VII. Confutatis maledictis


"Why are you here?"

The heavy oaken door shuts behind him with a soft click.

With a slight and gentle smile, ignoring the hateful, rasping tone of her query, Edward turns to face the girl propped up by pillows on the heavy bed in the center of the room. She's frail and swaying, even though she pretends that she's not, and as he takes in the smoothness of her newly shaven head and the deep hollows beneath her clavicles, compassion wells within him.

Despite her wasting sickness and the pain seemingly permanently etched in her features, Leah looks so much like her younger brother.

"To visit you, of course," Edward quietly offers, sinking into this all-too-familiar role and shoving all of the other thoughts that have been swirling in his mind away.

When he breathes in, the harsh chemicals coursing through Leah's veins leave a metallic, ugly, and unpalatable taste on his tongue. The opiates and alkaloids are so concentrated and strong that they almost mask the pungent evidence of the cancer that's eating away at her from the inside. Without asking or checking her charts, from that alone, Edward knows that Seth's sister's remaining time on earth is limited. A couple of months at best, and those will not be pleasant ones.

Another young life stolen too early, he silently laments, as his thumb rubs against the well-worn strand of beads in his pocket.

"Well, you can leave," Leah spits, seething, as she balls her fists around the sheet spread across her lap. "I don't believe in your God."

There is so much bitterness and rage in this girl's shaking voice that most would turn away in defeat, but Edward knows better. He hears the words she doesn't speak aloud and he feels the rippling fear and the sorrow that engulf her thoughts. So instead of leaving or even speaking, he silently crosses the room to the end of her hospital bed, where he slowly sits, patient and calm, waiting for the rest to come pouring out.

The silence stretches on and on, a seemingly endless chasm, punctuated only by her labored breathing and the jagged blip of the heart monitor beside the bed.

"Where's Father Carlisle anyway?" she finally asks, picking at the hem of the sheet. "He's usually the one that stops by."

"He's ill right now," Edward says, replaying in his mind the last two nights of rattling lungs and phlegm-ridden coughs. "He doesn't want to risk passing anything to you."

Leah's gaze sweeps from her lap to the window beside the bed. It's dark out already, and through the glass, the city lights below twinkle like a blanket of stars. "Yeah," she mutters, her volume falling to just above a whisper. "I get that a lot."

Edward doesn't ask how she feels, nor does he try to convince her of the existence of her Maker. Leah believes, he knows, despite what she said when he walked through the door. A thousand times, he's seen this process – the cycle of anger and grief and eventual acceptance – yet despite those many years, never does he grow immune to its effects.

"Don't you have somewhere else to be?"

Hands clasped, Edward tilts his head, saying nothing until she looks at him once more. When she does, he merely shrugs. "Not particularly."

"Did Mom send you?"

"No."

"Did Seth?" When Leah says her brother's name, something shifts in her voice. It warms, and behind her dark eyes, Edward sees an image of Seth as a young boy, awkward and lanky, grinning a broad toothy grin that hasn't ever changed.

Softer, he replies, "No, he didn't. He merely said that you were back here. Coming to see you was my own decision. I thought you might like some company."

The girl's features abruptly fold and pinch, and in his periphery, Edward sees her thumb jab at the red button that will deliver her morphine.

"Let me guess," she mumbles. Pausing with gritted teeth, Leah closes her eyes before gasping as the clear droplet in the line falls and hits her vein. "You're planning to give me some, 'Let not your heart be troubled' bullshit or something about, 'I go to prepare a place for you with many mansions.'"

Her sarcasm and belligerence in the midst of her pain make him shake his head. "No, I hadn't really planned on it."

"Why not?" Leah smiles in spite of herself. "Isn't that what you're supposed to do?"

"Maybe." Edward shrugs again. "But you already know that one, so what's the point?"

Their eyes meet then, amber to nearly black. For a long, still moment, neither looks away. Leah's thoughts are tumbling, knocked askew by the man in black before her. She sighs, slumps against the pillows behind her, and finally says in resignation, "Fine. Give me something I don't know."

Wordlessly, Edward rises from his perch at the end of the bed and steps toward her, closing the gulf between them. In silent question, he extends his hand, asking for hers.

