A/N: I wouldn't be able to write this without the help of my betas mac and jkane180, and pre-readers katinki and DoUTrustMe. You can find these folks under my favourite authors in my profile because they're awesome. This isn't a song fic, but I do listen to Florence on repeat when I write it. For some reason it helps.
I wasn't giving in; I was giving up. It was a subtle difference.
A growl built in Edward's chest like a howling wind, and I thought of funnel clouds as he tossed me over his shoulder. It was the trajectory, I think - the way I became airborne, spinning away from his face in the same instant he catapulted us up the staircase. We moved as one in a gyration of wind and fury; my body remained limp, placid, and yielding.
No. I was wrong. Funnel clouds never touched the ground. This was a tornado. Air rushed in my ears, vibrating through my auditory canals. I felt like a hapless leaf at the mercy of a force beyond my comprehension.
My limbs hung loosely, like my joints would unhinge with only the slightest tug. It didn't matter. Beyond exhaustion, I was mired in defeat and ready to meet my end. Edward stopped moving, literally halted to a motionless stance, which was strange in contrast with the considerable ruckus he'd caused only moments before.
In this eerily silent moment, I could breathe again.
But this was only the eye of the storm.
My eyes closed, my mind quieted, my senses shut down - another defense mechanism.
Biology could be kind, you see.
"Do it," I urged, practically taunting him. My father would be disgusted with me. I was raised to carry pepper spray in my purse - to offer a swift kick in the groin and ask questions later. Fuck, if he'd known about monsters, I would've been armed with silver bullets and wooden stakes, too.
But my dad didn't know to warn me about monsters.
"You are ridiculous," Edward spat. "You think you want this . . . death."
"I should've died in that convenience store." Everything would've been so much simpler if I had.
"You know nothing if you think that."
"Edward . . . you can't possibly keep me." He still hadn't set me down on my feet. It wasn't as if I could outrun him.
"Do you feel ill?" he evaded.
"Tired," I corrected. Honestly, I didn't give a fuck how it ended, so long as it ended.
That was a lie. My preference would be for him to do it quickly.
"Could you snap my neck first?" I pleaded softly with a shaky breath, closing my eyes and concentrating on the sound of my breathing. Maybe it could be easy. Maybe it would be like falling asleep.
I tried not to feel him, but his arms tightened around me. He seemed agitated as he shifted to cradle me like a baby, my head resting against the crook of his shoulder and bicep.
"I won't kill you." He was stoic.
"You will." Because it was in his nature to. "And I won't even put up a fight." I tried to sound unaffected.
"No," he said firmly, kicking open his bedroom door and taking careful steps to the bed.
"You will, Edward. My blood will tempt you, like you said." I could almost feel the cold river water on my skin from when he insisted upon washing off all traces of blood before bringing me into the house. He couldn't clean it all away. Dust and blood and sickness still coated my skin like a sheen of sweat. "How many monsters are in the house?"
"Four, including me." He inhaled another breath to speak, but his chest didn't rise and fall in the action. "Rosalie and Carlisle, whom you've met, and Esme. She's very anxious to meet you."
Right. I was certain she was.
Three monsters in the house circled somewhere below, made ravenous by the smell of the sanguineous rivers beneath my skin. I shuddered, imagining them predatory like sharks, whereby a single drop could incite a feeding frenzy.
"How much blood do I need to spill for you to lose control?" I'd never been so aware of my own frailty in my life. Skin offers no real protection when it tears so easily.
"Bella," Edward said slowly, sitting down on the edge of the mattress and drawing me down with him to sit in his lap. "In all of my hundred or so years, I've never met a human that didn't tempt me . . . until I met you." As if to illustrate his point, he lowered his mouth to my carotid artery and opened his lips. I squeezed my eyes shut, whimpering in terror, imagining his teeth gnashing through my tender skin - the terrible sting that would no doubt follow. I couldn't even fathom it.
Instead of fire, I felt ice. His tongue, not his teeth, pressed against my neck in quick pulses like a snake tasting the air.
"Stop," I wheezed, and he pulled his head away from me, holding my chin gently to force me to look at him.
"I . . . I apologize," he practically stuttered, staring at me with those strangely-coloured eyes.
"What?" What the fuck are you doing? I wanted to ask but only just managed to whisper the first word.
"You are lovely," he said slowly, and his eyes seemed to take in my entire face without breaking eye contact. I tried to speak but lost the ability to think in the abyss of his gaze. I should've been terrified feeling his cold fingers caress the underside of my chin before sweeping out to touch my jaw. "So lovely," he repeated. "Unlike any creature I've ever encountered before."
