A/N: ...and, we're back! Officially off hiatus, though I make no promises about when the next update is coming. I will repeat my assurance of a few chapters ago, however: this story will not be abandoned. Though it will surely take longer than any of us would like, it will have an end. I won't abandon our favorite couple, or you, dear reader.
Also, I've reposted a slightly different version of the previous chapter, so if you've forgotten what's going on, now would be a good time for a re-read :)
As always, thanks to my betas, TZ and AD.
Most importantly, thanks to you for still reading.
There was a tapping. Somewhere above. A hollow, clanging sound that seemed to land directly in his ear one moment and a thousand feet away the next. Then it would cease, and he wouldn't know if it was the source of the sound that had faltered, or his own hearing.
Tap tap – silence. Tap – silence. Tap tap tap – silence.
Other noises, too. From the street. Something rumbling and revving. The screech of metal on metal. A wailing... maybe a siren.
Tap tap – silence.
So many noises. Too many. Flickering in and out like broken television.
Tap tap tap – silence. Tap – silence.
The girl who slept next to him was snoring. The sound was calm and steady, starting somewhere in her chest and drifting out from between her lips like smoke, like a fire.
He wanted a cigarette.
She was covered with something dark and wrinkled, something that rose and fell in time with her breath. It covered him too, and it was warm. She was warm. The air was cold.
Tap – silence. Tap tap tap – silence.
Silence.
The light in the basement began to flicker. Suddenly, he was aware of how heavy his eyelids were. Viscous, like cement. And the tapping... what happened to the tapping? Darkness smothered him; he heard nothing, saw nothing.
Bella. Where was –
She was gone.
No.
"Edward."
No.
"Edward, let go."
She was gone. He was alone. He was always alone.
"It's okay, let go."
His hands hurt. Fingers, joints, muscles, everything hurt.
"Edward!"
He blinked. Light flooded his eyes...when had he closed them?
Bella's face swam in front of him, her eyebrows drawn together like blades of grass that had buckled under the weight of something big and careless.
"Hey. It's okay." Her lips trembled as she spoke. "Edward, it's okay. Let go." Something tugged on his arm, and he felt the bones in his shoulder grind against each other like rocks. As the sensation traveled down his arm, he realized that his hand was gripping something. Something soft.
He blinked again, his lungs stuttering to draw breath. Fingers – his fingers – loosened from the flesh of Bella's arm. Blood rushed back into each digit with a roar, and it hurt. He let his hand fall to the blanket. The outline of Bella's body blurred and shifted, and he was dizzy.
"Hey." A firm, cool hand slid under his chin. "Are you okay?"
He squeezed his eyelids together. The grip on his chin tightened and gave a little shake. He tried to pull away.
"Edward, look at me." The words landed sharply in his ears, and now he knew he had to answer. Bella's eyes bored into his face. "Are you okay?"
His tongue scraped the roof of his mouth. "Yeah."
She sighed, letting go of his chin, and he understood that she was relieved, that she had been worried for him. His eyes landed on her shoulder, where, just below the curve of muscle, the imprints of his fingers were beginning to turn red.
"Did I – Did I hurt you?" The words were difficult to form.
She shook her head. "No."
The tapping had returned, and now he knew exactly what it was – water, dripping onto a pipe in the wall one floor above.
"I'm sorry," he murmured, lifting his hand to try and cover the marks.
She inhaled sharply, like a hiccup. "I'm fine. What happened?"
"I – I don't know." Something had happened to him, but his memory was already fading into an uncomfortable haze. He fumbled for an explanation. "I remember... You pulled the blanket over us both before you fell asleep. I wanted to turn out the light. It was bothering you as you slept, you kept trying to cover your eyes. But moving was still... difficult. So I waited, and … that is all I can really recall."
Bella's gaze was inscrutable as she searched his face for something he was afraid she would not find. "You scared me."
He drew his hand from her shoulder, suddenly certain that he would only make the bruises there worse. "Bella, I–"
"You're okay now?"
"I – yes. I think so."
She nodded faintly. "Okay."
