Black Sunshine (Dark Eyes 1)

“No,” my mother says abruptly. “You stay out of the Veil. Bad things happen in there. Perhaps it’s not the same for you, but for a normal person, or a witch, the more you go in there, the more it changes you.”

“It’s quick and easy.” And creepy.

“I’m driving you,” my father says again. “End of story. You’re safest in my car, there are runes all around it. Don’t worry. If you walk alone, you don’t know what will happen. A vampire might bite you again, yes even in broad daylight, and you won’t have Absolon to put them in their place.”

I snort. “Putting them in their place? That’s a mild way of saying he ripped the heart out of someone and set it on fire.”

They both stare at me blankly. “He did what now?” my father asks.

I give them a quick smile. “We should go.”

I give my mother a hug goodbye and then we go down the stairs and out the front door. I slip on my sunglasses, the sun bright, and we head across the street to my father’s Volvo, getting inside.

I buckle up out of habit and relax in the seat, breathing in the familiar smell of the leather, the gauzy packet of dried lavender, rose, and sandalwood stuffed in the console, noting the crystals hanging from the rearview mirror. Now that I know what my parents truly are, it’s hard not to notice all the signs of witchcraft they’ve strewn amongst themselves.

My father pulls out and we head up Lily Street, the traffic quiet today. I don’t even know what day it is, time is losing all meaning again.

But my inner thoughts about the lack of traffic quickly come to a stop because the car comes to a stop just past Steiner, two blocks from where we’re supposed to turn right onto Scott Street, which will take us right to the house.

“What on Hecate’s aura is going on?” my father grumbles, trying to see around the traffic that has piled up in front of us.

“Why did you want revenge against Alice and Hakan?” I suddenly ask my father. “Why did you go through all the trouble to kill them?”

He eyes me, brow raised in surprise. Then he looks back to the road, inching forward a couple of feet with the traffic.

“Elaine had a sister, Tabitha,” he says uneasily. “Alice killed her.”

“Why?”

He gives me a look like, why do you think?

“Vampires aren’t supposed to kill without reason,” I go on. “Did Alice kill her for her blood?”

He rubs his lips together and looks back to the road. “I’m sure that was part of it.”

“You’re not telling me something,” I say. “Why did Alice kill Tabitha?”

He exhales, kneading the steering wheel. “It’s a long story, Lenore,” he says and then honks the horn, sticking his head out the window. “Come on, what’s the hold up?!”

I sigh, staring at the side mirror, watching the traffic line up behind us. I don’t know why the hell he’s being so cagey about my real vampire mother, but I have a feeling it isn’t good. Maybe he doesn’t want to tell me anything more without my mother around, since it was her sister after all.

“Oh, here comes someone, maybe they’ll tell us what’s happening,” my father says, but I pay him no attention, hoping that Alice was just an ordinary morally gray vampire and not someone horrible, because I’m not sure I could take it.

“Excuse me, sir, do you happen to know what’s happening up ahead?” my father says, and I turn my head to look at who he’s talking to.

A man lowers his head, peering in through my father’s window, staring straight at me. Grey hair, black brows, black eyes.

Brimstone fills my nose.

I open my mouth to scream but he’s fast.

Because he’s a vampire.

Yanik.

“Hello Lenore,” he says, smiling with fangs, which he then promptly places in my father’s neck, biting down with a splash of blood.

My scream finally comes through and I thrash, trying to free myself from the seatbelt, trying to fight him off, protect my father, whose only screams are drowning in his throat.