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  Other Books from Ylva Publishing

  The Art of Us

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  The Sea

  by KL Hughes

  Nicole Stark—the goddamned bane of my existence.

  I met her on the first day of fall semester. She sat in the front row, hair bouncing about her face in springy auburn coils. Thick glasses perched on her nose. Her pink bottom lip was tucked between her teeth as she stared down at a weathered book in her hands. The light caught her pale brown skin like a spotlight, making the freckles splashed across her nose pop into focus. She wore faded jeans that hugged her thick hips and a gray university sweatshirt. The toe of one bright white sneaker bounced in mid-air as she sat with one leg crossed over the other. Bop, bop, bop. The steady rhythm was hypnotizing, like a thumping pulse just beneath the skin.

  When she looked up, our eyes met. Hers were green; not a dark, rich green like emeralds but a light green, so light they could change colors in the right setting. They could be the soft gray of spring rain clouds or the translucent blue of the moon’s reflection on water, something almost white. But in that moment, they were green like the shallow parts of the sea and seemed almost to be moving, undulating like waves. I blinked and looked again and found them still. A trick of the imagination, surely, but one that sat uneasily in the pit of my stomach.

  Unable to help myself, I listened in on her, heightening my hearing to pick up the rhythm drumming in her chest. I could hear her body functioning: liquids sloshing about, stomach groaning, teeth grinding the slightest bit. All humans had their quirks, as I’d learned over the years. An unconscious tightening of their fists. Tapping of the toes. Relentless nail-chewing, the sound of which had always made my stomach turn. It was Nicole’s heartbeat that captured and held my attention, however. It was abnormal, slower—evidence of a murmur, perhaps. I’d heard murmurs before, hearts that skipped beats or doubled up every other. Hers was slower, yes, but not entirely uncommon. She was just another human, another body in its prime but so rapidly fading. Humans and their pathetically short lives, how I envied them.

  She smiled at me, lip still stuck between her teeth, and for a second, I forgot to breathe. It was a practice I’d taught myself never to abandon despite no longer requiring air to thrive, yet there I was, frozen and motionless. My chest was dead cavity, and all I could do was stare. It was as if she knew, as if she could sense my listening in, as if, in that instant, I could harbor no secret. I was exposed, and the longer she stared at me, the more intense the sensation became. Her rippling sea-green eyes penetrated, and their tide rolled right through me. I pushed away the feeling, because the tide had never carried me with care. There was always a crashing, a white-hot collision that ignited the body, filled it up and up, then ebbed and left it empty. The tide never offered anything more than something temporary, something coming and going, rolling in and rolling out again. I couldn’t afford to get carried away, couldn’t afford to crash. I couldn’t afford myself any allowance, especially not the allowance of letting my imagination carry me off. Nicole Stark was human, a fleeting bundle of thought and emotion, and nothing, nothing to concern myself with.

  I set my briefcase on the large desk in front of me. “Good evening, class,” I said. “My name is Dr. Louise Richards. You may call me Dr. Richards or Dr. Lou. I will be your instructor this semester for LI 412: Advanced Literary Analysis. Those of you who have had the pleasure of a previous class with me, please try to contain your excitement.” A few courtesy laughs broke the stillness. “Thank you. I know how hard that was for all of you, especially after a long, grueling day of reading syllabi.”

  The laughs, that time, were genuine. The sound was richer, less structured. It crackled around the natural awkwardness and tension of a first day and managed to dispel it, and just like that, we sailed smoothly into our first discussion. It was a welcome call to attention, a distraction from distraction, and as I barreled through each point of the syllabus, the tide rolled farther and farther out. The roaring inside calmed. The pulse faded. The desire ebbed, and her gaze became little more than a hot spot on my skin that I could mostly ignore.

