Author's Note: First the mea culpa (potentially). While I legitimately know how to swing dance, horseback riding is another thing... I took one class in college and it was a few years ago, so if there are any equestrians out there who notice problems, please PM me and I'll adjust the copy as needed.
As for the fun stuff, thanks for reading! The reviews are wonderful and are a light in my darkened place :)
I'm beginning to circle toward the end of the ride, the landing strip is in sight. I'm aiming for 10 parts at this point, but no promises. I may go over if given the inspiration. But I'm almost done traumatizing poor Beth's childhood. Don't worry, I eventually move on to poking other characters with a stick ;)
Part Seven
Beth swung up into the saddle and made a face as Matt snapped another photo with the camera Mom had sent along.
In the last four years, her family had begun taking pictures, documenting everything as if they might have to prove their existence later to some unknown entity. Rolls and rolls of film filled with mundane moments, fake smiles and absent people. There was a drawer in the kitchen dedicated to undeveloped rolls.
"You're seriously okay with doing this on your own?" Matt questioned from below.
"I'm not alone. I've got Bella," Beth leaned in and patted her horse's neck. "Go, be responsible, finish your paper. I'll be fine."
Matt glanced at his watch.
"I'll be at the library in south quad while you're on the ride. I will be right here when you finish. Do not move. Do not follow some freshman to his dorm. Do not take candy from strangers. Do not do anything stupid, alright?" Matt backed away from his sister with reluctance.
"Don't worry so much. You'll get wrinkles," Beth called as the line of trail horses slowly moved away from the fence and down into the cool shadows of the forest.
Beth was at the end of the line of trail horses. She adjusted her seat and wished the guide would lose sight of her, just for a bit.
People rarely just left her alone nowadays. Her mother, her friends, her grandparents, her brother. Someone was always there to drive away the feelings she got when she had time to think. The feeling of missing something, the eyes that always seemed to rest on her. Beth suspected she'd be a very different person away from the crowd. But, then again, she had made the decision to walk away from alone two years ago.
She was weird – that was the general opinion of the eighth grade class of Marshall Junior High by the time she left it. When Beth finished out her seventh grade year, most kids were nice. Her friends gave sympathetic looks, awkward hugs and helped her navigate the stairs on crutches for the last two months of school. Boys were assigned to carry her books and teachers let her turn papers in late, skip projects altogether.
But her grief had a much longer shelf life than their patience.
There were no tears. That would have been easier, normal. Beth just drifted, in and out of conversations, through the halls. She was the only girl in their science class who willingly grabbed a knife and started cutting into her frog, pinning back the skin and scooping out the little black eggs. When the gifted class visited the state coroner's office, Beth had to fake a shudder when clear jars heavy with body parts – skin samples, organ tissue – were passed around.
The flashes still came, though fewer and farther between. She'd seen the city from a dizzying height, she'd felt pain like a sunburn skating across her skin even in the shade, she saw barely-dressed women collapsed against a man who didn't seem to care but rattled off orders at others.
And she smelled phantom odors. Especially blood. Copper and something more, lingering in her fallible nose. Sometimes she looked down and saw spatters blood on her hands, her clothes that she couldn't wash off.
After a handful of CAT scans, two pediatricians, a neurologist and tests she couldn't pronounce, Beth was left in the not-so-capable hands of psychiatrist Roger Newsome. He diagnosed her with post-traumatic stress disorder, forcing her to describe the accident, to remember details of her father's death in as vivid detail as she could manage. Again. And again.
Four sessions later, Beth stopped talking about what she saw.
"I just needed to talk about it," she told her mother over dinner one night. "All I smell tonight is mac and cheese."
Diane glanced at her daughter, looking for her tells – a fluttering of the eyelids, pursing her lips. Nothing. Either she was better, or a better liar.
"We'll hold off on more sessions then, Bethie," Diane conceded. "Let's see how things go."
After school, friends, homework, her room and Bogart had all been pronounced "fine" and a minute after Beth's dish had been dried, she retreated to her room.
There, she cranked the CD Matt had sent her, Melissa Etheridge, just ten seconds of window-shaking noise, before lowering it to a reasonable volume. She methodically unlocked and opened the window her mother closed each day and started in on her homework.
