Daughter of Darkness (40 page)

“Who is this Mrs. Fennel, anyway?”

“She’s my father’s sister.”

“Yeah, you mentioned you were living with your father’s sister, but how come you never called her your aunt?”

“I didn’t know she was my aunt until recently.”

“Huh?”

“Our lives are twisted in secrets, tied up like a ball of string, Buddy.”

“I can imagine.”

“No, you can’t,” I insisted. “That’s why I wish you hadn’t come along.”

“Look,” he said, still holding my hands. “You didn’t do what you were supposed to do last night. You cared about me. You took a great risk. I have to believe it was not just for me but for yourself as well. It was for us. You’re different from whatever lives in that house. I couldn’t love you if you weren’t.”

I said nothing. His words were comforting and beautiful to me, but they didn’t change how I felt. My body was still tight. My heart was still thumping with anticipation, and I was still drawn to watch everything that moved around me. He continued to ask me questions, to keep me talking, expecting it would relax me or maybe to relax himself. I gave him as many answers as I could, hoping that he would finally realize that he was possibly in even greater danger than he had been last night if he continued to accompany me. If he had simply gone home, he would surely have been safe. Neither Ava nor Mrs. Fennel, and especially not Daddy, would have pursued him and given credence to the stories he might have told. They would have simply left, and it would have been forgotten. But not now. Now he was here, still part of who and what I was.

Our food came. The danger and the flight made him ravenous, whereas I barely picked at my hamburger and didn’t touch the bun.

“How can you not be hungry? Don’t you like hamburgers?”

“I’ve had this so rarely,” I said. “Meat was always the only thing we enjoyed outside of what Mrs. Fennel fed us.”

“What did she feed you?”

“I couldn’t tell you what it was, exactly. She used herbs in combinations only she knew. You would probably spit out the first bite.”

He ate and nodded and looked at me oddly.

“What?” I asked.

“You’ll think I’ve just gone crazy after all that’s happened, but you look older to me. I don’t mean aged or anything. You just look older.”

“I feel older,” I said. “It’s like whatever was childish in me died.”

“Well, I can understand that. I think the same thing happened to me last night.”

He finished eating. We paid our bill and got back into the car. Buddy had asked the rental attendant for a map of the state when the car was delivered, and we both studied it for a few moments to make sure to choose the best route.

“Not that I know much about Oregon,” Buddy said, “but from the looks of it on the map, this town isn’t much.” He sat back. “Come to think of it, I remember when we first met, your sister asked me if I was from a small town.”

“She was trying to find out if you were possibly a renegade,” I said.

“Renegade? What’s that?”

“People like my father who don’t follow our rules. They endanger us all. They’re actually our worst enemy, because they invade our territory and try to take control.”

“No kidding?” His expression changed. “She decided I wasn’t one of those renegades, right?”

“Yes,” I said. I nearly laughed. “I don’t know why that should give you any sense of relief now, Buddy. You’ve kept yourself a target by coming along with me.”

He shrugged. “No sense talking about it now.”

He drove on. Because we had started so late in the day and because of the time it took us to reach Hearts-port, it was twilight by the time we found Dunning Road. The road began as a solid macadam street, but after a good mile and a half, it became gravel.

“You sure about this address?” Buddy asked. “I haven’t seen any houses since we turned, and this isn’t looking like anything that’s been developed, especially when you think how long ago you were there.”

“It’s the address I have,” I said.

We continued almost another mile until we saw a large, two-story house with a cupola at the crest of a small rise. It had stone cladding, a small stairway to the front door, and a double slanted roof. From this angle, the dormer windows looked like eyebrows. The grounds around the house were not very neat. There were patches of grass here and there and wild bushes.

“That’s a pretty old house,” Buddy said. “I know a little bit about architecture because of a class I took. It’s what’s known as Second Empire.”

The downstairs windows were dimly lit, but the upstairs windows were dark.

“If I didn’t see that sign there,” Buddy said, nodding at the sign that read, “Lost Angels, An Infant Sanctuary,” “I’d think we were at the wrong address for sure, or it was a place nearly deserted. Maybe it is. Maybe someone bought it, and it’s no longer an orphanage.”

“Then why the sign?”