  ~ ~ ~

  Names and faces painted themselves with personalities as the weeks rolled by, a new brush stroke each class, a new color. They grew distinct voices and viewpoints, a blend of perspectives and beliefs all converging toward a singular topic and stripping it apart, cracking it open, pouring the light in. Each new discovery was a spark, a flicker of light and heat to make me feel alive again after centuries of emptiness, fecklessness, death. It was only a flash of life each evening, something that would never sustain, but it was enough. It was just enough.

  She was the quiet type—Nicole. Her hand never elevated above her shoulder, and when she spoke, her voice was that of summer thunder, something soft, distant, non-threatening. It screamed danger all the same, for she wasn’t merely a spark to me. She was smoke and flame. She was something carved from the static background of the room, something three-dimensional and fluid, vibrant with a subtle hum of energy that beckoned to me, and always, I found her looking back at me. It was a curious look, an interested look. The manner of interest was a mystery I yearned to unravel and one which should, without doubt, remain firmly unknown.

  I knew better than to linger on her. I’d been down that road before, but my gaze kept finding its way back. Step out of the water, I told myself. Retreat from the shore. The beckoning green sea was a student, a mortal. She was forbidden.

  She was forbidden, yet I couldn’t stay away. Every sense I had pressed through the haze of humanity and found her. I’d isolated her and memorized her heartbeat without aiming to. The slow rhythm simply grew in me until I knew it in an intimate way, like an old melody that had once rocked me to sleep or eased some hurt in my former life. I didn’t understand it. I’d grown so jaded over the years that humans had long ago lost their appeal, their power over me. Their pulses were comforting, like echoes of memories, pieces of a life I could only sometimes recall, but I no longer ached for them. I no longer lusted after them. I no longer thirsted for them. No human had captured me in ages. It had been centuries since the last, I was certain.

  But this woman, Nicole—there was something about her. I couldn’t place it. She smelled different, more alive somehow, richer, and try as I might to deny it, I wanted her. I couldn’t. I shouldn’t, but I did.

  ~ ~ ~

  She found me as if seeking me out, as if we had somehow managed to become entangled despite scant interaction and found ourselves drawn, always, back to one another. On my late-night walks about the campus, I would see her. She appeared in glimpses. A brief smile outside a dormitory door before disappearing inside. A catching gaze as she breezed by, not a single other soul around. I never knew where she was going or how it was she always found a way to cross my path, only that she was there. She was everywhere, though a part of me feared she wasn’t, that it was little more than my own growing desire manifested into visions, apparitions, haunting and agonizing and beautiful.

  Even when she spoke to me, I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t be certain. There was something too dreamy about her, as if she had been torn from a fantasy I’d once had, so long ago I could no longer remember, and born into living, breathing perfection. Something so tempting I couldn’t resist, not for long. Not long enough. Not forever.

  Still, I tried. Despite the way she called to me, said my name like a song as she stood along
the bank of the campus-side lake, I tried. That night, she wore a sheer dress, sleeveless and aquamarine. It flowed down to her ankles over bare feet. She waved as I passed by, dug her toes into the wet, grassy bank, and beckoned me over.

  “Dr. Richards!” Her hand moved as a wave would, rippling through the air as if part of its very current, ebbing out and drawing me toward her. I went. I found I could do nothing but, and in seconds, I stood beside her on the bank. She looked at me, her eyes a placid sea in the moonlight. “Out for another late-night walk, I see.”

  I drew my arms around myself as if to stave off a temperature I couldn’t feel. “Aren’t you cold?”

  She laughed and lowered herself to the ground, near the water’s edge. “It’s August,” she said, and I cursed myself. “The nights are still warm.” The lake’s surface rippled around her foot as she dipped her toes in. “So is the water.” She looked up at me, eyes so bright in the moonlight they seemed unreal. Haunting. “Would you like to join me?”

  Yes, I thought. An impulse. An instinct. My body answered her so readily, as if it was she and not I who commanded it. I bit into my bottom lip, feeling the familiar sharp points growing in as if to serve a painful reminder to back away, flee, while I was still able. Still able to resist.