Beth was not stupid. By the time she started high school, with its flood of new faces and opportunities, Beth had a steady hand with the eyeliner, a place on the dance team and the school newspaper and a new person to be. She talked too much and laughed a little too loud, but shrugged off those things she knew a 14-year-old girl shouldn't know and shouldn't see. By her junior year of high school, weird Beth was a distant memory. Girls wanted to be her friend and boys wanted in her pants, like any normal 16-year-old.
She was so convincing and so utterly normal that she almost convinced herself that it was all a dream. Almost.
In the spirit of every normal teenager, she was dying to leave home. Her open window was more to remind her she could always get out than to let some imaginary friend in.
Every weekend she had some place else to be – the beach with Sarah, a concert in San Jose, the backseat of a boyfriend's car, shopping in Salinas. Like a rubber band, she pulled herself as far out as she could just to snap back home a day later.
One weekend she wandered to the bank, withdrew 500 from the college fund her mother thought she didn't know about and bought plane tickets to Colorado, where Matt was in grad school.
"I have an interview at UC," she announced just before her mother headed to bed that night.
"Which campus are you looking at? L.A.? Berkeley?" her mother paused. "I thought maybe you could talk to my friend at Stanford."
Beth gave her mother a suffering stare.
"The University. Of. Colorado." she enunciated. "I already bought the place tickets. It's in a week."
"Beth, I just think that's a little far."
"It wasn't too far for Matt."
"You're not Matt, as you remind me every time you get in trouble," her mother sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Not tonight, Bethie. Please."
The little lines around her mother's eyes suddenly seemed deeper to Beth. The line between her eyes a deep ridge. Her mother looked old and tired.
The rage died in Beth as quickly as it started. She had gone through the motions of collecting admissions material for the school, talking to the recruiter about the journalism program. But she knew she wasn't leaving L.A.
"Fine, Mom," she couldn't seem to thaw her voice. "But I already bought the tickets, so I'm going."
The rhythm of Bella's walk lulled Beth into a mellow state, the sun filtering through the leaves and a cool spring wind blowing the smells of the forest. The thud of hoofs and creak of the leather saddle brought back memories of her father. His suit gone, jeans and flannel, lifting her up on a horse at Nana and Papa's, with the reins tucked in his hands. His grin when Beth clutched saddle horn and squeezed her little legs like she would gallop off into the sunset.
"Hold tight, baby," she almost heard his voice from far away.
Beth squeezed her eyes shut. The tears came at the oddest times. A minute ago, she would have said she was happy. Riding alone between sun and shadows. Suddenly, that seemed immeasurably sad.
He'd never been to Colorado. Josef had tried to woo him into joining him on any number of trips, but despite the comfortable cold, Mick just didn't see himself as a skier.
Finally Josef had found the bribe that would work: the girl.
"I know something you don't know," Josef announced at the end of Friday night poker.
"Given you had a 350 year head start, that's pretty likely," Mick rolled the bottles against the green felt, liking the swish of liquid despite himself.
"I know something new you don't know, smart ass."
"Do tell," Mick gave a nod and a half smile to the freshie who'd wandered in. He quickly pocketed the vials.
"Not that I want to encourage you in your stalker-ish ways, but the girl -- she flew out to Colorado last night for the weekend," Josef ran a finger down the neck of his midmorning snack. She shivered. Josef tilted her back and bit. For a moment, the light sucking sound was the only one in the room as Mick considered the information.
After her accident, Mick watched her again. The blood he'd pumped into her kept them tied, an unfortunate consequence that Josef assured would fade with time, though it would probably never disappear completely.
"On the bright side, eventually she'll die, buddy," Josef had kidded, only for Mick to disappear for a month.
He did everything he could to close her off from his font of regret and endless memory.
This time Mick treated it as more business than pleasure, an obligation he wouldn't walk away from. That way it didn't hurt so much when he suddenly realized that she would soon stop being a child.
Unfortunately for Mick, he'd used Josef's resources on occasion to watch from a distance. A staff photographer for tracking her in the daytime, Josef's expertise to make sure the meager college fund her father had left for her grew faster than it had any right to.
"How do you know?"
"A few hundred dollars unexpectedly left the account yesterday and skied its way on over to United Air," Josef replied, licking a cool line over the fresh wounds.
"So, you telling me out of the kindness of your heart?"
Josef gave a sharp laugh.
