known Daddy, never to have traveled in that first-class world that we lived in, a world of glamour and wealth, music and elegance? Would I have really been happier never to have lived in a world in which I never had a sick day, in which youth, energy, and beauty were forever? Would I really be happier sitting in my comfy little living room watching romantic movies or reading books about love and settling for the vicarious experience?
    “When you stand on the cliffs of Capri or feel the wind in your hair as the yacht surges forward toward Mykonos, when you have dinner on the Eiffel Tower looking out over Paris or have lunch in Eze on the Riviera and look out over the bluest sea, when you have your cocktail on the rooftop of the Hassler in Rome and look out over the lights of the Eternal City, when you share hors d’oeuvres with the richest, most powerful people in the world, people who can clap their hands or snap their fingers and change the lives of thousands, you will feel the full glory of who you are and