The week passed, as winter approached the rain got harder and colder, and Bella found herself waking in terror from nightmares of the might have beens and could have beens and probably weres. She didn't know Jane, didn't know where to look for a girl who went missing, but all the same she wondered in fear and in terror.

Some part of her was certain that she had traded Jane's life for hers.

And yet here she and Carlisle were, studying in the library like always, as if none of it had happened. Bella's hand, as she drank tea, shook ever so slightly, Carlisle pretended not to notice.

As he pretended not to notice, Bella pretended that she hadn't noticed more than she'd wanted to. Edward could read minds, he'd all but flaunted it, Edward had skin paler than hers and sculpted to perfection, Edward was a killer, and Edward was not human.

Carlisle looked so very similar, Carlisle had known Edward and feared him, Edward had known Carlisle and resented him.

Carlisle, she had become convinced, wasn't human either.

It wasn't shocking, maybe she'd already known, maybe everyone had already known but all the same that certain thought pounded inside her head every second of every day. Edward Mason is not human, Carlisle Cullen is not human, and they are both something dangerous.

In every shadow she saw Edward, always out of the corner of her eye, copper hair gleaming in the light, eyes burning and crimson as he grinned or smirked across at her from the dark. He'd put a finger to his lips, mocking, telling her to keep quiet or else come hither.

"Bella," Carlisle's hand reached out towards hers, catching her shaking fingers, and they were just as cold as always.

Bella started, with alarm and regret Carlisle pulled back, "Sorry."

"No, it's…" Bella stopped, shook her head, "It's fine, I'm fine."

She wasn't fine, and judging by Carlisle's expression, it, the situation, whatever this was, wasn't fine either. Libraries and studying wouldn't bury it away out of sight and mind, she wasn't safe here, they both knew it.

"Who…" Bella stopped, closed her eyes and breathed out, seeing Edward's face in her head, "Who is he, Carlisle?"

Carlisle's face shuttered, closed off, as if she had touched something more precious and far deeper than hometowns that didn't exist, England, or coffee dates and friendship.

However, whatever edge Carlisle had wanted to keep her safely perched upon, Bella had unwittingly crossed it already, or Edward had crossed it for her, and so shuddering and closing his own eyes Carlisle said, "He is… the closest thing I have ever had to a brother."

Then, with that wry and self-deprecating smile, "We're no longer close and he's… He's very dangerous, Bella."

Carlisle said nothing after that, but when Bella stood to leave and pack her things, his eyes trailed after her, wide and gold and filled with regret and a terrible nauseating fear both of her and for her.

It shouldn't have surprised her, that stepping out of the building, she immediately saw Edward lounging at its entrance against a pillar, his eyes a bright and glowing crimson.

"And he won't even walk you to your car, for shame, Carlisle," Edward said, hands in pockets, looking Bella over, eyes raking up and down, "It's almost as if he wants you to conveniently disappear outside of his watch."

"Edward," Bella said, stiffly, politely, and at her tone Edward just laughed.

"Oh, precious Bella, you are ever delightful," he walked up to her, slinging an arm around her shoulder, cold and far heavier than a human arm should be, "Now, now, don't take this the wrong way but please don't go texting for help like a good little girl from your study buddy Carl. That sort of solution only works the one time and gets dull and repetitive at even the second."

There was no chance of that, with his arm around her shoulder, Bella was more than certain that he'd simply destroy her phone if she tried it. And right now, that phone was the only way Bella had to contact Carlisle, when she got back to her apartment, if she got back, she'd have to memorize his number.

As they walked down the street, Edward shepherding her and setting the pace, Bella felt her heart rattling in her chest once again and cold sweat intermixing with the drizzle of rain. The sun, setting now, was turning the clouds scarlet, pink, and purple as it dipped below the horizon. Edward looked at it wistfully, almost with longing.

Looking down at her he then noted, his voice soft and full of wonder, "Twilight is the safest time for us, has Carlisle told you that?"

No, but then, Carlisle rarely said anything at all. Still, quietly Bella said, "He said he likes the rain."

