Vampire 01 - Daughter of Darkness

what you are,” Daddy had promised. “It’s out there, waiting for you to claim it, my darling daughter, like some ripe fruit for you to pluck and enjoy. You will have many affairs that are as passionate as any possible. You will miss nothing and have everything.”
    His kiss had sealed the promise.
    I stared at myself in the mirror.
Yes, now I understand what you meant, Ava
, I thought.
Now I know why Mrs. Fennel called love our poison. I must try to fight back all these thoughts and feelings for Buddy Gilroy. I must try to become more like you. Loyalty, obedience, and sacrifice must replace this craving for love and self-fulfillment. I am
, I declared to myself with new resolve,
my father’s daughter, too. I can be no one else.
Perhaps that was what Daddy and Mrs. Fennel meant by fulfilling our destiny. In the end, we really had no choice, nowhere else to go. Could I convince myself of that? If Daddy or Mrs. Fennel even suspected I had these doubts…
    I wrapped my secret thoughts into a neat package and put them away as deeply as I could in the closet of my memory just as my door opened and Ava stepped into my bedroom. She looked about my room and then at me, as if she could literally search the air for traces of my innermost secret thoughts. Then she nodded at the textbooks I had open on my desk.
    “Don’t waste too much time on all that,” she said, moving suspiciously about my room, her eyes going everywhere.
    “What do you mean? Why not?”
    She shrugged. “Your days at that school are numbered. Why bother to worry about your grades?”
    “We’re close to the end of the school year. Surely, Daddy wouldn’t move us before I finish.”
    “Do you think that matters at all to Daddy?” she asked, and smiled. “Don’t be ridiculous, Lorelei. Others, them,” she said disdainfully, waving at the window to indicate any and all who lived outside our world, “needgood grades to be the keys that open doors for them. We don’t. Daddy arranges everything for us forever.”
    “I don’t do it to get doors open for me, Ava. I do it because I enjoy it.”
    “Oh, please,” she said, and sat at my vanity table. She primped her hair and studied herself in the mirror.
    “Where did you take Marla?” I asked. She was so lost in herself that I didn’t think she heard me. Then she stopped looking at herself and turned to me.
    “To practice,” she said.
    “Practice? Practice what?”
    “I don’t know if you’ve noticed lately, probably not, because your head is in the wrong places these days, but our little Marla is surging into maturity. Daddy says there is something quite remarkable about her, even more remarkable than you or me. For the first time in, what should I say, centuries, he thinks he might have two daughters mature and skilled enough at the same time.” She laughed. “Imagine being able to take turns every month. What a relief.”
    “I don’t understand. How can that be? She’s not quite fourteen. She doesn’t have the mature figure, the—”
    “Daddy says he can sense that she will soon look more like eighteen, nineteen. In less than six months, matter of fact, she’ll probably be breathing down your neck.” She widened her smile.
    “My neck?”
    “Of course, Lorelei. Just think of the competition, the real sibling rivalry then. Each of you trying to outdo the other when it comes to bringing Daddy what he needs asquickly as he needs it. Who will catch the better prize? Which one of you will do it better, easier?”
    She turned back to the vanity mirror, took my brush, and swept her bangs back.
    “That way, should one of you have to be replaced, there’ll be no problem for Daddy, either,” she said. She stopped brushing. “It’s exciting, isn’t it? I almost wish I could trade places with you, that you’d be the one leaving and not me.”
    “How can that be exciting? It sounds horrible to think of two sisters trying to outdo each other.”
    She nodded at herself. “I was right about you. Daddy’s beginning to see it, too.”
    “Right about what?”
    “You’re missing something the rest of us have. It’s a kind of hunger, a driving desire, a need that makes you harder, sharper, and more self-confident. Daddy thinks, hopes, you’ll grow into it, that perhaps I’ll inspire you, but I have grave doubts, and Daddy has grown to trust my instincts. You think he’ll ever feel comfortable trusting yours?” She looked at herself again with pleasure. “I doubt it,” she