A/N: Hey! Back again. To those who celebrate it, hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving.
A more normal-sized chapter this time, in spite of more conversations. Hope you enjoy anyway, and see you at the end!
Chapter 11: Theory
I hadn't forgotten my question, which he had evaded before—if he had made any progress on hypotheses related to what I was.
However, he still refused to answer right away, grilling me for more details about the rescue, how I had tracked him to the bookstore, how the mind-reading worked and who all had that kind of power. Of course, he was interested in the fact that he was the one exception.
"Why do you think you can't hear me?" he wanted to know. The tone of all his questions was oddly normal, like he was asking me about my technique in an art class, or my hobbies.
As always his mind continued to baffle me—and it only seemed to have grown more mysterious over the course of today's conversation. I turned to look at him in that by-now familiar way, focusing my powers to a laser point as though I might pierce through his skull like a sword piercing armor. But of course, I met only silence.
"I don't know," I said at last. I considered the many speculations I had spent so many hours ruminating upon. "Maybe your mind doesn't work the same way the rest of theirs do. Like your thoughts are on the AM frequency and I'm only get FM." I almost had to laugh at the analogy. It was oddly apt.
He frowned. "My mind doesn't work right? I'm a freak?" He looked honestly troubled.
As always, he reacted to the wrong things, and I failed to stifle a laugh. "I hear voices in my mind and you're worried that you're the freak." I shook my head. "Don't worry, it's just a theory..." I paused, my eyes refocusing on him, sharpening. "Which brings us back to you."
He looked back at me warily, suddenly uncomfortable.
"I thought we were past all these evasions," I murmured, with a touch of irony. Just a minute before, he'd accused me of being the evasive one—not without cause.
His eyes dropped from mine, and he seemed to be thinking, considering. However, as his thoughtful gaze wandered over the dashboard, he froze for the briefest second. His mouth gaped in sudden horror, his heart rate speeding like a running gazelle.
I felt my hands tighten convulsively on the wheel. What had he seen? I was certain I didn't keep anything even remotely vampiric in the car.
"Holy crow!" he gasped, eyes wide with panic.
My eyes scanned either side of the road, half expecting to see a dead body on the pavement. I was surprised he could make out anything in this dark with his weak human eyes. "What's wrong?" I said urgently.
The whites of his eyes were visible all around his liquid blue irises, but his gaze wasn't directed outside. Rather, it was fixed on the dashboard.
"You're doing one-ten!" His voice was high and loud in the cramped space. He spun to stare out the side window next.
I rolled my eyes, settling back in my seat. I suppose with all my experience with his inconsistency, I ought to have seen this coming. After he'd barely bat an eye when I admitted I'd had to stop myself killing him, of course it would be a little minor speed-limit breaking that would get his attention.
"Relax, Beau," I said.
He didn't relax. "Are you trying to kill us?" he demanded.
"We're not going to crash."
He took a steadying breath, then asked in a voice of forced calm, "Why are we in such a hurry, Edythe?"
I shrugged. "I always drive like this." In fact, I'd slowed down a little to give us some more time. I turned to flash a grin at him.
"Keep your eyes on the road!" he said, panicked again.
I was incredulous. "I've never even gotten a ticket." I grinned again and tapped my forehead. "Built-in radar detector."
He didn't smile. "Hands on the wheel, Edythe!"
His eyes were so wide, his face a mix of pure terror and outrage at my apparent recklessness, I knew he wasn't going to calm down until I complied with all his demands.
What a problematic phobia, driving a little fast—I'd begun to think he didn't experience fear, at least not to the proper degree that other humans did. Apparently he did—it was just all the wrong things.
I sighed deeply and eased slightly back on the accelerator. It felt like we were crawling. "Happy?"
"Almost," he said, still staring at the speedometer.
"I hate driving slow," I muttered.
His wary eyes shifted to the road. "This is slow?" he asked skeptically.
I had a feeling this was going to continue to be a point of contention in the future.
"Enough commentary about my driving," I said abruptly. I was done letting him stall. "I'm still waiting for you to answer my question."
His gaze dropped. Uneasy again. He didn't look me in the face, and we were both quiet a long moment.
"I promise I won't laugh this time," I said, and I made my tone softer, more kind.
He shook his head. "I'm not worried about that."
I felt the same flicker of sickening disquiet, just like in the restaurant. I had told him so much already—I had admitted to the mind-reading, and he knew how close I'd come to murdering those people. He even knew I'd come close to killing him, too. But for this moment, I could still cling to the hope he didn't yet know the reason. He didn't yet know the extent of the horror... Unless he did.
The thought sent a crippling thrill of terror through my empty chest, up my throat and down to the tips of my fingers. And yet, I knew the only thing worse than if he already knew was if he knew, and didn't say it. As bad as it was, I had to know—I had to know what he was thinking.
"Then what?" I asked quietly.
He still didn't look at me. "That you'll be... upset. Unhappy."
