It was the time of day when the world grew dark, but when there was a peek of sun still on the horizon. Faith didn’t know what that was called. Dusk? Or was that the morning one? Twilight? Whatever it was, it meant that standing by a window no longer hurt, and by association, her stomach began to growl.
She couldn’t wait to sink her teeth into someone warm and wanting. She’d have to see if she could find another bar in this place, the arse end of nowhere, though. She’d pretty much extinguished all her passable options in this neck of the woods and, hungry as she was, she couldn’t face the idea that she’d have to feed on a complete minger.
As she stared out into the endless wilderness that surrounded the manor, waiting for the sun to fully set, something small and dark shifted in her vision on the grass below. At first she thought it was a fat badger, but after squinting a bit – sometimes she really wished that she’d kept her glasses – she managed to make out a man of familiar build settling himself on to the ground.
Faith’s heart jumped in the hollow of chest. Seth was out there, on his own, no Kitty in sight.
This was pretty rare – Kitty always seemed to be prowling around Seth. Faith peered all around, but, unless Kitty was watching from a window, it appeared that she’d let him have some time to himself.
He looked content, sprawled out in the grass.
Should she go join him?
She thought about the previous night, how swiftly he’d stepped in to deal with Ian. How he hadn’t made a big deal of it. How he’d walked her back when she didn’t know the way.
Then she thought of how they’d broken up, and why.
But maybe Seth had been telling the truth that night. Maybe he hadn’t forced Faith to attack Joy. Maybe, just maybe, she truly was a monster in her own right.
Granted, Seth had still lied about, well…
What had he lied about?
Faith drummed her long plastic nails on the windowsill, chipping away at the rotten wooden frame, as she wondered what to do. He was clearly sorry. He clearly still had feelings for her as he followed her around like a lovesick puppy and, standing there gawping at him like a corpse Juliet, she could finally admit that she still had feelings for him, too.
He tried to erase your memories of Joy, whispered the little voice on her shoulder.
He didn’t succeed and he’s sorry, whispered the louder one on the other.
He did seem sorry.
Faith was always one to hold a grudge and look where that had gotten her – friendless and living in a massive, stinking hovel. Maybe it was high time to try something new: forgiveness.
Maybe she could forgive Seth, her devious, psychotic little MurderBear. Maybe they could start again and have that wild, free love that she’d always dreamed of—
Faith found herself missing more than her cute hair. Those were the days…
“Thinking of me?”
Fuck, how was Caleb so fast?
Faith hadn’t even heard him enter the room and there he was, behind her again, like a cold fart. His hands at her waist made her tremble and not just because he was fucking freezing, even compared to her.
She turned into Caleb’s embrace as he brought his lips to hers, just managing to hold her hand between them to afford her some breathing space.
“You just can’t take a hint, can you?” she scoffed, stepping back. He followed her every move, confusion and frustration on his broken face. “I’m not in the mood.”
Caleb pouted and folded his arms. “Will you be in the mood later?”
Faith glanced over to the window. “Probably not.”
Caleb followed her gaze and his eye glowed. He turned back to her slowly. “Faith, don’t you want me anymore?”
Faith was surprised by his tone. It almost sounded… hurt. Almost like Caleb had actual feelings, which she knew that he didn’t.
“Look, we had our fun but I think we should stop screwing now. You’ve got your blondes and my thighs hurt.”
“But… I thought we were having a good time…”
Faith wasn’t sure whether to laugh or coo sarcastically, so she chose to make a weird noise instead that might have been a mixture of the two. “Oh shit,” she whispered as realisation dawned. “You thought we had a proper ‘thing’ going, didn’t you?”
“I really like you, Faith.”
Faith shuddered. She wasn’t sure why, but knowing that Caleb was falling for her gave all kinds of ick. “Caleb,” she said as softly as she could muster. She didn’t want to be a complete bitch about it, otherwise friendless as she was. “It was just sex.”
