Mary Louise Emerson

The first rays of morning light spilled through the apartment windows, highlighting the walls in golden streaks. The city outside was waking, but inside Riley’s apartment, everything was still. Frozen in the delicate breath between night and day.

Alaura sat curled on the corner of the couch, arms wrapped tightly around herself, legs drawn close to her chest. Exhaustion lay heavy under her eyes. Every time she closed them, she saw that creature—the black eyes, the veins webbing under his skin, the way he reached for her like he had been waiting a long time for that moment.

But morning came. And she was still here, alive.

With a deep breath that felt more like a brace against the world than easing it, she pushed herself upright. Forcing her body into motion, she crossed Riley’s apartment, pausing at the door. Her pulse throbbed in her throat as she pressed her eye to the peephole.

The hallway stretched quiet and still. Her apartment across the way looked untouched. No signs of a break-in. Nothing to suggest anyone has been inside.

She bent, scooping up the heels she’d left piled near the door, their glossy straps cold against her fingers. Then, carefully, she lifted the box, the weight dragging in her arms. It wasn’t the cardboard or the contents inside. But what it represented.

Quickly, she moved from one threshold to another, slipping into her apartment, the lock sliding into place behind her. The tension in her shoulders eased, not completely, but the familiar space of her apartment pressed in around her, offering a sense of stability.

Placing the box on the island, her gaze snagged on it for a fraction of a second before tearing her eyes away and stepping further into the kitchen.

Her body was on autopilot, following the routine she relied on more times than she could count. The rhythmic clinking of a spoon against ceramic, the gurgle of hot liquid filling the cup. Fresh coffee bloomed in the air. It was a small comfort, something normal, something that made her feel like maybe—this was just another morning.

After a few steadying sips, Alaura lowered the cup, its heat bleeding into her palms but doing nothing to soothe the chill beneath her skin. She turned back toward the island.

The box was waiting where she left it, silent and unassuming. Her eyes caught on it like a hook, dragging her closer whether she wanted to or not. She stared hard, hoping sheer willpower would allow her to see through its walls, sparing her the act of opening it. But there was no avoiding it.

She set the mug down, the ceramic making a thud against the countertop that spread through the still space, immersing her fingers in its warmth before finally pulling away. With a steady breath, she reached for the lid and peeled it off.

A rich wave of bibliosmia rose to meet her nostrils—aged paper and sun-warmed hide, dust and ink stepped in time. It filled her lungs, heavy and comforting all at once, like stepping into a forgotten library.

Inside, lay a collection of old, leather-bound journals. Their covers worn to a smooth sheen, spines cracked and softened as if they had been opened hundreds of times. The fragile state spoke of use, not abandonment.

Hovering over the top journal, her gaze traced the uneven script scrawled across the front in dark ink. She squinted, trying to make out the faint, barely legible writing. Then her eyes grew wide.

Her father’s handwriting.

A faint tremor ran through her fingers as she reached out, wrapping them around the edge of a journal, pausing as if her touch alone might undo it. Then, with painstaking care, she lifted it free, grasp featherlight, afraid that the wrong amount of pressure might cause the pages to dissolve in her hand.

It had been years since she seen his writing. After he died, her mother never talked about him. Never reminisced. Never brought out old pictures or told stories the way parents were supposed to. It was as if she erased every piece of his existence, moved them to that house in the woods, and shut herself off.

Yet here, in this box her mother hid from her, was his voice.

Alaura swallowed as she flipped open the journal, eyes scanning the first page. The ink had faded slightly, but the date was clear, before her parents adopted her.

Her chest tightened, the sensation spreading like a slow constriction. What had her father written that her mother wanted to keep from her? And more importantly—why had she left it for her now?

Closing the journal gently, she set it aside and reached back into the box, searching for something more, something that might give her an immediate answer.

The pads of her fingertips brushed against metal. She curled her fingers around it instinctively, like it was calling to her. From the depths of the box, she lifted a dagger. Not just another—but an identical one.

Alaura’s pulse quickened as she lifted the first dagger resting next the box on the counter. Her gaze flicked between them. The same jagged obsidian blade, dark as a void, sharp-edged and ancient-looking. Light didn’t even reflect off the surface—it vanished, devoured by it. The black steel hilt was warm against her palm, despite it being cool in her apartment.