Edward grinned, a jagged dark thing, and his eyes when they met hers were still filled with hunger, "Oh Carlisle Cullen, that would be the answer he'd give, wouldn't it? Has he told you much of anything, Bella? I'm sure he hasn't. Then again, you seem the perceptive sort, and you've lingered around him longer than you should. It amazes him, you know. You remind him of the rose gardens in England, beautiful and blossoming when you have every right to wither on the vine in such a sunless place. Like light, soft and illuminating in all the right places…"

Bella said nothing, there was nothing to say, only that horrible pounding fear as they walked closer and closer to the parking lot with her truck. And anyone passing them by would never notice, because Edward was boyish and beautiful, a boy on the cusp of being a man and Bella was plain and dark and would be lucky to have caught the attention of someone like him.

Lucky, as if Bella Swan had ever once in her life been lucky.

"That terrifies him, the last thing Carlisle wants is to be… illuminated," Edward said, as if this in itself was some kind of cruel joke.

"Listen I don't…"

"Know why he puts up with you? Why he lets you linger in the periphery of his strange silent world?" Edward asked, finishing her thoughts for her with a teasing fond note in his voice, "Oh, I know the answer to that, he all but shouts it every time he sees you and every time he doesn't. The poor fool, I think, may be in love. And with my shadow lingering over you, as well as his own memories, he's rightfully terrified. No, you have made yourself special in any and every way that counts, my friend."

He then stopped abruptly, in the middle of the sidewalk, the streetlights flickering on one by one as he took her chin into his fingers, gently, softly, and tilted it upwards. His fingers were colder than ice, so cold that they burned, "What would it take, Bella Swan, to truly tempt a saint? Is it the swan song of your blood? Is it your eyes, so dark and filled with light? Is it your smile? Or is it the ineffable grace where you can smile at monsters clothed as men?"

Finally, with his fingers on her chin, his eyes crinkling and glowing stoplight red in the dark, Bella asked, "Are you going to kill me?"

His lips twisted into a smirk, "That, Bella, depends on Carlisle Cullen."

He wanted her to ask, she didn't want to ask, but she had to ask regardless, "What do you mean?"

"Carlisle, many years ago now, once made a choice that he deeply regrets. Since then, he's learned his lesson of looking but not touching. You, though, you're different. He has no excuse of Spanish influenza and certain death, but oh he wants you. His heart aches, Bella, for your companionship if not your body," raised, wiggling, eyebrows and a sensual grin, "He truly is a sickening romantic at heart, our Carl."

Edward then stepped back, framing her with his hands as if lining her up for a photograph, "I want him to be forced to make that same choice once again, to feel his own agony and hypocrisy crush down upon him, to recognize that simply because he is an unreasonably good, kind, man whom the saints themselves might envy, he is capable of horrors beyond imagination. That I, a blood sucking demon, am made from his image."

Then, shoving his hands into his pockets, Edward's smile was all charm once again, "It's all personal, Bella, though nothing against you in particular."

Bella shook, shivering in the cold, even as Edward's eyes raked across her, hot, heavy, and filled with longing and desire, "It's a pity I have to use you to make this point, because you are so beautiful, so delectable, when you shake like that… Oh, would that I had the weakness to take you and break you now, your blood for my wine and bone marrow for my butter. But I hate Carlisle far more than I want you, and I can be patient."

Edward turned then, hand raised in a wave over his head, and said, "Tell him that he has a week to decide, and remind him, Bella, that he's never been particularly good at hide and seek."

Shaking, Bella got into her car, turned it on, and slowly but surely began to drive home. Her hands as they gripped the steering wheel were too tight, the radio sounding tinny and distant, like something from some other world. Her breathing was shallow and heavy, her legs pounding with blood from her heart, and they all but raced her up the stairs to her apartment as she flew on adrenaline.

She could smell it before she opened the door.

Bella had always been able to smell blood, the tiniest scratch, and she could smell the copper, burning, tang in the air and feel the bile rising in her throat. Whatever was on the other side of her door was not a papercut.

Bella's eyes widened, her throat burned, and she doubled over, willing herself to stay upright and not be sick on her own doorstep. Then, eyes squeezed shut, knowing she didn't want to see and couldn't see but had to see anyway, she put her key into the door, turned it, and opened it.

And oh, oh, all she could say as she opened it was, "Oh Jane, that's where you went."


