A/N – Nobody seemed to care for changing the name for Beau, so Beau he shall remain. I do not own Twilight or any characters featured therein. Belongs to Stephanie Meyer.
Chapter Two - Blood and False Peace
Driven to err by base desires, t'ward waste and wasting on they run.
-The Occuria
BPOV
My old red truck began to grumble and wheeze about halfway between Charlie's place and Forks High. Conspicuous lateness was probably not the best way to start my first date at a new school, so I decided to take the risk and keep on going. I was worried that whoever was riding that motorbike so viciously yesterday afternoon would spray mud all over the nice new paint job this Jake had given the truck, but fortunately he never materialized. With a cough and a groan of resignation, the truck died just as I was turning into the Forks High parking lot. Fortunately momentum stepped in and I was able to roll into the nearest parking space before the truck ground to a halt. Apparently this Jake wasn't quite the mechanic he thought he was, I smirked. Still, as much as I was growing to love the old truck, it really was a hunk of junk. What did I expect?
For a moment at least, fate smiled and no puddles bothered me as I headed towards the helpfully labeled 'Office'. As I opened the door, a jock-looking type guy with spiked blond hair burst out and stomped past me.
Fagboy!
Fortunately he didn't give me a second glance, but I leapt to the side in shock from my flashback, tears already threatening to spill forth. For fuck's sake, this would not do! Especially not on my first day. I gave myself a mental slap and told myself to man the fuck up and I stepped into the warm office. With the heater on full power and the fake plants draped around the room, it had an almost tropical feel. A middle-aged woman in a floral dress and her hair still in curlers looked up from a magazine.
"Now who have we here?" she asked, peering at me over the top of her spectacles. "Don't recognize you, deary. A new student?"
"Yes Miss," I began, "Beau Swan."
"Ah of course, Chief Swan's boy. Yes, we all heard about your arrival." She insisted as she ruffled through some papers underneath her desk. Wonderful, everybody already knew who I was. Perfect start to this whole vanishing act. "Here we are. A map of the school, and this form. Make sure you get your teachers to sign it before bringing it back at the end of the day." She said as she handed me the papers with a flourish, as though bestowing some sort of royal approval upon me. Gingerly extracting the papers from her hands and hoping she didn't pounce, I crept back out of the office and into the light rain. I glanced over at the truck with a sigh. I would have to walk home - I wondered whether Charlie would be able to come and help me fix the truck at some point.
I hunched my shoulders against the cold wind and pulled up the collar on the old jacket I was wearing. More students began to arrive and as I walked carefully towards the main building, a tall boy with black hair and troublesome skin slipped spectacularly on the icy steps. Fortunately he landed on his ass rather than his skull, and a few students around him snickered, one offering to help him up. This was good, right? I'm not the only clumsy dumbass in this place... Then a very short girl with very stylish clothes danced and twirled her way up the same stairs and into the corridor beyond. My brief swell of confidence thoroughly popped, I clutched tightly to the railing and continued into the school. My eyes itched. I hadn't gotten much sleep last night, and what I did get was fitful. The taunting continued, and the bullies in my dreams had no desire to let up just yet. I wiped at them sadly and stepped into the corridor, brushing my now damp brown hair out of my eyes.
"New kid at six o'clock," said a nasally voice in front of me said, "No! Don't turn around!"
"Is he hot? Is he?" gasped another girl, who was resolutely facing her locker. I rolled my eyes as I hurried past them, hearing something about 'cute but scrawny'. I decided I'd track down my locker later and headed straight for the English class. The teacher, Mr Mason, fortunately paid little attention to me, signing my form and waving me to a spare seat without even really lifting his eyes from the newspaper in front of him.
"Hey!" said a voice to my left suddenly, causing me to jump and drop my bag. "Oh sorry, man, didn't mean to startle you," he said apologetically as I picked up the bag and its spilled contents. "I'm Eric, Eric Yorkie. You're the new Swan kid right? Small town, man, small town. Everybody knew you were coming. So how are you liking Forks, huh? It's pretty small and boring, though, huh? I don't mind it though, th rain is pretty relaxing and there are a lot of mountains and stuff -"
This continued on for a while, and my fraid nerves were grateful for the one-sided conversation. By the time Eric was done telling me about how incredibly awesome some beach up the coast was, the class had begun and I sank into a quiet stupor as Mr Mason droned on about various books I had read too many times to mention. Trigonometry and Spanish continued in similar fashion, save for the trig teacher Mr Varner causing me to blush profusely when he insisted I stand up in front of the class and 'say a little something about myself'. I stuttered my way through a short spiel about Phoenix before sitting down and locking my eyes on the graphs in front me, blocking out the light giggling.