In the silence that followed, she watched him with that same enigmatic expression; he stared back, trying in vain to guess what she was thinking. He wanted to touch her again, but couldn't will his hands to move. A mild panic welled up in his chest – why wasn't she saying anything? Was there something he supposed to do?
Just then, she moved, lifting a hand to his forehead. Her cool, thin fingers wove themselves into his hair, and she began to rake through it. The touch sent faint shivers down his scalp, and he sighed despite himself. Her eyes drifted along his hairline as she pressed her lips into a tiny, uncertain frown. "I like your hair," she whispered.
"Thank you," was the only reply he could manage. Tilting his head into her palm, he fought the urge to close his eyes, not wanting to lose sight of her again. His fingers found her other hand and slid over the warm skin of her palm. On the inside of her wrist, he ran his thumb over the lines of scars clustered there. She was nearly as pale as he was. Thin blue veins ran along her wrist and into the heel of her palm like branching rivers. Her pulse drummed against his fingers.
"You'll have to leave soon," he said quietly. "Go back upstairs."
"Why?"
"I – The sun. It makes me ill, then it makes me very– " he broke off, swallowing, " – hungry."
"Oh." The fingers in his hair grew still.
"I'm sorry, I wish it wasn't – I wish I could–"
She pressed two fingers firmly against his lips and shook her head. "Stop. I get it. It's okay."
Something in his chest snapped loose, and he inhaled so deeply that he thought his lungs would burst. "Go somewhere with me," he blurted out.
Bella pulled her hand back. "What?"
Brows furrowed, he looked anywhere but her face. "Uh... what I mean is – would you like to do something? With me?"
"Oh. You mean, go out."
"Yes. Unless you prefer to stay in. We could also stay in, I have movies–"
Her fingers tangled themselves into his hair once more. "We don't have to stay in."
He looked up. The hesitant smile curling on the corner of her lips mirrored his own.
"Special Agent Britt." Mark Britt slid his badge across the yellowed veneer of the desk that stood at the entrance to the police station. The officer sitting on the other side picked up the small leather sleeve and studied it over his glasses. One gray eyebrow dipped as the man peered closely at Mark's name, then his ID number, and finally his picture. Then he looked back at Mark, nodded solemnly, and set the badge down between them. Mark slipped it back into his pocket.
"Pardon the scrutiny, Agent Britt," said the officer. "We don't get too many of you federal types around here. I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't make damn sure you are who you say you are."
Mark gave a curt nod.
"So what brings you to the fair village of Channahon, Illinois?" The cop – Officer Hastings, according to the thin metallic tag pinned to his uniform – folded his hands together and leaned forward in his chair.
"Your department has jurisdiction over the wetlands and the river treatment facilities upstream." It was a statement rather than a question.
Hastings began to nod. "The wetlands outside of town? Yeah, we're in charge of those. The state park down the road, too, but not the Goose Lake area. You'd have to go up to Morris if you wanted –"
"I'm not interested in the lake. Just the river."
Hastings refolded his hands and cocked his head. "All right. And what is it about our stretch of the Des Plaines that the Federal Bureau of Investigation finds so interesting?"
Mark bit back the urge to scowl. The last thing he needed was lip from an aging cop in a double wide trailer for a police station. "The bodies," he said stiffly. "I'm here about the bodies you've pulled out of that river."
All traces of Midwestern congeniality vanished from the man's round, wrinkled face. "What bodies?" he asked, but the recognition that flashed through his eyes told them both the question was a farce.
"I need information on any John or Jane Does your department picked up recently."
Hastings pulled his glasses off with a jerk and let them tumble onto a pile of paperwork. "Agent, I think you're in the wrong town after all. We don't – "
Mark brought both palms down on the table in front of him. "Cut the crap, Officer. For years, your department has had the worst clearance rate of any town its size in the entire state. Now you're gonna tell me all those murders are local, and you have an ID on every single victim? Or are you trying to obstruct a federal investigation for the hell of it?"
The corners of Hastings' mouth drifted into a deep, resigned frown. He sighed and glanced up at Mark through thick eyebrows. "I'm telling you the truth. You're in the wrong town. Those aren't our bodies anymore."