Caleb turned away for a second, looking as if he was trying to figure something out. Eventually, the cogs in head were whirring and he looked back to Faith with a defiant expression she’d not seen on him before.
“Is this because Seth is back?”
Faith felt her stomach tie into a knot. When had Caleb become so perceptive? Unless it was obvious. Was it really obvious?
“Well, yeah,” she admitted. “I think he wants to get back together and I’m thinking about it.”
“So let me get this straight; you want to go back to him even though he completely messed you about, hurt you and lied to you?”
“I think he’s changed—”
“He hasn’t. He’s good at deception, Faith – haven’t you learned that?”
Faith bristled. “Don’t talk to me like I’m an idiot.”
“You mean like how you talk to me?” he hissed. “He’ll only hurt you again. When he was with Lilith—”
“I’m not Lilith!” Faith spat back, rising rapidly through all three anger levels. “And what do you know about relationships? Your two suffering brain cells couldn’t even figure out that we were just fuck buddies!”
She shoved past him and he grabbed her wrist.
“Faith, I’m your sire and you should respect me—”
“Respect you?” Faith laughed, right in his face, and pulled her arm free. “Fuck off, Fringey.”
The faint wisps of cloud were clearing and gradually allowing an almost unobscured view of the stars. Out here, in the wilderness, they shone bright and uninterrupted by the chaos of artificial lights. Much like he did.
Seth had settled in on a bed of soft, damp grass. The tiny blades poked through the multitude of holes in his ragged clothing, and the dewy moisture soaked his unkempt hair, awakening all of his keenest senses.
If not for the absence of any vital signs, the ancient man might have even felt alive.
He stretched out and closed his eyes, enjoying the warm August breeze on his cool skin and the soft haze of the moonlight through his eyelids. Was there anything more satisfying in existence than enjoying one’s solitude in the great outdoors?
He hummed a sigh of satisfaction, which abruptly ended as he heard feminine footsteps approaching, and a shadow passed through the light.
Opening one eye, expecting to see Kitty’s face, he was surprised when it was none other than Faith who’d appeared beside him.
“Ah, Fledgling. You’re outside – are you lost?”
“Haha,” Faith said sarcastically. “I saw you from my window.”
“Spying on me?”
“Like you didn’t lie right here, under my window, on purpose.”
He hadn’t, but now he thought of it, it was a strange place to lay. He shifted on the ground against the handle of one of his blades that was pressing into his hip bone. Unfortunately, this movement caused another one to lodge into his groin. He briefly considered discarding his jacket, but felt that suddenly disrobing in front of Faith might give her the wrong idea.
Faith was still talking, defending her action to seek him out, no doubt. “You looked pretty rigid; I came to check you weren’t dead.”
“Not quite,” he murmured, adjusting his errant blades. “I’m simply enjoying the beauty of undisturbed nature at night, watching the sky.”
“For what? Aliens?”
“For stars.”
“Yawn,” Faith mocked and kicked the toe of her boot into the earth. “You’re really into some boring crap, aren’t you?”
“Ah, back to the being versus doing, I see. There’s peace in the stillness,” Seth murmured, closing his eyes once again and listening. To the nothing. To her. “You might find it worthwhile to simply be for a while; you seem a trifle preoccupied. Ah…”
He didn’t let on when he saw a tantalising flash of her memory. It appeared that there had been an altercation between his fickle fledgling and the brainless boner, that had resulted in them parting on unfriendly terms. He could barely hide his smile.
“Yeah, well, Caleb was being an arse,” she muttered.
He simply nodded and scooted over slightly to give her the driest patch of ground to lie on. “Come, join me.”
“Pass,” Faith snorted. “I’m not lying in the muck looking up at some white dots.”
“Muck? What muck? The grass is fresh and clean from the earlier rain.”
“Grass is never clean. It’s full of bugs and animals and literal shit and if it’s rained there’ll be mud too… why are you laughing?”
Seth propped himself up slightly and looked up at her. “It amuses me that you came all the way out here, over the perilous grass, to check on me.”
She huffed. “I was actually on my way to go hunting. I thought I’d see if you were interested in coming with me, but I can see that you’re too busy being a miserable old twat.”
Ah, her delicate way with words. He watched the way her nostrils flared as she pouted, the curve of her hips where she rested her hands. Mesmerised by the unconventional beauty before him, he sighed. “Help me up and I’ll join you on your hunt.”
“Help you up?” she smirked. “Can’t you get it up by yourself?”
“It appears that rigour fails me in my old age.”
She laughed as she reached down to take his hands. “They make pills for that.”
In a flash, he had grabbed her wrist, her waist and her whereabouts and had pulled the wanton woman down to the floor. She screamed at him and thumped his chest, but he didn’t let up, making sure to hold her to the ground a bit so the wet grass stuck to her in clumps as she wriggled about.
She let out a throaty growl and worked an arm free to slap him. Expecting this, he intercepted her hand, holding her wrist at length so she couldn’t jab him in the eye with her pointed plastic nails.
“I hate you!” she snarled.
“Do you?” he asked softly, leaning in closer to capture the scent of her as it mingled with the damp grass. Against him, her body had stilled, her eyes were fixed on his face. He could see it clearly in her mind that she was waiting… hoping…
“Get off me!” she hissed, ever contrary.
He flexed his fingers against her wrist. “I’m not on you.”
Her eyes glowed for a second and he smirked at her. Even with clods of earth in her hair and fronds of foliage on her bosom, he couldn’t help but think: she’s so beautiful when she’s alight.
He didn’t realise that he’d projected this thought to her until she stopped pretending to struggle up. She gazed up at him with those gorgeous grey eyes, through which he could see the full kaleidoscope of her thoughts, her feelings, her desires.
Smut would be an apt descriptor. She was imagining him climbing atop her, parting her thighs. Imagining that the rough-handled blade that was now pressing against her hip bone was something far more interesting, and ripe for manhandling. He watched this scene play out for a while until she huffed and tried to get up again.
“Stop trying to fiddle with my head.”
All right.
She whined and thumped him on the back. He fought a laugh and ran his fingers lightly up her arm, along her neck, coming to rest as he cradled her face.
She smiled at him, her plump purple lips begging for his own and those intoxicating irises holding sway over his very being. Had she always been so intriguing? She looked so softened, so sweet in that moment, making her next words sound even more unhinged. “If you keep trying to get in my head, I’m going to blast you across the gardens.”
“Go ahead.”
She squinted, as if trying to summon this power that she no longer had, and he felt a huge pang of something heavy starting in his head and ending in the cavity of his chest: guilt. How he wished he could undo his taking. How he wished he’d left her with this wayward power of hers. He was on the cusp of confession when she sighed heavily beneath him.
“Ugh, I wish I could control this fucking thing. I mean, maybe I’m too thirsty…” She looked away for a second and he saw in her mind that niggling feeling that she was a dud. It made his chest feel emptier, his brain hurt.
“I can still feel you trying your luck up there,” she snarled. “Have I ever told you that you’re a massive arsehole?”
“You might have mentioned it.” But isn’t that why you love me?
Faith seemed momentarily blinded by his intrusive sentence ending, but quickly regained her battle stance. “You wish I still loved you.”
“Yes, I do,” he admitted with a genuine pang of sadness. Caught in a moment of vulnerability, and so close to her that he could see the pores on her skin, he fought the overwhelming urge to try and kiss her. He knew her games, he knew how she’d tease, he wasn’t sure he could abide that in that moment. He went to pull away, to regain control over his fast fading faculties, but was stopped by a slender pair of tattooed arms looping around him and pulling him back.
Faith swallowed hard. For the first time in Hell knows how long, Seth didn’t have to pry into the crevices of her cranium to understand what she was thinking. Her eyes were betraying her.
“You were an absolute piece of shit to me,” she whispered, pulling him nearer.
“I was,” he concurred.
“I shouldn’t forgive you,” she murmured against his waiting lips. But I do.
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Almost Eternal 