I paused for a second. Then slowly, I took my hand off the gearshift, and extended it to him, palm up. Offering him the chance to keep me here, if that was what he wanted. A promise I wasn't going to try to run away.
He glanced up at me, surprised.
"Don't worry about me," I said softly. "I can handle it."
He looked down at my hand, then carefully wrapped his fingers around it. Just as carefully, I curled my fingers around his for a moment. His hand was soft, and warm. When I let my hand fall back to the gearshift, his hand, just as I expected, followed mine, and he laid his palm over top.
He gazed down at my hand, with total absorption. With his thumb, he carefully traced the outside edge, from the tip of my small finger down to my wrist.
The gentle caress of his thumb on my skin made my breathing accelerate. His scent in the small, heated space burned against my throat and filled my head with a fog as I waited for him to say something. However, he only continued to stare down at my hand.
"The suspense is killing me, Beau," I whispered at last.
He sighed. "I'm sorry." His voice was low in the quiet. "I don't know how to start."
I waited for him to continue, but he didn't.
I had to stop breathing—I couldn't think clearly. Not with the way his scent swirled in the current of the heater, building and strengthening the longer he was in the car, becoming its own entity, demanding my attention. And not with the way my burning emotions rose and fell like the swirling sands of a desert storm.
As I cut myself off from the alluring scent, my mind seemed to clear a little, at least for the present.
"Why don't you start at the beginning," I said. Obviously to get anything out of him I was going to have to keep prodding the conversation forward myself. This time, I worked to keep my tone less charged, distantly business-like. Perhaps he wouldn't feel so much pressure if it felt more like another ordinary conversation, as we had treated the mind-reading. "Is this something you thought up on your own, or did something make you think of it—a comic book, maybe, or a movie?"
I didn't know if he read much in the way of comic books, but clearly he was familiar with superhero lore, and as far as movies, he knew Final Destination.
He shook his head. "Nothing like that. But I didn't think of it on my own."
I was quiet, and I carefully allowed myself to breathe again. I could sense he was opening now, finally mentally readying himself to speak, and I needed to have air enough to respond.
"It was Saturday—down at the beach," he said at last.
He raised his eyes to mine, staring back at me to see my reaction.
I didn't know how to respond. I didn't see where this could be leading. There was certainly local gossip about us in Forks, but it had never strayed into anything too bizarre, or precise.
He continued, "I ran into an old family friend—Jules, Julie Black. Her mom, Bonnie, and Charlie have been close since before I was born."
I considered, wondering if the names should be familiar. I was sure I didn't know a Julie. I was interested by this piece of connection to his family, but I was still mystified how it was going to lead into his newest theory.
He looked at me evenly, warily. He said finally in a low voice, "Bonnie's one of the Quileute leaders."
I froze.
He knew.
He knew.
Panic shot through me, cold and sharp. I couldn't have breathed, even if I had wanted to. Of course, Julie Black—a descendent of Elda Black.
He went on, "There was this Quileute woman on the beach—Sam something. Logan made a comment about you—trying to make fun of me. And this Sam said your family didn't come to the reservation, only it sounded like she meant something more than that. Jules seemed like she knew what the woman was talking about, so I got her alone and kept bugging her until she told me... told me the old Quileute legends."
Even though my hands were frozen on the steering wheel, the scene seemed to play itself out in my mind in sharp detail. The cold look of one of the older Quileutes, who knew the truth, as a local from the town threw out a careless joke. The already suspicious boy instantly picking it out, and zeroing in on one of the younger, who found the old legends of the superstitious elders laughable. How ironic that in the end it was a Black descendent who inadvertently violated the treaty.
I waited for him to continue, but he didn't.
At last, my voice so low it was barely audible, I asked, "And what were those legends? What did Jules Black tell you I was?"
He started to open his mouth to answer, but then he closed it again. He glanced at me hesitantly.
"What?" I pressed, in a voice even lower than before.
"I don't want to say it," he muttered, eyes down.
I understood. I was afraid to hear it—but to have it lingering unspoken in the air, when we both knew what it was, seemed to turn it into a barrier. And I simply couldn't bear that.
"It's not my favorite word, either," I said, no longer pretending I didn't know where this was leading. I couldn't quite make myself smile, but there was just a hint of humor in my voice as I added, "Not saying it doesn't make it go away, though."
He still looked uncertain, so I said quietly, feeling irresistibly like a character from Star Wars or Harry Potter, "Sometimes... I think not saying it makes it more powerful."
At another time, I might have had to fight not to laugh at myself for my melodramatic pretension. However, this ancient, sage-like-sounding wisdom seemed to make sense to him.
Hesitantly, he whispered, "Vampire?"
I moved for the first time. A shuddering tremor raced down my spine and my head turned sharply away as though he had struck me. The single word—the word of my world, of which he wasn't supposed to be a part—seemed to hang in the air, pounding over and over in my mind like a drum.
He knew. He knew it all now. There were no more secrets—he knew the beast that I was.
