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Here comes the night, the bedroom in shadows
Candlelights, I don't know where it's coming from
But I, I keep moving on
Till the darkest thought makes me want to try these wings
"Lost in the Shadows" Lou Gramm
i.
Star is sixteen when she comes to Santa Carla.
She has a dead mother and no father, is an only child now lost to the world. She leaves foster parents behind, a house full of kids younger than her, tougher than her, angrier than her -- but none of them run, and she does.
The bright lights of the boardwalk call her like a moth to the flame. It is an overused metaphor, but it is the one she thinks first, and once it is inside her head, she can’t drive it away. She’s hitchhiked most of the way since she got to California, but she walks from the gas station where her last ride dropped her off all the way to the boardwalk and the beach beyond. The briny smell grows stronger with each step. Her canvas shoes are worn thin, and she can feel every small, sharp stone beneath them.
It’s early morning, and she hasn’t slept in more than a day, but even though her eyes are gritty and her head feels stuffed with cotton, energy races through her veins with every fast beat of her heart. The side of the road heading out of town is busier than the side heading into town, and she wonders where everyone is going, locked away in their cars with their windows rolled up and keeping out the world. They don’t seem to look right or left, they don’t seem to be impressed by the rise of the mountain in front of them or the gleam of ocean behind. She doesn’t understand how they could be so caught in wherever they’re going that they would miss all that beauty.
The boardwalk is closed, but not quite empty. People hover in the shadowy corners, some asleep on the ground, others digging through dumpsters. The homeless, she thinks, and then, people like her. She’s homeless, too.
She ignores them. Ignores the shifting sand beneath her feet. Ignores the cold bite of ocean as she walks straight into it. It creeps up her legs, her calves, her thighs, all the way to her waist, then higher still. Her breath comes in ragged gasps, and the salt scrapes her bare skin.
The sun is low behind her, the water dark ahead.
She could keep walking, she knows, until that cold darkness closes over her head and she sinks into a murky, watery world. She could wait there for sunset, and night, and finally her body would be as empty as she feels.
She stands there until her body numbs and her fingers wrinkle. When she makes it back to the sand, her long skirt is soaked, her shirt too, and she staggers under the weight of it. The drag slows her steps, or maybe that’s the cold working its way through her body.
There are old bonfires on the beach. She doesn’t know the first thing about starting a fire.
Star shivers and walks and waits.
ii.
Star is sixteen when she meets David and his boys.
She’s at the boardwalk, because there are only four places she goes in Santa Carla, the boardwalk, the restaurants downtown to dig through the garbage bins, the sole homeless shelter for a shower, and the public library. She’s not even sure how long she’s been in town. She’s hungry all the time, and lonely, and furious whenever anyone tries to talk to her. Her cheeks are raw from her tears and the sharp wind off the ocean.
California is supposed to be warm.
In that regard, it, like so many things in life, is a disappointment.
The boardwalk, thank god, is not. During the day, it is desolate and rundown, people’s smiles drawn tight, their discomfort clear beneath. Sometimes she can earn a couple bucks from the tourists, flashing her tarot cards at them, telling their futures (she’s always been good at making up exactly the stories they want to hear).
At night, though, it comes alive. The neon lights hide all manner of decay, and cast everyone in beauty, shadow and light playing across their faces. Bodies twine together, and on the beach, the crowds in front of the stage surge, generating heat and need. It satiates some of her hunger, even when there’s no food in her belly. She doesn’t care what band plays. It’s enough to lose herself in the people, dancing, skirts moving, hair wild.
They find her like that, the boys, tall, thin shadows moving through the crowd. Their clothes are right, their hair, but there’s something about their smiles, the gleam of their eyes, that sets them apart. It’s not so much that they don’t belong here; it’s more that the way they move makes Star feel like no one else belongs here, no one else is enough to be near them.
She doesn’t notice, at first, that they circle her.
When she does, she clenches her hands into fists. Keeps her eyes on the band. Tosses her hair, forces a laugh. Tries to look casual. Then, as if she’s seen someone she knows, she gives a little wave and takes off for the edge of the crowd. She means to go back to the boardwalk, find someplace to hole up until they’re gone, but they’re moving too, still, twining through the crowd. It’s hard to move against the crush of people, and before she knows it, they’ve herded her to the outer edge, but there’s no boardwalk to offer her safety.
The beach stretches before her, dotted with fading bonfires, scattered couples necking on beach blankets, and darkness only partially cut by the flames and the fall of the boardwalk lights.
