“I look to you and I see nothing
I look to you to see the truth
You live your life
You go in shadows
You’ll come apart and you’ll go black
Some kind of night into your darkness
Colors your eyes with what’s not there.
Fade Into You
I think it’s strange you never knew….”  - Mazzy Starr

Chapter 1: “By Sight Alone”

He watches as she steps away from him and towards the mirror. The bathroom in the Obsidian is bright and she squints. Over her shoulder he can see her reflection. He can see her new eyes and the childlike way she adjusts to them.

There is no fear in her and there should be.

So fast, he thinks, is her acceptance of these bastard vampire eyes. To fast. He doesn’t like it. Her vulnerability makes him unhappy. He sees her eat up the details in the room with a gentle hunger. A slender pale hand touches the mirror and her young body reacts in surprise. It’s a body he knows well, by sight alone, yet at this moment, so foreign.

She is languid in her turn towards him, her eyes a deep black glass – a “gift” from Obsidian Butterfly. (Someday there will be a 9mm slug that says “Return-To-Sender” with the vamp’s name on it – he takes comfort in this. But just barely.)

He mistakes her gaze upon him as predatory, those black eyes moving up him like stinking molasses. It was a black he recognized well, like the blank nothingness before a kill.

But that’s not what she’s doing.

She is searching every inch of him, as if looking for something lost. Her gaze has sharp teeth and it is eating at the hard clay that keeps him contained.

Just how long, he wonders, would it take her to burrow past that Kevlar exterior he spent so long creating? Possibly minutes at the rate of her penetration.

He can protect himself as long as this infant power is only skin deep.

And if it keeps up in its persistence?

The pit where his heart used to be drips with so many hidden agendas. His chest hardens at the resolve of this question as her eyes meet with his.

He’s afraid she’ll find the truth.

He’s afraid he’ll find his heart wasted on her.

He’s afraid he’ll have to kill her.

He’s afraid he’ll come apart.

He wonders why it couldn’t be those maudlin brown eyes of hers looking at him in this way.

He can barely feel his throat to speak –

“Say something, Anita.”

He sees revelation in her face.

“…I wish you could see what I’m seeing…”

This is one draw-down invitation Edward does not intend to take.

“I don’t want to.”

~~~~