Day two of her torment is a busy one for me.

She's busy screaming while I'm busy ransacking her house. I open every drawer, every cupboard, every file folder and every container in her pantry.

In each room I learn a something about her.

She eats a lot of salad. She owns a set of Mickey Mouse ears with her name on them. She's on birth control pills but there's no evidence of her having a boyfriend or lover regularly in the house. I find a small vibrator and pack of spare batteries in the same drawer as her underwear.

She's very clean and owns an extraordinary amount of disinfectant. She uses strawberry scented shampoo and double bags her trash. There is mace in her purse and another canister in her medicine cabinet.

Her post consists of offers of savings and reminders that her student loans are due soon.

I begin to see patterns as I rummage. Almost every room in the small house has first aid suppliers. A small kit in a side table drawer by the front door. A larger kit under the kitchen sink and a crate of it in the main bathroom. Bandages, alcohol swabs, tweezers. Hundreds of them all in little sealed bags. There is a fire extinguisher by the back door and a fire blanket by the stove. There are three, yes three, smoke alarms in the house.

She was either extremely nervous living on her own or she was extremely accident prone. I didn't know which until Carlisle emailed me a simplified version of her medical records. All I could do was be thankful that she'd chosen a single storey house here. Otherwise she'd have been in danger of breaking her neck down the stairs.

I also learned that she's a writer. She's lived in this street for exactly nine days. She moved here from Arizona to take a job with a small publishing firm, transferring from an even smaller publishing firm.

I call her boss from the number on a business card stapled to the top of her resume and explain that due to a family emergency Miss Swan would not be returning to work. He is apoplectic to put it mildly. He rages about her being so irresponsible and how he was being left in the lurch when he'd only just hired her. I tell him to fuck off and hang up.

Her emails tell me that she's got no friends locally, a few from Arizona from college and she's not exactly a social butterfly.

In the spare bedroom I find boxes of file folders. There are nine boxes piled on top of one another that almost reach the ceiling. They are taped shut and all bear the same markings. Police Only – Chief Charles Swan. A relative of hers obviously but why she had his files I didn't know.

A mystery for another day I tell myself as the clock nears midnight again. I turn off my iPod, turn on the lights and head back to her bedroom.

"Who the fuck gets shot in their driveway after living somewhere for just nine days?" I ask her as I scoop her up into my arms for the trek into the forest. Her answer is just a scream. An ordinary, guttural scream.

I lay her at the base of the same fallen tree and listen hard to the sounds around us. There isn't a human scent, sound or thought for miles so I leave her and hunt. Just the one small deer as I'd gotten over the desire for human blood since her house now smelled of bleach and my venom.

I decline yet another call from Carlisle on my phone as I trot back to where she lays.

She's not screaming, for a change, and has settled for a mild whimper and I find it quite nice to just sit by her for a little while. When she begins to ramp up again, and her foot connects with my hip as she kicks out, I decide to shift a little further away.

I fill the time reading over her medical files again. So many injuries in such a short life. Bike falls, trampoline fractures, head injuries from tripping. How she survived this long is beyond me I think as I read.

Carlisle calls again and again I decline the call. He resorts to text messages and when they go unanswered he switches to Facebook messages. I switch off my phone and put it back in my pocket.

I am strangely content just sitting in the forest with her while she screams.

Of course all the animals have fled. My scent and her high pitched caterwauling make them scatter pretty quickly. But within myself I am comfortable just sitting there listening to her rapid heartbeat between wails.

It's really flying now. Had she still been a little bit human it would've given out. But her scent is almost one hundred percent vampire now so I know that no harm was going befall her when her heart actually did give out once and for all.

It wouldn't be long.

I remembered listening to first Rosalie's and then Esme's hearts as they neared the end of their changes. They too screamed endlessly. Emmett took just as long but screamed slightly less. They all writhed in agony. Their organs gave up after three days but I hoped this wouldn't take that long.

I heard the first sputter of her hearts feeble attempt to maintain its humanity at four o'clock that morning. A brief hiccough, fifteen minutes between the stutters at first.

I heard it again at midday, hours after I'd taken her back to her home and back to her bed. This time it lasts a few beats longer. I knew then. She'd wake very soon.

I didn't have long to put things into place. I couldn't travel with her while she screamed so I was thankful that her change was going to be a normal one, by the feel of it. Just the standard three days. So while she screamed I worked. Both in her home and in mine.

I ignore all attempts by my family to contact me. I knew them very well and after more than fifty years of existence as their son and brother I knew how they were going to proceed. They were far enough away not to physically appear for another twenty four hours at least and for once my isolation was a positive. I figured I had a minimum of twenty hours before the first of them, and I was betting that it would be Alice, would show up on my doorstep. Or Isabella's.