By the time lunch rolled around, my nerves had calmed a little and Eric insisted that I join him at his table, located in just the right position to better see one Rosalie Hale's rear end when she sat down. I didn't care to see Rosalie Hale's rear end, but Eric insisted it would be worth the wait.
"Oh come on, why don't you just introduce yourself to her?" I sighed after his spiel had run long enough for me. This time it was Eric's turn to blush.
"Not a good idea at all." said the blond boy who had startled me at the start of the day. I had since learned he was Mike Newton, and mostly harmless. "You don't go introducing yourself to Rosalie Hale. Her boyfriend Emmett or his brother could punch your head right off your shoulders, and that's nothing on what Rosalie herself could do to you." he warned. They both sounded thoroughly unpleasant, and I wished I could simply move to my traditional habitat, the table in the far corner.
"Well alright then, c'mon, surely some cutie's caught your eye already." Eric grinned at me. My stomach immediately dropped, and I muttered something unintelligible. Fortunately before I had any kind of flashback, I was distracted by the cafeteria door opening. In walked five incredibly beautiful and oddly pale people, even for Forks. One of them was the small girl who had danced on the stairs this morning. The other four were all intimidatingly tall. None of them seemed to fit in with their drab surroundings. They looked like supermodels.
"Who are they?" I asked the girl next to me, Jessica, who seemed to be the fountain of all Forks High information.
"Them? They're the Cullens." she smirked. "Well most of them. The blond ones are Rosalie and Jasper Hale." A giant, presumably Emmett, who looked more man than young adult, put his arm around the blond and I could see where Mike was coming from. The group sat down, and I noticed the last of the group and the most beautiful person I had ever seen in my life. His tall, muscled frame draped itself lazily over the chair, and he brushed his messy... bronze... hair out of his eyes. Sexy-messy, you mean. No! Please, no. This cannot happen. I can't think that way. Not here, not yet. Before tearing my eyes away, I caught his for a moment and saw in their black depths a burning hatred.
Punch your head right off your shoulders...
With that, what little I had eaten of my lunch rejected its new home and I fled the cafeteria before I made a scene. I ran as fast as I could, not even turning to look back when I heard an almighty crash behind me.
EPOV
I hated it already.
That red truck I had noticed as I sped by the Chief's house yesterday had its ass parked near the entrance of the lot, looking as though it would never start again. I had seen it twice and I already hated it. And it was a fucking car.
"Geez, man, seriously. What has been up with you the past few days? You're making me feel like I want to punch through the window here!" Jasper said in an exasperated voice.
"Hey, you do that, and the pixie gets it!" Emmett warned from the front seat, before promptly being smacked in the back of the head by Alice. Why had I agreed to ride with my family today? Alice insisted that we were preserving the planet for future generations by using less fuel. Whatever. Our presence on Earth already fucked it up royally, a ruined planet would be precisely what I deserved. In any case, we were sitting in a Hummer... not exactly dear old Mother Nature's favorite ride.
The moment Emmett stopped the Hummer I was out of the door and marching across the parking lot into the main building, unwilling to listen to my siblings prattle on this morning. Well, hello handsome, thought a nasally mind behind me. I groaned. How could a thought be nasally? Lauren managed, somehow, to pull it off. I turned around and gave her a wink before feeling her heart rate pick up and heading off to whatever class awaited me in this God-forsaken limbo I was forced to call High School. He likes me! I knew he liked me! Lauren thought behind me. Yep. Sure. Keep telling yourself that, and someday you might find yourself liberated of your blood. I had no idea why I was being such a bastard. My siblings did not deserve my constant foul moods, and this silly human girl, unpleasant as she was, did not deserve my manipulation.
Was I lonely? I didn't really know. If I felt the need for a girlfriend, it would not take much to redirect the 'relationship' Tanya and I had toward something more serious. It would not take much to convince any vampire girl, I thought, smirking at my own arrogance. Yet, I felt like that would not help. In my darker days, I had once had come close to having... intercourse with a human girl before drinking her blood. Though I have since decided my rationalizations to be foolish and wrong, she was a killer, and she was somewhat attractive. Fortunately, my failure to control the beast inside of me did not extend that far. I immediately felt sick to my stomach for those thoughts. I had long since realized sex, while serving its purpose, never left me as fulfilled as I knew it left my, at times, unbearable siblings. Some nights my mind-reading abilities proved to be so unwelcome I had to go and run through the woods for a few hours.
Fucking shit faces!
