Monthly Bonus Content #2— 'Silent Night…' (Morgan 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?” Farah asks from the doorway, her 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 Morgan.”

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

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

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

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

“And the heat.”

“And the sun.”

“And people.”

After establishing the start of a very long list of Morgan’s dislikes, I give Farah 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.

Morgan is hunched on the gravelly rooftop, legs dangling over the edge, her hands behind her as she leans back with her head tipped up.

The light perfectly highlights the outline of her—all toned lines and hard edges. But the waves of hair that flutter against her 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 her shoulders as I approach.

Her gaze tips from the sky to the clothing with a brow arched. She draws it tighter around herself with a shiver. “Thanks.”

“What are you even doing out here?” I ask, settling down beside her. 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?”

She shudders with a chuckle that sends a breath to frost from her lips.

She 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,” Morgan states.

I look at her. A peacefulness washes a calm expression over her features, and her 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 her.

She sucks in a long breath, a sudden pensive thoughtfulness dragging her shoulders down. “I’ve been alive longer than I can remember.” Her 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,” she nods up, “it stays constant. I can rely on it when things become…”

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

She 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 she needs a moment to catch her 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 her swallow thickly. “I know, sweetheart/handsome.”

Her fingers stretch out to mine, her fingertips grazing against the side of my palm.

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