Page 8 of Her Eternal Mate
“I feel strange,” I said to Will.
“How so?”
“For the first time, now that there are no more vampires, I feel as if I’m getting closure over my parents’ death. I feel as if justice has been done,” I said, holding him close to me.
“And so it has,” Will said, facing me as he leaned closer to me and kissed me on my lips.
“Promise me this was the last of the vampires,” I whispered in his ears, mid-kiss.
“I promise,” Will said as he plucked my lips into his mouth and sucked them gently. “No more vampires.”
We held onto each other, embracing, kissing, and cherishing each other’s company as the crowd around us thinned and headed back to the commune. Tonight, I thought, I’d finally sleep peacefully.
Chapter 4
Will
“Where are you taking me?” Alexis asked for the dozenth time in the past hour. Given that it was a surprise that I didn’t want to ruin it in any way, I chose not to reply with the most obvious answer.
And what was the most obvious answer? It was complex. This entire situation was one convoluted Gordian knot. It had been one whole week since we had defeated the vampires in that legendary battle. One whole week of pure peace and bliss in the commune and Fiddler’s Green. Spring had finally come, and it had done so with such splendor and color that the entire world looked like it had been painted green. Green leaves on all the trees as far as the eye could see. Green grass in the lawns, slopes, and meadows. Greenery in Fiddler’s Green, courtesy of the new mayor who had promised a cleaner Fiddler’s Green. Flowers bloomed in every direction, from the flowerbeds to the greenbelts between the roads. For the first time since I had arrived in this town, Fiddler’s Green felt like a fitting title for this place.
It had looked like heaven. The entire pack had been one happy family, partying, celebrating, and partaking in the many communal activities. Now that the threat of vampires was over, the kids of the pack played baseball and basketball outside of the commune’s bounds, using the green field to the left as a makeshift baseball pitch and using the deserted parking lot as a makeshift basketball court.
What was more surprising than this sudden cheery atmosphere all around the commune was the behavior of the townsfolk. In all my time in Fiddler’s Green, I had never seen the people as friendly or amicable. They were all very businesslike, curt, and quiet. But not anymore. From the way they behaved, hugging and talking and laughing, it felt like a curse had been lifted off the land. Teenagers and people in their twenties were dancing in the streets and holding beach parties. Girls shopped at the only mall in town, drinking their shakes near the mall’s fountain. The old men and women gathered around the town square, reading their papers, drinking their coffee, walking their long walks, and perusing the collection at the new library that had been opened by the new mayor.
What a change all that was. A remarkable change. The sky remained blue and spotless. The seawater was suddenly clearer, the sand on the beaches whiter. People seemed happy, and so did the entire place.
All except for Alexis, who seemed deeply troubled.
For the past week, she had refused to sleep. It wasn’t for lack of trying on her part, either. She had gone to bed every single night, and every morning when I woke up from a very peaceful sleep, I’d find her sitting upright on her side of the bed, dark circles under her eyes denoting that she hadn’t slept even one wink. Time and again, I asked her what had happened to her, and time and again, she answered with the same response: “I don’t know.”
It took some introspection on my behalf to reach a valid conclusion. Alexis was suffering. She had been through a lot, especially in the last few months, and as a result, she had developed emotional and mental trauma. What the shrinks these days called PTSD. After learning how to operate a computer, I’d now become a little bit fluent with how to use the internet and search queries.
I found out that the symptoms of PTSD included being easily startled or frightened, always being on one’s guard, self-destructive behavior, trouble sleeping, trouble concentrating, irritability, and guilt.
Alexis had been displaying all those symptoms for the past week.
She’d become jumpy every time a door so much as banged near her. Sometimes, she’d see a shadow in one corner of the room and think it was moving. This would cause her to become frightened for no particular reason. She’d never say a word to me, but I could tell from the bond that we shared that she was coping with fear.
Whenever she walked around the commune and in Fiddler’s Green, she walked as if she’d get jumped by someone. She was always on guard, her ears perked up, her eyes darting from one corner to the other, her hands clutching her purse to use as a weapon should the worst transpire. Except, well, the worst didn’t transpire. Nothing happened.
She had started drinking more and more in the past week. She thought that I didn’t notice, but it was hard not to notice when we lived together all the time. There were empty whiskey bottles in the trash, and whenever Alexis kissed me, there was whiskey on her breath.
The lack of sleep hadn’t troubled me for the first day or two, but on the seventh day, I’d made up my mind that I’d do something about her trauma. A person could die from lack of sleep, and from the way she looked and behaved recently, Alexis looked like she might at least go into a coma, if not outright die. She had lost so much weight that she looked gaunt as a ghost.
I’d ask her a question, and she’d answer with something else that was on her mind. I’d ask her if she wanted dinner, and she’d tell me something completely unrelated in return. Last night, she replied, “I’m going to my grandma’s home.” Alexis’s grandma was Ariana, who had long been dead.
Whenever I tried to confront her about these things, she became agitated. She never lashed out at me, but I could see that I was driving her mad. Her face would flush with color, and her voice would become a bit louder. But she never lashed at me.
From all of this, I had concluded that my mate, my partner, the woman I loved so much, was suffering from PTSD. I even contacted a psychiatrist based in Chicago, a fellow who offered online and on-the-call help. He told me that the best way to help her would be to take her away for a few days to separate her from the place where she had suffered her trauma. Of course, I didn’t exactly tell that psychiatrist about werewolves and vampires and whatnot, but I got the message across and, in return, was given a followable set of instructions.
The most significant was to take her away for a few days. It had taken me less than an hour to finalize the location where I’d take her. A two-hour drive from New York and a five-hour drive from Fiddler’s Green was a small peninsula upstate called Frampton with a lighthouse and an old inn that catered exclusively to couples. Frampton Inn was a Victorian Inn with several astonishing features, such as a swimming pool studded with cyan and green rocks at the bottom, a large library, a hedge maze, rock stairs leading down the cliff side to the beach, and a series of caves that were turned into an underground restaurant by Frampton Inn.
That’s where I was taking her. But it was a surprise that I couldn’t reveal it before time.
“It’s a well-earned vacation for us both,” I said.
“What if something happens to Fiddler’s Green while we’re still away?” There it was, that PTSD was acting up again.