11. Shades

I heard their footsteps, right outside my hiding place. Although I knew they would never be able to hear my breath inside this morbid box, my air supply was cut off abruptly as my body reacted without my volition. Every inclination of my senses screamed for me to hold still, to lie like the corpse I would have been. And yet, my other, more monstrous sense urged me to spring out of hiding and end these fragile humans' search for me. I fought that urge immediately, stifling it before it became more than a whim. Lately, I had been keeping dangerous company, and in my mind was the wise proverb, "Bad company corrupts good morals". This company was awakening in me some long-buried desires, ones I had no wish to feed.

"There's no way he could have hidden this long in here," said one of the men outside my box, rapping on the high metal cabinets.

"Maybe he went on into the rest of the facility," suggested a voice I knew to be that of a sheriff.

"We were right behind him," muttered another man. "He couldn't have possibly gotten that far in a couple minutes."

They didn't know anything about me, I thought, half in relief and half in pity. These men had no earthly idea of what they were up against. It would be better for them if they just forsook the investigation altogether. Investigation-- more like a man hunt.

"Come on, boys, we've been standing here for twenty minutes," groaned the sheriff. "There's no way he's hidden in one of these. He would have been running out of air by now, surely."

"Doctor, what do you think?" asked the first man.

"Hard to say," replied the doctor, his steps coming perilously close to my hiding place. Muffled by the scent of the metal encasing me, I could smell the doctor, a kind of anesthetic-and-cotton smell. I wondered what I had smelled like to my former patients. "Mmmm, rather unlikely he's still here," continued the doctor. "This isn't the most comforting room to stay in for a long period of time. And we've searched everywhere except--"

"Yeah, I know, I know, Doc. You don't want us disturbing anything. Fine. We'll move on to the rest of the campus." With the sheriff went the rest of the hunting party, their boots and tennis shoes clacking on the hard tile floor. There was nothing else to mark their passage but the slight rattle of some utensils on a table that someone bumped on their way out.

I exhaled, then pulled in air again. I'd escaped, narrowly, but thoroughly. I carefully began to slide out of my hiding place, pushing the long metal drawer open and climbing silently out. I had hated being forced to hide here, among the dead, but it had been the ideal location. If, by chance, I'd had to spend the night in hiding, I would have blended in well with the other occupants of the lab. At least all the cadavers had been safely tucked into their boxes; there was no grisly remnant of life lying on the stainless steel table in the middle of the room, right next to the stand full of autopsy instruments.

At last the decaying smell of the box I had lain in cleared out of my nose, and I ran quietly out of the room, my shoes making no sound. I had long forsaken my white coat in favor of the long trench my kind friends had lent me, and the plain jeans and t-shirt I had purchased on the run. Rosalie had been emphatic that none of my clothes except the ones I'd worn to hospital Friday should be removed-- Esme would have noticed. Rosalie had thought of everything, and I could only hope she had kept her word and held her tongue.

I also hoped Esme found my other letters, although I knew she might never open that particular copy of Pride and Prejudice again, after the first message. I hoped Edward would discover the strength I knew he possessed to keep my family together, until they all came to accept my absence as something usual, normal. Of course, such a major event in their lives would take some time to fade; that was the nature of vampires, to love slowly and then almost never fully forget. However, once I had been gone for several months, a year, they would start to forget.

It hurt deeply to think they would not remeber me, but I realized it could be no other way. In order for my children, and my Esme, to move on, I would have to become nothing more than a faint pain. Tanya and her family had survived their mother's death, and my clan was much hardier than hers. Maybe Emmett could begin the healing process, like he always did, the jokster of the family. It would be hardest for Edward and Jasper, the two that would absorb the agony of everyone else.

And Esme...I had nearly turned back when I had pictured Esme. What would she think? That I had decided I no longer wanted her? Would she listen to Rosalie's negative comments, ones we had rehearsed for an hour before I left? Esme's pain and confusion was the hardest to imagine, but I compelled myself to wish for her intense, fierce, fervent hatred of me. If Esme couldn't bring herself to be bitter about my decision, I knew my ostensible abandonment would tear her apart.

I love you, I thought sorrowfully, as I passed by a glistening window. I love you so much, Esme. I would die for you. It's just that I must die for someone else, now.

And I had to shatter my own integrity. I tried not to look, but the shining window drew my attention. There was my clean white shirt, without a single spot. There was the trench coat, swinging around my feet. And there, staring back at me from the reflective surface, was a pair of large black sunglasses, incredibly tinted with wide lenses. Unfortunately, my vamire vision could detect the eyes lying beneath the shades, wide and alert.

They were eyes colored a very authentic, harrowing red.