That wasn't going to happen. Not if I could avoid it anyway.

To make sure we got away cleanly we'd be gone within that twenty. If any of them managed to get here any faster than that I'd deal with it then. Somehow.

I closed out my home first. There wasn't much to do and it didn't take long. I cancelled accounts for utilities, resigned from my job, arranged for someone to take care of the lawns and paid five years of property taxes up front. I redirected my mail and transferred money out of my everyday account and stashed it in accounts in other countries.

I packed what I thought I'd need and stashed the single bag in the trunk of my car. Then I drove it back to number twenty seven and began to pack for her. I didn't take much. A few changes of clothes and her purse. A few sparse toiletries went into the bag along with a few human trinkets I thought looked important to her because of their prominence in her home. A silver picture frame, the contents of her meagre jewellery case, a file folder marked 'important documents' from her desk that contained her true birth certificate, things like that. Everything else would wait for her return. One day she'd be back. We all went back. Eventually.

I did the same at her home as I did at mine. I closed all her utility accounts, paid her property taxes and redirected her mail. I tossed the contents of her fridge and pantry out to the curb and cleaned every trace of her from every surface.

Jasper would take care of her vehicle when he arrived and as I looked at my watch just before midnight I could imagine that would be soon.

I quieted my iPod and took her back into the forest. She screamed while I hunted. She screamed while I read my texts and deleted them one after another. They were all only from Carlisle now and I figured it was he who had volunteered to stay behind while the others made their way towards me. Probably to reason with me. More likely to plead with me to share her.

Wasn't quite going to happen that way.

So as she lay on the forest floor and screamed I sent the one and only message to Carlisle that I intended for quite some time. It was simple and to the point. 'You won't find us. Please don't waste the effort. We'll come to you when we're ready. My love to the family, Edward.'

His reply was immediate and pleading. I crushed the phone under my shoe and scattered the pieces in the underbrush. The burner phone would suffice until Jasper managed to trace me on that and by then I'd have another, and then another.

We sat in the forest until well passed midday that third day. I was content to just sit. She was hardly content to lie there screaming but she really had no choice.

Her body was giving in, rapidly now.

Her blood had been burned away steadily over the last few days and now her organs were giving in too.

I took her back to her home at four and by the time the humans around us were sitting down to their evening meal that third day her heart rate had skyrocketed and the giant muscle was futilely trying to fight my venom with everything it had left. Twenty minutes later it stopped for a full minute before kicking back in.

I stayed close to her then. Right on the bed with her. My ear to her chest. Listening for the time when it would give out completely.

At eight that night it did. One last cough. One last splutter. One last beat and then it stopped. It didn't restart. She still screamed. But that wasn't to last either.

I retreated to the far corner of her bedroom and slipped into a crouch. They sometimes come up swinging and I'm not interested in having my balls kicked in or a limb ripped off by getting too close too fast.

She screamed her last scream at eight eighteen on the eighteenth. Poetic really.

She opened her eyes two minutes later.

She lunged for me ten seconds after that.

"What the fuck did you do to me, you bastard?" were the first words she ever spoke to me.

Not so poetic.

"I saved your life," I tell her simply, palms up to show I'm not a threat.

She tilts her head and stares at me for a long moment. I smile at her. She hisses and bares her teeth at me. I am offended. I try to make nice again. "You'd been shot. Do you remember that?" she stares for the longest time at me and then nods. "So I saved your life," I tell her with another smile.

"I've been burning alive forever!" she shouts.

"Barely three days," I scoff, but this seems to enrage her even more.

"What the fuck did you do to me, you bastard?" she shouts at me, again.

"I saved your life. We've covered that already."

Her hiss this time is followed by a deep, throaty growl as she rolls her shoulders and slips into an instinctual crouch. "One more time, pretty boy."

I huff. In hindsight it might not have been the correct thing to do. I was preparing to dumb the situation down for her when she pounced. I didn't see it coming. No time to dodge. I didn't even hear her think about doing it first.

We land with a thud and then a crash as her ensuite door splinters.

Luckily for me she had no idea what she was capable of, or how to attack me, so I push her off me and get back to my feet. "Ungrateful," I sigh as I right my clothing and retreat to the other side of the room. "And why can't I hear your thoughts?" I ask as she too gets to her feet. "Have you suffered a brain injury that isn't in your medical history?"

She tugs the hem of her shirt until it's once again straight and then she looks at me through squinted eyes. "What the fuck are you talking about?"

"I can't hear you. I thought it might be because you'd suffered a traumatic brain injury that wasn't noted on your records," I say as calmly as I can. She seems very volatile. She also seems a little dim witted.

