After 22 years of pacing to her heartbeat, Mick forced a new rhythm to his nights. He got up, he poured a glass, he pricked a vein. He dressed. He went into the world.
He did not go to the little apartment in Long Beach. He did not wait at windows. He did not linger in nearby shadows.
He cleaned her out of him. Aborted the eyes, the touch, the smile from his insides. She was gone like she was never there, the absence weighing as much as the presence.
To Josef's. Without her.
To the morgue and its dead things. Without her.
To strangers' homes and hotel beds. Without her.
Home. Without her.
Beth, Beth's eyes had no home in him now.
He poked at the hole where she'd been, testing his own raw flesh with moments of her. He read her work, he saw her face from a comfortable distance of pixels. He felt for the pain nightly and was happy to find it a dull throb.
Until the night her face wasn't just a static stare. It was her. Her face, stark against a wash of dark and blood, brought him back to her.
The first time in months he'd seen her in any place but the recesses of his mind. He could feign surprise, as though her presence was a shock to his system. But he'd been waiting for this, the last temptation of Mick.
The spot was familiar, but the body behind her wasn't. An awkward turn of limbs and joints, the spill of blood in water. And all he could see was her, so close.
Dead blood arced through him and, in moments, Mick was there. He could smell her over the blood and death there. He was in his element, the currents blowing toward him, blood on the air; and she was in hers - camera-ready, a challenge before her. The tumbling water muffled her heartbeat and he couldn't be sure the tune was the same. Evidence washing away, Mick thought. Why didn't they turn it off?
And then he saw her.
Her blond head bobbed easily underneath the police tape. The officiousness of the crime scene slid aside for her, no cops barked questions, MEs kept at the body, her pace even and steady, unhurried as though she knew the world would be at a standstill around her. No eyes on her but his.
Profile against the curtain of water, cold and barefoot, legs bare to the knee. Heel to toe, moving through the water, a dancer's step. The memory of another dance hit him, tiny limbs in a bright bedroom, white hem of a nightgown floating in circles as she twirled on the other side of the pane, eyes open to the moonlight. He remembered that child of the night -- the tiny, cool hands on his face, the world moving in her orbit, his heart caught by her gravity -- 18 years and a world apart from this woman now. Her and not her.
The shock of the familiar and alien, as he watched her, walking barefoot through a freezing fountain at two in the morning.
A man's voice chastised Beth, his voice bouncing her away from the body. And toward him.
Her wet footprints tracked across the warm concrete, her path about to crash into his. His chest tightened, the blood in him wasn't enough.
Mick's eyes fixed on her shadowed form, light behind her.
Shoes swinging in her hand, her dance steps now an easy stroll, her voice playing the scene and he froze as he caught the word. Vampire.
She came into the light again and he knew even the weakest human eyes could see him. She could see him.
"Do I know you?" Her breath caught at the sight of the man on the edge of the scene. She wanted to run her hands across his face like a blind woman searching for recognition. This man. There was something about him. Something very familiar, pulling her to him.
"You tell me." Mick dared her to find the truth in her memories, in his presence here. He let her voice echo in his head. Did they know each other any more? She was so damned close, with her rat-a-tat heart and easy smile. He'd cut the bloom, but the root remained.
"You're a cop, right?" Someone safe, strong. She shook at the cobwebs, feeling for the truth of him. The answer was there, close enough to taste.
"No." Simple truth. One of the few he could give her.
"Reporter?" It was wrong before it even left her mouth. She knew better than that. This man didn't scribble on a notepad. His hands were meant for other things.
"Nope." No lies and no easy answers this time. Her eyes were still on him and he wanted Beth, this Beth to see him.
"We've met before. you look very familiar," the hunger for his name, for who was or who he should be brayed at her. There was something about him, that nose, the lips, the half-grin that answered her questions. But the shadow of memory was fading. She could be wrong. It didn't happen often, but it happened.
"Maybe I've just got one of those faces." He was getting drunk on her eyes, her gaze. It kept him rooted when he should be running. She didn't believe him and he thrilled in the knowledge. Something in him had stayed in her.
"Okay," Beth grabbed one more time at the flicker of memory and it was gone. But he was not.
"Question - what do you like better vampire slaying rocks LA or--"
"There's no such thing as vampires," he told the girl whose exposure to his world had been early and unequivocal. She'd touched fang, his blood had been in her veins. And here he was, giving half-hearted protest.
"I don't think the girl in the fountain would agree," Beth turned away from him. She wanted in that water. She wanted to bear witness almost as much as she wanted answers from her mystery man.
Her eyes off him, the spell was broken. Mick could move again. And, he did, out of her sight, keeping her in his.
*
*
*
*
Thanks to everyone for reading. I've got a quick sequel to this story called "Digging" that takes a look at what happens when Beth finds out what Mick was up to all along.