"What do you mean, they're not–"
"Just what I said, Agent. The lieutenant and the mayor had to threaten to go to the press twice before Chicago finally agreed, but they're takin' 'em back next month."
Mark leaned away from the desk and barely kept himself from nodding in triumph. Bullseye. Just as he'd guessed, the bodies were coming out of Chicago. Channahon, Illinois was fifty miles from Michigan Avenue and less than twenty from where the Chicago River fed into the Des Plaines. When he'd poured over the local crime statistics for the suburbs and townships in the region, the murder reports for this one stuck out like a sore thumb. A population of sixty four hundred with less than a dozen armed robberies and assaults per year, but a body count to rival a city ten times its size. The department had just fifteen officers on staff and barely enough resources to mount more than two homicide investigations a year. If somebody in Chicago was looking for a way to get rid of bodies, dumping them in the river and letting them float down to a town like Channahon was one of the brighter ideas they could have had.
But he never would have expected Chicago's commissioner to acknowledge it. "The city's opening investigations?"
Hastings rocked back in his chair. "Ha! Cook County take on twenty-three unidentified murders with the elections just around the corner? Yeah, and I'm Batman. They're taking the bodies, Agent. Getting them out of our morgue to keep us from bitchin' too loud. But no one's asked for any of the paperwork or forensics we've managed pull together, so I'll give you two guesses on how long they're gonna bother keepin' 'em around before firing up the incinerator."
Mark shook his head and scoffed. Bullshit like this was exactly why he'd never joined the force. Oh, he'd considered it now and then, but even with the less-than-stellar progress of his career at the Bureau, he was glad that he never became a cop, never had to deal with the bullshit that came with being a puppet of the local government. At least at the Bureau, there was only one guy on top of the ladder.
He looked around the station. A handful of desks lined the walls of the long, narrow room. A lamp was lit at the last one where a female officer sat in front of a stack of files. Though her pen still hovered in the air, she had turned her attention to the front of the station, eyes fixed squarely on him. In the kitchen behind her, a half-empty coffee pot sat steaming in the coffee maker. Otherwise, the place was empty.
He turned back to Hastings. "Well, yours or not, I'd like to have a look at any bodies that your people pulled out of the river in the last eighteen months."
"As you please, Agent. It'll take me a little while to round up the files, though, and I can't let you in the morgue 'till the examiner comes in a few hours from now. You wanna come back in the morning?"
"No. I'll wait."
Hastings peered at the clock on the wall, where the little hand was inching just past midnight, and fixed Mark with another long look. "All right. Suit yourself." He pushed his chair back and headed down the row of desks to the back of the building. When he passed the other officer, he leaned over and muttered something. She shook her head and went back to her paperwork.
Mark sighed, shoved his hands deep into his pockets, and lowered himself into a plastic chair next to the door. He was tired. The drive here from his home in northern Virginia had taken all day, and he had to be back at his desk in less than 36 hours. He'd told his wife that he was collecting evidence out of state, but the truth was, nobody from the department knew he was here. He wasn't even going to claim the gas expense. The AD had demanded a body, "bitten and drained," but she'd also made it perfectly clear that initiative like this wasn't going to be welcomed while he was on the clock. Well, never mind that. He would burn as many weekends as necessary; he was more certain than ever that Angela Carter had set him on the right path. Once he led the investigation that would capture the Bureau's first vampire, he'd have to thank her for it.
"Agent Britt?" Officer Hastings' deep, cigarette-scratched voice cut into his thoughts. "The boys at the treatment station pulled a few bones out of their turbines a few months back. You wanna read about those too?"
"Yeah," he nodded. "I want to read about everything."
Pat Taylor and James Pelzer's apartment was on the seventh floor of a brick building that stood adjacent to a YMCA and two blocks away from one of the area's biggest hospitals. A convenience store and a pawn shop occupied the retail space on the first floor, and once, in the alleyway between this building and the Y, Edward had killed a prostitute.
He didn't remembered the incident on his first trip here, but now, as he circled the building looking for the most efficient route into Taylor and Pelzer's living room, it came back to him in a flash, and he lifted his head in the direction of the lake where he had gone to dispose of the body.