A long silence filled the car, as I struggled to regain my composure. At last, in a tone of detached politeness, I said, "What did you do then?"
He blinked. "Oh—um, I did some research on the Internet."
"And that convinced you?" My tone was still carefully distant, only politely interested.
He shook his head. "No. Nothing fit. Lots of it was really stupid. But I just—"
He broke off. I waited for him to say more, but when he didn't, I turned to study his expression.
"You what?" I pressed gently.
He shrugged. "Well, I mean, it doesn't matter, right? So I just let it go."
I stared at him. Stunned. Shocked. I had known that all his reactions to me so far had been far from natural or right, and of course I knew he had known the dreaded word before deciding to get in the car with me. And yet—yet it had seemed there ought to be a limit, which we would surely reach any moment. That coming face-to-face with one of the vilest creatures of legend would have to awaken in him primal fear of some sort, even if he did his best to hide it. But now, his tone as he spoke was nonchalant, and his set features betrayed nothing but the calmest determination.
I stared at him a minute more. Before, with the speed of an alternating current, I felt all my disbelief abruptly turn to anger.
He was supposed to be responsible. That was one of the traits I had put down in my mental list. But this—there was nothing responsible about this. Even after all he had seen, even after figuring out exactly what I was, he still wasn't conscious of the real danger. Was he so hopelessly naïve? Or had living in the rainy town of Forks made it so he didn't care if lived or died?
Was that the real reason why he always seemed to be falling into danger? Because he didn't care enough to stay out of it?
"Um, Edythe—" he began, his eyes flickering nervously to the road.
I cut him off. "It doesn't matter?" I spat, and I deliberately removed all those subtle aspects of speech that I had cultivated to perfectly imitate humans. It rang in the small space, too high, unnatural. "It doesn't matter?"
He looked back at me, seemingly unintimidated at my outburst. "No," he said, shrugging again. "Not to me, anyway."
"You don't care if I'm a monster?" I demanded with a snarl, glaring at him. "If I'm not human?"
"No," he said quietly.
I stared back at him for a second, then abruptly turned to stare out at the road again.
Ridiculous—he was ridiculous. An idiot. Absurd. Didn't he understand? Didn't he realize? He should be afraid—he should have at least some instinct for self-preservation.
He eyed my face for a long minute, then sighed and turned to stare out the front windshield. "You're upset," he said in a mutter. "See, I shouldn't have said anything."
I almost laughed, but it would have been a harsh, furious sound, and instead I kept my teeth clenched together.
"No," I said, still glaring out the front window, "I'd rather know what you're thinking, even if what you're thinking is insane."
"Sorry."
I sighed deeply, and I didn't say any more for the moment.
Instead I stared out the front windshield, wondering how that could really be his response, and wondering about my response to his response. Wasn't this precisely the reaction I had craved—for him to know all my secrets, and still accept me anyway? It was a dream come true, better than I'd ever dared imagine. Wasn't it?
In this instant, the joy I had expected to feel eluded me, and as my mind churned through all my thoughts and feelings at dizzying speeds, I understood why.
This was exactly what I had wanted—for myself. But now that the moment had arrived, and I was not merely contemplating the future in a purely theoretical way, I knew for certain now that there was a significant part of me didn't really want what I wanted. Because I still knew without a doubt what his clear, decisive acceptance would mean for him in the end. He should be afraid of me, he should run. And for his sake a part of me—a part growing stronger all the time—wished that he would.
I felt his thumb tracing the side of my hand again, and I glanced over at him. His eyes had returned to our hands.
Gazing at his face, I felt all the familiar pangs of longing return in full force, and my well-meaning, whole-hearted desire for him to do as was best for him slipped away from me again. I didn't want him to be afraid. I wanted to talk like this to him forever and for it to never end...
"What are you thinking about now?" I asked softly, looking into his face.
His eyes flickered back up to mine, though if he was startled at my abrupt switch of tone, he didn't show it. "Um... nothing, really."
I frowned. "It drives me crazy, not knowing."
He looked away again. "I don't want to... I don't want to offend you."
I glowered, though my frustration this time could have been taken as half teasing. "Spit it out, Beau."
He shrugged. "I have lots of questions. But you don't have to answer them. I'm just curious."
He seemed to sense that my fit of fury was gone as quickly as it had come, and I didn't bother to try to maintain it. "About what?" I asked, curious myself.
He shrugged again. "How old you are."
"Seventeen," I said swiftly.
He stared back at me patiently, until I couldn't help it and a smile twitched at the corner of my lips.
"How long have you been seventeen?" he asked.
"A while," I admitted.
"Okay." He suddenly smiled wide. Happy to have gotten an answer without having to wrestle for it.
He was still acting as though this were an entirely ordinary conversation, and I could only stare back at him incredulously. I had only just reassured him, at least in a roundabout way, that he wasn't a freak, yet it occurred to me that for anyone to act so entirely normal under such circumstances may give more than adequate reason to question that assertion.
