Chapter 4.19 – Long Gone

Melinda had been staring at Faith for so long that Faith began to wonder if she’d caused her friend to malfunction.

“Are you okay?” Faith asked gently, even though the answer was written all over Melinda’s weird face.

“No. I’m not ‘okay’,” Melinda huffed. “I’ve just learned that my supposed best friend is an accessory to murder.”

“What? No, I’m not. I was never involved,” Faith insisted. “Mel, please…”

“Please what? Forgive you? Let you stay? Why should I? Why the heck would I want to be friends with someone like you?”

It was a totally valid question and one Faith had asked herself many times over the last few weeks, months, years even… and, therefore, she had an answer. “Because, I’m sorry and I really want to make things right.”

Melinda shook her head and muttered something Faith didn’t quite catch, but it sounded along the lines of ‘not this shit again’. But it couldn’t have been that, because Melinda didn’t swear. Unless she did swear now and the shift in the skinny vamp had been bigger than Faith anticipated. Somewhat perturbed, Faith pushed on.

“You know me – going with the flow of the river and not realising its drowning me ‘til it’s too late,” she paused, wondering where that flowery shower of bullshit had come from and shrugged. “I’m impulsive and thick, I suppose.”

“You’re not thick,” Melinda replied automatically. “But you might be deranged. We’re not talking about you disappearing for a night or two on a bender here, Faith. We’re talking about murder. How can you be so… blasé?”

“I’m not blasé. It affects me, I guess I just, I dunno, like, tried to switch it off? Mel, I was in too deep and I… well, wouldn’t you have been terrified of him?”

“I would have been, but we’ve long established that you and I have vastly different levels of fear tolerance, Faith.” She chewed over this for a moment before she asked gently, “Is that the reason? Were you terrified of him?”

Was she? Faith could have blurted out a lie and told Melinda what she wanted to hear, but with her friend’s sharp gaze stabbing into her like nails, she knew that being completely dishonest wasn’t going to wash. Instead she wracked her brains trying to remember how she’d felt, trying to answer Melinda’s question with at least an element of truth.

She spent a lot of time these days trying to forget the sexy arsehole, so it wasn’t an easy, or pleasant, task to recall their blood-drenched nights together.

Some bits had been scary, for sure. But terrified of him…?

Not even close.

Faith hadn’t have chance to respond before Melinda whispered, “I don’t think I can do this.”

“Do what?”

“I don’t think I can forgive you. You don’t even care.”

She said it so softly, so evenly but she may as well have screamed it in Faith’s face for the impact it had.

“You’re kidding.” Faith said, trying to shift through this eerie calm. “I am sorry, I do care… I… Oh my god, Mel, how can I not care? I have literally nothing. I have nowhere to go—”

Faith saw the moment that Melinda switched from flat to infuriated. That was utterly terrifying. Her voice was cool, so even, like it came from somewhere inside her that had been frozen over for centuries. “Do you understand why you have ‘nothing’, Faith?”

“Because he—“

“No, it’s because of you. Because you keep giving up on everything. You keep ditching everyone. You keep following your ruddy desires and ignoring how much it affects everyone else until it’s too late, until you end up back on your butt, where everyone told you you’d end up, blaming everyone and everything else for putting you there.”

“Are– are you saying that I deserved to be hurt?”

Melinda turned her head to the side; she appeared to be counting. When she turned back, her voice was little warmer, but only a smidge. “I’m sorry that he hurt you, Faith. No one wanted you to be hurt, and no one deserves to be hurt—”

“But I was asking for it, yeah?” Faith sniffled, still unable to shed any tears.

“Stop! Stop trying to make me feel bad. Just stop! I am sick of playing this game, Faith! You never listen to me! I told you he was dangerous from the start, Lilith told you from the start. Faith, even Seth told you from the start that he was he was a rotter. You didn’t think for second that maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t such a great guy?”

Faith groaned. “No… I thought you were overreacting as usual, and that Lilith was just bitter and didn’t want me having sex with her ex. And I honestly thought he was just joking…” Faith rubbed her temples, trying to locate her brain so she could stab it with her plastic nails.

“I was only trying to see the best in him, to give him a chance because no one else would; isn’t that what you good people do?”

“You’re doing it again,” Melinda growled. “Stop trying to make me feel bad.”

