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Chapter 4
Bella sat in the snow, watching dawns rosy fingers stroking the mountain tops, before trailing down into the valley. The sun made the snow sparkle, and as it hit her, she did too. Bella had known the average amount about vampire myths, over the last month most of them had been disproved. This one had been the most surprising, she had expected light to burn, instead, it had reflected, almost like she was repelling it. She thought it looked like diamonds, and maybe it was something similar, she thought she remembered hearing that only diamond could cut diamond. Diamonds are forever...that was what she was now, a beautiful object made of precious stone, cold and hard.
She must have been a sight, a sparkling statue on the side of a snowy mountain, if anyone had happened by. When Tanya had taken her to see herself for the first time, they'd stood here, in the snow in front of the house, and if it were possible she would have hyperventilated when she saw the light hit Tanya, and then herself.
Bella had come to love the mountains over the month, the sister's had taken charge of trying to distract her from her troubles. This had resulted in snow angels, snow men (who the girls had playfully flirted with, much to Bella's embarrassment), races and deliberately causing avalanches to dig themselves out. While all these had been fun, Eleazar had told them to begin something more constructive, and so the sisters had begun to teach Bella how to survive.
Bella had been told of the Volturi, about their gifted vampires, and Eleazar had criticised them for their lack of physical defence, if their powers were disabled the majority of them were not skilled fighters. Kate, however, had made a point of developing lethal physical capabilities, and she took charge of training Bella how to fight. Bella got the impression something had happened to spur Kate's learning curve, and Tanya and Irina's sad but knowing looks made it obvious it was a family matter, so she didn't pry. Bella hadn't wanted to commit more violence, but Tanya had looked her in the eye sadly and told her it was for her own good. Bella didn't want to lose her mind again, but Kate convinced her she'd be doing the opposite.
"Bella, newborns fight from instinct, it makes them predictable, and while they have the advantage of strength, an older vampire can outthink them. I'm going to teach you to think to strategise, and to defend, attacking will come naturally. Outthinking the other fighter is the name of the game, and if you lose it means death. Now, you hopefully shouldn't need what I'll teach you, but it's naive not to. I'll teach you what I've learned, but I'm not an expert. The Cullen's have someone who is."
"Who?"
"Jasper, Alice's husband. He was a soldier in the Civil War, before he was turned and conscripted to the Southern Vampire Wars."
"Vampires have wars? I thought you...we...mostly lived separately."
Kate told Bella of the newborn wars over territory, of their violence and brutality, and after too many had been turned, how the Volturi intervened.
"The combined powers of the Volturi decimated the newborn hoards. How can a newborn stand against Jane? Who can torture someone by looking at them, or her twin Alec? Who can completely deprive someone of their senses? They were wild, so they were cut down. But you are different Bella, you are the most rational and calm newborn I have ever met, and if what Eleazar says is true, you will be immune to many of the Volturi's gifts. This will interest Aro."
"Why?"
"Aro is a collector, he wants all the power for himself, when he learns we have a newborn with a mental shield he will covet you. He will be very interested in you, possibly invite you to join them. I don't think he'd ever try and take you by force, he's fond of civility, but we will teach you to defend yourself, and if you are ever in danger, you will have a greater chance of surviving. I don't want to scare you Bella, but the vampire world is far more dangerous than the human in some respects. But, you have the ability to fight back now; with the right skills, no one can ever hurt you again."
In her mind, it happened again, she was dragged out of the car, into the woods, and bitten, powerless and alone.
Bella didn't care about the Volturi, she didn't care about vampire laws and politics. She only knew, if she ever met her maker again, that she wanted the ability to take revenge.
The only revenge a vampire can have is cold.
Being at the Denali house was sort of like being at school again, everyone took time with her to teach her something different. Kate had been teaching her to fight, until Jasper got there at Christmas to fine tune her training. Tanya was teaching her about her new body, running through the mountains, how to stalk, and how to locate prey. Tanya would lead Bella into the mountains and disappear, and then periodically through the day she would attack out of nowhere. Bella needed to learn to mind her surroundings, and be ready for attack, and for prey. Irina didn't like playing in the snow as much, but she was a fan of climbing, she taught Bella to scale rock faces without fear, to trust her new body, and not to be afraid. Her first lesson had been particularly brutal.
"I've never liked heights Irina, I don't think I can do this."
"Your human self didn't like heights, it was instinctual. But you are far more durable now, a fall cannot hurt you. Only a vampire can kill another vampire."
Bella looked sceptically over the edge of the mountain, seeing the valley miles below.
"I can't do it, I'm sorry."
"This is for your own good Bella."
Irina had caught Bella unawares and pushed her off of a mountain. Bella had screamed all the way down, thought she was going to die.
But instead, her body adjusted itself, and suddenly she was landing at the foot of the mountain, on her feet, without an ounce of pain or effort, she left a crater in her wake.
It was hard to be afraid of heights after that. The rush of the air, the beauty of the view, had stunned her, and with no negative consequences, Bella threw herself off 3 more times that day. Bella remembered there was a sport called Base Jumping, where people hurled themselves off mountains, Bella understood why people did it.
She still thought that humans were nuts to try it without a vampire body.
