Chapter Four
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By the roots of my hair some god got hold of me.
I sizzled in his blue volts like a desert prophet.
The nights snapped out of sight like a lizard's eyelid:
A world of bald white days in a shadeless socket.
A vulturous boredom pinned me in this tree.
If he were I, he would do what I did.
- Sylvia Plath, "Hanging Man"
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Shock treatment. The very words were daunting.
Alice sat silently in the car while Edward drove. On her lap was a large, rectangular box about the size of a desktop CPU with dials and switches and electrodes. Edward assured her that the hospital from which they'd just stolen it wasn't using this particular model any more, having purchased an upgrade earlier in the year. They probably wouldn't even notice it was gone, but just to make Alice feel better, he promised he'd send them a sizable donation.
It had taken almost all evening to locate a hospital that still used electro-convulsive therapy and then to relieve it of one of their old machines. Alice had sat that particular experience out, waiting in the car until Edward came sauntering back, the machine tucked under his arm. He was actually whistling when he got inside the car.
It was late. She tried to insist it was too late to try out the machine, but Edward insisted on doing the first session immediately and she caved to his insistence. Alice kept thinking of ways to talk him out of this, but he was determined. She had a feeling that if she refused to participate, he'd grab the machine, hide out somewhere and shock the hell out of himself, paying no attention to protocols or voltage recommendations.
They'd gotten along better in the last couple of days. Edward hadn't made any moves on her and he'd spent the evenings with her, doing research on ECT (Alice refused to go blindly into another situation) and telling her stories about his past, the things he had done and things he had seen in his globe-spanning travels.
Alice thought of her shelves of history books and felt a little pang that she couldn't share her new knowledge with the world. So many incorrect assumptions, so many misinterpretations. One evening, Edward had gone out to the bookstore and bought her the book Motel of the Mysteries, a satirical story of archaeologists 10,000 years in the future discovering a buried hotel and "interpreting" the items inside, such as the toilet seat being a ceremonial fertility necklace. It certainly made her think about some of the assumptions she had made, sometimes blinded by her own perceptions and experiences instead of looking at things with an open mind.
"You okay, Doc?" Edward asked. They pulled into the driveway and Alice waited for him to open the door for her. He was strangely picky about thing like that. He thought she was intentionally rejecting his courtesy if she opened her own doors.
"Yeah, I'm okay," she said. He was going to go through with this, no matter what, so she had to help him to make sure he didn't somehow really hurt himself.
"You seem awfully quiet," Edward glanced at her face as he spoke, opening the kitchen door with his key.
Alice kept her eyes glued to the floor as she stepped inside. "Just thinking."
"That's your problem, Doc," he announced. "You over-think things."
She gaped at him. "Edward, haven't you even considered all of the things that could go wrong with this?" There were too many worries crowding her mind, whirling through her head, looping, repeating, feeding off of one another. What if it didn't work and he wanted to try higher voltage? What it it worked too well and erased all of his memories? He was incredibly powerful and it would be nigh to impossible to control him if he lost his inhibitions.
"I'm more interested in the things that could go right," he said. "Don't be a pessimist."
They set up the machine beside his bed, pulled a little closer into the center of the room so that Alice would be able to reach him from all sides and one of the stools from the kitchen was perched next to it.
"Doc, don't worry," Edward said, his voice surprisingly gentle. "You've done your homework on this one. Everything will be fine."
"What if it doesn't throw you into a seizure?" she asked.
"We've discussed this," Edward said calmly. "The seizure aspect may not be important for my situation. The electricity will still be hitting my memory centers, and if its detractors are correct, it will cause the lesions and neural death in areas associated with memory, but it's not going to hurt me. Hell, the APA guidelines allows for four or five shocks. I'm sure I could take more."
He opened a bottle of blood that he had driven to the vampire bar last night to purchase. (She had been proud of herself for asking no questions as to why it took him so long to return.) The label was blue with fanciful silver curls painted over the surface of the bottle and Gothic lettering in silver which read, "Vitamin H." Heroin-laced. She had given vampire-kind the first and only method of preserving and bottling blood and the first thing they did was use it to sell intoxicants. She understood how Marie Curie had felt when her discovery of radium led to the atomic bomb.