The police were quick, at least, as was Carlisle when she tearfully called him. They came and asked too many questions which Bella answered as honestly as she dared, she'd seen the girl once at a party, she thought her name might be Jane, she'd never seen her before and hadn't seen her since until she'd opened the door to her own apartment.

She thought it might have been a boy, Edward Mason, tall with red hair and dark eyes. He'd talked to Bella, scared her and enjoyed it, then he'd gone off and talked to Jane while Bella had left the party.

Carlisle's hands tightened on her shoulders, in warning, as she described Edward to them but somehow, they both knew that they wouldn't find him. And that even if they could find him…

The night ended with Bella making reassuring, murmured phone calls to Charlie as well as Renee from Carlisle's apartment back in Seattle. Soft lies that did nothing to soothe the panic of either or Bella's own panic and horror as her eyes wandered Carlisle's warm home for desperate reassurance.

It was a nice place, thick books everywhere, medical textbooks and novels alike. All of them old and bound in leather, overtaking the bookshelves and spreading to flood onto every available table and even on the corner of the carpet. Artwork, old, English, hung from the walls, and in the corner, propped up against a wall at an odd angle, was an old wooden crucifix that looked more at home in a cathedral than this small apartment.

Carlisle stood in the kitchen, at a distance that was polite, but likely not out of earshot while Bella tried not to think about what she'd seen. Finally, when the call with Renee ended, in tears and promised reassurances, Bella said quietly to Carlisle, "He said… he said you have a week to decide if I live or die."

And that, that seemed to mean something very specific to Carlisle, more than it had meant to Bella. He slouched forward, shoulders hunching, face twisted and furrowed with terror and grief.

Bella sat down at the table, placing her phone in front of her, staring at it and contemplating death. There had been a few close calls in her life already. Once, when she'd just moved to Forks, it had snowed and there had been ice in the parking lot. Tylor had hit the gas a little too hard and hit the front of Bella's truck. Two seconds later, and Bella herself could have been standing there, right where his car would have hit…

Later, after that, that same school year she'd been in Port Angeles with Jessica and Angela and a group of men had started following her down the street. She'd eventually walked into a building, some shop, and refused to leave until they gave up and dispersed, the shop owner a nice old woman who patted Bella on the shoulder and asked if she needed to call the police. Later, Bella found out, the man who had been the unquestioned leader of the group was a serial rapist and killer who had likely planned on Bella being his next victim.

Point being, her life had flashed before her eyes more than once now, and yet… A week, a single week, for her to live or die. Suddenly, nineteen was unbearably young. And yet, closing her eyes, picturing the after, she did not think she was afraid to die.

The chair across from her scraped against the floor, groaning, and Carlisle sat down in it, "Bella, I am, you have no idea how sorry I am. For all of this, any of this."

She shook her head, tears gathering in her eyes, hitching in her throat, and asked, "Why are you sorry? You… If you hadn't come the other night, I know he would have… I would have been Jane."

Jane spread out and dismembered across Bella's apartment like she'd been a dog's chew toy. Had Edward kept her alive for a week, long enough to find Bella's apartment and tear her open inside of it, or had he carted her dead body in and then thrown her limbs from one corner of the room to the other?

Carlisle grimaced, then smiled, but it was old and deep and filled with pain, "Edward is my fault, my responsibility in every way that matters."

He paused, eyes looking as if they were on the verge of tears, and yet none fell, and Bella wondered if Carlisle was even capable of crying anymore. Perhaps tears, she thought, were a human thing.

"Bella I'm… I'm not human."

"I know," Bella said, nodding, at Carlisle's stunned look she said, "Edward wasn't subtle, and… And you never seemed entirely human."

He nodded, seeming to accept that easily enough, this quiet charade that both she and Carlisle had so easily agreed to in the library. Bella missed that, missed it even though it hadn't even been a day since she'd had it, a week since Edward. They would never have the library again.

When Carlisle spoke again his voice was strained, raw, as if he'd been shouting, "I am a monster, I am the monster who turned Edward Mason, a good innocent boy who had once had human hopes and human dreams, into a monster. I am… I am what you'd call a vampire."

