Only by Moonlight
Special thanks to my amazing pre-reader, ladylibre, who has
offered superb advice as I settle this story in my imagination. She also helped
me come up with the title—she’s simply amazing…as are her Twilight stories Serenity’s Prayer and Black Ice. Don’t miss them!! :)
Only by Moonlight
is a work of Twilight fan fiction. All Twilight characters are the intellectual
property of Stephenie Meyer, and no copyright infringement is intended in the
writing of this novel.
Prologue
Chicago, 1918
He woke
with a start, his vision blurry. He blinked hard once, twice, before he could
see somewhat clearly, but everything remained fuzzy around the edges.
“Edward?”
His mother’s familiar voice was hoarse as she sat on his bed. “Here, drink some
broth.”
He felt a
spoon at his lips and automatically drank the broth. But swallowing hurt his
parched throat and exhausted him. He felt as spent as though he had just run
the 440 at full sprint rather than merely drinking a spoonful of broth.
“No more,” he
croaked, sinking back into the hot pillows. His mother’s hand should have been
cool against his forehead, but it wasn’t. But he barely noticed as she bent
away from him, coughing violently into a handkerchief.
Something wasn’t right, he thought
wearily, but nothing seemed to make sense any more, and he let his eyes close.
Sleep bore
him away for a time…he didn’t know how long. Strange visions due to delirium
marred his sleep, preventing him from resting easily. The fever sapped his
strength, and his chest ached with heaviness. The mere act of breathing required
concerted effort.
A coughing
spasm awoke him; he was lying on his side, his mother holding a handkerchief to
his lips. He didn’t notice the blood mixed with the sputum he coughed into the
white cloth, but he heard his mother’s dismayed moan.
A vague
concern forced his eyes open, and for a moment, his vision was perfectly clear.
“Mother?” he rasped.
“Yes, dear,
I’m here,” she whispered, trying to smile at him but failing. He noticed that she
did not look well; her face was deathly pale and haggard except for two bright
spots burning in each cheek. Her eyes were glazed with fever, as he was certain
his were as well.
“Rest,
Mother. You must rest,” he said hoarsely. “Go to bed. I’m fine.”
His mother
choked a little, and he saw both the tears and the resolve in her eyes. “I’ve
lost your father, but I refuse to lose you, too,” she vowed in a low voice not
meant for his ears.
But he had heard
her devastating words.
“Father is
dead?” he asked, bemused, as tears blurred the view of his mother’s face.
She took a
deep breath, but turned away to cough violently into her handkerchief, folding
it to hide the resulting blood so that her son couldn’t see how ill she was.
She would nurse him through this Spanish Flu, no matter the consequences to her
own health. Edward—her loving, compassionate, beautiful Edward—must live, even
if she did not.
Her gaze
met his, and he read the awful truth in her grief-stricken green eyes.
“Noooo,” he
moaned, then coughed again, the spasms wracking his thin body. His tall runner’s
form, already too slim due to a growth spurt over the summer, was emaciated
from the fever, and his mother grasped him to her heart, wiping blood from his
gray lips as each agonized cough brought up more fluid from his wearying lungs.
“You just
get better, Edward,” she told him fiercely. “I can bear anything except losing
you.”
Nodding weakly, he slipping into a heavy slumber from which
he never rose, gasping for precious breath in his final moments.
Neighbors
found them a few days later. Edward Masen, Senior, lay dead in the large master
bed. His wife’s body, still fully dressed and wearing an apron, lay slumped
against the bed in their son’s room, a blood-soaked handkerchief clutched in
her hand. In the bed beneath the east window, the beautiful seventeen-year-old
boy’s green eyes stared unseeing at the ceiling.
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