And here is the one you have all been waiting for! It got bumped up 'cause the one I was planning to put in here just didn't want to be written. I just hope I meet your expectations, oh great readers…
Rule 10a) Do not offer Edward constipation tables.
Rule 10b) Do not tell Bella to get a personality. Or a life.
Rule 10c) Do not call Edward a glittering stalker fairy princess.
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I landed, disorientated and still waiting for the other half of a sentence, in a meadow covered with purple-blue flowers. In the centre lay two intertwined people who appeared to be in their late teens. The girl laughed.
"No," she started to get up. "I have to get back to Charlie."
A sudden beam of light hit the clearing and the boy glittered. His girlfriend – I assumed – didn't seem at all surprised, but I took in a sharp breath.
"Who's there?" he jerked his head sharply in my direction, his attention caught by the almost inaudible noise. His voice was unnaturally melodic and smooth.
"Edward?" the girl asked, uncertainly, "Is it another vampire? Have the Volturi come to check up?"
Vampire? Volturi? I was thinking that the girl must have escaped from a padded room somewhere.
"No, Bella. It is a human, but she does not smell like a normal one and," he raised his voice and turned to address me, "I can hear your mind. I know what you are thinking and my Bella is not insane. Absurd, yes, but not insane and neither am I."
Great. Another mind-reader.
"You have met others with my skill? Did Aro send you? Come closer or I will have to get you." His voice took on a slightly menacing tone and he rose in one fluid movement.
I took a few hesitant steps towards them, reaching into my Magic Backpack to pick up something – anything – that could help me. My fingers closed on nothing. Fantastic. I had been relying on this for quite a while and now, when I really need it? Nothing. I did the only sensible thing: I ran.
As my feet carried me around the various plants, I looked for a tree with good, low-hanging branches. My usual method of escaping from people bigger and heavier than me in places like this was to get up high and get lippy, thus irritating them into doing something that makes them look stupid and petty. It is a strategy I thought up when I was nine and doing a week-long activity camp during the summer holidays. Being chased by a sixteen year old girl who had been called on as hired muscle by another girl is about as fun as it sounds. (i.e. not very.)
I was jerked back as an icy hand grasped my arm. I had gone all of ten strides when the glittery boy caught up with me at an unbelievable speed.
"Running," he said smoothly, giving no hint to the race he had just run at inhuman speed, "Will get you nowhere." I gave up and just hung loose as he picked me up slightly roughly and carried me back to the clearing where Bella stood, waiting.
"Bella, love. It's alright. She can't hurt us."
"No shit, Sherlock. I'm hanging out of your freezing cold, diamond-hard arms here. The last thing I could dois hurt someone. Why would I? Neither of you have done anything that bad to me… Yet."
I was deposited on the ground in a heap.
"Bella, you go back to Charlie. I'll take her to my family, to discover who she is and how she came to be here."
Bella bit her lip and ducked her head, tucking one lock of hair behind her ear. "Uh-huh. I'll see you tomorrow, Edward." As she walked out of the clearing, she turned to look behind her with one last smile, her face lighting up as she looked at her beloved fairy. Because he would never do anything to hurt someone who was randomly walking about in the forest who just happened to hear a private conversation in which his species was outed.
"Sarcasm does not become you."
Damned mind-readers. I hate every last one of them.
"Neither does envy."
I scowled – not pouted, I never pout – and folded my arms as best as I could from where I was hanging uncomfortably in his. "Why is this necessary? I know I can't outrun you, you've just proven that without a doubt. Put. Me. Down."
I was deposited unceremoniously into the leaf litter in a disorganised heap. I fixed my eyes on his strange yellow ones. "I hate you." I informed him, in a flat deadpan.
"What have I done to you to engender such a strong emotion?"
"You're right. You're not even worth that," I retorted. "You're just a glittering fairy princess."
He growled, a sound deep in his throat. "I am a vampire, a merciless killer, a monster. Not. A. Fairy."
"So what was that little display, huh? Playing with your food?"
Looking back, I think I may have had slight suicidal tendencies. He, of course, did not deign to respond to my taunting and merely grabbed me from the floor and ran.
Needless to say, I threw up all over his lovely designer shoes when we stopped. Nothing and no-one was designed to move at that velocity. His speed would make a Ferrari look, in comparison, like a London bus on any track. Such a shame he had neither the good looks of the former nor the usefulness of the latter.