Edward drank it quickly, taking no time to savor its O Positive flavor. It wouldn't knock him out, but it would make him more relaxed and perhaps dull any pain from the procedure. In just a few minutes, she could tell a difference. His eyelids drooped lower and his facial muscles relaxed. He smiled at her, that gorgeous, crooked smile that made every woman between the age of twelve and eighty weak in the knees. "You look very pretty tonight, Doc. Pink suits you."
He laid down on the bed and attached his own electrodes, both on the left side of his head- the hemisphere of his brain that was dominant, as Edward was right handed- one near the temple and one on his forehead, which their research had indicated was the worst possible placement in regards to memory side effects.
"'You may fire when you ready, Gridley.'," said Edward, clamping a leather strap between his teeth. If he put any pressure on it, he'd likely bite it in half, but it might pad his teeth a little.
Alice took a deep breath. She set the dials carefully, checked them again. Checked them one more time.
Edward spit out the strip of leather. "Dammit, Doc, do it already! The wait is torture." He replaced it and lay back, waiting.
Alice flipped the switch.
Edward's body arced upward, off the bed, only his upper shoulders and legs touching the mattress. His head thrashed, his face frozen in the rictus of a scream, and his feet jittered in a bizarrely jaunty dance. "Edward!" She rushed forward and almost grabbed him but stopped herself just in time.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
Six.
The longest six seconds of Alice's life.
She hit the switch and Edward dropped to the bed like puppet whose strings had been cut, limbs akimbo, limp, his face slack.
"Edward?" She knelt by his side and cupped his face between her hands.
"Edward, look at me." Her tone was calm and firm, two things she was not.
He obeyed.
"What day is it?" she asked.
" ... Friday ... I think."
It was Saturday. The expression on her face must have given it away because he groaned. "Aw, fuck, Doc, I didn't know what day of the week it was before you hit me with the juice."
She let out the breath she'd been holding. He was lucid, at least.
"Hit me again," he commanded.
"Edward, are you sure-"
"I wouldn't have said it if I weren't. Do it." He replaced the strap between his teeth.
She flipped the switch.
She wanted to look away so badly. She didn't want to see him like this, frozen in agony as every muscle clenched. But she couldn't. She had to stay focused, watch him to make sure he was all right.
Six seconds.
She hit the switch. He collapsed again, gasping. A soft moan left him, involuntarily, she was sure. She brushed back his hair. "Edward?"
"Again," he said.
Tears pooled in her eyes. "Edward-"
"Don't make me beg, Doc," he rasped.
She closed her eyes. Flipped the switch.
His arm shot out, ramming into her shoulder. She lost her balance and tumbled off the stool, landing with a thud. She was on her feet again instantly, her attention focused on Edward, his tight writhing, his silent agony. She hit the switch and he went limp. Both of them had tears in their eyes. She leaned over to look down at him, and one of her tears plopped onto his cheek. It flowed into one of his own, mingled, rolling down his cheek to splash on his ear, near that Darwin's tubercle she had pointed out while cutting his hair.
"I hit you," he whispered.
"Not intentionally." She smiled, as though tears were not flowing in constant rivulets down her face. "It's okay."
"Again."
"No," she said, and shook her head. "I can't, Edward."
"Yes." He caught her hand and gripped it. "You must. Please."
She did it.
Afterwards, he was weak and shaken. She went to get him a bottle of AB from the refrigerator and found that Rose had left a tray with a warmed mug outside the door. She took it in to Edward and helped him sit up, holding the mug to his lips when his hands shook too badly to hold it. He drank it gratefully and when he was finished, she pulled the blankets up to his chin, tucking him in, offering what little comfort she could. She pushed the hateful machine over to the wall, resisting the temptation to kick it to bits and burn the pieces.
She turned to go and Edward called to her. "Doc, please don't leave. Stay with me. Please."
She couldn't resist his pleading mint green eyes. She lifted the blanket and crawled into the bed, laying stiffly on her own side, her back to him. He pulled he closer and rubbed gentle circles on her back. "You okay, Doc?" The sensation of his breath on her ear made her shiver.
