Baby…

My ears rang with a rush of heat and panic as my eyes searched wildly around the room seeing nothing and everything all at the same time. Washed trails of blood littered the floor, thick heavy brush strokes with careless disregard of the life draining from its owner as this beast fed upon them. I followed them path, the absence of a familiar beating heart telling me everything I needed to know, Charlie would not be saved. The echoing of his horrified screams as she snatched him from the doorway dragging him to his inescapable doom haunt me as I continue to hunt for them now.

This was inevitable, we'd defied the odds of my world and hers in brazened disregard and now the reaping had begun. In the seconds following the bloody birth of this creature, our daughter, my greatest nightmare had been realized. Bella was clawed and snatched away from me by a villain who hid in friendly shadow at her side as that thing grew inside her; swelling her belly like a rotting body at the bottom of a river bed

My brother confused and as betrayed as I was held me in place as we both watched her, Rosalie, jump through the open window and disappear into the night, fleeing to the guest house, the only plausible route with a dying mother and baby in tow.

Their scent pungent and heavy in the air made tracking them easy work. I can smell them, better than this I can hear them. Frantic quarter second drums of a new heart in sick contrast to the dull, hollowed sound of a heart beating far below life sustaining rhythm. An outbreak of bumps along my skin as I send my fingers through my hair helping me to steady my thoughts and tell me what I already know, I'm close and as I push open the door leading to the parlor a shift of shadows that would have gone undetected by human eyes is captured by my own as they dilate in the darkness.

I can't hear their thoughts, I'm not focused and it frustrates me. I don't know if its even possible that I should hear the thoughts of this thing, this vermin.

But the loss of my gift only serves to heighten my other demonic senses and my eyes dart quickly around the room immediately seeing what they want to keep hidden.

Rosalie, statued and muted in the corner just beyond the door, the sound of her calm, sure breaths give her away. She is crouched slightly, ready to pounce; I have seen her in this position often over the decades in joyous romps through endless forest for elk, deer and bears as we fed as family. Siblings bound by blood and pain and necessity, I love her, even as she sets in wait to kill me and all that I hold most dear.

I'd reasoned even as we all dispersed in pursuit of them, Rosalie's baron womb has made her psychotic, I knew the moment I'd bought Bella home with the tragic news of this pregnancy, and she aligned herself with a woman she'd essentially loathed, this would have a bitter end.

But she was more than psychotic, she was murderous. Killing at the demand of this things hunger and it sickened me, she had to be stopped.

I don't acknowledge her, but instead nervously swallow, moving deeper into the room, keeping up the façade.

But make no mistake, I am being ambushed and do not let the history of my love for Rosalie cloud my judgment, she will die tonight if that is how it must be.

The curtains billow away from the window as a gust of wind fills the room casting a ghostly white light over the solid shadow in the far corner. A heavy worn boot peeking out from the darkness leads me in its direction.

Excitement strains the tiny heart into a frenzy but it does not move, it is obedient as it's told in silent communication to keep still, stay hidden from me. I can feel its curiosity, its ferocious desire to move toward me from behind, my hairs stand on end as I kneel down releasing a slow sigh.

"Oh…Charlie."

His lifeless body lie thrown against the wall just beneath the window, the curtain cascades over him in eerie resemblance to a death shroud and the sickening smell of his spent decaying blood fill my senses clouding my purpose for being here.

Had she seen this happen?

Were the screams that sent me bursting through the house, hurling my body from room to room in search of her, so blood curdling because she'd witnessed this? The rabid, torture of her father as he died in screaming agony at the hands of something so ungodly I could hardly fashion a name for it.

This creature. This hybrid of human and hell which tweaked and hissed against the air at my back too young to realize my senses would detect even the most minute sound in the room had killed its grandfather. Quite possibly the only human contact it would ever have in its short life, its mother's wanted path concreted for her now. If I could just get to her.

I needed to end this, the span of seconds I could count between the beats of her heart told me I had very little time.

Resting my hand on Charlie's arm I pretend to check him, stalling for time, its fruitless and unnecessary, he is dead, but I hope the monster breathing into Rosalie's ear would dull her normally flawless skills of observation and Rosalie would be off her game, granting me this small moment of reprieve.

I've never been lucky, in human or my vampire life and as I close my eyes, hearing her shift her weight forward, the movement literally changing the frigid air of the room the cold of it rushing up my back.

She's on to me and I let out a breath and pivot in her direction, hoping my voice does not betray the course of something I had not felt in decades throughout my body.

Fear.

It was gripping the normal grace of my movements and making my voice halt as I called out to my wife, desperation evident as I move to stand.

"Bella?"