The boy who had attempted to sit next to me in class hit his knee on the table leg and his thoughts turned to profanity as his pencils spilled out over the floor. At as human a speed as I could manage, I got up and bent over to pick them up for him, deciding I should try and make amends for my recent attitude. Just kill me and send me to heaven now, thought the girl sitting directly behind me. Stifling a growl, I quickly gathered up the remaining pencils and shoved them to the boy's side of the table before sitting down and tuning out whatever base knowledge about mathematics the teacher was attempting to force into the minds of these fools.
Alice was looking at me curiously again as we made our way towards the cafeteria for 'lunch'. Her recital of The Iliad in Pig-Latin Latin shed little light on what she was thinking, so I hung back and waited for the other four to enter before sauntering in myself. Immediately the foulest stench of poor-quality human food filled my nostrils, and I was grateful my stomach held nothing to vomit up.
Why on Earth do they live here anyway? Why aren't they in New York, or Los Angeles, or something? thought somebody in amongst the din of utterly pointless internal monologues. For privacy from people like you, I thought to myself.
So Edward, how have things with Tanya been going? thought Alice curiously, the strange expression still on her face.
"What do you mean, 'going'? They haven't been going anywhere. You know what it is, Alice." I muttered.
"We sure know what it is, boyo" Emmett chuckled. "We know what it is far too well!" I rolled my eyes at him.
"You're one to talk."
My hearing picked out a voice for my attention amongst the hum of the lunch room, informing a student that we were the Cullens. Who wouldn't know who we are? We were one of the most common topics of thought and angst amongst the student population. Was there a new student? I looked in the direction of the voice and noticed Jessica Stanley talking to a boy I had never seen before. I gasped as I took in his lean frame and gentle features. His eyes were warm and brown, as was his hair. He's... beautiful. This errant thought completely took me off guard. What on Earth? The venom was already pooling in the back of my throat, and I felt my body tighten, preparing to pounce. He was beautiful, and as a gust of winded which ripped through the cafeteria told me, he smelt delicious. My mind no longer cared for any other details.
"Edward, no!" Alice cried softly, her eyes glazed over with visions. At this my mind had no interest in reading her thoughts.
Just as the venom filling my mouth became too much to bear, the boy's wide brown eyes caught my own and he looked at me in abject terror. He immediately fled the room, and almost knocking over my chair in my hurry, I bounded after him. My blood lust and my arousal overwhelmed me.
I am going to bleed you dry, beautiful.
The boy's heart rate felt like that of a hummingbird as he tore down the corridor. He didn't even turn around as he fled, but before I could reach him I was knocked sideways into a row of lockers. The lockers tumbled down around me as Emmett held my arms behind me and put his knee against my spine.
"Edward, what the fuck do you think you're doing?" Emmett roared, shoving me harder against the ground. The boy had successfully made his get away, and his scent no longer held sway over my senses. Shoving Emmett off me, I stood up and looked around at the devastation. Before anything else, we quickly set the lockers up the right way.
"I'm sorry-" I gasped, gulping down the scentless air as fast as I could, dulling the call of the monster within me. "I'm sorry, I don't know what happened."
"Geez, I thought it was Jasper we had to worry about. Not you too? Mr Self-Control?" Emmett smirked, satisfied that nobody's life was immediately in danger. Alice came running down the hall to stand before us, looking as though she had been crying, if that were possible.
"Edward, please, don't hurt him!" she cried at me, and immediately her thoughts of blood and destruction filled my mind. I felt absolutely ashamed. I hadn't lusted after blood so strongly since I was a newborn. In fact, this was even stronger than that. Then more images filled Alice's mind, and I was suddenly reminded of the other strange dimension to this whole situation. In her mind, my tongue slowly dragged itself up the boy's neck, and his eyes were hooded with pleasure. I jerked backwards.
"Edward, what does this mean?" she asked slowly. But I didn't get to answer her question, I was already running as fast as I could from the school. I didn't even let these thoughts register in my mind, instead giving myself over to my instincts as I ran across the countryside. The storm that had been brewing since yesterday broke open, hurling wind and rain and thunder across the mountains as I ran and ran.
Before I could acknowledge where I was headed, I found myself on the outskirts of Port Angeles. The thoughts of thousands of humans filled my head, and the venom fought its way back up into my mouth. I growled, low and angry. Keeping to the back alleys, I stalked through the town.
"Here ya go, beautiful," said a middle-aged man to a teenage girl, both of whom were standing near a fire escape down one alley. The girl rolled her eyes at him, and I noticed he handed her a small amount of methamphetamines before she headed off. The monster roared within me - I felt so empty, the cravings felt so great. I needed this. The monster rejoiced, and reveled in the destruction it wrought.
---
I stood up, the man's face still frozen in its startled expression, only... deflated. I hauled his limp body into a nearby dumpster, and looked up to see myself in a shuttered window. I felt his life force flow through me, and I saw it staining my eyes a terrible crimson.