"A vampire?" Bella asked, finding that word oddly funny, like it didn't and couldn't belong in this conversation, but Carlisle nodded.

"Many of the myths, the weaknesses, aren't true. I can own a crucifix, I can walk in sunlight, I have no aversion to garlic, silver, or holy water but… But we do drink blood, crave it like a drug for which we will never truly have enough," he paused, eyes searching the room, before settling on her once again, softening on her hair and her eyes.

She wondered what he saw, when he looked at her, what had she looked like walking up to him in the library. Was it really what Edward had said? That human, ordinary, Bella walking towards him had looked like softly falling light?

"I was born three hundred years ago in England, I was the son of a priest, and when I was a young man I hunted monsters. I was very good at it, at twenty-three I cornered a dying coven in London. In desperation, as they faced their death at the hands of the vengeful mob, one bit me. Three days later, after the metamorphosis was done, I had been transformed into the very thing I hunted. For a year I attempted to destroy myself, always failing, fleeing from civilization and… One day, in my starvation, I killed a deer. It tasted horrible, but the hunger fled, and I had hope, but the years travelled onwards, and I realized that I was a strange perversion among our kind.

I did not view myself as human, can't, but I respected and wanted to be among them still. The rest separate themselves from humans entirely, view themselves as an elevated form of humanity, to escape the curse of cannibalism."

He folded his hands together, eyes looking down at his own fingernails, gleaming as Edward's had in the light of his kitchen, "Edward was born in 1900, I met him in 1918, during the height of the Spanish influenza in Chicago. I had worked to become a doctor, many times over by then at many different universities, and I was the only doctor in the world immune to any and every virus that existed. His father was dead, his mother dying, himself dying with no means to stop it as so many others were dying…"

He paused then, looked at Bella, taking her hands in his and pleading her to understand. His hands were so cold, and yet he did not even seem to notice Bella's discomfort, lost in his memories, "She had such green eyes, her son had the same eyes, and she looked up at me in her last lucid moments and begged me to save him. Somehow, she knew I could do it, and as she gripped my hand I could not say no. And so, when she died, I turned to Edward, feverish and no longer lucid and I… I changed him. For years he tried, I tried to teach him to see the world as I did, even when he could hear every thought in someone's head. And he was so talented but so very unhappy… Then, one day, he decided that it wasn't enough. That no matter how much I pretended and lied to myself, he was not and never had been my son or brother.

He left, to feed on rapists and murderers, and later he must have slid into unsuspecting and vulnerable young women. He never forgave me and all I can think is that I… I was so lonely, two hundred years I had been so alone in the world, that I had justified the murder of a child. A child who would become a gleeful and vengeful murderer himself to sate a hunger he should never have been burdened with. I didn't allow myself to wonder, to know in 1918 as I stared down at this feverish boy who would never be a man, that he would have rather died."

Carlisle looked away from her, as if he couldn't bear to look at her, stared instead at his stove and quietly said, "I turned no one since, didn't dare, not poor broken Esme who jumped in despair to her death or tortured and raped Rosalie Hale. I… I looked at them, in all their pain and misery, and thought that I could not choose for them as I had chosen for Edward. I shoulder so many burdens already, watching them die helplessly, it is just one more, only one more."

And Bella then realized what it was Edward wanted, what Carlisle feared, and perhaps the point of this strange story, "He's… He's forcing you to turn me into a vampire, isn't he?"

"Or watch him devour you alive," Carlisle said with a nod, a wretched laugh of a sob, turning his eyes upward as if to ask God why it had come to this.

A vampire, Bella had never given them much thought, for obvious reasons horror had never been Bella's genre. Monsters and things that went bump in the night usually sent her running in the other direction. That Carlisle was one of them was… Still, she could believe Edward was, and if she believed that then she could believe Carlisle was as well.

Except looking at him, at Edward, both were so captivating and so beautiful.

"Is it…" Bella paused, licked her lips, and looked at Carlisle, trying to form what she was saying and get to the root of this choice Edward had presented them, "Is it so bad?"

Carlisle looked at her, looked at her as if she had said the most thoughtless and ignorant thing he'd ever heard, and Bella remembered that he had just told her how this very choice had lead Edward Cullen from a boy who had likely been perfectly normal and charming into the monster she had met.

