Stephenie Meyer owns all things Twilight.
This story is an outtake from my story "The Insurgency". These two chapters show an alternate version of the introduction between Bella and Carlisle and replace chapters 7-11 of "the Insurgency". I had originally intended this to be a one-shot, but it's turning out to be a bit longer than I thought, so it will have two chapters.
Chapter 1: From the Pound to the Yard
Day 6937 (June 29, 2039)
(Bella's POV)
Waiting in a holding cage must be the definition of the words tedium and boredom. I wonder if those words were created by someone who was incarcerated, I thought as I stared through the bars of the cage I sat in at the Seattle pound. The main part of the mission was over, now I just had to wait until I could blow out of here.
One of the colony girls, Marie, had gotten her fool self picked up, and even though I had been ordered by the Human Council to stand down and cease all rescue operations, I had been snookered into finding her.
We had heard rumors of the Seattle pound acting as a cover, a drop off point for trackers to send girls to brothels or other forms of sex slavery. The pounds were different from the human confinement facilities. Pounds were primarily supposed to hold humans who had escaped while their owners were contacted, or humans who were being held pending trial for rules violations.
This pound owner and one of his guards were willing to take girls trackers had brought in from the wild, clean them up quickly, and the turn them around to vampire brothels or individuals who wanted a human cheaper than at the Human Containment Facility. After all, girls headed to brothels didn't need vaccinations – they would only live a few weeks. The pound owner took any human female without question, including girls who had been blood slaves, or vampire "pets", snatched from their owner's houses or yards. He would remove the identifying microchip all "pets" had implanted, and sell them to the brothels as well.
So I decided to get picked up by the same tracker who grabbed Marie, to see where he took me. Sure enough, we went straight to the Seattle pound.
Marie had already been bought, but an ally had found her. I had been here for two days, long enough to pick out the buyers and figure out enough of the process to know just who I had to kill to disrupt the "distribution chain." Hard to use such a cold commercial phrase when it comes to other humans, girls my age at that, but I had to think just like they did to figure out their process.
But now my tedium has been disrupted. Seems I have attracted a buyer, a vampire has shown up, and is staring at me. He has startling bronze hair, and I could see that he had green eyes back when he was still human. He had walked in, clearly looking for me; my scent must have drifted out the window onto the street. Once he saw me, he leaned against a wall and never let me out of his sight, while he started talking to the attendant.
It's freezing in here, I thought, staring back at him. They had taken my jeans, sneakers, Zeppelin t-shirt and windbreaker, and put it me an undyed cotton smock dress and a collar, after giving me an ice cold shower. Knowing I was going to be picked up, I had carefully stashed my backpack outside of town, and just been carrying a light bag with a few necessities that I didn't mind losing. The pound attendants hadn't even given me any shoes. So now I'm sitting here freezing in this unheated shelter during a wet Seattle summer.
Great, now I need to use the bathroom, or bucket in this place. I look at the vampire and then look pointedly at the bucket. He doesn't move his gaze from me. Oh good, a sicko to boot. I crouch over the bucket and do my business. I stare back at him.
After a few hours of trying unsuccessfully to negotiate with the various attendants, there is a shift change. The night guard, my future target for assignation for trading in humans, comes on duty. Once the vampire starts talking to him, they begin negotiating, the guard shrugging casually. They occasionally look at me then go back to hissing at one another in vampiri.
They quickly seem to come to an agreement, and as the bronze-haired guy makes a call on his cell phone, the guard walks away. Soon a third vampire arrives, wearing a suit, with a package for ole green eyes. Green eyes takes the package, and signs a clipboard. The guard comes back and is given something from the envelope. He gives the bronze haired vampire some form of paperwork then unlocks my cage and opens the door.
The bronze haired vampire leans in and puts a leash on the collar they put on me. I hate these things; as soon as I get out I'm taking it off. He gives the leash a tug, and we go out.
He leads me out of the building into the Seattle night. He still hasn't said a word. Man, he must be planning on killing me quickly, he isn't trying to make any kind of contact with me, even in in vampiri. Most vampires with blood slaves give them orders in vampiri. Well, when he lunges at me, he's going to be in for one big surprise. The human know how to fight.