My disconcerted face did nothing to disrupt his sudden good mood, and he said, "Don't laugh—but how do you come outside in the daytime?"
I couldn't help it, I laughed anyway. His research had told him some, but he didn't have all the details, at least not yet. "Myth."
In spite of my complete disregard for his request, his smile widened as he watched me.
"Burned by the sun?"
"Myth."
"Sleeping in coffins."
"Myth." I paused, staring out the front windshield as the wall of trees rushed by on either side of the road. I added quietly, "I can't sleep."
This stopped him for a minute. He stared at me. "At all?"
"Never," I whispered. My eyes drifted to meet his again.
Since coming to this new life, I had often wished I could sleep. Wished there were times I could just shut down, so that my mind could rest and refresh itself—particularly during those hellish weeks of my futile attempt to keep myself separate from him. If there weren't always the long hours of the night to suffer through, maybe I would be making better decisions now, maybe I would have been able to resist, to do the right thing for him, instead of what I was doing now. But then again, perhaps not—after all, I knew if I slept I would dream, and if I dreamed, I knew all my dreams would be of him.
I stared into his eyes, and he stared back into mine. He seemed to forget briefly about all his questions.
After a minute, my eyes flickered away, to stare out at the dark road ahead. "You haven't asked me the most important question yet."
He glanced at me, mystified. "The most important question?"
My lip curled. "Aren't you curious about my diet?"
"Oh. That one." Unless he was simply a gifted actor, which I knew from experience that he wasn't, from his surprised tone it was clear he had sincerely forgotten about it.
"Yes," I said in a low voice. "That one."
He had been reluctant to say the word before, and I had assumed that that meant he knew what the word entailed. I had assumed he would be working up to this question, or at the very least thinking on it, even as he might hesitate to voice it aloud. But that it could have entirely slipped his mind made me wonder if he really had the slightest conception of what the word vampire meant. The instinctual terror it ought to summon to his mind, just as if he were faced with a hunting lion, or a snarling wolf.
"Don't you want to know if I drink blood?" I asked. My voice was hard, almost accusing.
For the first time, he looked a little uncomfortable, though I couldn't tell if that was actually because of the subject of my diet, or because my tone made him ashamed to have not thought of it himself. Even when his responses were right, I was beginning to learn sometimes they were for the wrong reasons.
"Well," he began, "Jules said something about that."
"Did she now?" I said, wondering just how much this girl had told him of the legend. They were certainly in deep violation of the treaty—I supposed now we'd have technically had the right to go and slaughter the lot of them if we had felt so inclined. The old magic that protected them from our kind had not appeared since the time of Elda Black—not that Carine would ever condone such a thing.
He nodded. "She said you didn't... hunt people. Your family wasn't supposed to be dangerous because you only hunted animals."
I found that hard to believe. "She said we weren't dangerous?"
He shook his head. "Not exactly. Jules said you weren't supposed to be dangerous. But the Quileutes still didn't want you on their land, just is case."
I turned my eyes back to the road, but I wasn't really seeing it.
"So, was she right?" he asked at last. "About not hunting people?"
I could tell he was trying to keep his voice casual, like my answer didn't matter. But he was tense in his seat.
I wondered what he would do if I said Jules was mistaken. That we did hunt people, like any other vampire. What if I replied, We don't hunt on the reservation or any of the lands nearby, as per the treaty. We go... outside. How would he react to think I was hunting in Seattle? Or Port Angeles? Would he still say It doesn't matter then?
But I couldn't lie—even if I'd had any desire to.
"The Quileutes have a long memory," I said quietly at last.
He nodded, relaxing slightly.
"Don't let that make you complacent, though," I said sharply. "They're right to keep their distance from us. We are still dangerous."
He frowned. "I don't understand."
I continued to gaze out the front windshield. Yes, I had to remind myself—he might technically know the secret now, but he didn't know, didn't understand everything. I had told him I saved him from myself—and he remembered clearly the way I'd glared at him with murder in my eyes. But he thought that meant it was over. He didn't yet understand it was a constant ongoing danger, that every minute I was continually saving him from myself, my vicious, vampiric appetite that longed for his blood.
"We... try," I said, my eyes still staring out at the road slipping past. "We're usually very good at what we do." I hesitated. "Sometimes we make... mistakes." I added quietly, "Me, for example, allowing myself to be alone with you."
I was aware of his scent stirring in the car, trying to cloud my thoughts. My mouth was swimming in venom.
"This is a mistake?" he asked. There ought to have been a spike of fear in his voice as he understood, but instead I heard a note of something like hurt.
"A very dangerous one," I said quietly.
Neither of us spoke for a while then. He stared out at the road, and even though he could probably tell we were going at my usual speed again, he didn't comment. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking.
Abruptly, however, the hand he had over mine tightened. He said suddenly, his voice low and intense, "Tell me more."
I didn't understand the sudden emotion in his voice and I glanced at him. "What more do you want to know?"
