What Is Love?

Chapter Ninteen

The Slender man


For a moment, I thought my vision had failed me when I Slender walked through the night and saw two of my victims consorting with one another. "What is he doing here?" I hissed at the scene I saw through Danny's window. The woman herself was seated at the table across from the Maxwell human, and from the expressions etched into their faces I knew their conversation must be a grave one.

'Hm, wonder what on earth they could be talking about,' I thought sarcastically.

I hadn't planned on watching Danny for long tonight, in fact I barley monitored her anymore like I used to - just a quick nightly check up and proxy watch on and off the rest of the time - but seeing Noah in her house set my blood boiling; I didn't like interferences. If it hadn't been nearly midnight, I more than likely wouldn't have been able to stop myself from storming into her house and wrecking havoc on the Observer's favorite pawn. As it was, I stayed and watched the two humans all night, my tentacles itching at my back to be unfurled and set loose to destroy.

When dawn broke the next morning, I was beyond restless. I began doing the calculations in my head, trying to decide how early was humanly acceptable for me to show up at her door. Numerous questions ran trough my head at once: What would I say? What would be my excuse? How would I convince Noah to leave? I had no idea, and honestly I didn't really care. All I knew was that I couldn't stand to have my prey - my hunt inconvenienced like this any longer.

By eight I couldn't bare it any more. Donning my human appearances and leaving a brief message with Swain to bring the car around, I rapped on her front door briskly. Danny's emerald eyes went wide when she opened the door and I nodded to her in greeting. "Good Morning, Miss Dare. I do hope I'm not calling on you at an unfortunate time?"

She just stared at me a moment, eyes still wide. "Uhh..."

I resisted the urge to growl in irritation - why did she seem so dazed? I needed to get Noah out of there and away from her immediately. What was that insect doing to her?

"Is everything okay?" she asked slowly.

I didn't trust myself to even attempt a lie on that point at the moment, so I ignored the question. It was none of her business anyway. "May I come in?" I asked, keeping up my usual polite gentleman façade, although it was even more forced than usual today. The last thing I felt like doing was playing human... or playing nice.

The little female backed up so the doorway was clear for me to enter. "Yeah, sure!" she said smiling, and then glanced back towards the kitchen. "Hey Noah, I'd like you to meet my friend, Slen Ritter. Slen, this is Noah Maxwell," she said and gestured towards the human neither was aware I already knew all to well.

"How do you do, Mr. Maxwell?" I acknowledged him. I could smell Noah's fear - a smell I was very familiar with from him. The boy was such a coward.

But why was he scared now? It was impossible for him to know who I was as I had never used my human appearance to directly associate with him prior to now. As far as he knew, I was exactly as I appeared to be.

"I'm alright," he replied, his whole body tense. I resisted the urge to smirk despite my foul mood; he didn't like me.

But I had to stay focused: why the hell was this inferior creature here, miles away from his home and spending the night with my prey - with my Danielle - and how had he even found her in the first place?

"How do you know Miss Dare, may I ask?" I inquired of Noah, hoping for some insight.

He hesitated. "Um... a mutual friend introduced us," he lied.

"Interesting," I hummed. The lie was of little matter to me, of course, as I knew instantly who Noah was alluding to. The Observer would pay dearly for acting without my permission.

I turned away from the boy, I had the information I needed from him - perhaps if I ignored him, he'd get the point and leave. I faced towards Danny, addressing her as if she was the only one present. "Well, I had come to offer you company if you wanted to go out to make up for our interrupted drive, but if you are... busy, I can come back another time." The urge to snarl towards the end of the sentence was difficult to squash, so I attempted to cover it with a lack of emotion. I really didn't want Noah here.

"I was just leaving actually," Noah spoke from behind me and I turned back to him, slightly surprised. I should have given the boy more credit, he wasn't as slow to pick up my unfriendly vibe after all.

"Oh, I don't mean to run you out and ruin your little visit," I said with absolutely no sincerity, but with enough pretense to not give myself away.

"No, it's fine," he said dismissively. "Danny, would you walk me to my car?"

"Didn't you wanna take a shower first?" she asked.

He shook his head and shouldered a backpack that had been sitting on the floor at the end of the couch. "I'll shower when I get home. Come on."

Danny looked up at me and smiled softly. "I'll be right back," she promised and then left.

I didn't try to listen to their conversation, even though I could have easily adjusted my hearing. The fact of the matter was, I didn't care what the college boy had to say about me - and I could tell by the look on his face as he left that he did indeed have something to say.

Wandering over to the plush little sofa, I seated myself on one end and stretched my long legs out in front of me. Slightly amused, I acknowledged that even in my human form they were still spindly and spider-like, for all that my body was solid muscle. I let my shoulders relax, trying to ease some tension. 'Danny will be back in here shortly and away from the Maxwell boy. No need to worry over it much more,' I told myself. Noah was leaving; how much more harm could he do?

'How much harm indeed...' I thought. Now that I was beginning to calm down some, I began to realize there was no justification for my actions here at all. If Noah had known of my human guise, that would be one thing, but the boy knew no more than Danny would be able to uncover from the Internet in any case - why had I made such a big deal of him being here?

And that raised another question to my mind... Why would it have mattered anyway? Why had I even perceived him as a threat to the female morsel? He was just as much my prey as she was, and yet I'd only thought of shielding her. The idea of how dangerous it could be for him to uncover anything new never crossed my mind. I didn't think of it as interfering my hunting him, only Danny... What was going on? It wasn't like me to do things without thinking for one, and it certainly was out of character for me to get so protective of one of my victims. My actions... they didn't make sense!