"She's feeding the baby Edward; you've come at a bad time."

My eyes narrowed and shoulders square as I am assaulted with an onslaught of senses and gifts all at once. The jargoned ramblings of a mind so new its words were fragmented and disjointed into a mess of sound and colors that echoed loud then faded too quickly for me to comprehend. On its heels was a steady stream of thoughts and images so evil my eyes began to sting as I received them.

The slashing open of Charlie's throat a veined tiny orb of flesh covered human skull burying itself in the opening as it gushed with his blood, then lifting out to breathe as waves and spurts of red spattered against the distorted face, before bathing and lapping at the river of blood again. Charlie thrashing, his eyes widened in horror as his life seeped along the floor.

Bella screaming, trying in futile effort to run from the room, red handprints, smeared on white as she reached for survival, stained the wall near the door and my eyes dart there quickly as the image is shown to me. Her screams instantly hushed with a violent smack of her head against the wall as Rosalie pulls her back from the door by the hair, her legs weak and collapsing under her as her bowels lay open, the creature, insatiable climbs into her lifeless lap nuzzling its abandoned home, its hands disappearing inside.

Scattered and frenzied bites to the pale flesh of her thighs and arms, Rosalie tenderly caressing the ugly form to Bella's heaving chest, directing its hungry mouth to her neck whispering in sweet instruction where to feed on its mother, smiles of delight as it obeys with genius precision. Bella mouth hanging open in silent protest as her eyes go wide then dark as she faints into oblivion.

Shaken by the reel of memory, my face crumbles as my fists tighten and I scream in a voice I don't recognize, the sound of it literally shaking the walls around us and the heart of that thing pauses briefly as it scampers further up Rosalie's back, its wiry fingers burying themselves in her hair.

"Where is she!"

I'm met with laughter, sick and sarcastic laughter as Rosalie moves closer her voice lithe, her fingers reaching for the boney ones curling lovingly in her blond tresses as she smiles at me a dark threat as her eyes betray her true intentions.

"She's right here silly. I told you, she was feeding the baby."

Her arm, hidden until this moment moves and she delights in the look of my face as she drags Bella from behind her, the girth of her body collapsed and heavy on the floor while my sister grips the back of her neck pulling the flesh taut.

She lifts her slowly by the scruff, much like humans lift cats to paralyze them and I whimper as Bella dangles inches from the floor, her toes dripping thick zig zags of blood along the floor as she swings on display as Rosalie grins sadistically at me, arching her brows in question.

"Did you want her? I think we're done now anyway."

I can't think. My body sibilating as I growl, venom pouring and washing down my throat as the need to become lost in my own fury begins to overwhelm me. I can't see, the darkness of the room, of my thoughts and the pathological sadism of what has been done crashes around me and turns everything black threatening to envelope me.

I feel my mouth moving but hear nothing, a new onslaught of images rushing through my head, forcing a wave of nausea to push against my stomach, simultaneously pushing the blackness away.

Bella begging for her life in quiet pleas, her eyes focused on Rosalie, on the thing taunting her as it splayed its hand over her cheek, fingers caressing her in what could only be described as curiosity.

Bella shaken to life as she's snatched and thrown into the wall the sound of my thunderous steps and cries filling my mind as they did the owner of the memories ears.

My voice crackles as the frame of my body, on its own contorts into a menacing stance and I reach out my hand offering only one possibility to avoid my wrath. I am primal, the endings of my nerves rejoice as they schism and spark with untapped animalistic electricity.

"Give her to me Rosalie."

The creature, my child, lifts its alien head over her shoulder, its gaping hollow eyes stare at me, absorbing my stance, the tremble of my voice and it tilts its head like a curious dog and touches Rosalie's face, never taking its eyes from me, fear seeming to register as it ducks lower, merely peeking at me now. Her eyes grow bored and hooded as she nods, looking at Bella when she makes the faintest sound before answering.

"Yes, that's your father."

Before I realize it my hand has crushed a hole in the floor below me, shards of marble turn to dust between my fingers as I prepare to launch at her, Bella's heart lulling a thump in my ears.

"ROSALIE. NOW!"

And with that she's thrown in my direction, in a blur of nothing the curtains wave and drift out the window as Rosalie makes her escape just as I catch my Bella her body bankrupt and lifeless.

I want to cry.

I want to scream.

I want to go after them and kill.

I want so many things in this moment, but nothing more than for her to open her eyes and in her state that is impossible.

The realization is clear and vivid, much like the images still holding residue in my mind of her life being drained from her.

In order to give her life, I had to finish what they started.

With a strangled cry I ran from the room, rushing out into the cold night toward the main house.

"Carlise! Help!"