The Man in the Long Black Coat Chapter Six

Edward didn’t stop running until Forks was a faint glow on the horizon. He stopped at a clearing in the forest and pulled his new, disposable cell phone from the pocket of his long black coat.

“Good. No service.”

He put the phone back and took a seat on a fallen tree. He wasn’t eager to think about what had just happened, but he knew he must. Trusting his instincts is what got him into this mess. It was time for deliberation.

Who was this girl? Why was he so taken with her? Why, for that matter, was she so taken with him? Could it be possible that she knew what he was? She appeared not to care about what he had done. Hell, she seemed to be inviting death.

It started with the smell of her blood. Of that much Edward was sure. The aroma was overpowering, virtually irresistible to him. She was not a normal human being. But there was more than that. She was a mystery, a puzzle that needed to be solved. Bella Swan could not be read, and Edward had a powerful urge to read people. He had no choice but to figure her out.

And Bella? He had seen the scars on her arms. He had read the things people thought about her, the concern that Charlie showed every time he looked at her. She was a troubled girl. But why? Edward believed that whatever had brought her to Forks was where he would find the origin of her troubles. No teenage girl moves across the country halfway through high school without a reason.

He stood from the log and looked east, into the rising sun. He wanted to go in that direction, away from Forks, away from the tangles that lie there. But he could not. He sighed and turned around, into the darkness to his west. He knew he must head that way, back to Forks. Back to the police chief who’d seen him run, the reporter who’d eyed him with suspicion, the teenagers who’d thought him odd, and the ethereal girl who’d captured him whole.

He hunched his coat up and walked, to give himself time to think, to give the sun time to fully rise. He walked down the middle of the two-lane highway, his pace neither fast nor slow. His black steel-toed boots followed one another on the double yellow line.

He carried himself like a man with concern, his shoulders slumped and his brow furrowed. His disheveled hair clung to the back of his neck and his sloppy, three-day beard began to itch.

He came to the crossroads and turned, passing by the gas station where this had all started. But he stopped then, drawn there by the thoughts of the people who had gathered for morning coffee.

He approached slowly, his head down. He glided through the front door without a glance, everyone deep into their own world. A barrage of thoughts attacked him. “It’s a fucked up world.” “We don’t need no strangers in this town.” “Dumb kid probably deserved it. Heard he was into drugs.”

A group of elderly men were having coffee in the breakfast area. Each was hunched over the day’s newspaper. And each was reading the same story.

“A mysterious man, a missing teen, and a town in trouble,” read the headline.

Edward grabbed a paper from the rack and tore it open.

“Hey, you gonna pay for that?”

The clerk. Edward fought back a snarl.

“Of course,” he said, reaching into his pocket and flashing a phony smile. He put a dollar bill onto the counter and began to read.

  FORKS, Wash. -- They say something isn’t right here on the edge of Olympic National Park.

  A teenage boy disappeared more than a week ago from his job clerking at the town’s main gathering spot, a gas station, convenience store and breakfast joint just off the freeway. But little has been done.

  The police chief says he’s doing all he can in the disappearance of Michael Newton, 17. But there were no clues left behind. There was no sign of a struggle. No security footage, no blood.

  “At this point in time, we have no suspects,” said the chief, Charles Swan.

  But that is not true of the people who live in this town, perched along U.S. Highway 101 about three and a half hours west of Seattle. They say a tall, dark stranger has been seen about town in recent days. He showed up, the people of Forks say, just when Newton went missing.

  Strangers are rare here, residents say. The people who call Forks home tend to notice when one sticks around for more than a weekend of salmon or steelhead fishing nearby.

  This man, they say, is not staying in any of the motels in town. He does not appear to have relatives here. And no one, save the groundskeeper at the cemetery, appears to have spoken to him.

  “Stranger? Oh, yeah, real creepy dude,” said the groundskeeper, Waylon Forge. “Wore a long black coat. Didn’t talk much, but he gave off a real strange vibe.”

Edward tore the paper in half and tossed it into the garbage can. He could not afford this kind of attention. A few people looked in his direction, apparently noticing him for the first time. Whispered conversations began. Heads were kept down. Eyes darted about the room.

