.
"If kisses were the water I would give you the sea,
If hugs were the leaves I would give you a tree,
But if love was time, I would give you eternity."
-Anonymous
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I was in heaven-and as close to sleep as I could get, for a vampire who can't sleep.
Being in the meadow, with Edythe, was where I'd spent most days in the last few months.
I could feel the sunshine, more frequent now that we were nearing summer, buttery warm, melting into every facet of my shimmering skin.
"I've decided," came Edythe's quiet, musical voice, "that this is the closest to heaven I'll get." She pressed her full, silken lips to the exposed skin of my bare chest.
"Mmm," I hummed, running blind-but perfectly on target-fingers through her hair. "I was just thinking the same thing."
I opened one eye a slit, and Edythe was sitting up, leaning over me. Her eyes were the effervescent hue of butterscotch, and her expression was amused. Her hair had been haphazardly pulled back from her face in a sloppy bun, but most of the long tendrils had escaped, brushing against my chest in the easy, mellow breeze.
The sunlight shattered off her skin, and in the prisms of colored light refracting into the air, I could see every color of the rainbow-including the final, eighth color, that I couldn't put a name to, I had discovered with my new vampire eyes.
She was so beautiful.
"We should be getting back," Edythe murmured. I could hear every intimate syllable as each caressed her tongue, and the way her lips brushed together seductively.
"No thanks." I locked my arms around her waist, pressing hands into the concave small of her back, the satin-smooth skin there exposed by the way her top had ridden up. The pressure I applied pressed her impossibly closer, and she laughed, almost sounding breathless as she braced herself against my chest with flat palms.
She surrendered easily, molding the shape of her sun-drenched lips to mine. Her mouth moved languidly against mine, taking her sweet time, which I was utterly and totally fine with. I could take my time, too, and was planning on it.
Greedily, I pressed her closer, inhaling her absurdly sweet breath. If I'd been human still, my heart would be pounding, but as it was, it lay dormant, silent under her hands, inside my hollow chest.
My breathing, however, was a different story altogether, a leftover human reaction to her closeness, and this new world we'd been exploring since I'd been changed, and my fragility was no longer an issue.
"Okay, really," Edythe giggled when I rolled, pinning her in the grass beneath me, "we should go… Beau… Beau!" she shrieked, giggling as I ducked my lips under her chin, kissing down the column of her pale, ethereal throat.
A playful growl built in her chest, and somehow, she slithered out from underneath me, somersaulting away from me.
"We really should go. I promised-"
I dove for her, and though she couldn't foresee the move I was about to make, she was faster than I was. Edythe danced lithely out of my grasp, skipping backward across the meadow.
"I promised-" she continued, laughter pealing like bells. Oh, God, how I adored that sound… "-Archie I'd meet him after school."
It was the second week of May, and Edythe and I had not returned to school-myself for obvious reasons-I was supposed to be dead-and Edythe for lesser-known reasons, which would not be shared with the public. The story was that she'd been so broken-up over my supposed death, she couldn't stand going back to school, so Earnest had decided to home school her for the remainder of her high school career. Edythe hadn't been upset about besotting her eighty-somethingth high school diploma.
The real reason was that Edythe had been busy mentoring me, in my newly founded vampire life.
To everyone's immense surprise, I'd hardly needed it. I had found the adjustment to vampire life shockingly easy.
Jessamine had been appalled at my-as she put it-profound cognizance of self-control.
It wasn't as easy as she made it seem, but then, I was also pleased to find that the last few months had barely been anything like I was told they would be… Human instincts buried deep inside, hungry only for the satiating river of blood, wild, crazed, desperate…
Yes, it was true-my thirst for blood was not as easily quenched as the others', and I had to hunt more frequently. But I was incredibly delighted to discover that I was the Beau I had always been, even before the change. And other hungers, hungers I thought I would have lost for a long time, were as present as ever-sharper, even.
Speaking of…
"Archie, smarchie," I muttered, beginning to circle Edythe slowly now. She mirrored my advances, defensive. "He can wait." I dove again, asserting a little too much velocity-I was still learning-and as my hands found purchase on Edythe's tiny waist, we catapulted backward, lurching through the foliage ringing the perimeter of the meadow and smashing into a tall fir tree.
I turned just in time, keeping Edythe tight in my arms, so that it was my stone back that bouldered into the thick, aged trunk so hard that it split in two with a groan that would be ear-splitting to a human, but which brought no resulting pain to my vampiric ears. The tree toppled, and we fell with it, our collision ringing like the smack of boulders through the dense brush of the forest.