'You're probably just over thinking this, you know,' I scolded myself inwardly and let a growl bubble up from my chest. Honestly, I probably was upsetting myself over this all for nothing. Whatever I thought was going on... it would resolve itself. I had nothing to worry about.

It surprised me when Danny's voice interrupted my thoughts - I hadn't even heard her come in. "Are you alright?" she asked, giving me an odd look.

"Hm? Oh, I'm fine," I replied smoothly.

She sounded doubtful web she replied, and raised her eyebrow at me. "Are you sure? I could literally feel the tension coming off of you earlier."

Ah, I'd momentarily forgotten about my Slender sickness - no wonder Noah had been so uneasy. Luckily for them both, it was considerably tuned down when I wasn't exercising my true form, but the atmosphere around me must have been quite thick regardless; It made sense now. "Ahh, it was just that work's been getting to me," I lied smoothly, and just for my own amusement decided to throw in a hint of truth, "One of my... employees seems to be acting without permission to do so. Honestly, that's a big reason why I came here..." I trailed off, stopping myself from divulging too much critical information.

Danny laughed softly. Sometime during our dialogue she'd moved to sit next to me on the couch. "What, to relax in my wonderful company?"

The corner of my mouth turned up in an almost-smile. "Yes," I humored the girl and a blush spread across her cheeks. Interesting...

"So..." she shyly tried to introduce the next topic of discussion, "you said you wanted to go out and do something?"

I nodded. "As long as you are agreeable, certainly. Anything you want to do in particular?" I asked, and then nearly choked on my own words as I realize how horribly similar I sounded right now to a man asking a woman on a date. This was getting ridiculous...

"Nowhere in particular," she shrugged. "Heck, I'd be fine just chilling here and watching movies."

I looked at Danny in bemusement. What woman didn't want to go out somewhere? "You'd rather stay here?" I asked.

"I - I mean, if that's not what you want to do we can go out, I was just saying it would be fine," she stammered and bit her lip nervously.

I wasn't sure how good of an idea staying in this woman's house was. My control was superb, but even I could slip sometimes. In such a personal setting, it would be so easy to lose myself and kill her... or worse, forget myself and accidentally reveal who I really was. I wasn't ready to destroy her yet - I wasn't done playing with her mind and breaking her spirit - and if she figured out who I was and got word out to any of the others about that little tidbit of information, my business would get a whole lot more complicated. Even as I considered all the dangers, I couldn't help but take pity on the poor creature as the fear of rejection filled her eyes. Inwardly I sighed. "I have no problems with it," I gave in. "An in home movie day it is."

"G-great! What genre you in the mood for?"

I shrugged my shoulders. "You can choose," I relinquished control over the television to her, but then grinned as a joke occurred to me. "Although I do have liking for horror." Yes, a liking for horror indeed...

Danny made a face. "Damn, I was gonna go for romance," she sighed and I couldn't help but cringe.

"Lord no, please spare me that kind of horror."

She laughed, and I was momentarily mesmerized by the way her eyes sparkled with merriment, like two emeralds filled with dancing fire. "How about Cabin in the Woods? It's classified horror, but honestly I find it to be more of a comedy. It's ridiculous," she offered.

"Sounds fine to me. I've never seen it," I replied, trying to shake off the daze. Its was always those damned eyes...

It startled me slightly when Danny turned the light off after putting the move in. 'Oh child,' I thought deviously, 'being alone in the dark with the Slender man is not at all a good idea.'

The movie really was awful - this wasn't horror, it was failure. The over the top fake gore and unsubtle suspense was completely amateur. After thirty minutes or so, I couldn't keep my comments to myself anymore. "Good Lord, this movie is terrible," I said, amused by the idiotic concepts. "Zombie redneck torture family? That's quite honestly one of the stupidest things I've heard of."

The girl beside me chuckled softy. "Yeah, I'm just rooting for the pot head to live the whole movie. I could care less about the others and the not-scary horrors."

I looked over at her completely bemused. "Really?"

Danny nodded. "Yep! Gotta love the poor fool - he's hilarious," she giggled and then protested at my wondering head shake. "What? You don't think so -?" she stopped and suddenly froze. I was about to ask her what was the matter - I could sense the sudden heat coming from her - when she closed those those jewel toned eyes and leaned her body in towards mine.

My mind was instantly in an uproar. How dare this human be so presumptuous? This was bad. She was too close - too comfortable around me. What could she possibly be thinking? If only she knew who I was - if only had some notion of how much of a monster I was - she would not be angling her body towards me right now, so venerable... So easy to kill...

I was on my feet in a split second, moving faster then I should have to keep up my human appearances. "I have to go," I said quickly. "Important business meeting. Completely forgot about it. Goodbye Danny," I blurted, intentionally averting my gaze from the hurt I was afraid to see in her eyes.

I fled.
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A/N: Hopefully none of y'all are going to kill me now from stopping the kiss xD it will happen in all due time, my children... All due time... I'm not sure who I feel sorrier for though: poor rejected Danny, or hopelessly confused Slen. Smh, those two are gonna drive each other to insanity.

Anyway, hope you all enjoyed this chapter regardless! I'm on winter break from school now, so hopefully I can get another chapter out before I go back in January. For now though, I'd like to wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! You guys are the best readers ever ;D

- Erin