"Try the need for speed. And company. I bought a little company that sells snowmobiles, ski equipment and all that a while ago. I want to check it out. And I want you to come with me," the older vampire announced.
Mick weighed how annoyed his was at being coerced and how much he wanted to have Beth nearby.
"When do you want to leave?"
"Tonight," Josef gave an evil grin, leading his friend downstairs. "I took the liberty of sending one of the girls over for your things during the game."
Mick sighed as a freshie met them at the bottom of the stairs, bearing a suitcase he recognized from the back of his closet.
"Deal is, you have to hit the slopes with me for six hours before I tell you where in Colorado she is."
"You do know I'm a private investigator, right? Someone who could probably investigate that fact pretty quickly?"
Josef frowned.
"Two hours?"
"How 'bout I pour the shots and give you a nice push at the top of the hill?"
Beth was a few lengths behind the rest of the group, college coeds on romantic dates, kids her age with siblings and friends, giggling sorority girls. The trail guide hadn't counted heads in a while and probably hadn't noticed how far back Beth was.
On a whim, she pulled the reins and veered her horse to the right where a much smaller trail headed downhill. The brush was cleared, but all the tracks were dried. She had the urge to run her horse far and fast.
Once she was out of earshot, she eased Bella into a faster pace, just shy of a gallop. The rustle of the branches, the pounding of hoofs filled her ears.
Beth eyed a downed branch further down the trail, arching a foot or so into the air. She urged her horse faster, to a full gallop, straightened her legs slightly and tightened her calves.
Bella soared into the air, a graceful arc over the wood, Beth neatly bent above her. The beast landed, pulling the breath out of Beth.
She gave herself a little cheer of success.
It cut short when out of the corner of her eye she saw a shadow in the shape of a man. Beth jerked around, accidentally pulling back on the bit and shifting her weight.
In response, Bella snapped to a stop. She reared and Beth felt her balance go out of center. She released the reins as instinct took over – arms and legs tucked, her backside slammed into the dirt as she rolled off, tumbling away from the horse's rearing legs.
With a solid force, she smacked her shoulders and head against a tree stump, sending edges of white into her vision.
Mick froze. He felt the fall coming the moment her head turned toward him. Every muscle screamed to run over and catch her, but that wasn't exactly watching from the shadows and quietly making sure she was okay.
It had been stupid to track her. He'd compromised with Josef, taking two runs on skis that he had, in fact, not liked, and finishing the night on snowmobiles that he did.
Now Josef was happily ensconced in a freezer somewhere outside Aspen. He was miles away following a girl on a horse, like a dog.
It was as though she waited for him to be nearby to do something immensely stupid. Like leave the nice safe guided ride for a solitary gallop down an unknown trail in the forest. Maybe he should have read her stories about what happened to little girls who wandered through the woods alone. Not every wolf was a vegetarian like him.
He heard the smack of skull against timber, the odor of blood. For an impossible second, she didn't move and he vowed to walk into the sun.
Then a groan.
"Dammit," Beth swore definitely and rubbed the lump. A scrape, a bump. Nothing more. "Next time I'll wear the damn helmet no matter what it does to my hair."
The horse was a few feet away, casually chewing on weeds by the side of the trail. Beth wandered over, grabbed the reins and moved toward the stump. Mick darted between two trees as the rays of the falling sun bore down on him.
Beth froze. She stopped in mid-climb and stared into the woods, deep into the shadows.
"Hello?" her voice echoed. "Are you there?"
Every part of him wanted to scream "yes," he was there. He wanted it as much as he wanted to catch her. As much as he wanted to watch her every moment of the day in all the trivial moments that made up one beautiful human life.
But, like most of his life, he was still and silent.
When her head had hit it was as though Beth saw two things at once. The sky, the horse, the ripples of pain. And layered on top of that was a view from farther away, herself thudding against the stump in vivid detail against a million others her brain couldn't process, the edges of leaves, the detail of the bark, the outline of tiny insects buzzing through the air nearby.
For just a second, she felt the familiar presence. Comforting, tense, unceasing ... It brought memories of her guardian angel with his cool touch and solid wall against the bad things. In a moment of unguarded fantasy, she let the dark shadow take the shape of her memory.
She called out. Nothing.
Beth climbed the stump and mounted her horse. She galloped down the trail, the faint rustling of leaves and the occasional flash of shadow following her the whole way.