At the time, he was only vaguely aware of what the woman was expecting, of what a normal human male would have done in his place. Now, as the memory resurfaced, an unexpected thought arose with it: Could the encounter have played out differently if he wasn't out looking for a meal? If instead he had even a shred of interest in the parts of her body he wasn't intending to bite?
He remembered how the prostitute's hair swept across her cleavage; her thick legs in tall, black boots that gleamed in the streetlight; red fingernails that reached for his arm in encouragement. As he'd led her around the corner, she even slid a hand into the back pocket of his pants. He had jerked back immediately, swatting her away as one would a wasp. He had been disgusted. The contact felt unnatural, and it set his teeth on edge. Back then, it was the same with any human – he hadn't wanted any of them to touch him. So unlike now...
Abruptly, he pushed those thoughts aside. His mind was circling dangerous notions, notions he had no idea what to do with. He turned his attention to the matter at hand.
Nineteen days ago, on his previous visit to the apartment, he had learned that the fire escape would creak under his weight. He avoided it this time, bending down to untie his shoes instead. Wedging toes and fingers into the crevices dotting the wall, he began to scale the back of the building. On the seventh floor, he found Taylor and Pelzer's windows wide open, as he'd expected. Central air conditioning was not common in old buildings like this one.
Pulling himself up onto the window ledge that looked into the living room, he balanced there while working the wire screen free of its thin, aluminum frame. It came out with a pop, and he reached into the darkened room to set it on the floor before slipping inside.
The apartment was unoccupied, as he knew it would be. Thirty two minutes earlier, Pat Taylor had ordered a third pitcher of beer for himself and two others at the bar he patronized regularly, and since he was not due at work until noon the following day, he was not likely to return home for at least another hour. Not that Edward would need that long.
James Pelzer's bedroom was filthy – soiled carpeting, clothes strewn about the floor, a half-filled glass of something opaque collecting dust on the nightstand. Momentarily regretting his lack of shoes, Edward made his way over to the dresser in the corner, the top surface of which was littered with piles of the man's mail. He shuffled through it quickly, periodically tossing an envelope with a particular return address into a separate stack. He did the same with the bills and bank statements he found on the nightstand and on top of the toilet in the adjacent bathroom. Sitting down on the corner of the bed, he began to go through the selected papers more slowly, copying various account numbers into a small notebook he had brought with him.
These, in addition to a passport and social security number, would round out the data he intended to follow. From James Pelzer's email, he had discovered that the man went to Mexico on a one-way ticket. The automatic reply on the account informed all senders that Pelzer would have limited opportunity to return messages during the next few weeks. From this, Edward supposed two things: One, that Pelzer intended to remain in Mexico until his father died, and two, that wherever he was staying did not provide reliable Internet access, so he was not likely to purchase his return ticket online. In the absence of telephone communication to listen in on and email to intercept, the next best method for discovering when Pelzer would return to the country was to track his money. Although Edward did not have the skills himself, there were several individuals who, given an account number and a hefty fee, could provide him with a daily list of any transactions conducted with the credit or debit card in question. Wherever he was, Pelzer would have to come back eventually, and he would need cash to do it. Should he make a withdrawal, book a plane ticket, or even buy a stick of gum at an airport, Edward would know about it.
He had replaced most of the documents when his ears registered the whine of old elevator cables and the dull booming of men's voices somewhere below. Tossing the remaining envelopes onto the dresser, he headed back to the living room. The elevator opened, and footsteps stopped at the door just as he reached the window.
Keys clanged against a lock. "Come on man, just gotta sleep it off," said a male voice Edward didn't recognize. Sliding through the window frame, he snapped the wire screen back into place just as lights came on inside the apartment. Once outside, he allowed himself a flash of irritation. What was Pat Taylor doing home now?
The front door slammed shut. "Fuck, man. I gotta puke." Taylor's groan was accompanied by heavy, uneven footsteps.
"Again? Shit. At least you made it to the john this time."