They’re behind her still, she takes a quick look, and when she turns, he’s standing in front of her. She pulls up short, gasps, clutches her hand to her chest. All these things make her look weak, she knows, and she’s tried to teach herself to fake tough. In that first reaction, though, she can’t quite manage it.
“Hello,” he says, and his voice washes over her. “What’s your name?”
She doesn’t mean to answer, but hears herself saying “Star” none the less.
“Star.” It sounds different when he says it, lingers on his tongue. She can almost feel his mouth against her skin, and her body twitches, the movement outside of her control. He says it again, low and gentle, and goose bumps race down her arms. “Star.”
He’s not her type at all. She likes dark hair and muscles, and though he’s tall enough, he’s pale and lithe. But there’s something about him, the curve of his lip as he smirks, the flash of his teeth, the tilt of his head as he watches her -- desire unfurls low in her body, and heat gathers between her legs. He makes her think awful things, dark and dirty, and all she wants to do is find an empty room so she can hike up her skirt and get herself off.
He smiles at her as if he knows her thoughts, and when he tells her his name, offers her his hand, she’s lost. She’s lost.
iii.
Star is sixteen when she drinks the blood.
Sixteen, and falling, and falling, and falling, and then --
blood on her lips and teeth and tongue
-- she’s gone.
iv.
Star is sixteen when she meets Michael.
Sixteen and twenty, and it feels like she’s fought the blood lust every single day of her life. Her fangs prickle her gums, her throat burns, her stomach aches. She sits in the sun, forces herself awake as long as she can manage. Some days, it is more. Some days -- well. Some days, she doesn’t manage to see the sun at all.
But she tries, and she tries again, and ignores all the ways David tempts her, all the men he brings her, and all the women. Laddie, as if she’s Wendy Darling to his Peter Pan, and all she wants is a lost boy to mother.
(She laughs at him then, and the peals of laughter that fill the cave sound, in the echoes, more like screams.)
Michael is beautiful, exactly her type, curly dark hair, broad shoulders, easy grin. His eyes crinkle up when he smiles at her, he stammers a little as he flirts, and she wants to take him for ice cream and kiss him on the ferris wheel and squeeze his hand tight while the Big Dipper steals their breath.
David catches her watching him, and the slow slide of his smirk makes her tremble. She’s frightened, she thinks. Excited, maybe, or pleased.
Some nights, she drags David to her. Some nights, she pushes him away. Some nights, she shoves him and throws things and fills the cave with her rage.
He laughs at her then, delighted, and later she kisses blood from his mouth.
David brings Michael to the edge, of the cliff, of his life, of their home, and when he asks “how far you willing to go, Michael,” Star doesn’t need to hear his answer to know the truth. He looks at David like she did, like sometimes she still does. Like he looks at her, awe and desire and, beneath it all, just enough fear to hold their attention.
v.
Star is sixteen when she fucks Michael.
Sixteen and twenty, and oh, how they fuck. In her bed, on the fountain in the cave, against a rough stone wall, at the boardwalk, in the shadows, sand scratching, in the library, between the shelves, her hand between his teeth to silence his shout.
It is good, all of it, everywhere, every time, the thick push of his dick inside her, the way his body pulses, the way he groans against her shoulder, buries his face in her hair as he comes. The way he says her name, before, during, and after, like a promise: Star. Star.
Star.
And sometimes, somehow, it is even better when David joins them.
He can twist them the way they can’t each other, their minds, change what they see, change what everyone else sees around them. They fuck on the carousel, in one of the chariots, Michael beneath her, legs stretched forward, back curved against the seat. She rides him, skirt falling around them, hair in both their faces. David’s at her back, fingers in Michael’s ass, teeth in Star’s shoulder, and she can’t stop coming, can’t stop the rush of pleasure through her, pinned in place between them.
They fuck in the cave, Michael’s mouth on her pussy, David thrusting into his ass, all of them shouting, no need to stay silent. She comes first, clings to Michael’s hair as David fucks into him harder and harder, slithers down to wrap her hand around Michael’s dick, hold tight at the base, until David is done and finally, finally, they let him come.
They fuck in the air, fuck and fall, fuck and fall. She screams, hair wild, hands spread, and trusts that she’ll be caught -- that even caught in the middle, half human, half vampire, she’ll catch herself. And she does, every single time she falls.
They fuck after David’s killed, and she kisses blood off him. They fuck after Michael’s killed, and she kisses blood off them both. They fuck, and they fuck, and they fuck.
And somewhere in that bloody pleasure, they fall.
vi.
Star is sixteen when she kills, and twenty-two, and a devil herself, and in love.