Chapter Five:

The Southern Wars

Isabella Marie Masen

Stupid humans!

And their stupid love-affairs!

Everything about them was stupid, from their stupid ideas to their stupid notions.

They should all just leave me alone, but no, they just had to be in love with me.

Especially the stupid Mike Newton.

At least I had stopped swearing. Esme's face was to prominent in my head for me to say more than three swear words in a row.

I had literally thrown Alice out of my car and then proceeded to lock the doors and close my eyes, trying my best to ignore her scathing look and the tongue she had been sticking out at me. I didn't really care at that moment, I needed space from the humans, it was too much for me to handle in my current state along with the mental breakdown that Edward Swan, son of Police Chief Charlie Swan, had induced.

All those years I had been gone really were the biggest mistake I had ever made. They reduced me down to a pitiful withered creature inside the tough, secure facade that I had so carefully placed around me. Not even Jasper knew the full extent of the damage I had suffered. Damaged goods, I mused. That's what I was, damaged goods. The type that no one knew about until they opened the packaging and realized exactly what they had bought. I sighed sadly, wishing that I could cry, that the salty trails would fall, but of course they did not come. No, I was damned. Truly and utterly cursed because of what I had done. Even my eventual choice to take what I needed from animals could not atone for what I did. Nothing could ever forgive me for that, no matter how much remorse I felt for it now.

When I had been newly changed, only a few years after Carlisle changed Esme, I left Carlisle. I was fed up with him, the world, this life, everything. I was done, I couldn't take any more of this life I was forced to live. Back then, I still hated Carlisle, in my eyes I thought him a demon and he knew it and also knew he could do nothing for me. So I had packed up my things and left. For a while, I lived in my old house in Chicago, never going out. Then I met Maria.

She had ventured very far north, looking for someone called Jasper Whitlock. I didn't know that it was the same Jasper that later lived with Carlisle until I returned to him. She was intrigued by my ability and my story, sympathizing with me. I fell into the little pale-skinned girl's trap, hook, line, and sinker. This is what started a more than twenty year long rein of terror in the south.

Together, we kept the wars under the radar from the humans, so the Volturi never stepped in. In those twenty years, I killed more humans single-handedly than Jasper had in his little more than sixty years of human-drinking life. I, unlike Jasper, could not feel the emotions of those I killed, and had no remorse. Still mentally fifteen, I was angry that I had been forced into this life, and with Maria's encouragement, I became a killing machine. I particularly went after the humans that had eyes like my mother's.

I wasn't thinking straight back then, and Maria took advantage of it without me knowing until I had dug myself so deep into my hole that I had no chance of getting out. After I had realized what I had done to myself, I began to kill even more, sometimes four or five a night to try to numb the internal pain I was suffering. I went all over searching for my victims. Unknowingly, I used Jasper's method of finding humans and killing them without raising too much suspicion. I would go to two or three different cities and take two humans from each, one man and one woman, then set it up to look like they had eloped together. In this manor I killed for more than fifteen years.

I felt next to nothing or nothing at all over those years. But it was when I found a girl named Teresa that I finally felt the full horror of what I had done. Teresa was a young woman, only about twenty when I found her. I had been about to kill her too, when she woke up from her sleep.

And those eyes, those green, green eyes. They looked at me, and she understood. She understood what I was and why I was doing these horrible acts, and she smiled. I couldn't kill her then, I couldn't. She had accepted me, had known, and I immediately fled the house and ran. I left Maria without a word and spent two years searching for Carlisle. I had convinced myself that he would except me, no matter what, that if Teresa could except me, so could he. I had still been terrified though as I had walked up the front steps and knocked on the door. And when a large man over a foot taller than me answered, I whimpered and backed away. And then Carlisle was there. And I felt so much sadness as he gazed at me and saw my red eyes, a look of remorse upon his face as he simply stood aside for me to enter. Not a word was spoken, and it was then that I first met all the additions to Carlisle's family, the first time I had met Jasper, Maria's Jasper. Only this time, he was Alice's.

The late bell sounded, and I jumped out of the car, grabbing my book bag and sprinting at human speed to the class. It was a good thing I ran as fast as I did, because just as soon as I reach the classroom's overhang, it began to pour, the droplets of rain bouncing up and hitting the ends of my jeans. I rushed into the Biology classroom and all eyes turned to me as Mr. Banner stopped speaking about something or another that I had already learned at least ten times over.

"I'm really sorry Mr. Banner, I had to speak to one of my siblings and I completely lost track of time. I promise it won't happen again," I said, making my voice sound sad and my face a look of remorse. I pouted my lips.

"Don't worry Isabella," Mr. Banner said, putting his hand on my arm. I had to repress a shiver and a gag. I pulled away from Mr. Banner, wanting to throw up from the fact that an old man had just been flirting with me, his supposable seventeen year old student. I grinned at the thought though that I actually wouldn't get in trouble and started to head over to my seat. Only there was a boy in the chair next to mine, a boy named Edward Swan. I smirked as I heard his heart stutter and then go at double the rate it had been going previously. I suddenly felt incredibly sad for the boy who was cursed to sit next to me in the only available seat. It was going to be a long semester for him, at least while he was in this class. Even Mike Newton knew not to sit next to me, seeing as his instincts were screaming at him to not get close, though his trivial mind could not understand.

Those green eyes widened as I sat down smiling at him. He really was attractive, even for a human, even by vampire standards. I could see why a significant portion of the female population of Forks High School was head over heals for him. He seemed nice enough. I wondered if he liked it here so far. This is irrational Isabella, my head screamed. He is human. Human! And you are his natural predator, he would be food.

I sighed mentally and laid my bag down on the floor. Someone nearby dropped a folder, sending a wave of air over him and into me.

I froze.

Even time seemed to stop as his scent wafted over me.

KILL HIM!

Oh my god, his scent, the most delicious thing ever. If I had known before now that it had existed, I would have searched the world for it, just to taste it. The monster roared inside of me, telling me to take his blood. I could feel my eyes blacken with thirst and I tensed up. I couldn't do it, end an innocent life...but then again I could. All I had to do was raise my hand and ask to go to the nurse. Mr. Banner would tell Edward to take me and then I would have him and his wonderful, crimson blood—

No, don't think like that Bella. He's young, you can't kill him.

My mind ignored the statement and began to make more plans for Edward Swan's demise. People would notice if Edward was last seen with me, I could reach over right now and snap his neck, then go along the left side and kill the students there, then move to the right side of the room. The left side would be lucky, they wouldn't see me coming, but the right side would and someone might whimper, but no screaming. It would take five seconds tops to kill them all, if I could snap three or four necks per second. Then all I would have to do would be to drink the blood I needed and then burn the building down. No one would notice that I had not been consumed in the blaze if I dumped some of the chemicals in the class over the bodies to fuel the fire. But so much collateral damage, I didn't have to kill so many, and while I was killing the witnesses, Edward's blood would be getting cold.

Certainly the only good option would be to ask to go to the nurse, have Edward come with me, and then kill him in the woods. Then I could set it up to look like he had driven me home and on the return trip gotten into an accident. His truck would be burned and he would have been assumed dead, his body burned to a cinder in the flames.

So I did the only thing I could do. I raised my hand.