Bella bit her lip and flushed in shame, her fingers freezing in Carlisle's yet not daring to move them away, instead wondering if perhaps with those words she'd just bought her untimely death from Carlisle.

"You wouldn't be the same," Carlisle finally said softly, "You… change, the way you think changes, your memories fade, you become static and time moves past you so easily. You would hunger for human blood for the rest of eternity, be dead to your mother and father, and for all the strengths and talents you might gain you would pay a terrible price for them."

He looked deep into her eyes then, his own fathomless golden pools that Bella wondered how she had ever mistaken for human, "Bella, it is a choice I would never make for someone unless they had no other choice at all."

"And do I," Bella asked, "Have any other choice?"

Carlisle's silence spoke more than enough. Edward had found her apartment with ease, had tracked her to the library, Edward could hear what people thought, and she imagined he might even be lingering outside of Carlisle's apartment right now.

"Not many," Carlisle finally said, then he stood, pulling Bella up from the table with her, some decision having been made in his mind, "Leave your phone, your credit cards as well, and your apartment keys."

Bella opened her mouth, eyes wide, "My phone but…"

"Pick a destination, somewhere you've never been before and no one would think to look for you," Carlisle continued, now moving into his bedroom and out again at a speed that was almost too fast to track with the eye, hastily packing a bag filled with clothing, "Don't tell me where it is, just give me a highway and a direction and I can start driving."

"But, I can't just leave," Bella said, moving forward, trying to stop him even as he zipped up the suitcase, "I have school and what will I tell Charlie or Renee and…"

Carlisle just looked at her, eyes burning and filled with pity and anger, as if waiting for Bella to realize exactly what was happening. Suddenly she did, if Bella stayed here, and the week ended, she'd die or be turned. So, Bella had to disappear, so thoroughly that a mind reading vampire couldn't find her.

Bella Swan, one way or another, was already dead.

When they left the apartment, Bella's phone, her credit cards, all final vestiges of her life were left on the table.


Carlisle drove fast, far faster than the truck would be able to handle. He'd been driving for days now, barely stopping for when Bella needed food or a restroom or the car needed gasoline, leaving her to sleep in the passenger seat of the car. Soon the forest and rain of western Washington changed into the Cascades then into the plains of the eastern part of the state then into Idaho and Montana.

In the sunlight, as he drove, his skin sparkled like crystal. Light caught in different facets and reflecting off in a rainbow of color, like he was made from diamonds. Quietly, when the sun had first come out as they were driving, he'd explained that this was why he avoided sunlight.

Bella had said nothing, not quite sure what to say to the sight of his skin reflecting light but had thought that it was a strange turn in her life that saw her on the road with a man made of diamonds to perhaps escape his prodigal son.

Bella didn't call Renee and she didn't call Charlie, she wondered if they thought she was dead, her disappearance so soon after the discovery of Jane's body in her apartment. Carlisle said nothing, but undoubtedly, he thought it was for the best. If Bella called them, Edward might visit them first to see where she went or draw her to them, and if he could do it to someone like Jane then she didn't doubt he'd hesitate before murdering Charlie or Renee.

Bella felt cut off from the world, more than she ever had before, as if she and Carlisle in his speeding car were on some sperate plane existence from the rest of humanity. So that even the radio, kept on eclectic stations that wandered between pop, classic rock, and folk music couldn't truly reach them.

Staring out the window of the car, she noted to herself that she'd never seen so much of the country before, even with Renee moving all around the south they had always flown from one state to the next, chasing sunlight.

At one point in the drive, somewhere in Idaho, Carlisle explained what he knew of Edward's gift, "It is possible, sometimes, to block him. It's difficult, but if you think enough of other things, concentrate hard on something without consequence, then he can't see through it. It's exhausting though, and never maintainable in the long term."

Bella nodded, then asked, "Do you know why he can't read my thoughts?"

He looked at her, shook his head, "No, but then, perhaps that's your gift."

Bella shook her head, a rueful smile on her face as she stared out at the empty fields surrounding the highway, "Not much of a gift, is it?"

"Well, it may keep you alive yet," Carlisle said with a shrug and a smile, "And that is nothing to brush aside."