Shame.
I could have felt it. I should have, but I didn't want to. I felt satisfied, for the first time in far too long. And yet... the ache did not go away.
Before long, you will feel empty, and it will be worse than before. He did not deserve this, nobody does. They will look upon you with shame.
My family... I could not face them like this. They will hate me, what if they rejected me? The shame I should have been feeling all along swept through me and I almost collapsed to the ground.
You're a monster.
I was indeed a monster. First I almost killed an innocent young man, then I really did kill an, admittedly worthless, man in this alley. There was no way they would accept me back after this. Not after all Carlisle had taught me about not harming humans. I was no better than any other vampire murderer lurking through the shadows. I knew I would have to face them over what I had just done, but I could not just yet. Not while my eyes held the evidence of my crimes.
BPOV
With all the contents of my stomach having heaved themselves into the toilet, I allowed myself a moment to think over what had just happened. The Cullen boy - the beautiful one. I had never even gotten his name, but when he looked at me with such hatred in those obsidian eyes, all I could think of was the torment I had been facing for the past year. Could he know? Would he care? He couldn't possibly know. And given that we didn't even know each other, it was certainly none of his business.
I finally managed to collect myself, and noticed that the lunch bell had rung and it was time Biology, according to my timetable. I stood up and decided that I couldn't let one possibly handsome yet possibly psychotic boy distract me from being unnoticed. He probably just thought I was a worthless little social underling who ought not to have been looking at him. Yes, that was probably it. Those Cullens all seemed so perfect, they probably didn't appreciate having gaze of the normals devalue them, or something like that. The biology room was already mostly full of students, so after having my form signed I made my way over to the only empty table in the room and dug my nose into the textbook.
The teacher, a Mr Banner, began to call the roll and quite soon he came to-
"Cullen? Edward Cullen?" he decided to look up and I noticed him glance directly at the chair next to mine. So that was his name... Edward Cullen. And he sits right next to you. I froze, praying to whatever god was watching that this Edward Cullen would deal with his contempt for me by switching seats or classes, rather than dicing me up with a dissection scalpel. The rest of the hour passed in a bit of a blur, and every time I closed my eyes I could see his cold black ones staring back at me, hating me. What did I do to him?
It doesn't matter, you're weak. You're stupid. And you're going to pay for that.
With the final bell of the day I ventured out to parking lot. I saw the small Cullen, the spikey-haired girl, dancing from the front of the lot near my car to the back end, where I spotted three other members of her family. The bear-shaped one, and the two blondes. Edward was nowhere to be seen. Shuffling in the ugly fluoro backpack for my keys, I remembered that the poor old truck had died this morning. Damn. My mobile had been the victim of one of my later bullying episodes, and I couldn't afford a new one yet, so I couldn't call Charlie. He'd be busy anyway. Enjoy the walk, boyo, I thought to myself. A spluttering rumble caught my attention.
My truck was running.
The hell? I certainly hadn't started it, and the damn thing was incapable of being started in the first place. I ran over to it, mercifully not falling flat on my face in the minefield of puddles. The door was still locked - that ruled out somebody having broken in to... fix my dead old truck. None of it made any sense at all, and with the day I'd had I didn't have the energy to think it over. Clambering up into the driver's seat, I took a deep breath and maneuvered the beast out of the parking lot and into the street. The storm had begun to die down a little, and I was able to make it back to Charlie's place without the slightest protest from the truck.
The house was cold and empty. Looking up at a picture of mom, dad and me when I was little on the mantle piece, I felt a few more of the damn tears sting my eyes. I didn't even care this time, and let them fall onto the woolly scarf wrapped around me neck. Why couldn't I just be like the other kids? I didn't even mean liking girls. I meant having some goddamn confidence in myself. Instead I was a little weakling who got beat up by inbred morons in Phoenix, and was given death glares by supermodels in Forks. If I had any use at all I would have learned how to fight back against the morons. And if I had any balls at all I would have stood up and yelled "Hey man, the hell are you staring at?!" at Edward, or something to that effect. I stumbled into the kitchen and made put the soup I had made the first night here into the oven, down very low, so it would be ready by the time Charlie got home.
When he finally did, I was curled up fast asleep under the thick quilt on my little bed, dreaming of eyes that promised oblivion.
A/N - Don't kill me! Edward's not evil - he's just very conflicted. My justification is mostly pretentiously subtextual (sounds like a song...) and related to the quotes I put at the start of each chapter. But is important to show how confused he is, and how easily tipped he is when in this confused state. You've probably noticed that, in this story, he has a little bit of a split personality between the measured, proper Edward and the darker, hornier Edward... which one do you prefer?
Reviews please They keep me going…