He had me ensnared, not just as his captive; I couldn't summon the will to draw my gaze from his. Hours could have passed for all I knew. All we did was stare.
When he finally looked away, I'd regained my ability to speak. "Edward . . . may I ask you something?"
"Of course," he replied smoothly. "Anything."
Except for the one thing I really wanted, of course . . .
"Have you ever kept a human hostage before?"
"No."
"Why me, then?"
"Bella . . . from the moment I met you, I understood there were only two possibilities. The first was for me to kill you-"
I shivered with reflexive fear, and he placed his hand on the small of my back.
"Shh. That only passed through my mind for a moment. The instant I saw your eyes, I knew I could never harm you."
"Why not? You kill people."
"No, not typically. I try not to. Carlisle doesn't like it as it upsets his wife . . . my mother."
"But you couldn't let me go," I concluded.
"It wasn't possible. My family would never allow you to live after what you saw."
"But, Edward, they didn't know!"
In a very human display of frustration, he raked his hands through his gold and copper hair. "They didn't, true. I could have let you go then . . . I should have. I didn't know . . ." He moved away from me and jumped onto his bed, perching as if he needed to be at the ready to spring into action.
"What the fuck didn't you know?"
"I trust you," he said inexplicably as if it explained everything.
"I don't trust you," I spat, letting out a frustrated sigh; it didn't articulate the confusion and anguish I felt.
"Yes," he agreed. "Yes, that's fair."
The tension seemed to melt out of his limbs as he lowered his legs off the bed to sit in a more natural position. His fingers gripped my hand. "It's my vehement wish that your opinion of me changes over time." He brought my hand to his mouth and kissed it.
"W-what are you doing?" I stuttered, hovering somewhere outside of my body as I watched him drag his mouth over my fingers.
"I don't know." He dropped my hand, and a line furrowed over his smooth brow. "I- I think I need to speak with Carlisle.
"Are you leaving me alone in your room?"
"No. I'm sorry; I can't." He pressed his cold, preternaturally smooth mouth to my own astonished lips, not kissing but whispering - apologizing over and over again for ruining my life.
"What are you doing?" I asked, too stunned to be terrified, as he twined his fingers into my hair, cupping my head like I was the most precious thing in the universe.
"Performing an act of contrition."
xxxx
In the front room of the house, a parlor that belonged in the pages of Good Housekeeping circa 1957, Edward introduced me to the fourth monster of this strange family. Nothing could've prepared me for her.
"Ohhhh. Oh, Edward. She's just a little girl! Just a precious, lovely child." The strange woman skipped excitedly as she gushed, her perfect ringlets bouncing in tandem.
"Bella, this is my mother, Esme Cullen," Edward announced rather formally.
"Hi." My voice was timid as I offered a small wave. "Uh, this is a really pretty room . . . I really like pink." Please don't kill me! Her answering smile was the most terrifying grin I'd ever seen. She appraised me with a maddening enthusiasm that made me wonder if she was deciding how she'd prepare my organs for dinner tonight.
"Precious girl!" she continued to coo like a raucous dove who'd lost her pitch. "Oh, I have the prettiest dresses for you to wear. My other daughter doesn't like them - the lace is antiquated, she says - but you'll wear them, won't you?"
"Mother," Edward interjected. "Bella's a little tired. Please just make sure Rosalie stays out of the house for the time being and leave her be? I need to discuss something with Father."
Esme smiled indulgently. "Oh, poo. You men and your business." She ushered me over to an ancient-looking couch laminated in plastic, giving the cushions a few solid whacks with her fist so the years of accumulated dust dispersed; I sneezed and hacked, my chest and nose burning from the sudden onslaught of dirt and spores.
"Have a seat, dear; let's have a nice chat and get to know each other while the boys scamper off for a while."
I shot Edward a wary glance; his lips upturned in the corners in what I presumed was supposed to have been a smile of reassurance. "I'll be back quickly," he promised and then addressed the strange woman he called Mother. "Is Carlisle in the laboratory?"
In the what?
"Father," she corrected quickly, her lips retracting as a low hiss passed through them for an almost indiscernible instant before her mouth settled back into that jarring smile. "Yes, darling. He's downstairs working on his research."
My jaw locked with tension at the mention of research, my mind going to dark and terrible places. A lab in the house? What kind of experiments were they conducting that would warrant such an extravagance when they couldn't even invest in cleaning supplies.
"I'll be down in the cellar, Bella. I'm leaving the door open; come downstairs should you require me." Panic overtook me as he turned his back to me, and his tiny demon of a mother smiled widely, her red lipstick - oh fuck, I hoped that was just lipstick - a slash of crimson against the blinding white of her teeth.
