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Star.
David always sounded like he was right behind her, no matter where she went. Breath on her neck, hands on her shoulders, and always just out of reach. And you couldn't say "no" to the wind.
Your dinner's getting cold.
He used to come look for her, coaxing her out like a kid from the cupboard. They would sit, and talk about nothing, and Star would know things were forgiven as long as she came back home. Her tether had gotten longer--five years longer--but she missed those nights. They'd reminded her why she stayed; that, and the moments under the warmth of stage lights, when they smiled and flirted and raised the ghost of what they'd had.
Now there was just this.
Running down to the beach, where she'd been not an hour before, to see the band hunched like dogs over some poor corpse. She knew before they pulled back (theatrical, always) who it would be.
Michael--Moonbeam--Maybe-Mr.-Alright. There was a soft smile on his face, and a little blood on Marko's guitar.
Marko caught her looking, patted the boy's cheek. "We like our fans to go out on a high."
Her stomach lurched. "Why?"
"Some of us have gone hungry." David looked untouched by all of it, though she didn't doubt he'd led the attack. "So we never waste food."
"It didn't have to be him." Her throat choked, and she wished it was for this boy she could've known and not the certainty that David was lying to her about himself. Or that he wasn't, and the problem was that she cared about the difference. She wanted to join her brothers in the sand. "Don't bullshit me, David. Don't pretend this is about me."
"They all die, Star. That's what the world is. And this way, we carry a little piece of their memory with us. Their own little piece of immortality."
As he held his hand out to her, she noticed his earring glittering up from the sand. Stuck there in the boy's ear like a calling card, and when she backed away she met Paul and Dwayne's solid chests. They felt like a bulwark and a prison wall.
"The pain will stop," David assured her, like he had the night he held her through sweating and shivering and bugs under her skin. "Once you have what you need."
They knelt together in the sand, and David brought the boy's wrist to her mouth. It was cold. She told herself she could walk away, walk into the ocean if she believed so strongly about the value of life.
"He's already dead," David told her kindly.
And because she was adrift, because the cold, bright dead thing beside her still had the residual warmth of happier times, she bit down. There was no divine spark of revelation--just blood, cold and heavy and quieting to her nerves for a single moment. When the others gathered around her, hands on her shoulders and neck and scalp, they felt much warmer.
"Don't worry, Star." David took the leftovers from her gently, kissed her forehead. "You'll get the next one."