Chapter 1: The Vampire Pirate's Daughter by Lynette Ferreira
THE MEGA CUP of coffee in my hand is cold while the sun shines hot down onto my shoulders. I put my feet up onto the supports of the chair across from me, and I keep my face in the shade because the brightness makes me pull my eyes together and it gives me a headache.
I have been lost in my own thoughts, dreaming of my past, for hours, looking absent-mindedly at the people walk past me. A million faces, all of them unfamiliar.
Then I see him, and I sigh despondently while my eyes follow him sadly. His dark hair falls across his brow, and his eyes look at me, but they do not see me. He walks past me and toward the group of kids standing in front of the cinema. They greet each other laughingly. He must feel my eyes on him, as he turns and looks over his shoulder. I continue staring, but still, he does not see me.
Although I am only sixteen, I have never experienced romance. I have seen it many times, have experienced it through the people I see walking along a river, have longed for someone to look at me and know they only see me. Someone to whisper softly in my ear they only want me, and they love only me.
I have an instinct which tells me it would be great to have someone love me. I wonder what it would feel like to grow old. To be like the meagre mortals around me, to roll a die, to live on the edge, to be daring and know it might kill me. I have been around the world, have seen the world change, have had a million different hairstyles, fashions. I belong a hundred miles from anyone, but there is a yearning inside of me and I need to know what it feels like to fall in love. To tumble head over heels in love, and to have someone stumble for me. I wonder how it feels to love someone unconditionally as I have read so many times in books.
The server walks to me again and this time she smiles when she catches my eye. She has been around to my table a few times this morning, but I have ignored her on purpose.
I smile up at her now. “The bill please.”
She opens her leather folder and place a slip on my table.
I lean down to get my bag, where I left it laying on the floor next to my table and I pick it up onto my lap. After pulling the zip open, I dig into the bag, which is hopelessly too big and impractical. Eventually, I find my handbag and then I take out a few notes and smile at the server who has stepped away. She comes toward me again and I give her the money.
She says friendly, “Thank you. Please come again.”
Smiling in return, I push the chair I am sitting on backwards and then I get up.
If Shayne could hear my thoughts now, not that he can, he would be upset. He loves his extended life, but I am bored and lonely. There is nothing I can do, nothing exciting. What fun is there in bungee jumping, when you know you would never die? Is the action of jumping down an impossibly high bridge with only a rubber band attached to the ankle, not ultimately, purposefully defying death?
I walk away to the parking area and toward my car. When I am close enough to my car, I press the button on my remote and I can hear the doors unlocking from a distance away—a loud popping noise. I get into the car and back it out of the parking spot. After I pay for my parking ticket, I drive the short distance home.
We live in a gated security estate. We moved here a month ago. After we came here on holiday, a year ago. The crime is so high, and nobody seems to care if people go missing, it does not even reach the newspapers, so it is easy for us to maintain our lifestyle without suspicion falling on us too quickly. It is not so difficult getting what we need to sustain us in modern times. It used to be that people were more frightened and wary of strange things, but these days there are people who want to be like us. There are people who commit worse crimes daily. We kill for survival. There are those who kill for absolutely no purpose.
I stop in front of our house. It is a double-storey building and the neighbours live hopelessly too close. The spaces the houses are built in are limited, and sometimes I miss the wide-open spaces of long ago. Peering briefly into the large Koi fish tank standing to the left of our house, I walk to our front door, which has a large elephant carved into it. I push the heavy door open and I can hear the television on in the back.
I walk through the house toward the sound.
In the living room, I see Shayne sprawled across a chair. The large brown leather chairs are wide enough to sleep on and you cannot help it when your body naturally gravitates horizontally onto them.
I look at Shayne amused. Sometimes I think he is only fooling himself, saying he is still enjoying himself. I am sure sometimes though he must also feel that sense of purposelessness and now I can see the boredom on his strong face. He has a prominent nose, which he always refers to as his Roman-tic profile. His clipped reddish-brown hair is short in the back and on the sides, and then he likes to gel the front so it looks like bed hair. I have told him a million times this has gone out of fashion, but he likes to say he does not follow fashion and he is a trendsetter.
“Where is Amanda?” I ask him.
He looks up lazily. “Didn’t you see her at the mall?”
“No.”
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