Weekly Drabble #341: Dawn Breaks (Patreon)

This week's prompts are 'a trick of the light' from Tyronne and 'a terrible day for sunshine' from AS900. Enjoy!

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Dawn Breaks:

“Are you ready?

Leila nodded. “I am.” The newly-turned vampiress was sitting on one of the old mansion’s balconies. Though the sky had barely lightened, dawn was coming. She could feel it in a way she’d never been able to as a human. She used to love dawn, the sun rising up and peeping through her window, its warmth soaking into the room, warming her and gently nudging her awake. Now, dawn was not only a reminder of everything she’d lost, but a harbinger of a sun whose touch no longer caressed, but would gladly sear the flesh from her bones.

As dawn rose, all good vampires should be back in their beds, crypts or coffins as they chose, but not today. The Moonlight Walkers chose to conduct their most dire affairs at the cusp of dawn. Leila had been waiting three days for this moment, filled with anxiety and dread.

“Have you heard...” she paused, then continued. “Anything else about her?”

Victor hesitated in a way that told her he had. There’d been a sour edge to him over the last two days. Disappointed, angry, frustrated, unhappy? Leila couldn’t say. Despite that uncertainty, there was a sense that something was bothering him, but she had not been able to get him to say anything about it.

He’d been like this since the morning after they’d arrived at this great manse. Her sire had been called to account that day. Leila didn’t know if the renegade’s trial was over, or if it was still continuing. She hadn’t been called to it. The others wanted to keep her far from her sire, especially given the incident on the journey here. Besides, this wasn’t a human sort of trial, was it? The renegade Moonlight Walker’s crimes were known to her clan; that was why Victor had been sent to bring her in. He still felt ashamed that he’d been unable to track down the renegade before she could turn Leila and he carried some of the guilt for what happened to Tobias, though he shouldn’t.

That was all her fault. Her hunger, her tearing thirst and the childish belief that she could overcome it when she was still so young and still wracked by a newborn’s need to feed had led her to tear apart the man she loved, the man whom she’d been set to wed, but that the other vampire had stolen her from. Even now, that thirst still whispered to her. It was like a dark lover, cruel and cold but oh-so-knowledgeable about her body and how it could make her feel...

Sometimes she still wished Victor had left her upon that church’s steeple, her burning flesh melted to the cross she leaned against, the sun ready to break the horizon and embrace her with its judgment. But if it was finality she was seeking, William had told her one night as the curmudgeonly old manservant poked at a fire, then she could very well find it here.

“Don’t worry about her,” Victor said with a shake of his head. It was the same answer he’d given her the last two days. “You said you were ready. Are you?”

Leila straightened. “Yes,” she repeated her assertion, though part of her didn’t feel that confidence. The Moonlight Walkers passed judgment on others of their kind as dawn broke. They held court in a special chamber with windows that faced east. When open, they flooded nearly the entire the room with sunlight, save for the seats directly beneath them. “Is there anything you can tell me that would help?”

Victor smiled sadly. “Yes.” At first, Leila thought he wasn’t going to add to that statement. They’d had this discussion before. Leila’s fate would be decided in that room, and the elders wanted as unbiased reactions as they could get from her as they evaluated her and decided whether those windows should be opened, or stay closed.

Then, surprising her, the tracker continued. “I can’t say anything of what they will do or say, but I can tell you that no one in that room wishes to condemn you. If it were up to me...” he trailed off, then shook his head. “but it isn’t. They must determine if you are a wild dog in waiting, or...”

“...or if I can control this...” Leila looked down at her pale hands, turning them over as if they were new to her. Her voice softened, breaking a little. “What she did to me... and what I did.” She wouldn’t blame them if they did decide she was too dangerous to be allowed to live, or whatever one called the state that vampires existed in. She’d lost control once... twice, both with dire consequences.

Leila took a breath, looking back to the sky. The darkness was starting to fade. Dawn was coming, and so too would her fate be decided. “You’ll walk with me, won’t you?” she asked. She hadn’t expected to be afraid, but she was. She knew Victor wouldn’t leave her, but she needed to hear it, needed to have him there. She didn’t know what she might do otherwise. Maybe she would walk there with head held high. Maybe she would need to be dragged there, pleading and whimpering like a child. Maybe she would have leapt from this tower and tried to flee.

But he was here, and she was grateful for it. He had been a constant for her since she’d been turned, the one new constant and it was right that he be with her now, whether this was the end or another beginning.

Victor nodded, offering her his hand. “All the way,” he told her, leading the newborn vampiress from the balcony towards the waiting court.