The Beginning of the End || Bloodlines Vol. 1 ✔️ Complete

IV • Death Sparkles

Two days passed before Willa took her last breath. Two, torturous days of Daphne reading and re-reading and chewing her bottom lip to what felt like raw meat. She wanted to drink, but the thought of her young mother wasted swerving all the way up the highway had her stomach doing flip-flops, and she couldn't handle it.

She stared at her reflection in the front hall mirror, staring at her traitorous icy blue eyes. The eyes of a man she'd never met, never knew, a man her mother had cheated on her father with. No, her dad, but not her father. She didn't carry Dale's DNA inside of her. She carried some asshole's DNA from some biker bar in the city.

"Some one-night stand, some random fucking guy!" she cried, punching the wall next to the mirror. Her fist embedded itself into the wood and she jerked it out, clenching her jaw. She'd always been strong. Fast. It had come up once or twice with her classmates, but never got too out of hand, as far as she'd known.

She did, however, remember her mother pushing her to do less athletic things with her time. Coaxing her as much as she could to try more mental tasks, like nurturing her love for flowers, or enrolling her in chess club. Daphne hated to admit that she'd really enjoyed chess, despite her friends playfully calling her a nerd for having to go every week.

In all of the fun confusion of puberty and being a teenage girl, she had the added hardship of wondering why she had these parts of her that set her apart so much. Why she was so different. Over time, she'd just learned to live with it, learned to hold back so people wouldn't ask any questions. She'd been terrified that if her parents found out, they'd take her to a doctor and find out that there was something really wrong with her. Her greatest fear had been being locked up in a hospital somewhere, being poked and prodded by a billion doctors. She shuddered at the thought of it.

How she wished she'd just talked to her mother about everything. So much uncertainty—so much fear—could have been avoided with one simple conversation.

But learning that Dale wasn't her father? Daphne flinched, feeling like she'd just had a bucket of ice dumped on her head. That would have been ten times worse as a teen. She wouldn't have been able to keep it from him, she didn't think. And the look on his face when he found out...

"Oh, pumpkin," he would have said, "I'll always be yer dad."

Tears sprang to her eyes, and her heart clenched as if someone were trying to squeeze it into dust. He was gone, and he'd never known the truth. Was that better? Better that he'd died thinking that he was leaving behind a loving wife and strong daughter? His wife who'd cheated on him in their most vulnerable years and then tricked him into raising her adulterous baby?

Daphne swallowed hard and scrubbed her hands down her face. She realized at some point she'd stomped back into her mother's room, taking a seat at her bedside once again. Willa wasn't going to last much longer.

-stomach acid boiling, eating all the flesh around it-

"Mom," she said hoarsely, and then cleared her throat, swallowing hard. "Mom."

Willa didn't respond. Her breaths were shallow and ragged.

In concentrating on her mom's chest rising and falling, Daphne's eyes fell on a super-thin chain peeking out from beneath the collar of her pyjama shirt. She reached out and hooked it with a trembling finger, pulling ever-so-slowly to reveal a silver pendant that had hung low enough between Willa's breasts to be hidden.

Daphne had seen the chain before occasionally around her mother's neck. She'd never known there to be a pendant, but it had always hung into her shirts behind the fabric, and she'd never thought to ask what was on it. It was just a necklace her mom wore sometimes.