Descending Star

COUPLES

As the days wore on, Ben gave up on diversions and distractions, and he regressed to waiting by his wide open window, night and day. He peered out into the night in the hope of seeing her looking back, and predictably enough, he saw her everywhere. She watched him from the boughs of the maple tree, from the hemlocks beyond the yard, from the rooftop of the neighboring house, from tall treetops deep in the woods, from hammocks suspended on silver string under the mauve shadows beneath the clouds. Edythe was more guardian angel than vampire, and she watched over him all night, or so he believed.

Ben knew they'd had a rocky parting, but he had been stressed and anxious at the time, and he no longer recalled the specifics. Something about the fact that she had been literally falling apart from malnourishment, and how for her own good he had compelled her to feed. A reasonable response, in his opinion, to the cracks that he'd seen slashed across her knuckles and running down her neck like minor chasms. Surely she would agree, in hindsight, that his fears had been entirely justified.

Truly, he said to himself, she would take a long run, clear the air, breathe, and understand that he'd been terrified on her behalf, when he had 'sent her away,' if a reasonable person could even have called it that. She had been crumbling to pieces. She would see things clearly, and she would remember.

He had sent her away for her own good.

She had been dying.

Well, vampires could not die, not on their own, not that way. But they weren't immortal either, not by a longshot, and he couldn't help that perception and couldn't help feeling that way.

He sat at the open window every night, with the screen ajar to ward off the mosquitoes, and fell asleep there. He imagined that she had fed early on. Perhaps she had murdered humans, having gone to extremes to revitalize herself, and if so, he forgave it without a thought, sight unseen. She'd been falling apart. Whatever she had done, it had been necessary. He had to presume that she had reconstituted herself, back to her strong and glorious self, yet night after night, she stayed away. Maybe now, with the crisis having passed, she was easing back into her vegetarian lifestyle, so that when she did come back, she would be back to gold eyes, so as not to shock him.

What had become of her? Why had she not returned?

Don't follow me, he had said, but surely she had understood the context. He had meant, don't follow me, so as to attend to feeding, and mending, and revitalizing herself.

So, she had mended. By now, she must have mended.

Victor still menaced them, along the dark rough edges of their lives, a splinter that pried and rooted in fingernails and callous in a bid for the soft tissue beneath them, and surely Edythe had joined Alice and Jasper in a bid to finish him off, for good, so that they could be safe and secure. He dimly recalled having exhorted her to do just that.

So, she had gone after Victor. Surely, she must have.

He gazed out into the yard and woods, past the maple tree, and imagined that she had made the defeat and death of Victor her primary mission. He had exhorted her to be the vampire that he loved. That vampire would have gone forth to vanquish their red eyed foe. Ben imagined that she would return in triumph with Victor's head.

He sat at the window every night, fell asleep in his chair, and awoke deep into the early morning with pulled muscles in his neck, but she never came.

All week, on his circuits through the village, he shunned the Newtons' place– not to avoid Zoey, but because he didn't strictly know whether or not she had arrived– the rumor mill notwithstanding– and didn't want to know.