"Hey dickhead!" she screeches. For no reason. Rather unkindly, I thought.

"That's not nice," I chastise.

"You can hear me," she hisses as she moves into the centre of the room.

"Of course I can hear you," I scoff. "I just can't hear you in my head."

She stares at me for a long moment, shakes her head minutely as if to clear it, and then she grins. "You're fucking odd," she announces. She shakes her head again and I wonder what's going on inside it. "Why does my voice sound so..." she trails off.

"You're changed," I tell her simply.

"I realise that," she barks. "And why can I hear everything?"

"You're changed," I tell her again. I thought it was a simple enough concept. Perhaps I'd made a huge mistake turning her? She might have been a simpleton and the venom in her system may not have been able to heal that.

"Again, I realise that," she hisses as she turns and heads towards her bathroom. "Oh my fucking god!" she bellows as she takes her first look at herself in the mirror.

I think, and I believe it was a simple enough conclusion to come to, that her bright red eyes had startled her. So I begin to explain, "They'll change soon. A few weeks. It won't last, I promise," I tell her as I go towards the shattered bathroom door myself.

"They'll change?" she asks in a whisper, the first truly quiet, almost gentle thing she'd said since rising.

"They will," I assure her as I poke my head around the door. "Fucking hell, woman! What are you doing?" I screech as I see her. She's standing in front of the mirror, t-shirt raked up under her chin, a breast in each hand.

"I don't want them to change. They're perfect," she murmurs as she turns right then left.

I put a hand over my eyes, mostly, "I thought you were talking about your eyes. Your eye colour will change. A few weeks if you stick to the diet," I tell her.

"Oh," is all she says. I'm still mostly covering my eyes so I see when she drops her breasts, replaces her t-shirt and stares at her face in the mirror. "They're kind of weird," she says, probably more to herself than to me. I let my hand fall and stand behind her as she stares at herself. "Will they go your colour?" she asks, looking at me in the mirror.

"They will," I assure. "A few weeks."

She leans forwards and really stares at herself. I wonder what she's thinking. That was still bothering me, not being able to mentally hear her.

"My skin is so clear," she whispers, again turning left and right to stare. "And pale. Not a mark," she adds before turning to face me. "Did your dick get bigger?" she asks, shocking the hell out of me.

I stumble backwards, back into her bedroom, and try and wrap my head around the question. I want to look down at my crotch to see if I'm sporting wood, but I fight the urge. "Definitely not," I hiss.

"I figured if my boobs got bigger your dick might have," she mumbles as she continues to stare at herself.

I make the correlation between the two now. I'm embarrassed, thinking she meant now, not immediately after my change. She wasn't totally wrong I think to myself as I take a split second to palm myself. A little bit of wood.

She comes out from the bathroom and cocks her head to one side as she studies me. "What are you?" she asks simply.

I grin. I'm a lot of things. "What do you think I am? And by the way, you're one too now." She studies me for another moment. She swallows thickly and I recognise that for what it is. "You're thirsty."

"It burns," she all but moans.

"I can teach you how to tone that down," I say, pointing towards her throat that she's now gripping with her hand. "I can teach you how to manage it."

"What are you?" she asks again.

"Vampire," I tell her plainly. No need for niceties now. She's already called me a bastard and a dickhead, and it's not like she's not allowed to know I'm a vampire as well as those things.

Her only reply is a soft 'huh' before she scrunches up her brows and swallows deeply again.

"I'll teach you," I assure her as I make my way to the doors that lead out into her yard. "Put something on your feet so you don't stand out to any human who sees us leave and we'll run a bit. You'll like it. We all like to run."

She thinks on it a moment and then dashes down the hallway. She's back in a few seconds, flip flops on her feet, with a wide grin on her face. "I'm fast," she says as though surprised.

"You are," I agree as I hold the door open for her. "You're also lethal to humans. I need you to keep that in mind as we run. We'll go away from here and into the forest, but its a few miles before the scent of them dissipates."

She joins me in the yard and takes a long sniff. Her hand flies to her throat again as she smells our neighbours. Even inside their homes they smell wonderful. She turns frightened eyes to me, probably seeking assurance. "It burns," she moans again.

I huff. I'd just explained this to her. As a vampire she should be able to hear and retain information and recall it at will. I was becoming concerned that she was mentally challenged. I grab her hand and tug her along behind me as we jog to her fence. I leap it and stand waiting for her on the other side. When she doesn't immediately follow I huff again and tell her to get a move on. She comes over the fence and lands at my feet with a dull thud.

She has her hands on her hips when she returns to a full standing position. I have no idea what her problem is so ignore the gesture. "Go due north, that's the fastest way to leave the human scents behind us," I tell her as I begin to run.