Edward only took a few short steps out of the room before kneeling next to the staircase. He balanced his weight agilely on the balls of his feet rather than his knees and unlatched a door camouflaged in the floorboards.
"Wait!" I pleaded, and Edward turned to stone, neither moving nor blinking as he stared at me. "Don't . . . leave me."
"Oh, honey. He won't be far, and you're as safe as houses with me," Esme promised, and I felt something tug at my head. I turned, quickly peering over my shoulder, and watched in horror as she ran a bronze-coloured brush through my hair. "Like silk, you are, baby doll."
"Mother, Bella doesn't like to be touched," Edward admonished, and she retracted the brush. His eyes sought out mine as if asking for permission before lowering himself into the cellar. I nodded, and he disappeared.
"That's just silly. Why don't you like to be touched?" Esme demanded.
"I'm frightened."
"Of whom are you frightened? Me? Certainly not my Edward."
"Well . . ."
"If he was going to kill you, he would've done it already," she said matter-of-factly. "And besides, he's completely smitten." She trilled out a disjointed tune and muttered, "As smitten as a kitten with only one mitten!"
"I doubt that." I was so tired. I wanted to close my eyes, which perturbed me. Did they drug me again?
"Do you like cookies? Oh, I've always wanted to bake cookies! Tell me what goes in them, and I'll make you a batch." She bounded off the couch and twirled around in the middle of the room, sending her ringlets jittering into a frenzy of motion.
"Um . . ." My mind felt foggy. "Flour, eggs, butter-"
"Flowers? What kind of flowers?"
"No, flour."
"I could plant tulips," she gushed. "Oh, how lovely would it be to make tulip cookies! Carlisle has a special television that can order bulbs from Holland and have them shipped directly to the post office. Can you just imagine?"
"Uh . . ."
"And you can have babies! Real babies, not just dolls."
Oh, holy fuck, was she thinking about breeding me? Had Edward tried to bring home human women before? I felt bile rise in my chest as an image of Carlisle shooting me up with fertility hormones flashed in my mind. I imagined carrying a monster baby that would no doubt gnaw it's way through my womb like in the movie "Alien."
"How lovely it would be to have a baby in the house. I used to have a baby, but now I have Edward and Rosalie; they can't make babies."
"I'm sorry," I whispered, and she giggled.
"Why are you sorry, sweetness? You didn't kill my baby. God did."
"I want Edward . . . I mean, I need to tell him something." I jumped off the couch, sending more dust into the air, coughing at a sudden impact in my chest.
"Where are you going?"
I looked down and saw Esme's hand clutching a balled-up section of my shirt, just above my left breast. She held me tightly in place.
"Downstairs?"
"The men are busy downstairs, little girl. You're staying with Mother."
"Please . . . no, please." I didn't want to be part of her sick maternal fantasy.
"Sleep," she hissed.
xxxx
Ringlets like snakes.
I gained consciousness in Edward's bed with his pillow screwed up between my legs. I'd dreamed about spirals digging into my body like razor-sharp corkscrews. My ears still echoed with my screams; I didn't know if they were real or imagined.
"Rosalie came to me last night . . . after Bella fell asleep. At first, I thought she'd come to destroy her, but she only wanted me." Edward's voice carried over to me from down the hall; the door to the room stood ajar, allowing a slice of light to cut through the darkness.
"And did you succumb?" I heard Carlisle ask softly.
"No… it was queer; I didn't want her at all." Edward sounded tired, and I wondered if he ever slept.
"Good, Son. You know I never approved of your having relations with Rosalie without being properly mated."
"But what does this mean? Carlisle . . . I can't possibly be—"
"You can," he insisted.
"She's just a human girl."
"I suspect this is why you've kept her alive – why you couldn't kill her upon discovering her."
"I couldn't. I looked at her eyes and wanted only to comfort her."
"This is a good thing, son. I'm very pleased."
"And I'm stunned."
"Yes," Carlisle encouraged. "What else, Son? Allow yourself to feel."
"I'm . . . elated and . . ." his voice nearly broke, heavy with emotion, "terrified for her."
"Terrified? How strange. Why?"
"Because this isn't what she wants."
"Why don't you ask her what she wants?" he suggested, his voice growing louder.
Through the slit in the door, I saw a wisp of blond hair and a black eye. "Isabella, it's not polite to eavesdrop."
A/N - Big love for reading and reviewing! All reviews received within around 24 hours of the next post will receive a preview.
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