Out on the ledge, Edward shook his head in disdain. He simply couldn't understand the appeal of alcohol, and it vexed him that the men who consumed it became so unpredictable. Well, even if the idiot stumbled home well before his due, at least Edward had gotten the information he had come for. Turning his attention to the wall below, he began to trace a pattern of crevices that would take him back down to the street. Before he could reach for the first one, however, an unmistakable lightness in his back pocket made him freeze. The notebook.
He fumbled through each pocket of his slacks, but they were all empty. Scanning the ground below, his eyes could make out each individual crack in the pavement, but he saw no trace of the small rectangle of papers that should have never left his person. And there was only one place it could be.
Letting out a sharp breath, he pulled himself closer to the window.
Inside the apartment, the man Taylor had come with stood with his back to the window, shaking his head at the bathroom door. Taylor himself could be heard heaving just on the other side. And there, on the gray carpet in front of James Pelzer's bedroom, lay Edward's notebook; beige, thin, barely bigger than a wallet, and less than ten feet out of reach.
He gritted his teeth at his stupidity. Should the notebook be discovered, there was no information inside that would lead directly back to him, and certainly nothing to identify his clients or targets. Even the numbers he had just written were arranged in a pattern that would take an amateur cryptographer several hours to decipher. But it did have his handwriting, his fingerprints, and maybe even traces of his saliva, none of which he was eager to share with law enforcement.
Momentarily, Pat Taylor stumbled out of the bathroom, wiping his mouth with a clumsy sweep of one arm. The sour scent of stomach acid mixed with alcohol assailed Edward's nose, and he leaned away from the window. At this point, his options were limited to exactly one – wait until the drunkard fell asleep, then go recover his property. Should either of the men inside find the notebook first, he could only hope for an opportunity to replace it with a decoy before they could decide what to do with it.
You fool, he thought to himself, you careless fool.
"Where the fuck is Sarah?" Pat Taylor slurred from inside.
"Who?"
"Sarah, man, Sarah...she was askin' for it all night."
The other man snorted. "What the fuck are you talking about? If you mean that blonde who let you buy her a beer, she left before you even started puking."
"Fuck, man. I bought that bitch a beer. I bought her a fuckin' beer."
"Yeah, yeah. I gotta go."
"Fuck you, Jay. I bought her a fuckin' beer!"
"Right. Later, Pattie. Go sleep it off."
The front door slammed shut, and a few minutes later, the man who had brought Pat Taylor home walked out into the street below and disappeared around a corner. Inside the apartment, Taylor had pulled something out of his freezer, and was trying to operate the microwave. He kept pushing buttons, the wrong ones apparently. The machine beeped in protest, and after a minute of this, Edward found himself fighting the urge to climb inside and shove the frozen package of food down the man's throat.
Abruptly, the noise ceased. Sneaking a glance inside, Edward caught sight of Taylor stumbling toward the couch, his would-be dinner still sitting on the kitchen counter. The man dropped onto his back among the worn, blue cushions. Scarcely moving a muscle, Edward held his place for the next twenty minutes, listening intently as Pat Taylor's breath slowed and deepened. Finally, when loud, uneven snores began to rumble through the apartment, he reached once more for the screen hanging across the window.
Pat Taylor didn't even twitch as Edward slipped back over the windowsill. Three silent steps, and the notebook was back in his pocket, the front one this time, tucked as deeply as it would go. He turned back to the window, but even as his foot slid along the carpet, something made him pause. Slowly, he turned on his heel until he faced the prone figure on the couch.
Taylor's body reeked of stomach acid and stale alcohol. Soiled black hair was plastered against his forehead; his mouth was gaping open, a line of saliva trickling onto the cushion below.
Edward took one step forward, then another, until his hands hovered less than three inches from the sleeping man's throat. He heard Bella's flat, quiet voice in his head. She was raped and killed. She died at their apartment.
Anger surged through him, stronger than any he had ever felt before. His hands began to shake. He curled them into fists.
"I will kill you," he whispered to the sleeping man, "and you will know why."
End notes:
Well, hope that was worth the wait!
Many of the future chapters will come with multiple scenes like this one. Would you prefer the scenes to be their own (much shorter) updates, or should I stick to bundling them together into chapters that take longer to publish?
Thanks again for sticking with me, guys! You make me want to go and write, even when glee is on...
