Please Note: Alternating points of view—Bella/Edward/Bella


7. Around and around

For days I wandered aimlessly through the forest in my bare feet, climbing up and down mountains and wading through mud, mulch and snow.

Every so often I stopped to hunt, and while I was lost in the process of sucking each animal dry, I was fine, but each time I finished, the retching and the wretchedness soon followed. I couldn't dispose of the bodies quick enough, but burying them did little to alleviate my revulsion.

Despite carefully skirting around all signs of humanity, I came across the scent of human blood many a time, and I couldn't help but notice how much more appealing those scents were in comparison to those of the local wildlife. I kept reminding myself that while blood quenched my thirst, being the angel of death for any living creature was anything but satisfying. I hoped that would be enough to keep me in control, should I be truly tested.

I suppose it was also inevitable, in such a shadowy wilderness, that I would encounter the scent trails of my own kind again. Most belonged to Tanya's coven, but one very faint scent seemed awfully familiar.

With my nose almost to the ground, I allowed myself to be drawn along a foot worn path through the densest of thickets to a two storey cabin, tucked so out of the way no human would be likely to come across it.

The cabin was far larger than the one Tanya and her family lived in, and it was shrouded by trees and overgrown shrubs that hadn't been cut back in years. Had it been inhabited, I might have been in a bit of a predicament, but fortunately, it appeared to be completely deserted.

I was long overdue a wash and a change of clothes, so I circled the cabin twice, climbing up to the second floor, trying to find a way in without causing any damage. Why that was important to me, though, I couldn't say.

Both the front and back doors were locked tight, as were the metal shutters covering each and every window. There was, however, a small outbuilding at the back of the cabin, about the size of a garden shed. Its windows were like glass letterboxes, set way above eye level. The door was held shut by two heavy bolts, and there was a set of D-rings to take a padlock, but there wasn't one in place.

I drew back the bolts, the clanking noise echoing in the stillness of the forest, and pushed the door inward, surprised at what I saw inside. Instead of hunting gear, gardening tools, wooden-handled axes and chopping blocks, the room was modern and tiled throughout. The floor sloped gently toward the centre of the room where there was a metal grid covering a drain, and slightly off to one side above it, a giant shower head hung down from the ceiling.

On the opposite side of the room there was a granite countertop. It had an old-fashioned, butler sink set into one end and a washer and a dryer underneath the remainder. The shelving above housed a box of washing powder, some cleaning materials and a stack of white towels.

Looking down at my mud-caked feet and jeans and my blood splattered shirt, I began to understand why the owners of a home situated in this neck of the woods might need such a room separate from the main cabin.

Stepping inside, I closed the door behind me, and there on the back of it, hanging on a hook, was a pair of knee length, fur lined, lace-up boots. There were traces of dried mud on the soles and on the brown leather, but otherwise, they were in good condition and looked as if they might fit me.

I flipped the red power switch above the countertop, stripped off my clothes, shoved them in the washer with some powder and turned it on. I rifled through my backpack for my toiletries and walked across the room to inspect the shower control.

As the hot water cascaded over my body, I washed the blood out my hair and the mud off my legs and feet and watched it running down the drain.

Why am I always last?" I asked Carlisle as he held the bathroom door open for Esme, the steam from his shower billowing out into the hallway.

"Ladies first, Edward," he said, winking at his mate. My fingers were in danger of shredding the only decent towel I had left. I opened my mouth to point out the obvious error in that statement, but Esme walked past giggling and shut the door behind her. "And besides, you're the cleanest of hunters."

I glanced down at my mud-caked jeans and ran my fingers through my blood splattered hair. I was losing my touch and sharing just the one bathroom after a hunt was frustrating beyond words.

"If you'd only let me hunt alone, this wouldn't be an issue," I said.

Carlisle winced as a vivid image of me on my knees on the stone floor of an ancient chamber filled his mind, my head grasped firmly in the hands of a brawny, red-eyed vampire. I knew that chamber. It was depicted in the oil painting hanging on Carlisle's study wall.

"I've already lost a daughter, Edward," he whispered, "I will not lose a son as well."

I couldn't blame him. Neither could I convince him that I was no longer considering ending my own life, because I had tried to get away on a couple of occasions.

You would have thought as the fastest runner in the family, I could have escaped them, but no. My cousins had gleefully shared their technique for crippling me mid-run with Carlisle, and he in turn had taken great delight in imparting it to Esme.

I would never have imagined either of them could affect me so much, but Carlisle had somehow picked up on my physical reaction to his thoughts in his car and had used it to his advantage. Twice.

Esme, on the other hand, hadn't had to go quite so far. As soon as she had visualised herself on her knees in front of her husband, I had ground to a halt, turned back and begged her to stop. She had not caused me an erection, but I'd been damned if I would to find out if she could by allowing her continue.

"Do you two enjoy torturing your son?" I'd asked her.

"Better we torture you than you torture yourself, Edward," she'd replied, raising an eyebrow.

Needless to say, after these foiled attempts at escape, I didn't dare risk another.

Esme eventually took pity on me, moved one of the other bathrooms to the top of her schedule and then made me do all the work. There was no point rushing it either, much as I might want to, because with my mother, substandard workmanship would not be tolerated.

My first shower in the new bathroom was blissful, initially. I was aware that my parents were taking a bath together on the opposite side of house, and that they were trying to keep quiet for my sake, but their thoughts were unavoidable. And my cousins had turned me into Pavlov's dog.

The moment the idea entered her mind, I knew what Esme intended to do to Carlisle. He was generous to a fault, or at least that was my understanding of the situation. He closed his eyes so I couldn't see my mother and recalled one of his particularly voluptuous lovers of old pressing her bare breasts up against his back while reaching around to hold him firmly with both hands.

I leaned my forehead against the cold tile, closed my own eyes and went with it, only opening them again to watch my semen running down the drain. I didn't feel gratified in the slightest. I felt lonely, desperate and depraved.

While my clothes tumbled in the dryer, and the towels I'd used to dry myself and wipe the floor turned in the washer, I sniffed at every corner of the room, eventually poking my nose into the boots. That was when I realised that the vampires that owned the house in which I'd found the antique comb must also own the cabin.

The boots held a hint of the same sisterly scent I'd detected on the third mattress, and what had drawn me there was the arousing male scent from the first. I shuddered at the memory of the other scents I'd encountered there, suddenly relieved that I had not been able to enter the main cabin and wanting to get as far away as possible.

The second the dryer beeped, I started to retrieve my clothes and get dressed, forcing myself to slow down when I pulled up the zipper on my jeans. Reaching back in for my shirt, I noticed a garment in the dryer that wasn't mine—a large, pale grey, zip-up hoodie. I held it to my nose and breathed deeply. It smelled of washing powder and something else far stronger: the scent of the brother I didn't have.

Setting the hoodie down on the counter, I put my shirt on over my T-shirt and slowly did up the buttons. I fetched some socks from my backpack and slipped one socked foot into a fur-lined boot. It was a little too roomy, so I added another pair of socks over the first, pulled on both boots and laced them up carefully.

After hanging the wet towels to dry on the hook on the back of the door, I flipped the power switch, pulled on the hoodie, slung my backpack over one shoulder and stepped out warily into the darkness.

The bolts clanged loudly when I slid them home, the noise ringing in my ears as I ran through the trees, heading in what I hoped was a southerly direction.