When she hesitantly complies, placing her feverish hand in his cold one, Edward turns her palm around and gently pinches her thumb and index finger together. Under his breath, so quietly that she cannot hear, he speaks the Latin phrases, as he guides their joined hands to her forehead, to her sternum, slowly to the left, and then to the right.

"In my distress, I called to the Lord. I cried to my God for help. From his temple, he heard my voice; my cry came before him, into his ears," Edward murmurs, his voice low and liquid, still holding her hand in his. "He parted the heavens and came down; dark clouds were under his feet. He mounted the cherubim and flew; he soared on the wings of the wind… He reached down from on high and took hold of me; he drew me out of deep waters. He rescued me from my powerful enemy, from my foes, who were too strong for me."

"What does that even mean?" Leah whispers, her gaze falling and spiking the room with the scent of salt and unshed tears.

Swallowing, Edward sits down beside her again, closer now, and touches the tip of his finger to her cheek, dragging it to her chin. "It means you are a child of God. You have to but call His name and He will save you."

Salvation. The word is both bitter and sweet – the gift the soulless can only long to possess.

"What?" she stutters. "God's going to somehow cure me? Yeah, I doubt that."

"No," he answers, tilting her chin up. "It's your soul He will save."

Leah crumples then, and falls into his chest, crying and clawing at the wool of his coat. "Father, it's not fair! I don't want to die!"

"I know," Edward soothes, as he gently holds the frail, sobbing girl, rocking her until her tears eventually dry and quiet.

Hearing the desperation and mourning for what will be, the temptation to grant her her wish is almost overwhelming, so much so that venom wets and slicks Edward's teeth in preparation. But the moment he considers giving in, those images from long ago strike, instantly quashing the notion, forcing him to gulp back his poison.

For he cannot ever break that vow again.

He will not damn another soul.

~.~.~

It's snowing again, the second time in so many weeks, but this night, it's unwelcome and far more dangerous than the flurries from before. Tonight, the wind whips sharply from the lake, plunging the temperature of the air below zero. It's a bitter night, and those few that depart the hospital's warmth scurry to their cars wrapped in scarves and heavy coats.

By the time Edward steps out into the cold, it's nearly eleven, far past the close of normal visiting hours and much, much later than he'd intended. Yet despite the hour, he cannot bring himself to regret staying as he replays the reluctant smile affixed to Leah's sad face when she finally drifted off to sleep. That his presence could provide her some measure of peace gives him the same.

Oddly enough, Bella's words and voice from nights ago now echo in his mind, and with them comes a sudden, not altogether unexpected ache of longing – a craving to see her, to bask in her nearness, to hear the rhythmic pulse of her heart. While he still burns for her, the hours between the time he leaves her at her apartment door each night and the moment she appears at the shelter's kitchen have grown long.

Without thought or conscious direction, Edward immediately sets his sight toward the shelter, forcing himself to keep a human pace.

It's as he's passing a row of crumbling tenement houses with darkened alleys and broken street lamps that that pang of longing is replaced by something else. For a split second, he stops in his tracks and like the predator he is, he instinctively inhales, testing and tasting the air. There's the faint hint of an almost familiar scent. It's so distant and diluted by wind and snow that he can't quite place it.

Nonetheless, a seed of worry – of even panic – settles in the pit of Edward's stomach, and when he starts walking again, it grows with each and every step.

Edward's stride lengthens and speeds, kicking up sprays of white, feather-light powder.

Bella isn't due to leave for another thirty minutes, he reminds himself, yet the same something that drew him to inhale before now compels his hand and pulls his phone from his pocket.

In bright, glowing black on white, his panic comes to life: I'm exhausted. Jake said he'd take care of lock up, so I'm going to go ahead home. I'll see you tomorrow? I told Father Carlisle that I'd be in early.

"Damn it," he mutters, as he tests the air again.

This time the scent is stronger. It's saccharine, like thick, sugary syrup on his tongue, and there are undertones of jasmine and something else.

Instantly, Edward's fingers curl into tight, shaking claws and his body violently locks down as all fears of back alley evil and troubled minds vanish, traded for something far worse and far more lethal.

Something he has not encountered in many, many years – another demon, just like him.

Vampire.

.

.


In the first segment, when Leah says, "Let not your heart be troubled… " she is referring to John 14. The verses that Edward replies with are from Psalm 18.