"Tell me why you hunt animals instead of people," he said quickly. As though he had suddenly realized his time to ask questions was limited, and was afraid he wouldn't get them all out. His voice was deep with some emotion that didn't match the words.
I hesitated. "I don't want to be a monster," I said at last, my voice low.
"But animals aren't enough?"
I thought for a moment, trying to find a way to explain. "I can't be sure," I said at last, "but I'd compare it to living on tofu and soy milk; we call ourselves vegetarians, our little inside joke. It doesn't completely satiate the hunger—or rather thirst. But it keeps us strong enough to resist. Most of the time."
I gripped the steering wheel a little tighter, glaring out at the road. I added in a low voice, "Sometimes it's more difficult than others."
He considered. "Is it very difficult for you now?"
I sighed deeply, and as I inhaled, the scent, enhanced by the warmth from the heating vents, assaulted me again. Even as I tried not to think about it, it was a constant presence at the back of my mind—the temptation, the ravage hunger. I had beaten it back further now, since that night I had acknowledged how I felt—had it only been a week ago? But even so, even though now I had no desire to give in to it, it was not conquered. It lingered there like a shadow, a threat that could still strike at any moment, if I ever once let down my guard.
"Yes," I answered quietly.
His response ought to have been fear, but of course it wasn't.
"But you're not hungry now," he said unexpectedly. It wasn't a question.
I frowned. "Why do you think that?"
He shrugged, nonchalant. "Your eyes. I have a theory about that. Seems like the color is linked to your mood—and people are generally crabbier when they're hungry, right?"
A chuckle escaped me before I could stop it. Crabby. That was a good word for me when I was needing to hunt again. Funny, how he'd noticed that detail about my eyes, and correctly guessed the reason behind their change when no one else even noticed it. But then, he wasn't properly afraid of us like the others were.
"So everything I thought I saw—that day with the van," he said. "That all happened for real. You caught the van."
His tone was full of wonder. I wondered if he'd been having more doubts about his own sanity than he'd let on. Could I have convinced him it was all a concussion-induced hallucination if I had pushed harder?
I supposed it hardly mattered now. And, I thought selfishly, a part of me—too large a part—was glad it hadn't turned out that way. Glad I wasn't able to convince him of my lies.
"Yes," I answered, shrugging.
"How strong are you?" he wanted to know.
I wasn't sure how to answer that one. "Strong enough."
"Like, could you lift five thousand pounds?" His eyes were bright, excited. I wondered if he was imagining me at some sort of weightlifting competition. Maybe there was a part of him that was a normal teenage boy after all.
"If I needed to," I answered hesitantly. "But I'm not much into feats of strength. They just make Eleanor competitive, and I'll never be that strong."
"How strong?" he asked, fascinated.
I smiled a little, rolling my eyes, "Honestly, if she wanted to, I think she could lift a mountain over her head. But I would never say that around her, because then she would have to try." I laughed at the thought.
"Were you hunting this weekend, with, uh, Eleanor?"
"Yes," I said, then hesitated, debating whether I really wanted to say what I would say next. But tonight was a night for honesty, for no secrets, and I added, "I didn't want to leave, but it was necessary. It's a bit easier to be around you when I'm not thirsty."
His eyebrows creased. "Why didn't you want to leave?"
I hesitated. The more I said, the more he would probably begin to suspect the extent of just how much I had been stalking him. However, there was something else, too. It felt... strange, expressing the true depths of my feelings in so many words, directly to him, right here. When I'd described to him my worry when I found he wasn't with his friends, I'd downplayed my paranoia. To try to describe it felt... dangerous. Dangerous in a different way than I was to him. My frozen heart felt so fragile, so vulnerable. My self-preservative instincts told me to keep it under guard, to not allow it to ever be fully exposed.
However, the feeling that I wanted him to know me, know everything, swelled in my chest again. Even though I knew at any moment I might say something that would frighten him in a way nothing else had before, or he might suddenly come to his senses, and so run from me, how could I not trust him? He had already quietly accepted that which no one in his right mind could be expected to accept.
"It makes me... anxious... to be away from you," I admitted slowly.
He gazed back into my eyes, no doubt seeing the sudden intensity there.
He didn't look away as I continued, "I wasn't joking when I asked you to try not to fall in the ocean or get run over last Thursday. I was distracted all weekend, worrying about you. And after what happened tonight, I'm surprised that you did make it through a whole weekend unscathed." I paused, frowning. "Well, not totally unscathed," I amended.
He blinked. "What?"
I raised my eyebrows. "Your hands," I said pointedly.
He glanced down at his palms. "I fell," he said with a shrug.
I nodded. "That's what I thought." I smiled a little. "I suppose, being you, it could have been much worse—and that was the possibility that tormented me the entire time I was away." My smiled turned wry. "It was a very long three days. I really got on Eleanor's nerves."
He raised his eyebrows, then frowned. "Three days? Didn't you just get back today?"
I didn't understand the sudden intensity in his expression. "No, we got back Sunday."