"I'm fine," she whispered. Another tear fell and splashed on the back of his hand. He was the one who had suffered and here he was, comforting her.
He began to sing to her, a beautiful melodic song in a language she didn't know, in a rich baritone voice. His breath teased her ear as he sang and she felt her nipples harden. She'd never known there was a connection between the two.
The last note died away. "What was that?" she asked.
"A lullaby in a language long forgotten, Paeonian. I heard the song sung by a shepherdess south of the Balkan mountains, long ago." He paused for a moment and blew gently on her ear, making her shiver again. "That song probably hasn't been sung in two thousand years."
"Well, we know your long-term memory isn't affected," she said briskly, moving her head away so he could no longer tease her ear. He chuckled. "Good night, Doc."
"Is it daw-" Alice was out like a light.
Edward seemed to be in a pissy mood that evening. He merely grunted when Alice greeted him in the kitchen, grabbing her "breakfast" bottle of blood from the refrigerator and popping it in the microwave to warm.
"Why don't you drink from live donors?" Edward asked abruptly.
Alice hedged. "This is more convenient."
"Convenient, perhaps, but not nearly as satisfying. Come on, let's go out to the club."
Alice shook her head. "I have work to do."
"Do you ever drink from a live donor?" Edward demanded.
"What's it to you?" Alice retorted.
"I'm curious. I satisfy your curiosity about history; you can return the courtesy of answering a couple of questions. I repeat: do you ever drink from live donors?"
Alice wouldn't look at him. She stared intently at the diminishing numbers on the microwave's clock as if they held the secrets of the universe. "No, I don't."
"Why?"
Alice hesitated, trying to think of a way to answer.
"Jesus Christ, Doc, it's not that difficult of a question."
Alice felt her hackles raise. "I just don't want to, okay?"
"You don't drink, you don't fuck ... it's unnatural. It's a complete denial of your nature as a vampire."
"Oh, so we're back to the sex thing again?"
"That 'sex thing' is a part of your nature. That's what vampires do. We drink blood and we fuck. We're like bonobos. It's social, like a handshake. It keeps out tensions down and keeps us from killing one another."
"Do I seem aggressive or violent to you?" she demanded.
"No, you seem- Never mind." He cut off his words and strode to the door, snatching his keys from the hook.
"You're leaving?" Alice asked, hating the tone of her voice. She should sound indifferent. Instead she sounded sad, almost like she was pleading with him to stay.
"Yep. I'm off to be a vampire for a bit." The sarcasm in his tone cut her. "Don't worry, I'll be back in time for us to do the treatment."
She wouldn't admit it, but that wasn't the reason she didn't want him to leave.
She stared at the door a long time after he closed it. What was her problem? Why did she care what he was going to do at that club?
The answer hit her like being doused with a bucket of ice water. She was falling for him. Desperately, she tried to deny it. Tried to reason with herself. He was in love with another woman. All she was doing was setting herself up for heartbreak. If it was true, she had to nip it in the bud right now, root it out of her system, learn to love the smell of Napalm in the morning.
She had to get out of here. She went through the hallway and stuck her head inside the living room. "Rose, I'm going to visit Victoria. Want to come?"
Rose shook her head.
"Come on, it'll do you some good to get out of the house."
Rose met her eyes and slowly shook her head again.
Alice sighed. "All right, Rose, I won't push." She went in to the living room and used the phone by the sofa to call a cab. She sat down next to Rose and gave her a hug. Rose kissed the top of Alice's head and Alice lingered there for a moment, drawing comfort from the embrace.
They sat there like that for a few minutes until the arriving cab honked its horn. Alice grabbed her purse and coat. "I won't be long," she called over her shoulder. She opened the door and nearly knocked over Edward.
"Where are you going?" he asked.
"Out," replied Alice and strode past him to the cab. He stood there in the doorway, watching as she pulled away. She refused to look back at him. He had smelled like soap, as though he'd just taken a shower and she wouldn't think about it. No, not at all. She read the cabbie's license over and over again to force her mind away.
Queen Victoria lived in a renovated castle not far from the city. It wasn't as glamorous as it sounded, being simply a small square building with a tower on the front two corners. It was chosen for its security, not aesthetics, having thick stone walls and only small arrow slits for windows. The owners of the property had actually used the old castle as a barn after the construction of the manor house half a mile away.