While the sisters had taken to showing Bella the physical side of her new body, Carmen and Eleazar were better suited to the mental. Bella found that she now had an eidetic memory, everything she read, heard, saw or did was permanently imprinted on her. She'd never considered herself a slouch in the academic department, but now she was on a whole other level. Eleazar had taken her to his library, full of books in various languages from the 17th century and onwards and had said:
"By the end of this week Bella, you will be able to read every Spanish book in this library."
Bella had been sceptical, no one could learn a language in a week.
She was wrong.
Eleazar had sat her down with a laptop with a Spanish dictionary and language programmes. By the end of the first day she could recognise most words, by the second she could read and translate them, by the third write them, and then came the spoken part. Reading and writing a language were very different to listening and speaking; she'd taken Spanish in High-School and never been good at it. Carmen had taken to only speaking to her in Spanish, and Bella wasn't allowed to reply in English. Bella was getting more confident in her replies, her brain was translating back and forth in an instant, and then Carmen had introduced Bella to her secret vice.
Spanish Soap Opera.
The Telenovela's were from Latin America and Europe and weren't as long running as American series. They were overly dramatic, featuring cut throat dowagers, evil twin sisters and cheating husbands. Carmen loved them, she said they weren't unlike the Italian Comedia dell'arte she'd seen in the 17th and 18th century. The Soap Operas had set type characters, inflated personalities and shocking plotlines, although Comedia dell'arte was often improvised, Carmen was riveted by it. Eleazar smiled when he saw her watching, stating that he was mated to a teleadicto.
"We do not often go to the theatre in this part of the world; this is Carmen's closest substitute. Ahh I see Philippe had discovered the niño is not his son."
Bella could see the appeal she supposed, her mother had liked to watch Passions. At first they watched with the subtitles, then without, and soon enough Bella's brain could process the different accents of Spain, Mexico and Latin America, and she found that she was unconsciously developing Carmen's accent when she spoke Spanish, which Carmen praised. As Eleazar predicted, when she opened the first page of Don Quixote a week after her studies began, despite the archaic Spanish, she was able to recognise and read the words fluently.
Eleazar seemed to be encouraging from a distance, giving her goals and gently challenging her to reach them.
"This is new to you Bella, only you can decide how far you will go. It is my responsibility as your elder to give you the basis of what you can achieve and guide you towards your potential. But, I find with young people that pushing too much is met with resistance, you are still a teenager, no?"
Bella often felt a pang when she remembered the reason for her new abilities; she would be 18 for the rest of her afterlife. She'd never get the crows feet that women so feared, never complain about gaining weight, or get a new haircut, she'd never even shave her legs again. She would be the same forever, and remember every moment of her new existence.
Those thoughts often made her melancholy. The family knew to leave her alone in her darker moments, she would go and sit on her own, by a window or in the snow, curl up and think. A day may pass, time was different when you couldn't sleep, and then she would walk back in and they would act like nothing had happened.
Bella found that those things she could remember about her human life were now fixed, but that she was recalling less and less new information. She wondered what pieces of herself she had lost while she burned, and if in time she'd ever get them back.
The family had given her her own space. The room was decorated in magnolia, one wall was a window, and there was room on a shelf for books. She also had a bed, its posts were made of metal vine and flowers, and the silk curtains were dark blue. Tanya and Irina had gone to collect the bed from a nearby town, they'd had it ordered the week she arrived. Bella had gone hunting one day with Kate and found it in the empty spare room when she returned. They said they wanted her to feel comfortable, and she admitted she liked having somewhere to lay and be alone.
Eleazar, after one of her dark moments, had knocked on the door of her room, and when she replied, entered. Eleazar presented a leather bound book to her. Bella could smell the animal hide from across the room, it made her oddly thirsty. He placed it in her hands and she looked up at him puzzled, opening the book to see blank pages.
"I thought niña, that it may help to write down some of what you remember. I have seen young Edward do so, and it seemed terapéutico. Or, you may like to write about your new life, it is up to you. I have always thought, it is a shame to leave the pages of a book blank."
He'd left her with the book and a silver nibbed fountain pen, and she knew if it were possible, she would have cried.
Bella had spent her sleepless nights writing down her life, and she found the more she wrote, the more little things she remembered. Like the way her mother would burn anything she cooked, or how her father used to glare down teenage boys who looked her way. How her mother used to address her Christmas presents "From Santa", even long after she'd admitted she knew he wasn't real. Her Dad would sneak the green beans off his plate when he thought she wasn't looking, "rabbit food" he'd called it.
Bella knew she would never see her parents again; they were both dead, their losses still felt fresh in her mind. But, to remember them, to write about the good times, to solidify them in her new memory, made her feel closer to them.
Bella could get used to drinking blood, to not feeling pain, to running faster than the wind and jumping off of mountain sides. But she would never get used to not sleeping, she hadn't been a slugabed before, but it had been good to switch off, to dream, to define one day from the next. She missed not thinking, being able to escape life, now she remembered every second, this was all there would ever be for her. So she would fill it with fighting, stealth and hunting lessons, with languages and soap operas and diary writing. Although she was becoming attached to the Denali coven, through bonds of friendship and familial love, she still felt out of place, like something was missing.
All she had now was time, and while her new abilities were fantastical, they seemed hollow.
It seemed all she was doing was passing time, and she had centuries of it ahead.
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