He looked almost angry. "Then why weren't you at school?" he said, suddenly demanding.
I blinked. "Well, you asked if the sun hurt me, and it doesn't. But I can't go out in the sunlight—at least, not where anyone can see."
He was curious again. "Why?"
"I'll show you sometime," I promised rashly. A part of me knew this was a promise I could end up breaking—but if I did, it would likely be because I wasn't in his life anymore, and that could only be to his benefit.
It warred inside me still, the desperate need to be around him, to see what he was doing every moment, and the equally desperate desire to do what was best for him. Just like my equally warring desire to see him accept me, despite what I was, and the knowledge he really ought to turn now and flee, as fast and as far as he could...
He gazed back at me for a moment. "You could have told me," he said at last.
I frowned. "But I knew you were fine."
"Yeah," he said, growing agitated again, "but I didn't know where you were. I—"
He stopped, his eyes dropping from mine.
"What?" I asked softly, coaxingly.
His face was starting to change color, red patches blooming across his cheeks.
"It's going to sound stupid," he muttered. "But, well, it kind of freaked me out." His eyes remained fixed on the dash in front of him. "I thought you might not come back. That somehow you knew that I knew and... I was afraid you would disappear. I didn't know what I was going to do. I had to see you again."
I stared back at him for a long moment. I'd already suspected... already known... his adolescent feelings. But somehow, hearing him actually say the words, it was different. It was like a declaration. And, hearing them put that way, they sounded so much like my own it was frightening. He didn't make them sound like a harmless, passing adolescent infatuation.
Elation and horror shot through me at the exact same moment, each vying for control.
He wanted me. He would choose me forever if I let him. But what was it going to cost him in the end? What would this fulfillment of my deepest fantasies do to him?
He looked up into my face, and he saw my expression. "Edythe," he said gently with concern, "are you okay?"
It was the look on his face that decided it. The kindness, the goodness, the innocence. The face of someone who didn't deserve to have his future destroyed. The horror overpowered the joy and I felt suddenly sick—sick with what I had done.
"Ah," I groaned, bowing my head. I whispered, "This is wrong."
He stared back at me, bewildered. "What did I say?"
"Don't you see, Beau?" The anguish rose in my burning throat, until I thought I would choke. "It's one thing for me to make myself miserable, but a wholly other thing for you to be so involved."
I couldn't bear to look at him anymore, at the damning evidence of the terrible crime I had committed, and I looked back toward the road, though I didn't see it. Words spilled out in a rush as the emotions rose, all spinning in a storm inside me.
"I don't want to hear that you feel that way. It's wrong. It's not safe. I'll hurt you, Beau. You'll be lucky to get out alive."
I could feel his eyes on me. "I don't care," he said quietly.
"That's a really stupid thing to say," I said harshly, my voice rising. Trying to make him angry.
He didn't react. When he spoke, his voice was just as soft and calm as before.
"Maybe, but it's true. I told you, it doesn't matter to me what you are. It's too late."
The words were quiet, a statement of fact. But they pierced through my chest like a condemnation. Too late. Too late. Only two possible futures—one or the other. Both setting him on a course of destruction.
"Never say that," I whispered feverishly. I went on with conviction, "It's not too late. I can put things back the way they were. I will." I willed myself to mean it.
He stared out straight at the road ahead, just as I did. "I don't want things back the way they were," he murmured.
Too late.
I was going to hurt him, one way or another, there was no avoiding that now. When I had left Forks that first time, I should have never come back. But now it was too late. Too late to go back, when my leaving would not be an interruption to his life. I knew that leaving was still the best thing for him, the way to a better future. But I was going to hurt him, disappoint him terribly in the process.
"I'm sorry I've done this to you," I whispered. Sorry that I had interfered, closed so many doors to his future. Sorry for, instead of shielding him from pain, forcing him to share mine.
We were both quiet then, and before long we were passing into Forks.
When we saw the familiar landmarks, he finally turned to me again.
"Will I see you tomorrow?" he asked.
I hesitated. "Do you want to?" I whispered.
He answered, voice low with intensity. "More than anything else I've ever wanted."
I stared out at the road a moment, then I closed my eyes. And I felt my conviction, my will to do as was best for him rather than what I wanted, crumble.
"Then I'll be there," I said at last. My dark mood was already passing, and I added with a hint humor, "I do have a paper to turn in."
I turned, allowing myself to look into his face again. That beautiful face I just couldn't get enough of, that I knew someday I was destined to doom, one way or another.
We were at his house now. I brought the car to a stop and turned off the engine. However, he didn't get out right away. His hand was still resting on mine—it had never moved the entire way.
"Save me a seat at lunch?" he asked, not quite meeting my eyes.
I smiled, anticipation filling me at the thought. "That's easy enough."
"You promise?" he insisted.
Even though it was wrong, my smile widened at the worry in his face. "I promise."