Alice hopped out of the cab at the end of the drive and walked the rest of the way to the gate. She gave her name and identification number and waited until her permission to visit the Queen was confirmed by the guard. He'd seen Alice many times before, but during a civil war, alliances can shift from friend one day, assassin the next. As soon as she was confirmed as an ally, he became much more friendly, asking her how she'd been and if she'd made any new discoveries. Alice chatted with him for a few moments before heading up to the castle door. There, the same procedure was repeated in addition to a search for weapons.
She was led by a dayman butler down the stairs into what was once the dungeon but now contained Victoria's office. He announced her grandly at the door, "Miss Alice Brandon to see Her Majesty."
Victoria was pecking at a computer when Alice entered the room. She held up a finger for Alice to wait while she finished. Alice didn't mind. She took a seat in front of the desk and used the opportunity to survey Victoria for clues as to how she was doing, and the news wasn't good.
Victoria had been changed when she was in her early twenties but she looked older than that now. Her face was pale and drawn, her mouth curled down in bitterness, her eyes shadowed and haunted. Her bright red hair was an incongruously cheerful note, even pulled back from her face as severely as it was. Victoria had never been a fashionista, but the baggy clothes she wore were drab and shapeless. Alice recognized the sweater she wore as being one of James' and her heart broke a little.
"Sorry about that," Victoria said, tearing her eyes away from the screen with effort. "It's nice to see you, Alice. How have you been?"
The words were correct and so was her polite tone, but Alice knew her well enough to recognize that Victoria was seriously troubled. It was even more than her tearing grief for James. "What's wrong?" Alice demanded.
"Oh, beside the fact that my mate is dead, my people are rebelling against me and I keep getting boxes in the mail containing the ashes of my troops, everything is just ducky." Victoria put a hand to her forehead. "Wait- I'm sorry. I'm-"
"Stop," Alice said. "It's fine. I understand you're under a lot of stress right now."
"That's an understatement of epic proportions," Victoria said, her voice wry. She indicated the piles of paper on her desk. "Laurent is running his revolution like the mafia, expanding his territory by eliminating any opposition in the way. Report after report of businesses being ransacked, my supporters being harassed, blackmailed or killed. Most of the East Coast of the U.S. is now under his rule. I can't stop it. He's keeping us more than occupied with trying to clean up after his people who are taking full advantage of the confusion to slaughter humans whenever the whim takes them. I'm losing Volturi faster than I can replace them an trust me, the pool of volunteers is getting mighty thin. I find myself having to take candidates who are little more than fledglings. And just to put a cherry on the top of this shit sundae, Caius has gone rogue."
"Caius?" Alice repeated in astonishment. Caius was head of the Volturi, the last person whose loyalty Alice would ever question.
"He hasn't joined the rebels," Victoria said. "He's simply gone off the deep end. He was acting so strangely last night at one of the vamp clubs that they kicked him him out, which pissed him off to the point that he picked up a double-decker bus full of tourists and threw it at the building."
"Oh my God," Alice gasped.
"Our kind took care of the memories of the survivors and witnesses, but there are twenty-four dead. The humans think it was a terrorist bombing. But Caius took advantage of the confusion and bolted before he could be contained." Victoria took a deep breath. "But enough about my problems. Tell me about how you've been doing."
"Aw, jeeze, Victoria..."
"I'm serious. Distract me for a minute or ten. It will be a welcome respite, I assure you."
Alice recounted the events of the last week. "I'm sorry I can't say we've learned very much about vampire brains as of yet," she apologized.
"You've learned what doesn't work," Victoria argued. "That's valuable in of itself."
"We have seven weeks of the shock treatments to get through," Alice said. "I refused to do it more than three times a week and we figure he'll need at least twenty sessions to show any results."
"It's better than losing him, Alice." Victoria sat back in her chair and rubbed her eyes. "If he's feeling anything like what I am, it's this or a walk in the afternoon sunshine. Edward is highly respected by the Council and I need his support right now. Call me callous, but I'm in favor of you doing whatever you have to do to keep him going for as long as possible." Victoria's mask of cool civility fell for a moment and Alice got a glimpse of the raw pain beneath it. It shocked and frightened her with its intensity.
