The Twilight Twenty-Five: Goodnight, Noises Everywhere

Prompt: Rapacious

Pen name: Feisty Y. Beden

Pairing: E/B

Rating: M

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Chapter 4: Rapacious

"Wake up, wake up, wake up!" I yelled, not so much to the statue but to myself. I took my free hand and slapped my cheek again and again. "Wake the fuck up!" I wanted out of this dream.

My other hand was going numb from the icy fingers on my wrist—I wasn't sure if it was because the stony fingers were cutting off my circulation or because of the coldness of the hand itself. Maybe both. I tried to pry the fingers off, but they formed an unbreakable circle. It was as if the statue had been cast around me. I looked at the beautiful, horrible mouth again. The lips were closed, inanimate—had they really spoken? Had I just imagined they had said my name?

The body wasn't moving—it couldn't be alive. I used my free hand to feel for a pulse, but why would a statue have a pulse? "Speak again," I said tentatively, unsure if I was hoping for silence or for speech. Speech would mean I was crazy; silence would mean I was alone, as always. Which was worse?

I found myself thinking of that movie with Jimmy Stewart and the giant rabbit that only he could see. Was it so bad being crazy? Would I rather be sane and alone? When you were the last person on earth, was sanity even relevant? I thought of the last few months, the days running into each other, my carefully regimented routine, eating everything cold out of cans, talking to the clouds … I looked at the statue that I wasn't sure had called my name. The decision was easy.

I chose insanity.

"Hey," I said, shaking the statue by the shoulder. "Wake up."

He didn't move.

"Jesus, at least let me the fuck go," I said. My hand was turning white and red and purple.

Silence and stillness.

I played a movie in my head, a montage of my last few months, of all the things I had done that I hadn't believed myself capable of: burying my father, breaking into people's houses while tiptoeing around mummified corpses, living with the silence in my head, being utterly alone. I was stronger than I believed. And I wasn't going to let some stone statue, alive or not, hold me prisoner. "Godfuckingdammit, you are going to let go of my arm right now!" I yanked my arm hard and made my hand as small as I could, imagining my flesh turning to liquid and flowing through the gaps between the stone fingers.

It hurt a fuck of a lot, but I freed myself. My skin scraped against the rough, cold fingers, an impossible stone fingernail digging into the back of my hand. It was like a tiny X-Acto knife wound, precise and merciless, a surgeon's artful touch. I hissed from the sudden pain and watched in wonder as the clean cut slowly filled with blood, a tiny hidden spring. For some reason I was reminded of Tuck Everlasting and the stack of pebbles hiding the spring of eternal life.

My blood was dark, startling red, and the air began to smell faintly metallic. In the back of my head I wondered if I were anemic, if I had been getting enough protein from all the canned meat product I'd been eating. I continued letting the blood ooze out of the cut. I was so fascinated by the life flowing through and out of my veins that I didn't notice at first that the statue had started to stir. But then there was too much movement in my peripheral vision, and I focused again on the mysterious sculpture.

I didn't try to make sense of what I saw: the coal-black eyes flying open, the mouth opening slightly. I thought I heard a groan. The eyes, the eyes were wild, vicious. The gaze flew to my hand, so desperate, so full of desire that my skin felt on fire.

"Please," I thought I heard the statue whisper, but the voice was dry and hollow, desiccated. My mouth felt dry just listening to him, my skin itchy like it would be from dry radiator heat in the winters, back when we had winters and radiators.

"What do you need?" I asked.

"Please," the statue said again.

He'd come to life again after I'd been cut. Could he feel my pain? Or was it the smell of the fresh blood? I waved my hand near his face, and when I looked in his eyes, I knew he could easily kill me.

"No," he gasped. "Take it away." He spoke with such surprising force that I jerked my hand away, and one fat, perfect drop of blood fell onto his lip. His tongue darted out to taste it, and his eyes closed again. His forehead wrinkled, and I noticed his hands were clenched into fists. He grasped the grass in handfuls as if wishing the blades of grass would tether him to the ground. His whole body shook; it seemed as if he were fighting something in himself. "I … won't … harm you, Isabella Swan," he said through gritted teeth, purging himself of each word as if he'd swallowed a bottle of ipecac.