“I don’t know. Whoever bought it might think that’s cool. I mean, look at it. The gardener must be legally blind.”

There were no signs of life around the house, no cars, no one outside.

“I feel this is it, Buddy.”

“So, I guess we’ll go in to see what’s what,” he said.

“No.”

“No?”

“I don’t want you going in with me. Wait in the car.”

“Are you sure? I mean…”

“I’m sure,” I said.

I couldn’t tell him why, exactly, but the feeling I had had back at the motel was much stronger here, and those famous instincts Ava often accused me of not having were alive and behaving like sirens and alarms.

“Well, I don’t think I should let you go…”

“Please, Buddy. I agreed to let you come along with me this far. Please.”

“Okay, if that’s the way you want it.”

“I do,” I said. “If I need you, I promise I’ll come out to get you.”

He nodded.

“Lock the doors,” I said when I opened mine and stepped out.

I heard the click and looked back at him. He was sitting forward, his face caught in the dim glow of the slowly brightening half-moon. His face looked made of wax and in danger of melting away completely.

I walked up the gravel drive to the front steps. Just as I reached the top, the door opened, and Mrs. Fennel stepped out of the shadows and into the dimly lit front doorway. I gasped and drew back. She smiled.

“We expected you sooner,” she said.

Ava came up to stand a foot or so behind her.

I took another step back, glanced at the car, and considered running back to it.

“There’s no need for you to run away, Lorelei. No one is going to hurt you,” Mrs. Fennel said softly.

“Even though you’ve done a lot that could hurt us,” Ava added.

“Now, stop,” Mrs. Fennel said. “You know what your father told you.”

Ava smirked. “We won’t hurt you, but that doesn’t mean we’ll leave him alone,” she said, nodding toward the rental car.

“There’s no need to threaten her,” Mrs. Fennel said. “I know my girl. Come on in, Lorelei. You want to know so much, and you’ve come so far.”

She stepped back. Ava disappeared inside. I looked back toward Buddy. He had never seen Mrs. Fennel, so he wouldn’t know that they had beaten us here. I hoped he hadn’t seen Ava standing next to her. I was afraid for him, but what drew me back up those stairs was my own need to know about myself as much as anything else. Mrs. Fennel kept her smile.

When I reached the doorway, I heard the sound of women laughing.

“Those are just other daughters and sisters,” Mrs. Fennel said. “They all know you’re coming. Everyone’s waiting for you.”

She put her arm around my shoulders and closed the door behind me.

“You know, this is a wonderful second chance for you, Lorelei. I can tell you, few of us would have enjoyed such an opportunity. Your father really loves you.”

The house was old, but nothing looked worn or as untidy as the grounds did. There was no dust, no cobwebs. Everything looked as it might have looked the day the house was built and furnished. The floors glittered like immaculate hospital floors, and the wood of the walls and ceilings looked polished. I followed her through the short entryway and hallway and then heard the sound of babies crying.

“Feeding time,” she said. “Don’t look so surprised. This really is an orphanage of sorts,” she added. “Come. Look.”

We stopped at a doorway on the left. Inside was a nursery with ten infants in bassinets. Two women wearing nurses’ uniforms were tending to them.

“Go on, look at them, Lorelei. Each one is perfect and will be quite beautiful.”

The nurses turned and smiled at me.

The one on the left reached into a bassinet and took out an infant who wasn’t crying. She looked asleep. The nurse held her so I could see her face. She did look perfect.

“Wouldn’t you love to have a daughter like that?” Mrs. Fennel asked.

I didn’t answer.

The laughter in the other room grew louder.

“Oh, come on,” Mrs. Fennel said. “They’re so anxious to see you.”

I followed her across the hallway and into a large living room. Five young women sat on settees. I didn’t recognize them from the pictures I had seen in Daddy’s closet, but when the fifth turned to me, I gasped.

It was Brianna.

“Hi, Lorelei. You have grown beautifully. She’s perfect, isn’t she, Mrs. Fennel?”

“Perfect.”

Ava, who was now sitting in a large cushioned chair on the right, continued to glare angrily at me. The four other women were as beautiful as Brianna, two with rich, radiant black hair and two with auburn. All of them, including Brianna, were dressed in black gowns very similar to the one Daddy had brought for me from Paris. Ava laughed at the expression of surprise that I was sure I wore.