"I wish that James had let me die all those years ago, rather than changing me," Victoria said softly. "If he had, none of this would be happening. All of the innocent people becoming collateral damage in this war ... And now I'm trapped, trapped here by my duty. I can't let Laurent win, even though I long to be able to say, 'Okay, I'm done with this Queen business'. He would destroy us all because we would no longer be warring just amongst ourselves; he would expose us to the humans and then the bloodshed would really begin."
"Edward blames himself," Alice said. "He says if he hadn't dated Lauren, none of this would have happened."
Victoria waved a dismissive hand. "If it hadn't been her, it would have been someone else. I'm not just saying that to make him feel better because you know me and you know if I thought it was really his fault, I'd be demanding his ashes on a silver platter. We were standing hip-deep in gunpowder in a room full of smokers. Pretty soon, someone was going to drop a spark that set it off. It was inevitable. We knew it all along, the Council and I. We were just hoping for more time to build our forces before the explosion. Edward and Bella ended up being the catalysts, just like Helen of Troy ended up being what started the Trojan War, but the truth of the matter is that there never would have been a war if the countries involved hadn't already had deep, bitter animosity."
Victoria leaned forward over her desk, her palms braced on her mounds of paperwork, her eyes blazing. "You tell Edward that the truth of the matter is that I am the cause of this war. Me and my silly little rules about not killing humans and wanting to prevent evil or mentally disturbed people from being made into vampires. If I had just accepted the status quo and used my Volturi to clean up after vampire murders, everything would have been copacetic. But I wanted to change things for the better. A lot like you, Alice." She smiled, the first genuine smile Alice had seen her give in over three years, though it was heavily tinged with a wistful sadness. "That was what convinced me to change you. I could see some of myself in you, the desire to use your skills to help people and make the world a better place."
"That, and the fact that Dewey said he was going to squash me like a bug if you didn't do something," Alice joked. They both chuckled a bit at the memory of the surly vampire bartender who had gotten fed-up with Alice and her insistent snooping around the bar that housed the vampire club.
"It was one of the best decisions I've made since I became Queen," Victoria told her. She came around the desk and Alice rose to her feet. They embraced one another. Victoria pulled back and looked down into Alice's face. "If I can give you one bit of advice, it would be to never fall in love. Both Edward and I can attest that the pain of its loss never goes away, never gets better. There are few widows and widowers in our world because the burden of the pain is too immense for many of us to bear."
"Oh, Victoria," Alice hugged her again, wishing she could absorb some of that burden for her.
"I have to bear it because I have no choice. I have my duty." On Victoria's lips, a tiny smile played, one that made Alice's stomach grow cold because she had seen it on Edward's lips as well. "Maybe being deposed wouldn't be so bad after all."
"Don't say that," Alice said fiercely. "I don't know if you're a believer, but I believe that God never allows anything to happen by accident. It's all part of a plan."
"Oh, I'm a believer all right," Victoria said. "I just don't believe that God has much to do with our kind."
Alice shook her head. "We're part of His creation, too. There's nothing really supernatural about us, if you think about it. We're changed by a virus that makes us stronger and faster by changing the way our bodies process nutrients, and turns off our aging gene. It heals our injuries and is so efficient that it gets all the nutrients it needs from blood. We even have evolutionary adaptions that help us blend in with humans and attract them. The only thing I can't explain with science is how we can hypnotize humans and read their minds, but that's just a limitation of our current scientific technology, not something innately inexplicable. We're part of the natural world and maybe the rebels are right in the respect that we were intended to be the top of the food chain, to keep human population numbers in check, but we don't have to be led by our animal natures."
Victoria gave that tiny smile again. "I should send you on the lecture circuit to recruit allies."
