Disclaimer: the characters and Twilight Universe belong to Stephanie Meyer. No copyright infringement is intended.

A/N

THANKS SO SO MUCH to annoyed by you ,AriannaTwilight, and Suny B fro their AMAZING reviews!!! I'm glad that you like the alternating perspectives and tone. I'm glad posting this quickly will make you happy. Unfortunately, this chapter is all in Esme's pov. But the next one will alternate povs again. I will be traveling this week but I hope to post within the next two weeks. PLEASE keep the reviews coming they tell me what to do more of, plus, they make me SO happy. Happy New Year!!!!

Chapter 2

The Wrath of a Goddess

Esme's POV

I never thought I would be thinking in hell, but nevertheless my first conscious thought after the pain was that cotton tastes funny. Once my brain registered that and that the fire was gone, my mind started working overtime. If the fire was gone, did that mean I was not in hell? If I was not in hell, where was I? As soon as I decided to sit up from lying on something soft, I felt the room begin to spin. Two arms came into my view and steadied me. Judging by the man's face, which was quickly lowered to my level, I surmised that by some miraculous mistake I had been taken from hell to heaven. His angel face was impossibly pale. His eyes were a dark rich gold, they complimented his almost white blond hair nicely. Then a burning in my throat made me rethink whether I was in hell or not. The hell-fire was back consuming my mouth with a raw burning thirst. I raised my right hand to touch my throat. Before my fingers could touch that part of my body, they came in contact with one end of my cotton gag which stayed limply in my still open mouth. I snatched the thing from its inconvenient resting place and closed my mouth with a snap.

The spinning had stopped so I let my bewildered eyes scan the room around me. The room was plain in its appearance. There was a large radio on the opposite wall from me. The radio was like those I had seen in the newspaper advertisements. Its many dials were glossy black and the radio's mahogany casement was just as polished. On the whole, this marvel of new technology seemed very new and expensive. Seeing such a new invention with my own eyes was such an unexpected treat that I momentarily forgot my thirst and the room's other occupants.

I should say that that was until the blond angel covered his pursed lips with a fist and cleared his own throat. From the way that quiet sound hung in the tense silence of the room, you might have expected a lion to have roared. At any rate, startled from my reverie over the radio, my eyes first wandered up and met the cautious gaze of a young man who stood defensively in a semi-crouch just a few yards from where I still lay. He was also incredibly pale. His eyes were lighter gold than the older angel's, and he had dark messy brown hair. The recollection of the blonde's eyes prompted me to look down at the still figure beside me. One of his hands still closed on my upper left arm in support. When he saw my gaze on him, he dropped the other from his mouth. He parted his full lips for me in a small smile that revealed some of his sharp white teeth.

"I am Carlyle, and this is my son Edward." He gestured vaguely in the direction of the crouched man, but never once moved his eyes from mine.

Forgetting that it was probably a good idea to be polite around angels, I burst out my two most urgent questions in one breath. "Do you have little Peter? Is my baby happy in heaven?"

Saying this without the pretence of my own introduction, I closed my burning mouth while I waited for ether of them to answer. At first their only responses were expressions of blank confusion. Then the brown-haired one named Edward fixed an intense gaze on me as if he was trying to read my mind. Then faint comprehension and dread registered on his face. He traded looks back and forth with Carlyle, they seemed to hold a silent conference over my head. When I saw that Edward was not going to answer me, I looked down at Carlyle. His face was contorted in a mixture of compassion and guilt. I knew I was not going to like his answer.

"We are not angels. We are vampires. Do you remember any of what I told you while you were turning?"

After he uttered this grave question, I remembered this strange tale I had heard in the fire. At the time I just thought it was a hallucination brought on by the pain. But apparently not. With horror I started to remember the story of the legendary monsters that yearned for blood. But the ones that the voice, Carlyle, had mentioned were not so bad. They refrained from killing humans and only drank the blood of animals, "vegetarians" in his terms. The idea of killing did not bother me as much as it would have if I were not being slowly driven mad by my burning need. The part of the story that horrified me to my very core was the notion that I was immortal, unable to ever be with the dead either in heaven or in hell. A few weeks without my lovely boy had driven me to suicide. And this vampire, this fiend I had just thought an angel, told me that I was parted from my Peter forever.

I leapt up from the couch, my eyes blazing. My hunting instincts took over and I launched myself at Carlyle's neck, instinctually trying to find the place where his jugular vein once throbbed. Before I could take one step, Edward tackled me from behind, vainly trying to pin my claw-like hands behind my back. My newborn strength surged in my body and I broke his hold effortlessly. But Carlyle was too fast for me. He fled the room and, just as I was about to turn my anger on Edward, Carlyle distracted me with a plain white cup. The scent was something my body craved and could not deny. I angrily abandoned my attack and, instead, flew to Carlyle's side, snatching the cup of blood he offered me in one smooth movement. While I gulped greedily, the fire began to ebb and Edward took advantage of the moment to begin speaking rapidly.

"Yes, you are immortal." Edward seemed to answer my thoughts. "But do you think a life of killing will ever bring you closer to your boy? I do not know if we vampires have souls, but doing right never seems to be wrong. As you see, my father and I do not have the strength to restrain you."

Carlyle joined in, "Even though I understand your revulsion to what we are, I ask -- in the hope that one day you might be rejoined with your son in whatever end waits for us good vampires -- that you fight your impulses, that you instead let us teach you, and that you do good ."

My angry fire abruptly died. Instead, the old numb emptiness seemed to saturate my entire being. I fell back on the couch, my body wracked by tearless sobs. The sounds made Carlyle's face twist in guilty sympathy. But both Edward and Carlyle seemed greatly alarmed when the sobs turned to hapless, mad laughter. When I looked down at my big right toe, I saw that the coroners had apparently left a tag on me, denoting my supposed cause of death. I shook the scrap of paper from my now marble-like foot. I brandished the word scrawled on it in Carlyle's face. My eyes held a mad glint and my body still convulsed with the hopeless laughter.

"Out of all the people you could have made immortal, you picked one of the only people on this planet who just wanted to die. Or can you not read?" I said cynically, ignoring his tortured expression. "It says, 'SUICIDE'!" I screamed the word like an accusation. I spent the rest of that first night of my new life convulsing intermittently between my dry sobs and mad laughter, deaf to Carlyle's pleas for forgiveness and Edward's assurances that things would be all right. I was lost to everything but my own dispair.

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