He stared back at me for a long moment. His sky blue eyes were oddly intense, but as I watched, the intensity seemed to fade, leaving behind a hazy mist. His mouth opened slightly. Then, as though unaware of what he was doing, he leaned toward me.
At first I failed to read his intention, and so for a moment I didn't react. Not until his face was inches from mine.
He exhaled lightly, and his warm breath hit me directly in the face.
My mind went blank. I could imagine my eyes glazing over just as his were, but for a completely different reason.
The concentrated scent filled my nose and mouth, so much more potent than I had ever known. Venom filled my mouth—I was in a fog, and though I should have been full my stomach ached with ferocious, all-consuming hunger. I heard the steady beat of his heart, the rushing flow of his blood through his veins. For just a moment the fantasies I had refused to entertain any longer ripped free from the back of my mind, and I imagined the taste of his blood in my mouth.
Too fast for a human eye to follow, I drew back hard against the door of the car, and I threw up my free hand, bringing it an inch from his face, blocking him coming any closer.
He stared back into my face for a second, then snapped from whatever it was that had a hold of him. He drew back instantly, eyes wide.
"Sorry!" he gasped, looking shocked, though I couldn't be sure if it was at me or himself.
I stared back at him for a long moment, my back still pressed up against the car door, struggling to get control. I didn't breathe.
At last, inch by inch, I slowly relaxed. The pure terror of the moment, when I had almost lost control, faded, and I slumped.
"You have to be more careful than that, Beau," I said in a dull, hollow voice.
I felt suddenly more tired than I could ever remember feeling. A deep weariness had settled over my mind, and sunk into every crevice. This was all wrong—so wrong. What did I expect? He was a teenage boy. He wanted to hold hands, and touch, and kiss like other teenage couples just discovering the magic of first love. But he couldn't even kiss me—or whatever it was he'd had in mind to do—without chancing having me succumb to a sudden overpowering urge to kill him. Eleanor was right—I was going to drive him crazy with this limited, incomplete love.
Reluctantly, I carefully removed his hand from over mine. Not even that small touch was safe. Nothing was safe.
He took his hand back and folded his arms over his chest.
"Maybe—" I began slowly, gloomily.
He cut me off before I could say anymore. "I can do better than that." He went on quickly, "Just tell me the rules, and I'll follow them. Whatever you want from me."
I sighed. He didn't even know what he was offering. What he was giving up. He was smart and responsible, and he always thought ahead, but now... now. I was the responsible one once, too—now he was just like me.
"Seriously," he said. "Tell me to do something, and I'll do it."
I glanced at him. Then again, maybe this was him being responsible—if he really meant it, and he would try to follow any rules of safety I outlined. Or at least, as responsible as he could be with his mind clouded by the power of adolescent infatuation. I couldn't help but smile a little.
"All right, I've got one," I said at last.
"Yeah?" He suddenly looked worried.
"Don't go in the woods alone again."
He blinked. "How did you know that?"
I didn't answer, only smiled a little more and wordlessly touched the tip of my nose.
Again, rather than be disturbed as it became increasingly obvious I had been doing more than just following him around in my car when he went out of town, his eyes lit with the same fascination as before.
"Really? You must have an incredible sense—"
I wasn't about to let him start in on more questions, and I interrupted, "Are you going to agree to what I ask or not?"
He shrugged. "Sure, that one's easy. Can I ask why?"
My eyes flickered briefly to the darkness outside the car. "I'm not always the most dangerous thing out there," I said quietly. "Let's leave it at that."
He stared back at me, then shivered. "Whatever you say."
It was time for him to go. I sighed a little to myself, then raised my eyes back to his. "I'll see you tomorrow, Beau," I said. It was technically true—I would see him tomorrow, though I would also be seeing him sooner than that.
He gazed back at me another moment, then pushed open the door. "Tomorrow," he said with emphasis, trying to make my parting words into a promise. Then he turned and started to get out.
I froze, and I was suddenly hit with an overwhelming urge to keep him there. To keep him here, with me, talking just like this until sunrise and beyond.
Without knowing quite what I was doing, I leaned across the car and called softly in a low voice, "Beau?"
Automatically he turned back, ducking back inside the car, and he seemed startled to find our faces barely inches apart.
I didn't breathe in, and this time, the unexpected proximity did something different to me. As I stared into his wide blue eyes, so close to mine, for a moment my thoughts were in a fog, and I wondered if it was the same fog that had muddled his thinking a moment before. My eyes flickered for the barest fraction of a second to his lips, and I felt a strange, new hunger, different from the thirst. But, probably equally as dangerous.
Tamping it back down, I said softly, smiling, "Sleep well."
He stared back at me for a second, unmoving. For a moment I couldn't even hear the sound of his heartbeat.
Then at last he moved back, half-tripping over his feet as he tried to back out and having to catch the frame to keep from falling. A quiet chuckle escaped me before I could stop it.
I watched him trip and stumble his way up to the front door, and once he was safely there, I started the engine, then slowly, reluctantly pulled out of the drive.
