Chapter 6
Warning! This chapter is intense, and includes hunting/feeding on a deer, and is what gives this story its lighter mature rating.
This chapter has no Bella/Edward interaction, and Edward is far away, so I'm giving exposition and making stuff up as I go along-especially about the "camping trip"…
Carlisle and I didn't drive to Rainier, as Bella assumed we would. Why would we, after all? We can generally move as well and as fast as any SUV, with the option of going cross-country, to boot. So we ran all the way there. Why were we going? Well, for one thing, hunting. We didn't want to thin out the herds around Forks too much. That might alert the wrong people that there were predators other than normal animals hunting the forests. And let me tell you, life becomes a lot harder when a vampire hunter/slayer starts sniffing you out and breathing down your neck. There is always the option of buying pig's blood from a butcher shop in a pinch, but that really is just a last resort; kind of like eating Saltines when you want Oreos, or bologna when you want steak. It's just not the same.
Another reason we occasionally go out-of-area is because of the local competition. Not the animals, though we have to consider them, too, but the local wolf pack. The WERE-wolf pack. The pack has a direct connection with the Quileutes, the local Indian tribe. I'm not entirely sure what it entails, but I do know that most, if not all, of the members of the pack come from the Quileute tribe. They live near Forks, and the reservation includes most of the area around La Push. The legend about the feud between werewolves and vampires is true, but we have a tense truce with this pack. Our two groups made the truce for similar reasons. One reason is to keep some measure of control over ourselves and our territory, and the other is to avoid those who would hunt us. Silver bullets don't hurt just werewolves. Human bodies showing up in curiously large numbers would bring the kind of attention we just don't need, especially in the age of phone cameras 24-hour sensationalist news coverage. So in the interest of self-preservation, we keep a "live-and-let-live" attitude. Simply put, it's a truce of convenience.
The group Bella would be going with was large enough to attract the attention of the Quileutes, maybe enough that they would send a sort of "welcoming party." The fact that Bella would go to La Push and likely meet with members of that tribe bothered me. It bothered me plenty, because if any of them were werewolves, they would undoubtedly smell me all over her. Then they would likely tell her what I am, one of their "cold ones," in an effort to warn her, and I'm not sure at this point how she would take that information. I had already made some arrangements regarding that possibility, but that didn't make it any easier to think about. Oh, well, if it happens, it happens, and I'll cross that proverbial bridge when I come to it.
A third reason we go away is related to why the Cullens are absent from school on nice, sunny days. We don't like sunlight. We consider it our natural enemy. It doesn't hurt us, not physically, anyway. As far as vampires are concerned, however, it's worse; much worse. We can endure more physical pain than any human alive, but sunlight effectively emasculates us. You see, direct sunlight makes vampire skin…sparkle. Yeah. Like a pretty crystal. Likea tacky, out-dated '80's disco ball. Like a drag queen exhibitionist at a "Gay Pride" parade. There is not enough sarcasm to express how much this condition disgusts us. We Cullens call this condition proof positive that there is a god…and that he/she/it detests vampires with a loathing that surpasses even that of the hateful father facing the villain who raped and killed his only daughter; an abhorrence blacker than a Catholic's sins; reviles them more than any Hatfield hated any other McCoy. That is how much this deity hates vampires; so much that we have skin that sparkles. Thus, we are creatures of the night. In the same position, wouldn't you be? Or wouldn't you at least live in a perpetually cloudy place?
My musings stopped when Carlisle suddenly halted, inhaling slowly, searching for the scent of prey on the wind. I stopped beside him and did the same. We both caught the scent at the same time, and our heads swiveled to the left. Our sharp vampire ears were able to pick out the sound of deer hooves softly treading on the forest floor. With just a quick glance at each other, we knew what we would do. I crept quickly and quietly on a straight line toward the deer, while Carlisle moved off toward the side. We would run a kind of "interception play," where I would give chase and Carlisle would tackle it from the side.
As soon as it saw me, the deer took off, bounding away through the forest. My fingernails lengthened into claws; my canines grew an inch; the vampire was ready to hunt. I kept pace with the deer, even through sudden directional changes, as it turned on a dime right, left, abruptly left and back at the same time so I wound up skidding several feet on loose leaves before I was able to give chase again; this deer was good at running. I got in a couple good slashes along its flank, injuring it, but not fatally. I was having fun; I wanted it to last. The deer turned and bounded through a meadow that opened up on the right.