Yes, but where were they going? Bella had picked west, debating between Minnesota or Wisconsin, certainly a place you'd never expect to find Bella Swan but… But she just felt, in strange way, as if they'd be driving forever, driving for the rest of Bella's life. In this car, eating at Wendy's and sleeping in the car, going, and going until there was nowhere to go anymore.

With Edward's deadline was approaching by the minute.

Even though she'd been sitting still for days she felt tired, tired and restless and strangely light headed, as if even now she was dreaming and would wake up and realize that neither Edward nor Carlisle had existed in the first place. However, every time she woke up it was to Carlsile's sparkling skin in the morning sunlight and to the sound of the radio.

His eyes grew darker by the day, with fear and hunger, and Bella knew that in his own way he was just as tired as she was.

"Carlisle," Bella finally asked, "Why are you doing all of this for me?"

Carlisle laughed, blaming himself again, because if he hadn't looked at her, in his mind at least, then none of this would be happening.

"You dropped out of med school for this," Bella reminded him, "Just to drive me across the country."

"I have been to medical school before, I go back every few decades to catch up on research and new techniques. It's easier than you'd think to fake a medical license and new IDs and show up in some small town as a surgeon," Carlisle assured her, and she wondered what it would have been like to have met him instead as a recently graduated student opening a practice in Forks, "I'll be a doctor again, a medical school student again, I'm sure of it."

"Still, I'm… I'm nobody," she hadn't wanted to say it, hadn't wanted Carlisle to come to his senses and realize it, realize that no matter what Edward thought that there was nothing special about Bella. At best she was some freak of nature whose thoughts Edward couldn't read, a fact that somehow didn't surprise her, because she'd always been just a little different than everyone else.

"No, no you are not nobody," Carlisle insisted, taking his eyes off the road to stare at her with a bewildered expression, "Do you know how many people have talked to me in the last century? How many have dared to get close and then get close again? Even after Edward appeared and…"

He trailed off, took a breath, then said, "I have lived for over three hundred years, and yet, I have never met someone like you. Whatever time I have to take away from my human charade, don't ever think that it's not worth it."

And the way he looked at her, Bella knew that he believed it, more his belief was so strong that Bella herself could believe it for a moment. That Bella Swan, human, ordinary, clumsy, and so quiet was worth everything.

She smiled at him, tears gathering at the corner of her eyes, ignoring his look of alarm as she confessed, "There was never anyone like you either, in Forks of Phoenix, and I know it's only been nineteen years on my end but… But I looked, I think, for someone like you. Everyday I'd look through crowds and faces, looking for you. So that even if I was in a library, looking for a place to sit and do homework, I'd notice you right away."

Through her tears, rolling fat, large, and warm down her cheeks she smiled, eyes locked on his figure even through her blurring vision, "So even if we met in the worst circumstances, even if knowing you means driving in a car to nowhere, I am glad I met you."

Then, perhaps it was the idea that death or change or something was around the corner, perhaps it was because Bella had spent so much of her life afraid for no reason at all, but she moved forward so that her face was against his, his skin so cold, and kissed him lightly on the lips.

They were cold, colder than his hands seemed, and there was no movement to them, and yet her whole body seemed to burn with just this light contact, a whisper against his lips.

He stared, stunned, afraid, still driving and not saying a word. But that was alright, because beneath that, she was sure that he was happy. That when this was over, one way or another, he would be glad that he met her too.

And the road, as always, continued to wind before them, drawing them closer and closer to Edward's deadline and to whatever waited after that.


It was in a gas station restroom on Bella's last day, with flickering fluorescent lights, graffiti on the walls of who had been here and who was here at one in the morning for a good time, with yellowed tap water, that Edward made his reappearance.

Carlisle was filling the car with gas, then buying the hostess products that she'd been living off of for the past few days, while Bella took this moment in the bathroom to regroup herself and try not to notice how limp her hair was, the dark circles beneath her eyes, or how she looked halfway on the way to death already.

Then, Edward's voice, unmistakable and recognizable anywhere, casually singing out an old Frank Sinatra number, "I've got you under my skin. I have got you deep in the heart of me. So deep in my heart, you're really a part of me, and I've got you under my skin."