  “No,” I said, clearing my dry throat. “No, thank you. I shouldn’t.”

  “Why shouldn’t you?” Her smile teased and taunted me. “Why shouldn’t you do what you want?”

  “I…” My voice faltered, a harsh separation from her enticing melody. “I don’t want to. I’m sorry.” I backed away, each step like trudging through muddy water, through drying cement. “Have a nice night, Miss Stark.”

  With that, I turned and fled as I should have done at first sight of her. I heard nothing in response, no plea to return, no parting words. At a safe distance, I looked back only to find she was gone. The moonlit water rippled in slow, silent circles, and her dress lay empty on the bank.

  ~ ~ ~

  Active avoidance became my only hope, my only relief. I gave up my walks, though for years they had been my only comfort, my sole source of relaxation. The night had been my home for longer than I could remember, and I gave it up. I kept, instead, to my home, to my books, to solitude, and I hoped Nicole Stark would disappear. Time would crawl on as it had done all my long life, and before I knew it, she would be gone, moved on to another class, another school, another poor soul she could torment with her beauty. It was the only plan I had, and for a while, it worked.

  I had done so well in my resistance that my desire became little more than background noise each class, something I could press through and ignore. I pushed away her rhythm, her scent, her entire presence. She was a face in a crowd I could skip over, look past, ignore. That is, until the sixth week of the semester.

  As my students filed out of the auditorium, one heartbeat stubbornly remained. One familiar scent lingered. It wafted in the air, drifted up and over my shoulder, demanded I pay attention again. Nicole was standing just behind me. Her pulse played as a symphony at my back.

  “Dr. Richards?”

  My name on her tongue mesmerized me. Her summer-thunder lilt made the softest rumble, catching the syllables in the most delicate manner. White-hot lightning followed, striking low in my gut and catching fire. My gums began to throb. I gripped the edge of my desk with one hand and kept my back to her. “Yes?”

  “I was wondering if you could grant me an extension on the Whitman essay.”

  She stepped closer. I heard the step like a mallet to a gong. The desk began to give way under my hand. I quickly let go, wood dust coating my palm. “How long do you need?”

  “Just a few days,” she said. “A week, at most, if that would be okay.”

  “A week is fine,” I said through clenched teeth. “Have the paper in my mailbox by the fifth.” I stuffed the last of my papers into my briefcase and slung it over my shoulder. “Have a nice night, Miss Stark.”

  I needed to escape her scent. I couldn’t take the drumming of her heart in my ears or the aching in my gums. I had to get out.

  “Wait,” she called as I shot toward the door. I froze, hand on the knob. “Is that it? You’re not going to ask me why I need the extension?”

  I made the mistake of looking back at her. She wasn’t where she should have been, wasn’t at the desk as she had been the moment before. She was close, too close, only a step or two away. My head spun as I locked onto her vibrant eyes. They weren’t soft or subtle as they had so often been. They were stormy and bright, blue and green colliding like volatile weather fronts to create a luminous teal.

  She smiled at me as I gaped, and the pain in my gums reached its peak. I spun around, putting my back to her once more, and cupped a hand over my mouth. The sharp points of my extended canines dug into my lower lip as I clamped my mouth closed and tried not to shudder.

  “I’m sure you have a valid reason,” I choked out, then opened the door and fled.

  ~ ~ ~

  I took her home with me. Each night, I took her home with me—the scent of her, the thought of her, the sound of life rushing through her veins. I couldn’t shake it, couldn’t shake her. As forcefully as I had pushed her away, all her little particulars, and the more I craved her, the greater my thirst grew. I hadn’t felt so empty, so parched in decades. It was painful. It was maddening.

  The floorboards creaked as I sat up in bed and rested my feet on the floor. The edge of the mattress dipped under me, and I stared through the dark and sighed. Sleep had been elusive for days. I needed a drink.

