Chapter 1
It was midnight.
My birthday.
And wasn’t it ironic that today was both the beginning and the end of my life?
Or at least, that was what it felt like.
Because you see, today, my powers were going to finally come to me.
And today, the vampires would take it.
I sat on my bed, fiddling with the gossamer threads. Anyone who looked at my life from the outside would think that I'm privileged, spoiled even. But they don't know anything about me.
I stretched out, blowing out a sigh as I waited for my powers to come in. It was past midnight. Had they come in already? Was I supposed to feel something?
I was kind of expecting something cool to happen. Maybe a burst of light, a chorus of angels...something.
So far, none of that had happened.
I opened my mouth and sang a verse of my favorite Halsey song because humans really know their music...but nothing feels different.
And so, I wait.
A lot of the other girls I talked to didn’t really know what it felt like to use their power, and they refused to talk about what it felt like to receive the power at all. They reasoned that because they were going to lose it anyway, what was the point of using it at all? That way, they would never know what they were missing.
But I couldn't do that.
I had to know just for a few seconds if that's all I got, what it felt like to be powerful. To be whole. To be what I was born to be.
The vampires made sure the rest of our lives never felt like that.
My mind inevitably drifted to tomorrow, and what that meant for me.
Tomorrow, I would enter the family business. Mama had been grooming me for it for the last few years. How to dress...how to talk...how to act...how to please a man. How to be a beautiful face and nothing else.
A lifetime of being nothing. That's what eighteen meant for me.
I once read a book about the sirens. I found it in the school library, and although I'm sure that most of it wasn't true, one thing did stand out to me.
Sirens once had control. The waves, the depths of the sea, the weather...all of it was ours.
And then one day, all that power disappeared.
My thoughts dissipated as my chest started to burn. I rubbed it absentmindedly, thinking maybe I had some indigestion from all that lettuce my mother had forced me to eat for dinner.
The burning began to spread, however, until I felt like I was on fire. Looking down at my skin in panic, I half expected it to look burnt to a crisp.
The pain grew so intense that I opened my mouth to scream, but nothing came out. It was like I was being reborn at that moment, changed from the inside out.
I laid there and felt like I was dying as the burning somehow intensified until my world was narrowed to just a pinprick in space. No wonder none of the girls I knew had wanted to talk about this. I couldn't imagine a greater pain than this. I guess this explained how my mama could do unmedicated childbirth like it was nothing.
Just when I thought I couldn't take a second more, and the burning became so great that I believed I would become nothing but embers at any time, the burning disappeared as quickly as it had begun. It left me a throbbing, shaking mess from the adrenaline still coursing through my body.
Tears were streaming down my face. I had been in so much pain that I didn't even realize that I was crying.
Lifting my hand to brush the tears off my face, I gasped in surprise. The skin on my hand almost seemed to be glowing...it was like there was a backlight reflecting off my hand. I started examining my entire body and saw that the strange light had taken over every inch of my skin. There were other changes as well.
I was more…
That was the best way to describe it. My skin was smoother, my dark hair was thicker and longer, my lips were fuller...everything about my looks was just...more.
What was even stranger than the way my skin glowed and what also seemed to have improved, was the fact that I felt stronger. Like there was a power inside of me that was just waiting to come out and play.
And I didn't even have to wonder what it was. I just knew. It hummed through my mind.
I opened my mouth, and it was just instinct, this song that I was all of a sudden singing. A song as old as time itself. A song of my people.
It flowed from me, weaving its spell on everything around me. Storm clouds were gathering in the distance outside the window I now stood in front of. Wind was picking up from the east and racing towards me. All of nature was bending to my will.
I felt powerful. I felt magical. I felt like who I was supposed to be.
I didn't know how I could live without this feeling ever again.
I woke up in a daze. At first, I didn't realize where I was. The last thing I remembered was standing in the pouring rain in my manor's backyard as the wind raced around me.
Somehow, I ended up back in my room on the floor.
And somehow, I fell asleep.
Staring at the clock, I wanted to cry. Julian would be here any minute. And then everything would be gone.
A knock sounded on my door just then, and a hiccupping sob burst out of my mouth.
The door opened a second later, and Mama stood there, perfectly primped and coiffed as ever. She was Julian’s little pet.
And I hated her for it.
I hated her acceptance of our life. I hated that she’d paraded me in front of Julian since I was a little girl, and that she ignored the heated glances he gave me. She ignored the promise in his eyes for what was to come for me.
She was a selfish, terrible excuse for a woman. If only her outside appearance matched the ugliness inside of her.
She looked triumphant as she stared at me from the doorway.
Rosalind Alexander was a beautiful woman. And beautiful was probably an understatement. She was stunning. The kind of being who garnered stares no matter where she was or who she was talking to.
She was the darling of the vampires' courtesans, and very proud of that fact. Icy blonde hair, blue eyes that could and did charm any man. She was perfect, perfectly evil.
"What are you doing on the floor?" she asked disdainfully.
As much as I wanted to tell her to go fuck herself, I refrained.
“Julian will be here soon. Get changed," she ordered, looking at my pajamas that consisted of an old rock concert tee and a pair of cheerleading shorts like they were disease-ridden.
"Yes ma'am," I replied, trying my best to sound respectful. Because she controlled my future right now. I was hopeful that at the very least, she would ease me into the business rather than throwing me to the wolves all at once.
When I didn’t move quick enough for her liking, she marched over to me and slapped me on the side of my head. “Get up,” she barked before striding away, confident that her orders would be obeyed. She’d specifically hit me on the side of my head rather than my face so that there wouldn’t be any visible blemishes. Julian wouldn’t like that, and all my mama cared about was him.
Wasn’t it a pity for her that all she wanted in life was him and all he wanted was me?
I shivered at the thought.
I went through the motions of getting ready. There was a certain order to getting ready that I'd been taught practically before I could walk.
Wash my face, moisturize my face, apply lotion all over my body. Apply makeup. Get dressed. Do my hair. Apply perfume in certain places.