Edythe's perfect, bell-like laughter rang out again as the vestiges of our corruption of nature stilled beneath us.
"Poor Archie," Edythe pretended to pout, "We'll really be late now, trying to put this poor tree back together."
Another tree, closeby, groaned, leaning precariously, and the musky scent of dirt, unhinging, entered my nostrils.
I flipped us so that I was the one hovering over Edythe now.
"Screw the damned tree," I practically breathed, and lowered my mouth to hers, slipping a leg between hers to hold her in place against the fallen tree trunk.
I barely noticed when the other tree came toppling down, crashing into my back, splintering off its stony stability, leaves and twigs, bark and moss detonating every which way.
Forest debris rained down over us, and Edythe burst into laughter once more at my wild, savage ways.
Suddenly, my head whipped up reflexively, automatically, catching the scent. The sound of the forest crashing down around them had startled a small herd of deer, grazing a couple of miles off. Their hearts, heavy and thudding with an elixir like none other-okay, they were herbivores, so it wasn't top-notch, exactly, but it would do-picked up speed as their heads whipped up, as well as mine. And then they cleared the small space they'd occupied, moving fast, unsure of what had scared them, only knowing they needed to get away from the threat, quickly.
But I was quicker, the threat they didn't see coming.
.
"Well, no wonder you two took so long," Archie said when we walked through the front door. He and Jess were sitting on the floor in the living room, a game of Canasta between them.
Jess glanced up from her hand of cards, giving the both of us a quick once-over. She rolled her eyes affectionately.
"Oh, you know Beau and his hungers," Edythe said, knowing very well what Archie had been getting at.
Absently, self-conscious, I picked leaves out of Edythe's tangled hair. If I could have, I'd be displaying quite the show of blotchy red spots right about now.
"Beaufort," Archie said in his disapproving tone, "I just bought you that shirt last week."
"I liked it, too," Edythe mused, plucking at its uselessness now. It had been torn, shredded, really, between the trees, and the struggling hooves of the two deer I'd managed to ascertain. "It reminded me of your human eyes."
I gazed down at her for a moment, and then said, "I'd better go change."
I headed up the first set of stairs, past Carine's office door, through which I could hear her talking to someone on the phone. I moved up the second flight of stairs, to the third floor, to Edythe's-no, mine and Edythe's-bedroom. A few things had been moved around, the biggest change being the addition of a king-sized bed, draped in a golden duvet.
I had been embarrassed when the thing had been brought upstairs, knowing what the only reason a vampire owning a bed would be for, but no one seemed embarrassed about it, or even awkward. I supposed, really, nothing much got by in this house, with super-sensitive hearing and all, and the fact that nobody slept.
We all tried to be respectful of each others' privacy, but there was more than just the tranquil, warm beauty behind the reason Edythe and I liked to visit the meadow so frequently.
Quickly, I stripped my muddled tattered button up, and slipped on a Royal Blood band t-shirt, something Archie wouldn't exactly approve of, but then, what did I care? I wasn't planning on letting him choose what I wore every day for the rest of forever, was I now?
I stopped in the bathroom down the hall, glancing at myself in the mirror. Every so often, I'd catch my reflection, in this strange, surreal sense-seeing the boy standing there, and then realizing that it was me. Parts of me were familiar. The old Beau was still there-dark shock of hair against pale skin, though the contrast was, admittedly, more stark now… Features sharpened, muscles exaggerated, as if I'd been edited in some real-life version of Photo Shop. And the eyes… The eyes were always what shocked me most.
It had been a few months now, and so they weren't so red anymore, but they were still an astonishment. They were more a burning amber, the color of burning embers in a campfire now, somewhere between crimson and topaz.
Briefly, I contemplated the idea of red eyes for life, and all that would entail… I couldn't deny the curiosity wasn't there, but curiosity and desire are two very different things.
And I wanted to live this spectacular new life with Edythe.
She'd made mistakes, yes, something she couldn't seem to let herself forget, and I had decided to learn from her remorse and pain.
Besides, there was the part of it that I couldn't… wouldn't… imagine. Teeth sinking into real-life human flesh, causing someone intentional pain-even, make that most likely, death-for my own, selfish gain…
The ghost of a shudder, really more the memory of the sensation than the actual ministration, quaked through me.
I turned away from the bathroom mirror and went back downstairs.
