A/N: Edward's change. I won't waste time with the suspense—you already guessed it, I'm sure. Twilight has many issues, but one of the greatest—in my opinion—is that Stephenie totally lost the cool element of evil that is inherent in vampires. This I must rectify. I give you… the dark side of the Cullens. What facts were conveniently left out when telling Bella Swan their back story? Plausible as canon, but characters may sometimes be OOC. They are newborns, after all.
WARNING:This fic will have possibly disturbing content and be slightly graphic. Sickness-graphic, mostly. Not gore.
Disclaimer: I'll say this once and have it count for every chapter, okay? Not. Mine. All rights belong to the author and to the original vampire, Nosferatu. Or Dracula. Whichever you prefer. Oh, and I'll admit that my title is very similar to that of the book Fever, 1793, so let's give credit to its author as well. Thank you, Laurie Halse Anderson!
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Prologue
The textbooks have it wrong.
The victims of the Spanish Influenza didn't die peacefully. They didn't slip away from fevered dreams, with sweat-shining faces and calm half-smiles of acceptance. They didn't die surrounded by their weeping loved ones. They didn't die in soft white-sheeted beds with teams of doting doctors attending their every need, each wish spoken in the rise and fall of gentle rasps.
They didn't die at all.
They were murdered, murdered by one of the most brutal epidemics to strike in history, a death every bit as horrifying and traumatic as a physical attack.
The sickness was a thief because it stole their sanity and then their lives. It was a murderer, a killer, of millions.
They were killed as they thrashed in grime-covered beds, racked with seizures. They were killed as they sobbed and pleaded for release from the pain. They were killed lying in filth, coated in excrement, smeared with blood and vomit. They were killed as they gagged on their own foul-tasting blood, pouring from their mouth and their nose and their ears. They were killed as their skin swelled and stiffened and turned a sickly blue. They were killed while coughing up torn bits of lungs and stomachs and throats and crying out from the dreadfulness of it all.
They died in agony.
They died in fear.
They died alone.
This monstrous killer with so many lives clasped tight to its bosom, so aptly named 'La Grippe', caused the deaths of over fifty million people worldwide.
Edward Cullen was one of them.
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