Once I had finished re-decorating the gleaming leather, I looked up, wiping my mouth and wished for some mouthwash. He grasped my arm and dragged me into the glass-fronted house, calling calmly and quietly for a family meeting. A couple of blurs in front of my eyes and around the edges of my vision, and then, right in front of me, stood four people – amazingly beautiful people with unruffled hair and clothes perfectly tidy, and all with the same golden-yellow eyes.
Well, that was me done for. I had seen enough bad films to know that, when the vampire/werewolf/miscellaneous 'dark' creature(s) were found out by the innocent, weak, powerless, unsuspecting, etc. human, bad things tended to happen to said human.
Luckily, I was the main source of entertainment for the childish being who had sent me out on my travels, so I hoped he wouldn't let me die…
Hoped.
I was jerked out of my thoughts when a part of me noticed, in irritation, that I was being talked about as if I were not even there. That, ladies and gents, is just plain rude, no matter how you look at it.
"Seriously, people?! Vampires – whatever! I exist, just thought I'd let you guys know. Oh, and try these, they might help with your, ahem, internal issues." I gave him a packet of Bisacodyl that appeared as I rifled through the Magic Backpack, thinking solely of 'reveeeeeeeeenge!'
It could be said that I have issues, but I think I have the right to toy with the egos of people who annoy me by now.
"Look, I won't tell anyone. I mean, who'd believe me? Only people who already know."
More feverish whispering. Side glances over their shoulders at me. Eventually, the fairy princess (he growled when I thought that – serves him right for dipping into other people's heads) strode over to me.
"You stay in our house. You do not speak about us to anyone. We will not eat you; we are vegetarian and only drink animal blood."
He had clearly missed the point of vegetarianism, along with the rest of his family.
"You will cease making smart comments in your head about me!"
I – tried – to raise my eyebrow in a criticising way in an attempt (most likely failed) to make him feel ant-sized. "You know, if you stopped invading my mental privacy, you wouldn't have to listen to them. And I have the right to think whatever I want."
Thus began the longest week of my life. It was dull. I was bored. The little cheery one got on my nerves every single second she was within five miles of me.
You would have thought that sharing a house with seven vampires would have been more exciting, but nope. They went to school. Instead of using their intellect, memories and other various advantages, they went to the local high school and Miss Drama Queen moped after the no-personality-whatsoever Bella. It was only when I asked where he was every single night, that I realised just how obsessed he was.
"Yo, Carlisle. Where's Drama Queen? He's not in his room."
He tensed in irritation; both at the intrusion into the private space of his study, and at how I referred to his eldest son.
"I believe he is visiting Bella. Would you please leave me alone?"
"Doing what? Isn't it past her bedtime?"
The vamp patriarch, his tone much, much colder, replied that he, apparently, liked to watch her sleep.
Creepy or what?
Of course, I missed no opportunity to annoy my favourite target the next day, when he returned and brought miss no-personality with him.
"So," I greeted him, "Not only are you a fairy princess, you are also a possessive, creepy stalker. Oh, hey Mary-Sue."
"My name is Bella." She replied, clearly in a huff. Needless to say, we did not get on all that well. She seemed, for some reason, to think that I was after her precious Eddy-kins.
"Oh, I know that. I just call you Mary-Sue because, if this were fiction, you would totally be one. See ya later. I have a book and no wish at all to see you and your disturbing boyfriend gazing deeply into each other's eyes while making deeply dramatic and unrealistic statements, al the while trying to persuade him to make you into a marble statue like him. Seriously, get a life. And a personality; does your life revolve around your boyfriend?!" I walked away, her angry splutters fading beautifully into silence as I got further from their house.
It was a gorgeous day, all sunlight and rainbows with birds chirping merrily in the bushes.
Of course I'm lying. It was tipping down in a way that made me feel almost like I was back at home in England and I settled down between the roots of a huge tree. I spread my coat on the earth and propped my large umbrella up in a way that it protected me and the book from the fat drops of rain.
This was the most exciting my life got, now. An action book in the woods. Yay me.
A woosh past me caught my attention. One of them clearly felt they had to check up on me. Vampiric babysitters are the worst. Especially when you haven't needed a babysitter for several years.
"Look, I'm fine. You don't need to check up on me every five minutes! Yeesh… get some manners."
I was grabbed from behind and held in a strong grip.
"Okaaaay. I'm guessing you're not one of those Cullens?"
"Right guess," he said, yanking up one of my long sleeves to expose my bare skin.
Just as he grazed my skin with his teeth, a flash of lightning hit, taking me off to my next adventure.
Hopefully, it would be better than this wet place inhabited by wanna-be 'vampires'.