He walks up to a silver Volvo and clicks the doors open with a remote. He opens the door on the passenger side, I get in, and then once I'm seated, he wraps the leash around the door handles.
He then gets in on the other side. Doesn't even turn on the heat, the s.o.b. Do I fiddle with the knobs on the dashboard or continue to play the part of a human who's never seen a car? I decide to play the part of the frightened human, so I shiver visibly then pat my stomach. "I'm hungry, master," I say in a pitiful voice. He glances over at me then keeps driving. Prick.
The mind reader checks in, thanks to my connection with my cousins, and tells me the jerk vampire's name is Edward, and he's hungry too. He's debating whether he can wait until he gets home and try to use the equipment to draw my blood, or just pull the car over along the side of the road and drain me on the spot.
Great. When we board the Edmonds-Kingston ferry, I'm left in the car, and Edward stands outside. He leans on the guard rail and watches the opposite shoreline, as the ferry makes its way to the other side. He gets back in the Volvo to drive off the ferry then merges onto the highway. Surprisingly, after about ten minutes, Edwards pulls into a gas station. He gets some gas and goes inside. I look through the window and see he has pulled a bottle of blood from the refrigerator unit, and is looking at a display of food for humans. I guess he's going to try to make it until he gets home after all.
I, however, am not going to wait. I decide to go for it and slip into the driver seat from the passenger seat, cutting off that god-awful collar. I start the car by pushing the ignition button and gun the motor. He's outside in a flash, but this gar goes from 0-60 in four seconds, so I lose him quickly. My last sight of him is watching him chasing the car as I flash down highway 104. Just like a dog chasing a car in the old days, I think.
As I drive along, I lean over to open the glove compartment and pull out the car's registration papers. I decide to return the car to its place of registration if possible. When I enter the address into the GPS, the GPS recognizes the address and show it already has this address as a pre-programmed setting for "Carlisle".
One of the main reasons I left the bronze-haired vampire alive was something my gift showed me. Whenever I meet a vampire, I get visions of their "human" past. This always includes their human death and change events and also flashes of their recent contact with humans. When the bronze-haired vampire's past flashed in front of me, I thought saw a vampire from my own past flash by.
In Edward's change event, I saw a blond doctor looking at him with concern in his eyes. The doctor picked him up from a hospital bed, carried him somewhere else, and bit him. That doctor looked like a doctor who had come to my Human Containment Facility and made an impression on my mother, years ago.
I had been in my "experimental phase", about eight years old. I was experimenting to see if vampires were truly invulnerable and truly immune to pain. So I was punching, hitting or stomping any vampire I could reach at any point on their body that corresponded to a point that hurt on my own body. So far, I had stomped a foot (easy target), kicked a shin (not as easy since they were starting to watch me), and gone after a knee and missed. Suckers were fast.
Of course, retaliation for my experiments was immediate and ruthless – the guards used their cattle prods on me in retaliation for touching them. After the first incident, my mother wrapped herself around me and she got the other jolts of electricity, making her scream in pain. I felt bad, but wanted to keep going. If I could find a point of vulnerability, maybe I could get us out of here. It would be worth it then.
On this particular day, all those years ago, it had been time to take me to see the doctor. As I sat on the exam table waiting for the doctor to come in, my mother was pleading with me to be nice, not to fight. I made no promises.
But the usual doctor didn't examine me that day. In walked a different doctor, a blond haired doctor. I had decided to go for his teeth, since I was up high on the exam table. What's the worst thing that could happen? Even if he kept them, I might get a bit of venom through a cut and get changed. Once I became a vampire, I could get out of this place and take my mother with me.
I watched as the strange doctor came closer. I was poised to strike, when he looked at my mother and said, "You have a lovely daughter, Mrs. Swan."
Mother looked startled, then happy, then about to cry. She stammered out, "Thank you," and I decided to submit to the exam without any experiments.
When we got back to our cell, she began telling everyone how the blond doctor had treated her like a gentleman used to treat a lady. He had treated her like a human.
I had never forgotten that doctor and had sometimes dreamed he would come back and take us both away to live with him.
Now, years later, I have just met his thirsty son. So, doc, I'm not killing your son, as a return courtesy to your kindness to my mother, years ago.