“Dresses look familiar?” she asked. Her expression soured again. “I didn’t wear mine tonight. Thanks to you.”

“Ava,” Mrs. Fennel said with a tone of warning. She smiled again and nodded at one of the women with black hair. “This is Sophie, Ava’s mother. Don’t they look more like sisters?”

“I thought… she died in childbirth,” I said.

“You weren’t ready for this sort of truth when we told you that story, Lorelei,” Mrs. Fennel said.

How much had been fabricated? I wondered.

“Here you are,” I heard, and turned to see the woman in the picture with my name on it, the woman I had thought was my mother, enter the room. She didn’t look any older than she had looked in the picture and certainly no older than any of the other women. She carried a dress in her arms that looked just like the dresses the others were wearing. “Look at how she’s grown, Mrs. Fennel.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Fennel said.

“It’s not fair,” Ava said.

I looked at her, confused. What wasn’t fair?

“Stop it, Ava. Your father has decided,” Mrs. Fennel said.

Ava pouted.

“You know who this is, don’t you?” Mrs. Fennel asked me. “You took her picture from your father’s closet.” She shook her head. “Don’t look so surprised. Of course, I knew you had, and your father knew you had, too. You could keep no secrets from either of us.”

“Is she my mother?”

“Yes.”

“Then Daddy is…”

“Is really your daddy,” Mrs. Fennel said, nodding. “He’s all their daddies,” she added, with a sweeping gesture toward Brianna, Sophie, and the other two.

I shook my head. It was all overwhelming.

“Maybe you’re telling her too much too quickly,” my mother suggested.

“No,” Mrs. Fennel replied. “It’s what Sergio wants. He believes that if she’s told the truth now, she’ll stop resisting.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. “You said she was my mother.”

“I am your mother, Lorelei, and your daddy is my daddy, too.”

“But that’s… incest,” I said, and they all laughed, Ava the loudest.

“Those kinds of rules, biological or otherwise, don’t apply to us,” Mrs. Fennel said. “Now you know. You have your father’s blood, just as they all do. It’s how we go on. This is your destiny, to have your father’s progeny.”

I shook my head.

“Don’t try to understand everything at once,” my mother said. “For now, you’re to put on this dress. Mrs. Fennel brought it along.”

“Why?”

I saw how all the others were smiling. Only Ava continued to sulk.

“It’s what we think of as a bridal dress. Daddy is going to be here soon. You’re moving to the head of the line.”

“It’s not fair,” Ava insisted, rising to her feet. “I’ve done everything right, and she hasn’t, and she’s moving ahead of me.”

“A mistake has been made, and your father believes this is the way to correct it. You should be thinking of him, not of yourself,” Mrs. Fennel said sharply.

Ava glared at me and then sat again.

“What are you saying, Mrs. Fennel, that they are all Daddy’s daughters and Daddy’s wives?”

“Well, we don’t have formal weddings here,” she said, and they all laughed again.

I looked at Ava. Why did she want this more than I did?

“You probably noticed that your mother doesn’t look a day older than she did in that picture,” Mrs. Fennel said, as if she could hear my thoughts. “And Brianna… not much of a change in her, either. As your father promised you many times,” Mrs. Fennel said, “you will have more and do more than any other young woman.”

“But you’re older,” I said.

Mrs. Fennel laughed. “I’m older,” she said to the others, and they laughed, too. “Yes, I’m older, Lorelei. I’ve passed my prime, but we’re talking in terms of centuries, not decades, and I have a long time to go yet, a very long time. Besides, do you know anyone who looks my age who has my energy and strength?”

I looked at my sisters. “Do they all need what Daddy needs every month?”

“No. Only the males feed, Lorelei, but the females provide for them and give birth to our new ones. That’s their destiny, and that’s your destiny now.”

“Put on your dress,” my mother said, thrusting it at me. “It’s getting late.”

I didn’t move.

“You can go out and tell your young man that everything is fine and he can leave. We’ll let you do that,” Mrs. Fennel said when she saw my hesitation.

“He’d better not be out there when Daddy comes,” Ava warned.

Everyone stared at me, waiting. Some of the babies began to cry louder.