I didn't know what possessed me, but I softly asked, "Do you need the blood?"

"Don't offer what you can't provide," he said, grinding his teeth and squeezing his eyes shut.

"I'm still bleeding," I shrugged, pinching together the loose skin on either side of the cut. A few more drops beaded up. "Here," I said, tipping my hand over his mouth and letting the drops fall in, one, two, three. He moaned, sliding his tongue inside his mouth, and suddenly I felt like Lucy Pevensie with her cordial of fire-flower juice. His eyes began to flutter open, and his fingers twitched.

"Can you … sit up?" I asked.

"I can try," he said weakly.

I stood up and held his hands, leaning back with all my weight. He felt like marble, living marble, if ever there was such a thing. His body creaked to sitting position, and I barely noticed that his firm grip had bruised both of my hands.

"Thank you," he said.

"What did I do?" My cut was already starting to clot. I wondered if the clean incision would leave a scar.

"Haven't … eaten … in so long," he gasped. "No food anywhere."

I thought of the basement walls lined floor to ceiling with cans. "There's food at my house," I offered.

"Can't eat that," he said.

"Can't or won't? Don't be proud or chivalrous. I'm offering you food. I'll share."

"Can't," he said again. His eyes flicked over again to the back of my hand, the cut.

It all clicked. "You can drink only blood, can't you?"

He didn't answer, but from the way his eyes followed my hand, I knew it was true. His situation was far worse than mine. As far as I knew, I was the only person alive. I noticed how gaunt he looked, how his cold skin clung to the bone, how sharp his cheekbones appeared, how deep the hollows of his eyes.

"Haven't had … human blood in so long," he whispered hoarsely.

I had chosen insanity, so I did not feel too foolish when I asked, "Are you a vampire?"

His eyes and mouth opened wide in shock, and after a few moments of staring at me, he simply nodded.

"Are you the only one left?"

He swallowed a few times, his eyes gazing at something far away, long buried in his memory. "Yes, I think I am."

"Are you real?" I immediately shook my head and said, "No, don't answer that. It doesn't matter." I crouched back down next to him.

We sat quietly, and I watched my skin knit back together. "Can you stand, do you think?" I asked.

"I used up the last of my energy to find you, Isabella Swan. Your blood revived me, but I'll need more to move, and I can't ask you for that."

"Why can't you?"

He laughed sharply. "Don't you have any sense of self-preservation? Do you even know what you are offering?"

"Fuck my self-preservation," I said. "Self-preservation means I spend what's left of my life completely alone. What good does that do me?"

Impetuously I grabbed his cold hand and dug his fingernail across my hand again, reopening the wound. "Drink," I ordered, and I held my hand to his lips, his cold, lifeless lips.

He began to suck, his animal side taking over, and I heard him swallow a few times before he forced himself to stop, spitting out the blood in his mouth and wiping his lips with the back of his hand. "No," he said firmly. "I won't."

I looked where he'd spat, and my blood was diluted, pinkish. It reminded me of children's aspirin. Tentatively I reached out a hand to touch his side. I could feel every rib. I could see his hipbones jutting above his pants, which were so worn they must have once fit perfectly, maybe been his favorite pair. And now they hung off him like an old snakeskin.

"It'll kill you," he said. "And it will kill me too."

"I don't understand," I said. "Why will it kill you? Vampires drink blood. That's what they do. Or is there something I don't know?"

"The virus," he said. "Tainted blood … that's why I'm alone. I was the only one who had the strength not to feed. We … can't die of starvation."

"I'm the only one alive," I said. "I've been the only one for a while. I think … I think the virus would have gotten me by now."

I shoved my hands between my knees and stared at my stretched-out legs. I could feel his gaze sweep over me.

"You are a curiosity, Isabella Swan," he said finally, slowly bringing himself to standing. He held out a hand to help me up.

"Why do you know my name?" I asked, allowing him to pull me upright, although I needed no help.

His eyes grew darker. "It is right that you shouldn't remember me. You never should have known me. It was selfish for me to come back, but … I had to come say goodbye."

We began to walk arm in arm, my routine already broken. I turned around and started back for the house, several hours before I usually returned. The sun shone weakly in our faces, and I did not turn around to see if one shadow or two were cast behind me, attached to my heels, following me home across the barren earth.