Back to the present, I keep speeding down the 104. Driving for such a long time while barefoot is a real bitch. And since I don't have anything to use for a driving disguise, such as a hooded sweatshirt, or scarf and glasses, I hope the tinted windows will keep out prying vampire eyes. Fortunately, there isn't a lot of traffic. I scroll through the radio stations, and find a blues station. It makes the ride a lot nicer.
I finally pull up to a large dark house outside of Forks. I would never have found it with the GPS lady navigating me.
A light rain is falling. I hope against hope that the rain will cover the sound of my heartbeat and footsteps as I leave.
I pull up by the house and park the car outside the garage. Of course the car lets out a 'ding ding ding' as I open the door. I grimace at the noise but climb out and start to walk back up the driveway quietly, my bare feet slapping a little in the puddles on the asphalt driveway.
In a flash, two vampires appear on the lawn. One, a big guy, gets directly in front of me.
I know I can fight them, but I decide to try talking first.
"Hi. Hey, you know, you make a better door than window. Care to step aside, like opening the door, and let a lady pass?" I ask.
He doesn't say anything, but I think he's kind of smiling. The voice that answers is a different matter altogether. "Care to explain how you came to be driving that car? Come to think of it, what were you doing driving at all?" drawls the second vampire, a blond male.
Holy crap, that looks like Major Jasper Whitlock! My C.O. (commanding officer) will be thrilled if I take him out. He's the last of the twenty vampires decorated by Aro and Caius Volturi in front of the entire vampire world for contributing to the successful Gathering of Humans in the weeks following the Event in July 2020.
OK, game on, I think. I need them closer. "Well, I had to borrow that car, so I was doing my good deed for today by returning it. Now, I'll take my leave. I'm sure you wouldn't want to return a courtesy on my part with a rudeness, such as killing me, on yours?"
The big guy dances his way backwards down the driveway, always staying just in front of me, while the blond vampire starts making circles around us.
I hear another car coming up the driveway. The car, a black Mercedes, is being driven with its headlights off. It stops just behind the big vampire.
"Welcome to the party pal," I yell as the car door opens. "We're just getting started."
The driver leans back into the car, turns on the headlights, and says in human, in a low voice, "Jasper, Emmett, what's going on? Who is this young girl?"
As the driver steps into the headlights, he walks towards me with his hands lowered in front of himself, saying, "I'm not going to hurt you, dear."
I yell back, "I thought that line gotten taken out of the vampire play book about twenty years ago when you didn't have to hide anymore…" then I stop as he steps fully into the headlights.
It's the doctor from all those year ago, the one who spoke kindly to my mother. I stop, pause, and stare without intending to.
But that was then, and this is now. I'm in the dark, in the rain, facing two vampires clearly on the hunt, and a third whose intentions I don't know.
They all seem to notice my stare and exchange looks. "Come inside, dear, it's raining out here, you're cold and wet. Come in the house, I won't hurt you, we'll get you into some dry clothes and we'll talk," says the doctor vampire alluringly.
A little too alluring, I decide.
"That I am wet is an observation on your part. Whether I am cold is an interpretation, and whether I mind being either cold or wet is not something you actually know about me, pal," I retort.
He looks surprised, and the big vampire chuckles. "Don't you have a coffin or something you should be lying in?" I snap to the big guy.
He roars with laughter at this crack, while the blond who looks like Whitlock growls.
I'm not done, I turn back to the doctor vampire. "And sorry, but I don't think I want to go into that house. I'm betting there's more vampires in there, right? Right now, I've got three vampires outside here with me, why would I want to go inside to make it easier for some lazy vampire who doesn't want to come outside in the cold to eat me?" This little rant earns another guffaw from the big guy.
"Dear, I won't hurt you. I don't drink human blood," he says. "Look, my eyes are yellow, not red. That's a sign that I'm an animal drinker."
"Actually, doc, your eyes are pitch black," I snap back at him.
"That's a sign of strong emotion," he beings.
"Looks like hunger to me. Is that an emotion? Maybe with you guys, your thirst is your ruling emotional state. By the way, how many humans do you have inside of that house right now?" I ask.
"None," he replies.
"Did you kill them? Are they all dead, maybe you got an opening I can conveniently fill?" I goad him.
"My wife and I don't…'keep' humans," he states simply.
"Really? How about him, or him?" I ask, pointing to the other two vampires.