I sped up, intending to kill it before it reached the trees on the other side. Suddenly Carlisle appeared from the right, tackling the deer and removing it from my path. His attack was so unexpected that I forgot I was still running so fast, and slammed right into a tree on the edge of the meadow. The impact made my ears ring, and I think my nose got out of joint. I was dazed and woozy, but that quickly passed. I turned and walked back to where Carlisle was, fixing my nose as I went. I winced a little as I popped it back into place, but the pain faded quickly enough. Carlisle already had his mouth fastened to the deer's neck when I approached. That bastard started without me. Okay, not a total bastard. He did leave me the heart.
When we had finished draining the blood from the vicinity of the neck, Carlisle moved down to its hindquarters, and I punched through the deer's ribs and grasped its heart, then yanked the whole thing out of the chest cavity. I held it over me, tilted my head, and squeezed, catching the red dripping blood in my mouth. This is one reason I wear so much black. By the time I finished with the blood that had pooled where the heart had been, there were no large reserves of blood left in the deer. We left the rest to the scavengers.
When we finished with the deer, we went and found a stream to clean ourselves off. Butchering animals is a messy business, after all. I took off my shirt to wash it, and Carlisle did the same. The water briefly ran tinted red from the excess blood that came off. We laid our shirts on a nearby rock to let them dry, and washed our hair and faces in the stream. I turned my back to Carlisle and shook my hair out-and abruptly remembered why I was trying to avoid doing just that, but I was too late.
His arms slithered around my shoulders and met in the middle of my chest, just below my throat. The front of his body was almost, but not quite, touching the back of mine. I could feel on my back, or imagined that I could feel, the residual heat in his stomach from the blood that we had both recently consumed. My spine stiffened, my eyes snapped wide, and at that moment all I could do was to stare straight ahead. I knew what he was going to do, and he knew I knew, and that only heightened his anticipation, because he knew I didn't really want it. He also knew that I wouldn't say no. I could barely gasp out his name. "Car…lisle…"
"Come on, Edward. You knew this was coming way back then." He leaned his head forward over my left shoulder until his chin was all but resting on it, his face on the same level as mine. He turned his head and murmured in my ear, "I told you my price for showing you how to bind a person inexorably to you. You know you don't have to pay it, but you also know you stand the best chance with me guiding you every step of the way. A girl like her doesn't come along every day, and who knows when you will meet another ideal specimen?" I looked at the ground, teeth and fists clenched. "Say it, Edward. Tell me what our deal was."
My body trembled from trepidation. I took a deep breath, eyes intently studying the dirt, twigs, and underbrush of the forest. "Until…until I bind her to me, I will…be your toy."
"Yeeees, and?"
I forced myself to continue. "And…and for every step you lead you me through, we have…a 'playdate.'" I had to practically spit out the last word. It wasn't like this would permanently scar me, but I still had in essence made a deal with the devil, and it was time to pay again. I turned just my eyes to look at him, barely catching his eyes at the corner of my vision. "You really are a perverted, warped son of a bitch, aren't you, old man?" I asked in disgust.
He jerked me back against him and chuckled. "Of course I am, 'son.'" His hands splayed over my chest. "But then, so are you. We are vampires…."
I turned around and deliberately willed myself to relax into his cruel embrace…I will have you for myself, Bella. This has gone too far to quit now, so I promise I will make you mine. No one else shall have you; I shall destroy anyone who tries, and I fully intend to make you pay for this and the other 'playdates,' darling…and finished the phrase he started. "…It's what we do." I closed my eyes, and Carlisle took it from there. "Come along, my little sex toy…"
*Note: "Oh no!" Oh yes! I went there! Edward/Carlisle "Camping Trip" homoerotica! I apologize if you're fond of the Cullens, but if this was going to work, I had to demonize all the vampires, not just Edward. Since vampires do symbolize the spectrum of human vices, it seemed like the kind of thing the 'elder' vampire would do. He wouldn't give away this kind of guidance for free, and he would like extorting and blackmailing people, as would the other vampires. Any actions to the contrary are an act to give the appearance of being different, or to assimilate into human society.
**To any yaoi fangirls out there: I hope you have good imaginations, because this is as much as I will describe. Partly because I don't particularly want to write any kind of erotic scenes, and partly because even if I did, I wouldn't be able to post it on anyway. Besides, there are other sites that concentrate on that kind of prose, and they do it much better than I can. Find one of those and substitute the names.
This chapter was harder than the others. I've never read a description of vampires hunting down anything except humans, so I kind of had to go with wolves or other pack carnivores. Plus, aside from the exposition, I had to make up everything! Hope you enjoyed it!