Edward hustled toward the door. These people noticing him was not his problem. Even the chief wouldn’t be much more than a nuisance. But the media was another matter. The media had the potential to bring attention from the outside. Edward had spent nearly a hundred years avoiding that kind of attention.

He quickly walked away from the gas station and took refuge in an alley several blocks away. He pulled the cell phone from his pocket, turned it on. Thirty seven text messages, all from the same number. Nearly as many voicemails.

He turned the phone off and put it away.

Bella Swan was not his concern right now. He needed to find Charlie. He needed to read his thoughts. To find out what he told the reporter. To find out what he really believed. Find out if he’d been in contact with anyone from the outside.

He found Charlie at home, sitting on the rear deck with a cup of coffee and reading the very newspaper that had the potential to cause Edward trouble. Edward watched from his familiar spot in the woods nearby. He lit a cigarette and sat on the ground, his legs crossed.

At first, the chief’s thoughts mirrored the words in the article. Soon, though, they turned to Edward himself.

“Got to check this guy out.”

“Can’t believe Bella was dancing with him.”

“Seems like a real creep.”

“Have to corner Bella on this one, let her know I’m serious this time.”

Just as Edward expected. The chief was suspicious. Edward would have to deal with that, eventually.

His train of thought was interrupted when Bella walked onto the patio.

“Oh,” she said. She hugged her arms around her body. “I didn’t know you were out here, Charlie. I’ll come back later.”

She turned to walk back into the house, but Charlie reached out and put his hand on her shoulder. “Don’t go,” he said. “Have a cup of coffee with me. We should talk.”

Bella rolled her eyes and shoved her hands into the pockets of her tattered jeans. She looked toward Edward hiding in the woods and smiled.

“Sure, Charlie. I’ll have some coffee. What is it you want to know?”

She sat down with her back to Edward and crossed her legs at the ankles.

“This guy,” Charlie said. “The tall man I saw you dancing with last night. Who is he?”

“His name’s Edward,” she said. “He’s new in town. I don’t know. I just thought. I was just trying to be nice.”

“Bella.” Charlie sighed.

He got up and began to pace. He waved his arms about.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “You spend the whole of your senior year in high school studiously avoiding making any friends. You drop out two days after your eighteenth birthday, a month shy of graduation. You don’t talk to anyone about why, including your own father. And yet I’m supposed to believe that some stranger comes to town and you’ve all of a sudden become the Forks Welcoming Committee?”

Bella said nothing. She stared into her coffee cup. Blinked. Got up from her chair and walked to the railing. She stared at Edward. He smiled, despite himself.

“Listen, Bella,” Charlie said. “I know it’s been hard these last couple of years. Your mother -”

“Don’t you dare,” she said, turning around. She balled her hands into fists. “You have no right to talk about her. You’re the one who abandoned her. You’re the one who let that asshole into her life.”

They stared at one another for a while, until Charlie bowed his head, sighed and headed back inside. “You know you can talk to me about anything,” he said. “I love you, Bella. Always will.”

With Charlie gone, Bella looked toward Edward again. She shook a Marlboro from her pack and placed it to her lips, her eyes never leaving his. She lit the cigarette and took a long drag, holding the smoke in as one corner of her mouth lifted into a sad smile. She exhaled a cloud and shook her head, taking her new iPhone from her pocket. She ran her thumb over the phone’s black screen, caressing the button in slow, circular strokes.

“Come for me,” she whispered.

Edward leaned forward and stopped. He knew that if he took one step, he would not be able to refrain from taking another. He would walk to her with purpose. He would leap onto the balcony, and there he would take her. He would do as she wished, and he knew he would regret doing so for as long as he existed.

He bowed his head and ran his hands through his hair in frustration, looking back up at her quickly before he turned to go.

“Why if it isn’t the famous ‘tall dark stranger.’”

Edward stopped abruptly.

“Felix,” he said.

The enormous vampire before him grinned.

-30-

A/N Once again, the people in this fandom amaze me. Thanks so much for the love, y’all. If you like this, I’ll be your best friend if you leave a review. A huge shout-out to my beta/wife, @MazzyStarla. She rocks my world. Look for me on Twitter if you want, @CrackedFIc, or on Facebook @ Cracked.Fic. :)