"Sorry," Alice said. "I'm piss-poor at public speaking. The only class in which I got bad grades was Debate. You can study and practice until the cows come home, but being a charismatic speaker is an innate talent that can't be learned. Just like leadership." Alice said this last sentence pointedly. "I could never be a Queen. Being a leader is also a talent which you either have or you don't. Most Americans think they have the talent because our school kids are programmed from a very young age that we're all leaders, all rugged individualists forging our own path, but the truth is, we're not. Just like our relatives in the animal kingdom, we have Alphas and Betas, and all the way down to Omegas. An Omega can never be an Alpha no matter how much they're told they are, no matter how many leadership seminars they attend. They may even achieve the position in the working world, but they'll never be good at it."
Victoria shook her head, amused. "Alice, you're a trip. I could listen to you all night, but I need to get back to work. 'No rest for the wicked' and all that jazz. But, tell me, before you go, what's the next step in your experiments?"
Alice took a deep breath. "Intentionally damaging areas of the brain where memories are stored. I'm really, really hoping we won't get to that point because it sounds grossly irresponsible to even consider experiments like that."
Victoria looked thoughtful. "I might be able to help you with that step. I'll give you a call."
Alice hugged her again and left. As she walked up the stairs, she began to dial for a taxi. She was paying such close attention to her phone's keyboard that she ran right into a man on the stairs.
"ACK!" The stack of papers flew out of the man's hands and he tumbled backwards down the narrow stone spiral stairs. Alice's phone shattered as it followed him.
"Oh my God!" Alice ran after him, hoping like hell the man was a vampire, not a dayman. He lay in a heap at the stairs' foot. Alice threw herself down beside him. He smelled like a vampire, thank God. "Are you all right?"
"Oh, yes, quite well," he said politely. "If you could be a dear, please twist my head around the right way?"
Alice moaned and covered her face with her hands.
"Joking, I'm joking." The man slowly and carefully sat up, wincing as he straightened his limbs. "The neck didn't break but I think it's the only thing that didn't. Those stairs have got to violate some kind of building code. I think we should sue. What do you say?"
Alice laughed. His grin was so infectious she found herself returning it. "Think we could strike it rich? Perhaps I should throw myself down the stairs, too and we can start a class action."
"What class might that be?" He cocked his head.
"The clumsy class, of course," Alice said.
"I'm not clumsy, YOU are," the man pointed out, and Alice covered her face with her hands again.
"I'm sorry," she said. "Maybe you should sue me instead of the Queen."
"The stairs were the part that hurt, not being bumped into by you," he informed her. He grinned again and stuck his hand out. "Jacob. Jacob Black."
"Alice Brandon." She grinned back at him and teased, "It's nice to meet you Jacob-Jacob Black."
"Just one 'Jacob'. One is awesome enough." He took her hand into his massive paw and shook it gently. It was only once they'd stood up that Alice noticed how massive he was. Perhaps even bigger than Emmett and Emmett was the tallest man Alice had ever met prior to this occasion. He was built like a linebacker, heavily muscled and broad-shouldered. His silky black hair and hawk-bridged nose pointed to at least some Native American ancestry and his skin had a slight copper tinge. Alice looked away, feeling suddenly shy once she realized he was checking her out, too.
"I'll tell you what, Alice Brandon," he said. "I'll drop my lawsuit against you if you'll be my date for the James Gill show at the Stanford Art Gallery tomorrow evening."
Alice was a bit flustered. She had little experience at being asked out on dates, especially by such an attractive man. "I- uh, I..." She wished her thoughts didn't fly to Edward at that moment.
Jacob took her hesitation as a negative. "I'm sorry, are you involved with someone?"
Alice lifted her chin. "No, I'm not. I ... I'd love to go with you, Jacob." To hell with Edward. He was right: she needed to live a little, socialize more with the opposite sex.
Jacob grinned again. "Great!"
They exchanged information. Alice's cell phone was a crumpled wad of plastic and wires, so he wrote his number on a piece of paper torn from the corner of one of his documents and entered Alice's in his phone. She told him her address and how to find her house.
"Looking forward to it," Jacob said.
Alice stuck out her hand awkwardly and he shifted his re-collected papers to the other arm to shake it. She felt like a moron but he just smiled at her. Alice ducked her head and escaped up the staircase.
She couldn't wait to tell Rose! Her first date since becoming a vampire. Alice practically skipped down the hall and gave the dayman at the door such a blinding smile that he was stunned into momentary immobility. She could barely contain her excitement.