"I don't want to know any more, Vivian. Please. Let's leave it at that. You go your way. I'll go mine. Okay?"
"Aiden, I thought you cared for me. How can you send me away like that? I want to be with you. I want you to love me."
He at least had the decency to look ashamed. "But it's different now. I mean, how can I ... I mean, every time I touch you I'll, I mean, I'll know ..."
"Know what? That I have this wonderful ability to turn into a beautiful, strong, swift creature? That I am a Child of the Moon?" The revulsion on his face told her different.
"Vivian, did you kill that man the other night?" His words came out in a rush.
"Is that what you think? That I'll put on my fur and kill you?"
He hung his head and didn't answer.
She softened her voice and came close to him again. "Aiden, have I ever been anything but loving to you?" She saw him tense, but he didn't back away. That gave her hope. "Aiden, have I ever been anything but willing? " She stroked his chest with her fingers, and he raised his head to meet her eyes. "You don't want a tame girl, do you?"
"No!" He flinched back. "I can't. I'm sorry." And he did truly sound sorry.
"You don't trust me," she said, frustration making her angry. "Do you think I can't control my other self? Do you think my teeth will grow as I lose myself in your pleasure?"
"I want to trust you, Vivian," he said, sadness creeping into his voice, "but every time I think of kissing you I see that other face. All the time I think, 'What has that mouth done?' and I don't think I can ever kiss you again."
His words piled like cold stones inside her.
"You're a coward," Vivian said. "I thought you were different from the rest, open-minded, but you're just like those parents you despise. At the first sign of the unusual you run. You tell lies about me and make people hate me. You take away my friends. You're the monster, not me. I only wanted to love you."
She took the necklace he had given her from around her neck and hurled it at him. "Maybe you made me your victim."
His hand slapped to his chest and trapped the pendant as it slithered down his shirt.
"Go," she said fiercely.
He looked at her in surprise.
"Go now," she repeated. She didn't trust her rage.
"I'm sorry it had to end this way," he said as he backed slowly away. "I really am."
"You think it's ended?" she whispered as his car door closed. "Oh, no. You'll be seeing me."
AUGUST
Satyr's Moon
Chapter 22
22
Vivian clung to a log in the clearing at the back of her house, as if she were an alligator motionless in a swamp. The sodden evening air of August enhanced the illusion, and the pattern of the bark became her pattern, as her flesh pressed into the wood. She curled her toes and savored the crunch as her nails bit gouges in the log. The odor of mold and damp moss intensified as she crushed the bark, until the air smelled like a cemetery. Motionless and silent once more, she allowed the creaking evening chorus to monopolize the woods with their see-saw, chirp-chirp, grind-grind, eternal white noise. She envied their cacophonous serenity.
A nearby rustle announced a predator's careful tread, and her eyes opened slightly. He walked discreetly but wasn't trying to conceal his approach. How polite, she thought. She sniffed the salty tang of a young male, often aroused. Overlaid was a comfortable intimate smell like a warm bed slept in, and the faint hint of baby powder and spearmint chewing gum. Willem.
He paused beside the log as if trying to decide whether to wake her.
She rolled and grabbed his legs. The momentum sent him tumbling. She bit his calf as he fell. He yelped. She threw herself on top of him, pinning his arms and leaning a knee with gentle menace into his groin.
"Vivie!" he pleaded. "I didn't mean nothin'. Vivie, let me up."
Maybe it was his use of her baby name, or maybe it was his soft bewildered eyes, but the heat of her anger dissolved, and she slid to one side, releasing him.