"What way is due north?" she asks as she catches up to me.

"This way, obviously," I tell her as we run. If she's right beside me, and I've told her we're going due north, then obviously due north is the direction we are going. And I'm the dickhead here?

She streaks ahead because she is faster than me as a newborn. I shout at her to stay close to me but she doesn't listen. This will not do. I whistle, she continues to run. I growl, on she runs. I break off a low lying branch as I give chase and throw it at her, hitting her square in the back of her head. Then she stops. Finally.

"What the fuck was that for?" she hisses as she turns to me.

"You weren't listening to me," I shrug.

"You're not the boss of me," she growls.

I want to tell her that for right now I am, but I keep my mouth shut because she's got her hand to her throat again. "What do you hear?" I ask her, creating a distraction from her anger. Her head whips to her right in the direction of the herd of deer I knew to be there. She says nothing but does lick her lips in hunger. "Sniff," I tell her and wait until she has. I see the silver sheen of her venom on her bottom lip and cannot help the shiver that overtakes me. I put the sight of her out of mind and concentrate on the lesson at hand. "Stay downwind of them. They spook easily, especially for us. Crouch low, pounce quickly once you've chosen one. The others will scatter so pick a big one as you're so thirsty."

I haven't even finished giving her the instructions before she's off, bounding across the forest floor. She's quite stealthy for a newborn, quite in control. Utterly magnificent actually, I concede. She pounces on the largest of the herd and she's got it on the ground, her lips pressed to its neck before I take up position up a tree to watch.

She drains it in minutes and stands looking down at it for a long time after its heart has stopped beating. For the hundredth time since she'd risen I wonder what she's thinking.

"Do I leave it here?" she asks, directing her enquiry exactly in my direction though I doubted she'd given much mind to where I'd gone once she'd begun to stalk her prey. This was instinctual. She might not know that about herself yet, but she'd be able to find me anywhere now she'd scented me.

"Predators will take care of it," I tell her from my perch.

"I still burn," she says as she whips her head from right to left, probably trying to locate her next meal.

"Find another," I tell her as I jump out of the tree.

I hear the rest of the herd to the west and she does too. She takes off, flying through the trees, and I give chase. She's got a female on the ground and she's feeding well before I take another perch. "Listen for what's out here as you feed," I instruct. "Humans won't exactly sneak up on you, you'll hear and smell them long before they hear or see you, but blood lust is a problem when we're hunting," I tell her.

She stands and wipes her lips once the animal is spent and then she trots to the base of my tree. "Can I fly?" she asks, looking up at me. My bark of laughter must answer her question. "Will the sun burn me dead?" comes next, again I laugh. "Coffins?" more laughter. "Garlic?"

I jump from my branch and land right in front of her. "None of the above. You have no natural predators to worry about. Even the humans aren't a problem because they refuse to believe you exist," I tell her as I nod in the direction I want her to walk. "Sunlight won't harm you, but your skin will look like diamond shards in the sun, so it's best to avoid being out in it with humans around. They are incredibly ignorant, but if they see or hear too much they do ask endless questions."

"And garlic?" she asks.

"Ridiculous," I mumble. "Nothing can hurt you," I tell her. "Unless someone pulls your head off. And that won't technically hurt, but it will kill you. As in actually dead this time."

Her soft 'huh' is the only sound as we walk.

"I got shot," she says after about twenty minutes. It's not a question. Just a statement, so I treat it as such.

"Yes."

"You bit me."

"Yes."

"Why?" she asks.

I don't think I can answer that. She's too new. She won't understand. So I give her an answer that as a human she would've understood easily. "You were dying. I did what I could to save you."

"Is that how this is done then? You bite and then they change?"

"Yes. In its simplest form yes."

"Who are you?" she asks, startling me.

I think on what to tell her. I'm so many things, and known as so many people. In the end I decide to tell her who I want her to know me as. "I'm Edward."

"I'm Bella," she whispers as we come to her fence again.

"Hold your breath," I counsel as she reaches for her throat again. "They'll smell good to you always, but you must learn not to react," I tell her as we leap over the fence into her yard.

"It'll never go away?" she asks as we go in through her bedroom door.

"Not ever," I tell her sadly, for it was sad that she was now going to have to battle her desire for them forever more.

She stands in the middle of her bedroom and thinks on that for a second. And then she throws a punch that would've been a killing blow had I still been human. Unused to not hearing the intention I take it square on the chin. I reel backwards, stumble against the edge of her bed and end up on my ass on the carpet.

She follows, stands over me, her luscious lips dripping venom as she stares down at me. "That's for saying I had a brain injury."