Monthly Bonus Content #2— 'Silent Night…' (Mason Winter Special) (Patreon)

The storage room is eerily quiet. Dust motes twist in the air, watching over my shoulder as I search around in the darkness.

I dip behind a stacked mountain of old crates that have the Agency’s emblem branded into the light wood. But there’s nothing but more empty concrete floor behind them.

“What you doing?” Felix asks from the doorway, his frame cutting a long shadow across the only beam of light.

I groan and fling open a pair of doors on a cupboard “Looking for Mason.”

“In…there?” he asks, walking into the room and peering around me. The cupboard is bare.

“I figured he likes dark corners,” I joke. Felix gives a chortle at it. “But honestly, I’ve looked everywhere else at this point.”

He wiggles a finger out towards the hallway. “Did you try outside?”

I stare around him, as though I can see through the many walls to the snow-capped forest that lays outside. “Why would he be out there in this weather? He hates the cold.”

“And the heat.”

“And the sun.”

“And people.”

After establishing the start of a very long list of Mason’s dislikes, I give Felix a grateful nod and make the trek through the labyrinthine hallways to the roof.

-

Outside, the snow is strikingly crisp against the thick midnight horizon. A sickle-shaped moon slices through the darkness and gleams out sharp beams of silver to cast across the exact vampire I’m looking for.

Mason is hunched on the gravelly rooftop, legs dangling over the edge, his hands behind him as he leans back with his head tipped up.

The light perfectly highlights the outline of him—all toned lines and hard edges. But the waves of hair that flutter against his face soften the image just a little. The urge to run my fingers through those dark locks is almost too much to resist, so I clamp my fingers around the jacket I’d grabbed on my way up.

“Here,” I say, resting the fleecy coat around his shoulders as I approach.

His gaze tips from the sky to the clothing with a brow arched. He draws it tighter around himself with a shiver. “Thanks.”

“What are you even doing out here?” I ask, settling down beside him. The solid ground is bitingly cold even through my clothing, and I curl my toes in my shoes to bear the chill until I’m numb to it.

“It’s quiet.”

“You always say that,” I reply. “Why are you really out here?”

He shudders with a chuckle that sends a breath to frost from his lips.

He holds a hand up to the sky. “Look at it.”

I do. My gaze swivels to the sky that is awash in glitter. Trees soar high in an attempt to touch it, but the stars wink at them teasingly, as though telling them they will never reach that high.

“It’s beautiful,” I sigh.

“It’s the same,” Mason states.

I look at him. A peacefulness washes a calm expression over his features, and his freckles mirror the stars.

“The same?” I ask, eventually dragging my gaze back to the sky sparkling with nature’s beauty.

It has nothing on him.

He sucks in a long breath, a sudden pensive thoughtfulness dragging his shoulders down. “I’ve been alive longer than I can remember.” His eyes slide to mine with a smirk, and I give a small chuckle. “You’d think living that long would mean time would lose its purpose. But everything is still so rushed. It’s too fast.”

“But the sky,” he nods up, “it stays constant. I can rely on it when things become…”

“Too rushed?” I prompt when he doesn’t finish.

He nods.

It’s not something I had ever considered. The vampires never really talk of time or their age. But to live so long and for it to past by so fast…no wonder he needs a moment to catch his breath every now and again.

We sit together in silence after that. Watching as a few birds float across the moon, dancing amongst the fluffy clouds and dipping out of view behind the fir trees.

“You can rely on me, you know,” I say after a while.

I see his throat bob. “I know, sweetheart/handsome.”

His fingers stretch out to mine, his fingertips grazing against the side of my palm.

I smile and sigh into the contact as the stars seem to twinkle even brighter.