“I’m not, I’m trying to explain!” Faith wailed. “Ugh! Why are you being such a pain the ass?! Look, at first I was right with you, I thought it was cruel, I thought it was shitty thing to do – honest! But then I started thinking about why he’d be so open about it, and I thought… I thought he might be testing me, you know? Trying to see if I was worth opening up to properly, worth trusting. And he did start to open up; all his life, everyone has had it in for him, he’s always been the bad guy,” she wiped her eyes, surprised to actually find them wet, and took a moment to compose herself. “I tried to ignore everyone else’s opinions and just give him the benefit of the doubt and see if he… I dunno, if he changed, I guess. God, it sounds so fucking stupid. But the first time he killed someone, he told me I didn’t have to, but I did; I had to watch. I had to see it for myself, see him for myself. And when I did… I guess seeing it,actually watching what it entailed for Seth to survive, I guess it made me understand why he did it, you know?”

“No, I don’t know,” Melinda snapped. “There’s never any need to kill.”

“That’s easy for us to say, with our traditional fangs. But those weren’t any neat little puncture holes Seth made. His teeth are like these jagged little razors; he literally shreds his prey to bits, killing them was the merciful option—”

“He drank from my dad; do you know that?” Melinda blurted out. “My dad came looking for us and bumped into Seth who drank from him and left him on Lilith’s doorstep. Lilith said that Seth had mesmerised my dad, cut a small knife wound and had drank from that. So he could survive without killing, he just won’t. He kills for sport. End of.” Melinda slowly shook her head. “Faith, do you realise what you are doing? People died in front you. Brutally, unnecessarily,” she reiterated. “And you’re trying to justify it.”

“No…” Faith bit her lip and replayed Kevin’s demise in her head trying to figure out where her sympathy had fled the scene. Sure she remembered feeling bad that she was about witness someone’s death. But more than that she remembered how exhilarating the whole night had been, how close she had felt to Seth for sharing this part of himself with her, how invincible she’d felt, being with him. Even tinged with the ire that she still felt towards Seth, try as she might, she couldn’t shrug off the memory; that feeling of superiority, of being half of an untouchable duo. The absolute wickedness of their pure hedonism.

She craved it as much as he did.

“You don’t think it’s wrong, do you?” Melinda asked tentatively. “You don’t think hunting people is wrong.”

“Forget everything you were; forget everything the world thinks you should be.” Embrace what you are.

It was at that moment that Faith realised that Melinda could never understand because she didn’t want to understand. She didn’t want to embrace her vampire side. She wanted to hide out in a cottage and drink sterile blood from a flask, while she waited, possibly forever, to be brought back to life so she could carry on living. Faith wanted to live now.

She looked across the table to Melinda, with her shaking frame and tear-stained cheeks and the pieces began to click into place. There was no way she could recall Seth’s antics with anywhere near the amount of disgust that Melinda had from just hearing about it. There was no way she could ever be what Melinda wanted her to be. And in that moment, they both knew it.

“No, I don’t think it’s wrong for vampires to hunt people. I think it’s what we should do and… I like it. I like hunting. I like using my allure on guys and draining them to within an inch of their life. I like being a vampire, Mel.”

“I see, and, for the record, I disagree with it all.” Melinda drew a circle on the table thoughtfully. “We have always been so different, but now it seems that we’ve grown into irrevocably different people, haven’t we?”

“I guess so,” Faith admitted numbly.

“I guess so too,” Melinda said quietly, and silence fell in the room.

“So what now?”

“I don’t know, Faith. You can’t stay here with the witches and go hunting; they’d never allow it and, in all honesty, I don’t really want you to stay here, not now.” Melinda sighed. “It’s pretty clear that you’re only back here until you get a better offer, and I’ve been your fallback option long enough… but then if you have nowhere to go, I can’t just make you leave—”

“Actually, there is somewhere I can go.”

“Oh? Not back to Seth—”

“No. Not him.”

Melinda looked curious, but she didn’t push. “Will you be safe there?”

Faith felt another pang in her general chest region as Melinda offered this tiny crumb of care. She had no idea what Kitty had in store for her, or if she’d even be able to find her. But she nodded. “Yeah, I’ll be fine.”

“Hm. Please keep in touch. With your family if not with me. I will pass on that you’re safe but they really need to see you. I’m sure Moon can facilitate a meeting if you’re worried you might attack Joy again.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Do you want my new number?”

“I don’t have a phone right now.”

“All right.” Mel reached behind her into a drawer, surfacing with a pen and scrawled her number down on scrap of paper, which she held out to Faith.

Faith looked at the slip in her hand, the back of a shopping list, at Mel’s tiny handwriting, and choked back a lump in her throat. “All right,” she parroted.

The pair rose from the table and lingered in their awkward new space, moving as if to embrace, pausing and settling on a handshake instead.

“Take care, Faith.”

“You too, Mellyb- Melinda.”

Faith walked out of the front door calmly, pausing only once to look back at Melinda as she lingered behind.