  I stopped in the bathroom first, where I splashed water on my face and donned the same silk robe I’d worn for close to a century. It was pristine, not a single frayed fiber. It had always been such a durable material, and the luxurious feel of it reminded me of my grandmother. She had so cherished the finer things in her life.

  My reflection caught my eye, and I stared at myself for some time. I looked nothing like how I felt. Inside, I was brittle. My exterior, however, was as striking as it had always been, frozen in time for nearly seven hundred years. My hair hung about my shoulders in dark, smooth waves, as soft as ever, and the angles of my face remained young and sharp. On the outside, I was the same twenty-seven-year-old woman I had been all those years ago, when I was taken, turned into something I never asked to be. Inside, I was ancient. I was dust. The only difference was my eyes. They stared back at me, a beautiful chestnut set of lies. I sighed and popped the tops off the case on the sink before plucking two thin contacts from my eyes and dropping them into the waiting solution.

  Now, in the mirror, I saw what I really was. Milky white blinked back at me. Their color had drained so long ago, vanished like the pulse beneath my skin and the comforting rise and fall of my once-functioning lungs. I opened my mouth and let my fangs descend, sharp white in the dark room. The skin of my fingertip gave so easily as I pressed it to one firm point. Nothing rose to the surface—not even a hint of crimson.

  I closed my eyes and retracted my fangs, unable to look any longer. I’d so long ago made peace with my existence, my nature, but in that moment, I didn’t want to see myself. I didn’t want to see. I put my contacts back in and wiped at the wetness under my eyes. With a hard breath, I steeled myself and looked up again. My old brown eyes looked back, and I nodded.

  “You’re still you, Louise,” I whispered to myself as I had done so many times before. “You’re still you.”

  I hugged my robe tight around me as I made my way toward the kitchen, running my hand along the wall as I went. It was warm to the touch, the sun’s heat radiating through from the outside. I missed it sometimes. The memories I had of being in the sun were faint, fading with each passing year, just like the last touch of my mother’s hands and the final breath my former lover had taken. I still had her heartbeat memorized, though it was faint, so terribly faint. The pieces I held onto from another life were slipping from my grasp, and as they went, they took my fire with them. They took my thirst
. I’d been running on embers for so long, until now. Until her.

  Her teal eyes flashed through my mind again, so bright. An electric current zapped through me. I was feeling again. Discomfort sat in my belly like a stone. Hunger itched in my veins and atop my chilled skin. Thrill bubbled just under the surface. I loathed the sensations as much as I celebrated them. To be teased this way when I was so close to fading, so close to sweet disintegration, was cruel.

  In the kitchen, I poured a glass of wine. The deep, bitter red went down in two gulps and fizzled along the way. I felt every inch of the journey, closed my eyes, and reveled in it. The second glass, I filled with a richer red. The thick liquid sloshed into the glass from its chilled container and bubbled as the microwave spun it around and around, heating it back up. At the beep of completion, I carried the glass into the living room, the comforting coppery scent enveloping me along the way.

  The fire I had lit before bed still burned and cast shadows about the walls. I lay on the floor as I watched them dance, and I tried to stamp out the glow igniting my insides. I struggled to silence the hum stirring within and banish the thoughts of Nicole Stark that refused to let me rest. I tried to drown my desire by quenching my thirst, but the blood in my glass was tasteless. It didn’t soothe or satisfy, and all I could think about was the thumping beneath her skin.

  I lay there long after the sun dipped below the horizon, long after the moon’s ascent. I lay there until my bones began to ache and the walls of my old home felt as if they were closing in on me. I lay there until the sound of the doorbell dispelled my daze and drew me up from the floor.

  The large clock above the mantel read ten minutes after eleven, which surprised me. Who could be knocking this late at night? I never received visitors after ten. I rarely received visitors at all.

  As I neared the foyer, a familiar aroma crept in and over me. It stopped me in my tracks, dizzied me, then suddenly I was at the door. I closed my eyes, drew in the scent again, and fought back a moan.