A/N: Gasp... a twofer? Indeed. Unfortunately, Jasper's voice has eluded me once again--it's exceedingly difficult to pin down. But I try. Mostly, I wanted to get this chapter out of the way so I could get back to Alice, which is weird 'cause Jasper is probably my favorite character in the series. Oh well. I hope this chapter is okay for all you Jasper lovers out there! Oh, and I wanted to thank my reviewer for the day. It makes me so VERY happy to open my e-mail and see that someone has read my story. So thanks a lot, and I hope you'll continue to read!
Unfortunately, none of this belongs to me. It's all Stephenie Meyer's.
Jasper
The summer I turned eleven was the hottest summer I can remember. There was a drought that year, and over half our cattle died, along with most of our other livestock. The horse my daddy had given me on my birthday the year before died one night while I was sleepin'. Daddy found him in the mornin'. The ground was too hard and dry to bury him, so daddy and a couple of his friends dragged my horse 'bout a mile away from the house and left him in an open field so the stench couldn't reach the house. They were back 'fore I even woke up. But it didn't take me too long to figure out what had happened, and I set off to find my horse's body. I didn't know what I was gonna do when I found it, but the horse was mine—I loved him, and I couldn't just let him rot out there in the sun all alone. But I was young, and I didn't know the endless fields and plains around my house well, so I got lost. I wandered in that unbearable heat without food and without water for three days. When someone finally found me, I was lyin' naked in the burnin' sun, pretty near dyin' from exhaustion and dehydration.
I'd thought thirst didn't get much worse than that.
I was wrong.
Thirst is all I feel now, though I no longer desire water, or alcohol, or any other liquid that used to quench my thirst in my previous life. Instead, this immeasurably stronger thirst manifests itself in three relatively equal desires: blood, battle, and lust.
Of course, my blood thirst is of the most immediate importance, since blood is what keeps me alive. It also happens to be the easiest thirst to satiate. That first night, when Maria took me on my first hunt, I remember havin' no concept of what a human was. I was like a baby, drinkin' his first bottle of milk: I didn't know who or what it came from, I only knew that it was good. I killed three humans that night without even registerin' the fact that my own teeth had made the gruesome wounds I saw on their bodies once I'd drained them. To me, it was as though they had never been alive, or if they had, their sole purpose in livin' and breathin' was to let me drink their blood.
Human blood still has the same pull for me now, all these years later. But eventually, I did begin to remember bits of the life I'd had before. It was only when I remembered the way air felt in my lungs, or the way my heart sounded in my chest that I began to feel even the smallest ounce of pity for those who eventually served to satisfy my hungers. But no trace of pity, no ounce of compassion could ever stop me from drinkin' the crimson liquor I need to live. Blood makes me strong; it keeps me alive. That humans must suffer so that I might live is, simply put, unfortunate.
It's hard for me to believe that I was once as fragile and breakable as the humans I kill. Maria has explained it to me countless times—how she found me on the street, how she sensed what she called my "charisma," and how she had made me like her—impossibly beautiful, infinitely powerful, and immortal. Had I been unsure about my transformation into a vampire when I first awoke to this life, such reservations surely disappeared the moment she informed me that death was all but impossible for our kind. I had been afraid of goin' to hell. Immortality made it seem like hell wasn't an option anymore.
Of course, she left out a few things that night, favorin' a truncated version of the duties of our life in recognition of the blood thirst that was causin' my throat to burn. But by the next day I was able to recognize and give a name to the hostile atmosphere that surrounded me. I'd realized the moment that I opened my vampire eyes to my new life that I could sense the emotions of those around me. That first night, and nearly every night since, the emotions have been the same: edginess, anticipation, passion, anger, rage. The more of us that are in the same area, the greater these feelin's are. And thus is the nature of my second thirst: the thirst for battle.
Just like blood, fightin' keeps me alive. Maria had promised immortality, but I found out quickly that immortality, like all else in life, comes at a cost. In this particular instance, the cost is measured in vampire lives. The harder and better I fight, the longer I live. Again, that others should die in my quest to preserve my own immortality is regrettable. But it is the only way I know to stay alive—and my vampire self-preservation instincts are far greater than my comparable human instincts ever were. I fight well so that I can live to fight another day.