Her thumb traced the surface of the handle, following the curves of an emblem etched into the pommel. The dagger she used last night bore an open crescent cradling a six-pointed star. Lines radiating outward from it like veins, spreading across the metal before fading into broken arcs, as though the mark was incomplete.

The second dagger carried an unbroken circle enclosing a single droplet. Tiny markings orbited the design like distant celestial bodies, hinting at motion.

Together, the two halves formed a blood-born sigil, the mark of an eternal lineage. Life and immortality locked in a perfect loop, one feeding the other, never-ending.

Why did her mother have these daggers?

Then, a thought slithered into her mind, unbidden—Her mother’s stories.

Toward the end, when the pain was too much and the medicine blurred the line between reality and dreams, her mother had begun rambling about things that didn’t make sense.

Stories of vampires.

Not the kind from movies, with castles and capes, but real ones. Some that walked among humans, blending in, feeding carefully, strategically —their existence unnoticed by the world. And some as if they were not human at all.

Alaura had brushed it off as delirium.

The cancer had taken so much from her mom—body, strength, mind. She listened, holding her mother’s hand, nodding along as she whispered about creatures hidden in plain sight, about a war no one knew of, about a choice that would one day have to be made.

She told herself they were just the fevered thoughts of a woman too close to the end. But last night, she killed a man who wasn’t a man at all.

And now, she was holding two daggers made of something that pulsed beneath her fingers like a living thing.

The realization hit like ice water.

What if they weren’t just stories?

What if her mother hadn’t been hallucinating?

What if she had been trying to tell Alaura the truth?

A hushed whimper escaped her throat as her gaze drifted back to the box. Somewhere in these journals, the answers were waiting.

Alaura spent the next several days consumed, the world outside her apartment ceased to exist. Days and nights bled into one another as she flipped through page after page, chasing ghosts.

There was no order. Dates jumped around, skipping across time like it wasn’t linear—some entries from before she was born, others from years she barely remembered. Then back again as if her father never expected anyone else to read them.

Symbols appeared in the margins—wedged shapes, vertical structure, intersecting lines she couldn’t decipher. A list of names that meant nothing. Notes written short handedly, the ink dark and unevenly scrawled, like he had been in a hurry.

There were gaps. Too many. Which meant there had to be more journals.

Every lead unraveled into a dead end—mentions of people she didn’t recognize, locations that seemed like breadcrumbs to something bigger but stopped at a brick wall. References to movements, to tracks, to something her father was monitoring. No why. No what.

Until she found a journal dated the year her father died.  The ink on the last entry was smudged in places, like it had been written while in motion.

October 12
“Possible nest located. Warehouse on 9th and Lowry. Signs of movement—recent feeding. I’ll check it out before heading home. If this is it… it could be the break we need.”

The last thing he ever wrote.

Alaura’s stomach twisted. A cold numbness crept into her fingers as she read the words over again. Her vision began to blur, letters seemed to shift on the page. The truth sliced through her like broken glass, expanding until it hurt to breathe.

He wasn’t driving home, he was hunting. Everything she believed about that night—an accident—was a lie.

She stared at the journal lying open in front of her, dragging her hands through her hair, elbows braced against the counter as the thought sank deeper.

Suddenly, her entire childhood made sense. Her mother uprooting them, moving to a house hidden deep in the woods. The way she severed ties with their old life, shutting down, shutting everything out.

Her mother wasn’t grieving, she was hiding. Afraid that whatever had killed her father would come for them next. And after a few nights ago, maybe she was right.

But Alaura wasn’t her mother. She couldn’t just sit here, waiting for whatever took her father to come for her next.

She shifted her gaze to the daggers lying on the counter, the blades drinking in every ray of the afternoon light. She didn’t understand what they were, only that they were hers now.

Her pulse quickened, resolve solidifying into something cold and steady. Hands no longer trembling as she reached for the daggers, securing them beneath her leather jacket. Then the journal, tucked carefully in her bag.

There was a still a few hours of daylight left, if she was going to do this, she needed to go now. Without another glance at the safety of her apartment, Alaura crossed the room and stepped out into the light—leaving behind the girl who waited for answers and became the woman who would find them.