He paused at the doorway to watch me go.
For a while I drove around aimlessly, as my thoughts raced around in my mind.
All the incredible things that had happened tonight repeated themselves over and over in my thoughts. His face, the sound of his voice, the look in his eyes.
It doesn't matter.
For the moment, the agony of the coming future faded to the background, and I was euphoric. He knew. He knew everything and he didn't care. He didn't want me to disappear. He couldn't bear the thought of not seeing me again.
I knew it was wrong, but for the moment I allowed myself not to care. I embraced it. Reveled in it. I went through each memory of the night one by one, lovingly, filing each away among my core memories, most easily retrieved. I relived each and every moment, second by second.
However, as I retraced the events of the night, going backward, it was inevitable I would work my way back to the instigation of all this—a woman and two men, getting ready to murder an innocent passerby in cold blood. And as those memories replayed themselves in my thoughts, I felt all my joy spiral down into a blazing, black inferno of hate.
I was alone now. Beau was at home and safe. It wouldn't take long to go down there, and take care of them. Make sure they never threatened him again.
However, I forced myself to cut that thought off where it was. Beau cared about me, far more than I deserved. For me to commit the savage, brutal murders I longed to would betray his trust. If I did, then I would have to tell him the truth later, and he would be horrified... Or worse, he would say It doesn't matter again. He was so good, so pure, but his love for me could taint him. Just knowing of my acts of savagery, and accepting it, or even simply not condemning it, would make him my accomplice.
Still...
There was no question those people were dangerous, left on the loose. And if that woman ran into Beau again—not entirely unlikely, given his usual luck—no doubt she would do everything she could to eliminate him. It wasn't right to murder them as I might like to, but it also wasn't right to leave them on the street. What if they cornered a real cop next time? Someone like Chief Swan? Someone's father, brother, friend, husband... or even wife or mother.
I turned my car toward the north, back home, a plan already forming in my mind.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I suddenly remembered the phone call from earlier I had missed.
I pulled it out and put it to my ear.
"Hey, Archie," I said, sighing.
"I tried to call you earlier," he said, and he sounded contrite. "Sorry, by the time I saw what was going to happen, well, you were already on your way."
"It was close," I admitted. "But it's okay, everything worked out. I know you can't catch everything."
"Thanks." I heard the grin in his voice as he added, "Even though you would have come back and killed me if something had actually happened to him."
"Did you see that, or is it just a hunch?"
"Hunch," he said. "But my hunches are pretty good." He added, "Anyway, I'm going to keep a closer eye on that kid from now on. He needs it."
"Thanks," I said, smiling a little. "I'll be counting on that."
He paused. "I was paying more attention later," he said, voice suddenly a little more serious. "Are you going to tell them that he knows?"
I hesitated, then sighed. "Yes, I will. Soon. But maybe not just yet."
"Don't worry, I won't say anything. Do me a favor and tell Royal when I'm not around, okay?"
I grimaced at the thought. "I'll try to remember that."
The line was quiet for a minute, then I asked, "Ah, tonight..."
"He'll be fine," he answered, already knowing what I was going to ask. "Like I said, I'm keeping better watch now. I'll watch him tonight, while you're gone. It won't take you long. You want to talk to Carine now?"
"Yes," I said, my hand tightening again on the wheel.
"Just a second, I'll put her on."
He paused, then said, "Get it done quickly. Then you can go be where you want to be." I could almost picture his wink and sly grin as he added, "Stalker."
I didn't reply, but I didn't cringe at the use of the word this time. There was no use being sensitive about it, I decided. The truth was the truth.
"Course," he continued, "according to Carine, angels supposedly follow people and watch over them too. So maybe you're more like his guardian angel than a stalker."
"A vampire-angel," I said. "Now, who wouldn't feel safe with that?" However, the image made me smile.
He said, "Okay, here she is. Good luck tonight. Don't worry, it'll go fine."
A moment later I heard Carine's voice on the other end.
"Edythe?" she said, her voice calm, but a little concerned. "Is everything all right?"
I sighed. "Not exactly, Carine. I'm headed back there right now. See, I... need your help with something."
A/N: I shortened the conclusion somewhat from the original Midnight Sun. (These conversation chapters tend to drag on long enough without anything more.)
Anyway! Thank you all so much for all your thoughts and comments, I really appreciate the feedback. I know some of these chapters are long (not to mention being another retelling of the same story we've already seen several different ways), so it means a lot to know so many of you have been able to enjoy it. Of the three Reimagined stories so far (New Moon, Eclipse, and this one), this one certainly has had the most constraints, but that has also made some of the challenges the most interesting.
If all goes well, the next chapter should be in four weeks, and I plan to be working on Breaking Dawn in the meantime. (I made significant progress on one of the chapters I was most dreading the editing for, and I have a plan of action for revisions on another section that was bothering me, so hopefully that will give me some momentum.)
Anyway, if you have a moment, let me know what you think so far, and hope to see you next time!
Posted 12/4/18