Bella lifted her head into the stained mirror, that looked as if it hadn't been cleaned in days, and her eyes slowly but surely lifted to see Edward Mason oh so casually leaning against a stall as he looked across at her.

"I have tried so, not to give in. I've said to myself this affair, it never would go so well. But why should I try to resist when I know so well, that I've got you under my skin?"

As he caught her eye, his a more faded burgundy now, he grinned across at her, that boyish handsome grin of his, "I would sacrifice anything, for the sake of having you near. In spite of a warning voice, that comes in the night and repeats in my ear, 'Don't you know, you fool, you never can win. Use your mentality, wake up to reality.' For each time I do, just the thought of you makes me stop, before I begin. Because I've got you under my skin."

Then he was next to her, moving too fast for her to track, faster than Carlisle at times, and fingering her hair he asked, "Do you like Frank Sinatra, Bella? I miss the man, I miss him and Ella Fitzgerald, and am so tired of this modern trash they call music."

He then spared her a dry almost amused and chiding glance, "Oh come now, did you really think you two could outrun me? You took I-405 East, Bella, any half-wit could have caught up with you."

"Does he know you're here?" Bella asked, swallowing, all too aware that this could be her end. Here in a gas station on the freeway in the middle of nowhere.

Edward barked out an amused laugh, "Oh I'm sure he will soon enough, but the wind's not in his favor, and he has been very distracted. But I'm not here to talk to Carlisle yet, I want to talk to you."

He stepped back then, not to a polite distance, still entirely too close, but further away so that he could take all of her in at once, "So, Bella, do you know what the verdict is? Does he watch me guzzle you down like cheap beer or are you to become a blood sucking lady of the night?"

Bella said nothing, eyes hardening, but Edward had clearly gotten better at reading her or else had read Carlisle's mind, "You don't know, do you? You know, Bella, I can tell you the answer, or at least, Carlisle's answer. Would you like to hear it?"

"Not from you," Bella hissed out, only for him to smile, so very politely back at her.

"I think I like that about you, Bella. You're so quiet, yet beneath that you have a courage that even you would not know how to recognize. You're the girl who politely has tea with monsters," he then paused, considered her, then said softly, "You know, if he hadn't come for you, or if you had never met him, I think I may have turned you myself. The world will be a darker place without you in it, Bella Swan."

He sighed then, breathing in the scent of her and the filthy gas station restroom, eyelids fluttering, "It is just too bad that you are… my personal brand of heroin."

Bella blinked, blanched, and couldn't help but ask, "Was that the best you could come up with?"

"Oh, come on, Bella, it took me days to think of that metaphor," Edward said, somewhat affronted, eyes burning before his expression slipped into disinterest once again, "I had to do something to occupy my time chasing you two lovebirds down."

Bella looked at him then, really looked at him, and realized she was looking at whatever was left of Edward Mason. That once, this boy had probably been exactly what he seemed at the surface, a charming, charismatic, thoughtful young man with a playful smile and hair that stuck out in every direction.

Once, he might have been in her high school, played baseball and gone to dances, perhaps Bella's dances.

Then, she suddenly realized, Carlisle had turned him into this. And that was what it boiled down to, for all of them, because there was no guarantee that Bella as she was would survive this and not in turn become another Edward Mason.

It truly was death in every direction.

"You're a monster," Bella said, a small, simple fact, one that she had never said out loud because to say that to Edward would mean in one way or another to say it about Carlisle.

He just grinned.

Then, clapping his hands together, still grinning, he said, "I think I've changed my mind, it's not Carlisle's choice, not really, that's the whole problem. No, it's your choice, your decision between Scylla and Charybdis, to die or to become death, and I think he should have to watch one way or another."

Bella's heart was pounding, she could hear Carlisle running towards them opening the door and shouting, even as Edward looked at her, grinning, and said, "And Bella, you have about two seconds before I choose for you."

(Maybe, Bella thought to herself as she spared one last, horrified, look towards Carlisle with her mouth open, her number had always been up.)


Author's Note: And that's a wrap, with Edward stealing the show enough to show up more than I'd planned to in the original formative planning of the story.

Thanks for reading and reviewing, reviews are much appreciated.

Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight