An Ever Fixéd Mark (13 page)

“Elizabeth, I…”

“What?”

“I can be there by 6.”

“See you.”

Lizzie closed her phone and paused in her
seat. He was going to tell her whatever it was he was avoiding. Or
he was going to try to avoid it again and lure her … to… she had to
keep her head. She was in too deep now. He could really hurt
her.

She was pleased to see both Meg and Jackie
disappeared again. She took a quick shower, but didn’t put much
effort or thought into getting dressed. She threw on the jeans from
the floor and a t-shirt with paint stains. He wasn’t worth any more
of her time that weekend. But it left her with idle time. She
finished cleaning up her bedroom and remade the bed. She tidied up
the sofa, the cushions and blankets still a mess from her campout
in front of the television.

At 6 o’clock exactly, the doorbell rang.

Lizzie led him up the stairs silently. They
paused in the hall. “Let me get my jacket. We can get ice cream,”
she made the decision on her feet.

“Can we stay here?” he put his keys on the
table by the radiator.

Lizzie breathed in deeply, knowing she
should insist on more neutral territory. “Sure,” she didn’t make an
attempt at pleasure with her answer. She led him across the hall
into the dining room, the most formal of all the rooms in their
house. She pulled out a chair and looked at him as he took the one
opposite. “Can I offer you some coffee – or tea?”

“I’m all right. Do you want to get yourself
something?”

Lizzie looked at the bar and determined she
would save that until he was gone and her heart was broken. She
waited for him to settle in the chair and sat rigidly to face
him.

“I can tell you are not happy with me,” he
looked down.

“I don’t understand…” Lizzie breathed out
her anger and her sorrow.

“Of course you don’t.”

“Are you married?”

“No.”

“But there is someone.”

“Not someone else,” he met her eyes. The
gray green was filled with that burning she saw in the darkness of
her room. “There is you.”

“So you like me?” Lizzie couldn’t stop
herself from asking such a desperate question.

“I like you very much,” he revealed a pained
smile.

“Then what’s wrong?”

He continued to look at her, letting several
minutes pass into silence. Lizzie felt uncomfortable under his
watchful gaze, but was frozen in the expression of her last
sentence. She heard the clock tick in the kitchen and felt the
light of the evening sun slip slowly behind the trees outside the
window.

“You are a very intelligent, perceptive
individual,” Ben finally broke the quiet of the dining room.

Lizzie released an annoyed sigh. That was
neither an explanation nor a compliment. She turned in her chair
away from him, feeling the urge to leave the room and the
frustrating conversation. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“You see the world and maintain a certain
amount of skepticism and doubt.”

“About you, yes.”

“About what I am finding incredibly
difficult to even start to tell you.”

Lizzie turned back to face him. He was
struggling. “You are going to tell me something about how you like
me, but don’t think we should be together.”

“It could be,” he nodded. Lizzie glared at
him, tossing aside any swell of sympathy she felt at his grief.
“The other night you said you were looking at my yearbook photos
and thought I looked the same as I do now.”

“Except for the hair.”

“Except for the hair,” Ben repeated. “I
haven’t changed since high school,” he paused and took in a deep
breath. “I haven’t changed for two and a half centuries.”

“WHAT?” Lizzie shouted, more in anger than
anything else.

Ben reached across the table and took hold
of her hands to stop her from leaving her seat. “I know this is
quite incredible, Elizabeth,” he hesitated again. “I don’t look
older because I haven’t aged for over two hundred years.”

“What? Are you a vampire or something?” she
clenched her fists under his grasp.

Ben caught her eyes and looked at her with
more gravity than she had ever seen in him. “Yes.”

Lizzie squared her jaw. Was this some sort
of demented joke he contrived with Meg? “That stuff isn’t real,”
she wanted to move her arms, but felt fear creep into her stomach.
A fear to do anything to make him angry. What if he really believed
it? What if he was psychotic enough to try to open up her veins and
kill her?

“It’s very real.”

“But you… you… you are Ben Cottingham. You
went to Springs Regional High School. Vampires don’t go to Springs
Regional. Or live in Coldbrook.”

He laughed, lightening the severity of his
look. “You think I should live in Bavaria?”

“I don’t… I think you are full of shit,” she
hardened her eyes, still unable to move her arms.

“You’re scared,” Ben sighed sadly. He
relaxed his grip on her arms and slowly unclenched her hands to
clasp them in his own.

“I’m scared because you are delusional. No
wonder you were attracted to Sara. You both live in fantasy
worlds,” Lizzie still couldn’t move.

“Elizabeth…”

She decided to not say the next thing that
came in her mouth. She bit into her lip, not sure what she could
say. What would anger him. What would anger her. What was or was
not completely crazy. Her mind swelled with confusion and could no
longer fight the tears that filled her eyes.

“Elizabeth,” he repeated.

“Why?” she wept. “Why are you telling me
this?”

“Because I feel if I am going to include you
in my life, you need to know this about me.”

“You don’t feel like it’s something you
should keep to yourself?”

“Not from you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It wouldn’t take you long to notice that I
don’t eat anything. Or drink anything.”

“But all that wine… and at the bar you had
beer.” Lizzie hissed. He was always getting her drunk.

“Did you ever really see me drink?”

“No,” Lizzie assented weakly thinking of the
unfinished bottles. Her fingers fell limp in his grip. “Do you want
to suck my blood?”

“Yes,” he shut his eyes and bent down his
chin.

Lizzie retreated her arms quickly and folded
them across her chest. “I think you should go.”

“Is that what you want?” he lifted his eyes
back to her, but they still burned.

Lizzie felt the tremble of her lip rattle
all through her bones. She was terrified of what he could do to
her. But there was something deep within her that was terrified if
he left, she would never see him again. “I don’t know what I want,”
she hugged herself to calm the trembling.

“I won’t hurt you,” his voice was calm.

“But you want to kill me,” she articulated
the reality she couldn’t grasp.

“No,” he shook his head and tried to reach
out his hand, but retrieved it on a second thought. “Not at
all.”

“You just said,” Lizzie shut her eyes,
unable to repeat his confession. “You said you wanted to.”

Ben sat back in his chair and looked as
though he was choosing his words very carefully. “You’ve taught
yourself to not eat when you aren’t hungry, haven’t you?”

“Most of the time,” she couldn’t look at
him.

“You’ve taught yourself portion
control?”

“More or less,” she was still crying. How
dare he hit that nerve in the middle of this conversation.

“It’s the same way for vampires.”

“
This is insane,” Lizzie
stood up from her chair. She looked at the bar and thought about
getting a drink. She also measured how close the bottles were if
she needed to defend herself.

“It isn’t insane, Elizabeth,” Ben’s voice
was still calm. “Think about everything you taught yourself about
diet. A person needs a certain amount of nutrients and calories to
function well.”

“And many people overeat.”

“And become ill,” Ben continued. “It’s the
same way for me. If I drink too much blood, then it doesn’t do me
much good. If I drink a regular schedule, then I won’t
overeat.”

“Do you keep a regular schedule?”

“Until this week,” Ben hesitated. “You might
say I was too distracted.”

Lizzie looked at his eyes. He was hungry.
“How much is a serving?”

“A pint.”

“That’s what I give at the hospital,” Lizzie
muttered.

“Exactly. Nature isn’t illogical. If I keep
a steady feeding pattern, I never need take more than a pint… which
is precisely how much the human body can lose without any
consequence.”

“What if you don’t feed regularly?”

“Then there are tragic costs for the
source,” Ben said quietly.

“
Source? You mean people?
Or do you drink from animals?”

“Animals work in a desperate situation. It
isn’t healthy. One tends to mimic qualities of the source. Vampires
who feed on animals tend to be more like animals.”

“And you become more human by feeding on
humans?”

“Simply… yes.”

Lizzie allowed herself a lengthy look at
him. He was the same Ben. With the freckles under his eyes and the
strong shoulders. He didn’t look like a monster. She didn’t even
see if he had sharp teeth. She kissed him and had been inside his
mouth… but never felt the cut of fangs. She saw so much of his
body, his perfect ageless body. Was he – could he – really be
immortal? Lizzie was in disbelief. But to disbelieve this would
mean disbelieving everything else he told her. Was she that
desperate to have this man love her? That she was willing to buy
into his fantasy just to feel the thing she wanted to feel?

“When was the last time you ate?”

“Last Saturday.”

“How often do you need to eat?”

“Once a week.”

“What happened yesterday?”

“I lost my appetite.”

Lizzie thought of the pair of blemishes she
saw in the mirror just below her neck. And the other mysterious bug
bites. “Did you bite me?”

“There is a sort of venom in our fangs that
is like anesthesia. It just… numbs… the person… so they don’t feel
pain. I wanted you to sleep so I could leave quietly,” he confessed
awkwardly.

“But you didn’t…”

“I didn’t take anything. Just a touch to
prolong your sleep.”

“Why did you leave?” the question brought
Lizzie back to the reality before this strange conversation
started.

“Because…” Ben breathed out slowly. “Because
I wanted very badly to take your blood. All three times, Elizabeth.
I never knew if I would be able to resist in the morning.”

“But you could resist at night?”

“
Because you had
alcohol.”

“So?”

“Alcohol weakens the blood and bitters the
flavor.”

“So my intoxication stopped you from …”
Lizzie struggled with the completion of the sentence. “All that red
wine put you off?”

“
From drinking your blood.
Not from you,” he said with determination.

“You made sure that I had wine,” Lizzie
looked at him.

“I didn’t know I was going to tell you this,
Elizabeth,” he paused. “I haven’t tried to see you with the
intention of making you a source. So I needed to take precaution…
because there was always that desire. I never take without consent
of the source.”

Lizzie uncrossed her arms and allowed them
to fall to her side. “How many sources do you have?’

“That’s complicated.”

“I’m pretty good at figuring things
out.”

“Yes,” he looked amused and worried at the
same time. “You are.”

“So how many?”

“I go to a clinic.”

“Oh,” Lizzie thought of a hundred new
questions, but didn’t have the energy to start asking them. A part
of her was willing to accept this bizarre and strange new way of
seeing things, of seeing Ben. She let herself look at him again and
saw his gray green eyes. Those hadn’t changed. They were still
hungry. They still looked at her with the same look that glanced
across the library table at Springs High School.

“Do you want me to go?” he asked as Lizzie
remained frozen by her inability to select a question.

“No,” she shook her head. She felt as though
she was in a dream she was writing as she was dreaming. Maybe she
spent too many hours on the couch. Maybe Meg had put something on
that pizza. And yet it was starting to feel as if she knew this all
along… as if she had just been waiting for him to say something so
they could move on to the next step.

“You have fangs?” Lizzie blurted out.
Tangible proof to his identity could confirm once and for all
whether or not she was in some grief laden psychosis.

“My teeth are a necessary tool for feeding,”
he answered. “I can’t just … I don’t think I should take that risk
right now.”

“Because you would try to feed?” Lizzie met
his gray green eyes.

“I might.”

“Do you want to?” Lizzie let that question
articulate before she had a chance to talk herself out of it. She
saw his breath quicken the rise and fall of his chest. He was
looking at her. She didn’t know where on her body he was focused.
She wondered if he had some extrasensory ability to see the blood
rapidly coursing through her veins and was allowing himself to
imagine something he had been fighting so fiercely.

Lizzie laid her left wrist across the table.
“Maybe I’m as crazy as you are, Ben. I don’t know that I am sane…
or even awake. But more than anything… right now… I want to believe
this thing you are telling me. I want to believe you,” she
stretched so her fingertips almost touched the fabric of his
shirt.

He curled her fingers into her palm and slid
her arm back towards her torso. “This isn’t why I told you.”

“You’re hungry,” Lizzie pushed his hand back
and turned her wrist up on the table.

He sat back in his chair and put distance
between them.

“Are you afraid?” she looked directly at
him.