Page 104 of We Were Eternal Once

Did time mean nothing to the shell of a vampyr?

I trace the edges of the stone structure beneath me. The name has worn off, destroyed by the countless evenings of rain. If I dug my fingers into the surface, I could trace the letters.

How comforting, that you can visit a loved one after they’ve died.

If I’d told you where I’d been buried, would you have visited? Would you have stood vigil, waiting for me to die at last? Or would you have dug me up?

Or were you too busy with the woman in the sitting room?

A flare of jealousy tears through me and I hate myself for it. I’ve not seen you in centuries, and yet I mourn you still. Even a decade since I pulled myself to the surface, I still think of you.

Will you haunt me forever?

Or do I need my own woman in the sitting room to be free of you at last?

California, 2010

Ido not believe in love at first sight, yet I could not deny how I felt the first time I saw Skye.

The waves of the ocean lapped the sand in Ocean Beach, California. The moon rested heavy on the horizon, casting a pallor over the empty expanse.

Empty except for the woman who surfed in the waves.

It was forbidden to surf at night. I’d seen the police try to chase her out of the water more than once, their megaphones pressed to their lips as they yelled curses at her. She laughed and grabbed her surfboard and ran barefoot on the beach, leaving the police in her wake.

She had to be a vampyr. There’s no way a human could see the waves in the dark like she did. And no human could run like that and heft a board so easily.

I watched her every night, marveling at the ease in which she rode the waves.

She approached me one night, her board under her arm. She was all muscle and sinew, the strong cords of her stomach prominent as she shed her bodysuit.

“You going to stare at me or say hello?” she asked.

“Hello,” I said.

“Haven’t seen you around here. Well, other than every night on the beach, staring at me like a creeper,” she said.

“I didn’t think you could see me,” I admitted.

“It’s your eyes,” she said, lifting her hand to pass along my temple. “They basically glow.”

Her eyes were ice-blue, so blue they were almost white. I knew those eyes, and at first I wanted to turn from her for it. Was this another Essemteu that would collect me and follow me?

Perhaps she is not her maker, just as I am not you.

“I am new to California,” I said.

“Cali-forn-ya,” she sing-songed, copying the way I said the name.

“Is that wrong?” I asked.

“No, it’s cute. You foreign vampires always have the funnest accents. Where are you from, Red Eyes?”

“Greece,” I said. “And my name is Melinoë.”

“Never been, Noë. Is it cool there?”

“In the winter and fall,” I said.