I find that my ability to sense the emotions of those around me is especially handy in a battle. I can sense the amount of rage and determination in the vampire that I'm fightin' against, so I know just how much rage and determination I need to summon from within myself to ensure that I emerge the victor. I'm not perfect in my calculations nor in my accuracy, and I have the scars to prove it. When I was first born into this life, I remember lookin' at myself in a puddle of water on the street and marvelin' at my own astonishing beauty. Survivn' for so long has taken a terrible toll on my physical perfection. Now I'm careful to avoid all reflective surfaces so that I never have to see the pattern of crescent-shaped scars that stands out like scales on my skin. I suppose it's true that the monster always reveals itself in the end.
I know that my ravaged body makes others wary of me—I can sense it when I walk amongst my allies and they tense in an equal measure of both reverence and fear, or when a newly-turned vampire awakes to see me standin' over him and his first, animalistic instinct is to shy away from the attack that my battle-scars indicate is comin'. And I know that my scars are the reason why Maria never looks at me on those rare occasions when she allows me to satisfy my third desire with her in her private chambers. After those first few contests I won by fightin' against my allies to prove my strength, she would thrust a particularly delicious human at me in commendation of my victory. But I could feel somethin' growin' in her, even then, that wasn't the same as the anger and rage that I normally felt emanating from my peers. It was only after that first battle of Monterrey—a decisive victory by all accounts—when she took me into her chambers and began to press her body desirously against mine that I was able to put a name to what she felt for me: lust. My skill and competency on the battlefield made her long for me, and I couldn't deny the attraction I felt to her cunning and meticulous ability to put together an army in pursuit of the power she so desired. Of course, the fact that she was astoundingly beautiful only strengthened the intensity of the attraction.
I never had any women when I was human, preferrin' instead to devote all my faculties to the glory and honor of war, and figurin' that the women would come later. Desire is an instinct as deeply rooted as survival though, and that first night we came together I took all of her again and again and again. Her skin was silky and flawless beneath my touch, and her breath was sweet and intoxicating as she covered my body with passionate kisses. The fulfillment of my lustful thirst was more gratifying than I thought possible, and I marveled at our ability to fulfill that desire ceaselessly throughout the night. That was the first and only time this particular thirst would be satiated so completely for me.
As the undeniable proof of my many battles began to mount, Maria grew more and more distant from me. She closes her eyes completely now on the rare occasions when she rewards me with her body instead of blood, and I feel her mentally recoil in disgust every time she happens to touch one of my scars. If my lustful thirst weren't so strong, I'd stop goin' to her. But it is strong, and even though it's never fully satisfied, a night with Maria soothes it into a tolerable submission.
Though we no longer are able to satisfy each other sexually, Maria and I are still loyal to one another in other ways. In fightin' to keep myself alive, I keep her alive as well. My victories are her victories. Battles these days are fought mostly in the name of personal vendettas or revenge. Maria has made a lot of enemies. I am her shield, her protector—if I were to die in battle she would surely fall soon thereafter. I defend her from her enemies, and even her allies on the rare occasions that members of our army turn against us. She gave me life, and so I fight to keep her alive. Life for life; it's only fair.
This is the only way I know how to survive—livin' from day to day, from desire to desire, from thirst to thirst.
But in moments such as these, in between feedings, in between battles, in between sexual gratifications, I wonder if this is really all there is to life. I am alive, but am I really livin'? I vaguely remember that there were other elements to my human existence that gave life more meaning. I forgot the words for such things long ago, but I'm almost certain that they existed. Sometimes I hide in the shadows and watch humans and try to understand what it is that they are feelin' when they touch one another, or when they look into each others' eyes. Somehow they're able to live without killin' each other, or without even hatin' each other. Of course, I do remember that war was a part of human life, but it was the exception, not the rule. Their emotions aren't goverened by any of the negative thirsts that permeate the atmosphere around me when I'm close to my vampire allies. The bonds that hold humans together are not forged from fear or necessity, but from somethin' far greater, far stronger, far more… permanent.
Whatever binds these humans to one another is not somethin' that I've ever felt within my little army, so it may not exist for our kind. But if thirst—for blood, for battle, for the flesh—is all our kind has to live for, is life for us really worth livin' at all? Is it really worth fightin' for?