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“Not really fair that you’re driving when Solon first offered the keys to me,” I tell Wolf as he brings the car onto the exit to the 101, the engines roaring.
“You can drive back down, how about that?” he says, adjusting his sunglasses. The minute we crossed the bridge and got away from the bay, the fog lifted and the sun started beaming down on us. It feels like a real California autumn now, strong rays, dry fields, the kind that exists once you leave the mist and gloom of the Bay Area.
“I don’t see you in the sunshine all that often,” I comment, noting how nice his skin looks in it, the way his hair gleams bronze. I want to run my fingers through it.
“Could say the same about you,” he says, adjusting his hands on the wheel.
My god, his hands are a masterpiece.
Calm your tits, Amethyst, I tell myself. You can’t start lusting after him in this car, he’s going to notice, and it’s a long-ass drive.
“So, the sun doesn’t really harm you, does it?”
He shakes his head. “As you know, our senses are heightened so it can be annoying on the eyes. Sunglasses usually solve the problem. But the sun can’t harm our skin or really do any other kind of damage.”
“But Solon said that in the old days, when you lived up where there was a midnight sun, you’d have to escape into the Black Sunshine to survive.”
He tenses, just for a moment before he gives me a quick smile. “It wasn’t really the sun that made us hide there.”
“You hid there?”
He gives a short nod. “Yes, for a long time.”
“Why? If it wasn’t the sun?”
“I’m sure for others it was the sun. Those up in the frozen north, there weren’t many places to find darkness, a chance to rest the eyes. Twenty-four-hour daylight makes humans go mad, imagine what it does to vampires.”
“But for you…”
“We had a house, and the forest was thick and deep, so it wasn’t much of a problem for us. We had darkness when we needed it.”
It’s so rare to have Wolf talk about his beginnings, other than some memory here or there, and I don’t want to scare him off. But at the same time, I’m awfully curious.
“So, why did you have to hide again? Was it…was it something to do with your parents?” I know his father and mother died when he was young, but I never got the details on how.
He sucks in his lower lip for a moment. “Yes. The veil, Black Sunshine, was the only safe place for me and my family after my father died. The townspeople, they were looking for us and we had to disappear immediately.”
“What happened? To your father?”
“Honestly, I’ve blocked most of it out,” he says, glancing at me for a second. “I’m not saying that to brush you off. I want to talk to you about it. It’s just…I don’t really remember what I saw. What I do remember is that I was with my father when he died.”
I press my hands to my mouth. “Oh my god.”
“Yeah. So, you can see why it’s probably best that I don’t remember. I’m sure if I dug deep, maybe saw a therapist, went to hypnosis, whatever, I could recall it, but I would rather not. All I know is that he was killed by humans with a sword and there was a lot of blood. And that it was just the two of us, and after he died, I had to go into the Black Sunshine for the first time. I ran home, just…a mess. I managed to reach my mother and brother and sister before the humans got to them and we all disappeared into that black-and-white world, and we stayed there. For years.”
I’d obviously never been in the Black Sunshine, that veil is a vampire-only zone, a layer of the world between heaven and earth and hell from the sounds of it. But, to be there for so long, I can’t imagine it. Especially at such a young age, after losing a parent.
“So, it was humans that killed your father?” That was the other surprise. “I thought only slayers could. You know, witches, with that special knife of theirs stabbed in the heart.”
“There are three ways, that’s one of them.”
“Right. The other is by fire and the other is…” I pause, looking at him in horror. “Oh my god. Was your father decapitated? In front of you?”
“As I said, I’d rather not think about it.”
I exhale loudly. Holy fuck.
“I was only five,” he goes on. “It was a long time ago.”
“Yeah, that’s even worse! You were just a child, Wolf.”
“It was a long time ago,” he repeats.
“But that’s got to fuck you up!”
He lets out a sharp laugh. “I’m not saying it didn’t. It did. It has. But you learn to live with the trauma. That’s the one thing about being a vampire, you have a lot of time to live with it.”