"They don't live here anymore," he says almost sadly. "They used to live here, but that was almost twenty years ago. Please dear, I can't stand to see you so cold. You're not dressed for this weather," says the doctor, staring to circle me himself.
"Well, some jerk at the pound took my jeans, warm jacket and sneakers, and gave me this stupid slave smock to wear. Not my first choice for outdoor attire, but then I wasn't given a choice in the matter," I snarl back.
The doctor switches tactics. "Why don't we talk in the car," he replies. "I can turn the heat on for you."
His manners are better than his vampire son's, I think to myself. I walk around the car to the passenger side, and he flashes in front of me and opens the door. Once we're both seated inside the car, he slides off his coat and hands it to me while he starts the motor in order to turn on the heat. I put the coat over me then wiggle out of the wet dress underneath the coat, and toss the nasty thing out of the window.
I hear a cheer and low chuckle from outside, something about, "you go, Carlisle", from the big buy, no doubt.
The doc lowers his head then unbuttons his blue oxford shirt, takes it off, and hands it to me. I twist around and put it on under the coast. I really like the bit of his scent that I can pick up from his coat collar. I try to be discreet as I inhale it.
"OK, dear, what brought you to my house tonight? Is someone chasing you?" he asks.
I leave that last part of the question alone, and say, "I had to borrow that car," pointing to the Volvo, "in order to outrun a vampire that was chasing me. I wasn't stealing it; I just needed it to survive. So I was returning it to the address shown on the car registration in the globe box."
"Thank you," says Carlisle. I can tell there is communication going on too low for me to hear between Carlisle and the two vampires standing outside the car. The mind reader decides to chime in and tells that the big guy, Emmett, has called Edward to tell him that the Volvo is at the house. Edward has in turn told him about his runway human. Emmett is laughing, telling him, "Eddie, you got a live one."
The doctor asks if I saw the driver of the car.
Well, since he already knows, guess I'll out with it.
"The last time I saw the owner of this car, he was chasing it, and lost the chase," I begin, getting chuckles from the outside.
"But to back up, I was at a pound in Seattle. This guy thought he bought me, but he didn't. Whoever sold me to him didn't have the title, since he didn't deal with my owner. I had only been there two days; they are supposed to wait five days before releasing us to an interested buyer. I'm sorry he's out the money, but then he never asked me about my owner, or I would have told him. He never spoke a word to me at all. He just dragged me out of the pound on a leash, put me in that car and drove off. First stop he made, I switched from the passenger side to the driver side and drove here."
"Hmmm..." the doctor says. "Dear, my name is Carlisle Cullen. You may call me Dr. Cullen if you like."
"Thank you," I reply. "And my name is 99."
"99? Didn't they ever tell you what your mother called you?" he asks.
"My name is 99, and I'm proud of it," I answer, dodging the whole issue of my mother.
"Well, Miss 99, I notice you called me 'doc' a little while ago. Have we met before? How did you know I was a doctor?" Carlisle inquires, peering a t me closely.
"The car registration and GPs indicated you were a doctor," I lie. I'm a terrible liar, and I know it. I think he knows it too, but lets it pass.
He leans a little closer, "Are you sure you won't come inside? It's late…" he beings alluringly.
"Now I know you're not trying to dazzle me," I snap. I cover my mouth and nose, lean away, and start to open the door.
"I'm sorry," he answers, then locks the door.
"You bugger," I snap.
He doesn't answer but puts the car into drive and quickly pulls into the garage.
"I'm not going in there," I state firmly. The door from the garage to the house opens, and a beautiful vampress with caramel hair and a heart shaped face appears in the door, backlit by the light from the kitchen. She looks like a 1930's movie star.
"Carlisle?" she asks. "Who is your guest? Why haven't you brought her inside?"
She walks up to the passenger side, and Carlisle rolls down my window using the master control.
"Hello, dear. Wont you come in?" she asks.
Why not. If I have to kill them all, I might as well get this over with. So I get out and follow the pretty lady vampire inside. Carlisle walks in behind me and closes the door. I hear the door's lock click softly behind him.
PLEASE READ AND REVIEW. I WILL FORWARD ALL REVIEWERS EXCERPTS FROM THE SECOND CHAPTER.