But there was nothing more to say.

She walked down the hill slowly, as if she wasn’t bothered at all. When she reached the bottom, she looked around calmly, still clutching that piece of paper in her hand.

And only when she realised how quiet it was, how truly alone she now was, did her armour crack. The tears genuinely started to fall. Faith wept like her heart was breaking. She wept until her soul was empty, until everything that remotely hurt was numbed and obsolete. She wondered how to approach her family. She wondered how to survive. She wondered how many more nights she’d spend alone and searching for anyone who would understand her, who’d accept her, who would want to be around her—

A gloved hand reached towards her through the darkness; his fingers lightly gripping her bare shoulder.

Faith whipped round, but it wasn’t who she’d been expecting.

“Shit… you really are alive.”

Caleb laughed a little. “Sort of.”

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

“I’ve been looking for you.”

“Really? Why?”

“Yes really, and because I saw you wandering around here on your own, and I want to invite you to visit with me.”

Even though he was smiling, Faith couldn’t suppress a small shudder at the sight of Caleb. His face was a mess of cracks and scars; his one eye glowing eerily bright and the other seemed to be nothing more than an empty socket, reminiscent of Lilith’s dark form. On the exposed skin of his cheeks and his neck were ash-like marks that shifted like shadows with a life of their own. He was wearing some sort of old-fashioned tail suit, like he was on his way to an opera, or something. If it wasn’t for the goofy grin, slug-like eyebrows and the fact he was drenched in cologne, she might not have recognised him at all.

On the plus side, he hadn’t grown back that stupid fringe.

“Visit with you?” Faith repeated.

“Yes, back at the manor I reside in with my new friend, an ancient vampiress named Kathryn Galloway, former bind of the late Wrathwyn Galloway, head of the West Collective of—”

“Kitty? Yeah, we’ve met.”

“Oh?” Caleb seemed surprised, but this quickly gave way to another grin. “That explains a lot. I bet she set this up then, me finding you. I have been thinking of you, but I thought you were long gone.”

“You’ve been thinking of me?”

He nodded. “Are you well?”

Faith shrugged. She didn’t want to dive into how she felt with a guy who had the emotional maturity of a six year old. Instead she distracted him. “Better than you. Is that what…” crap, what did Melinda say April’s dad was called again? “What, uh, Wally the witch did to you?” He nodded and she reached out to trace the scars on his cheek, but he jolted back before she made contact. “Ah, sorry. Does it hurt?”

“Yes. But mostly inside.” His nostrils flared. “All I tried to do was love April and he did this. I still don’t understand how I got it all so wrong.” He looked away; his remaining eye glowing brighter. “Kitty says it wasn’t my fault; that witches have an unjust hatred for vampires and there was no way I could have won.”

“Right. And you trust her?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” He brought his gaze back up to Faith’s. “She took me in when I was a slip from the end and gave me purpose. She makes ointments and balms for me that provide some relief, and she says that fresh prey will help my recovery, so she provides that also. She is so good to me.”

“Is she really? So, you’re not, oh I don’t know, locked in basement and having her force, uh, stuff on you?”

“No…? I have my own wing of the manor, I come and go as I wish and I barely see her, in all honesty. Why do you ask?” Caleb looked bemused and then his grin grew wider as he connected some dots. “I know, you’re comparing her to Lilith, aren’t you? Trust me, Kitty is nothing like Lilith.”

Faith’s memory fluttered back to that day they’d fled Marjorie’s; how scared Caleb had been of his sister when she’d caught him making out with April, and how reluctant he’d been to defy her.

This was a whole a new Caleb. Beyond the fucked-up face and the broken heart, he genuinely seemed content, relaxed. Maybe he’d lost a few precious brain cells when he got blasted by Wally and wasn’t understanding the situation, or maybe she really had got Kitty wrong. Maybe Faith was just a terrible judge of character. Maybe Kitty wasn’t so bad.

“I see. Sounds like you’ve got a good set up there.”

“I have. I think you’d like it. I’m definitely allowed to have girls in my room now. And I have a TV. A big one.”

Faith couldn’t help but smile back at Caleb’s giddiness. “Ah, so that’s what you’re hoping from finding me, hey Fringey?” she teased. “Wanna get me in your room and show me your big device?”

“That’s the plan.”

Faith wasn’t sure if he’d fully grasped what she was insinuating or if he was genuinely going to show her a TV, but the slight growl in his voice and the impish sparkle in his one remaining eye got Faith fluttering in a few places regardless. He reached for her hand again and she took it, if a little hesitantly.

“Why the fuck not? I’m up for that. Lead the way, Fringey.”

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