AN: I hope that I'm keeping this story moving at a good pace. I don't want to go too fast or too slow (I usually struggle more with the latter than the former) but there are some important things that need to be established before Bella and Aro really start to embark on the crazy journey called love. Any feedback is appreciated.
…
Above all, I must not play God.
(Modern Version of the Hippocratic Oath)
…
CHAPTER EIGHT: BROKEN PEDESTALS
With a deep, longing sigh, Carlisle indulged my curiosity further. "I transformed Jonathan in 1965," he began with a mournfully nostalgic voice, like he was talking about a son that had died.
"He'd been in a terrible car accident which had completely crushed his lower body. So I wasn't sure it would even work. But something about him reminded me of Edward," Carlisle explained.
"I can't say what it was, exactly. He was older, and brunette with piercing blue eyes; there wasn't any resemblance. But as he was lying there, dying on his hospital bed, the same feeling struck me. The need to do something beyond what human medicine could do. So I decided to try to save him."
Jonathan's story is so much like the others… I realized as Carlisle painfully retold it. And it takes place after Alice and Jasper joined. How could I have just believed that Carlisle would stop trying to save people by supernatural means after Rosalie and Emmett? He never gave any reason why he wouldn't ever do something like that again.
"He was already sedated, so I knew he wouldn't thrash during the transformation," was Carlisle's technical justification for going through with it.
"And Alice, probably already aware that I would need it, had encouraged me earlier that day to prepare a syringe full of my venom which I had concealed in my pocket," Carlisle explained. His teeth clicked ever-so-slightly at the end of his sentence in a way that suggested to me that he recalled precisely what it felt like to extract his venom from them on that fateful day.
Of course Alice had told him to prepare a syringe, I thought. That sounded just like her.
"It was a little risky, using that syringe to start his transformation in the hospital, rather than taking him elsewhere," Carlisle went on. He flickered a glance at Aro as he spoke, as if expecting the ancient to berate him for doing something so reckless.
But Aro said nothing. He simply waited patiently for Carlisle to continue. I surmised that he probably already understood, having seen Carlisle's memories, that nothing bad had come of it.
"But the other doctors were too busy trying to stop the bleeding happening near his legs. And so many medicines were being administered to numb the pain and clot his blood. So none of the other doctors thought anything was odd about me injecting something into his arm." Carlisle told us.
"He had so many deep, open wounds... I feared he might bleed out during the transformation. But he didn't." The doctor breathed a tiny sigh of relief after he said this. The high emotions of the event must be resurfacing somewhat as he recalled it.
"When his heart stopped, I kept him under with a very strong sedative for a few more days to let his family have a proper funeral," the doctor explained. "Astonishingly, it worked."
Carlisle almost sounded as surprised by this fact as I was.
"Sedatives work on vampires?" I asked.
"Only very recently transformed ones. There needs to be blood left in their tissues to carry the chemicals through the body," Carlisle clarified. "And the morphine I gave him did nothing for the pain—it just kept him still," he made sure to add so that I didn't get any ideas about trying to avoid the fiery sensation I knew accompanied transformation with the aid of modern medicine.
Damn it. It seems like facing the scorching agony of vampire venom again is inevitable.
"I had to give him very high doses for it to work," Carlisle related with a gloomy expression. "And the day after the funeral, I had to go dig him back up." His eyes were suddenly downcast and abruptly lifeless, indicating that his time in the graveyard had been an unpleasant experience.
I grimaced at the thought of Carlisle having to desecrate a grave. As a pious man, doing such a sacrilegious thing as disturbing what was supposed to be a resting place for the dead must have made him quite uncomfortable.
Though being a vampire made following some of his religious provisions impossible (he couldn't exactly participate in communion when bread and wine made him puke), in general, Carlisle liked to be respectful of holy spaces. He had once confessed to me that the biggest reason he didn't actually attend local church meetings was not out of concern for keeping his secret, (the reason he avoided most social functions). Rather it was because most churches had been blessed to "ward of evil". And although he tried to be his best, as a vampire, he was pretty sure he would count.
And if he was that sensitive about just walking into a church building… I could only imagine how terrible he must have felt about disrupting sanctified burial ground.
"That must have been awful," I sympathized.
Carlisle gently shook his head. "The digging wasn't the worst part," he countered with a solemn voice.
I guessed he wasn't terribly concerned about reopening a grave that didn't actually have a dead person in it.
"It was finding Jonathan very much awake, and very thirsty, when I opened his casket."
Automatically I winced at his words. The picture Carlisle's description conjured in my head wasn't pretty.
Before the battle with the newborns this summer, Jasper had explained to me just how all-consuming and intense bloodthirst was for the first year of vampirism. It still wasn't something I totally grasped, since I tended to learn best from experience. But I think I got the gist that it made you completely insane and turned even some of the nicest men into remorseless murderers overnight.
And delaying its satisfaction only made it worse. So I could only imagine that when Jonathan awoke from his morphine-induced coma, that he was totally parched after having been denied blood for several days. His throat must have been aflame with the worst white-hot pain in the world.
"Jonathan panicked and attacked me at first, not knowing what else to do," Carlisle said sadly. He sounded as though he had felt more pitying than hurt at the time, knowing firsthand just how terrifying and disorienting awaking as a vampire was.
I was about to ask if Carlisle had been injured by this savage newborn. But just before I could open my mouth, the doctor's face suddenly grew even darker, signaling that his story was about to get much worse.
"I didn't expect him to listen to me," Carlisle expounded. The incredulous lilt in his voice suggested that even now, he found it hard to believe that Jonathan, in the midst of such intense hunger, had paused to hear him out. "But once I explained to him what was going on—that I had transformed him into a vampire—he immediately tried to seek out someone to satisfy his thirst."
Aro's lip unconsciously quirked upwards the faintest bit on one side, amused at Jonathan's instinctual response. Though he desperately fought to school it back into an impassive line for Carlisle's sake.
Momentarily I felt affronted that Aro would be delighted by this news. But I was too eager to understand why seeking human blood was Jonathan's first reaction after Carlisle had talked to him, to say anything.
"Someone...? Didn't you explain that you drank animal blood?"
"I did," Carlisle quickly agreed, nodding his head vigorously. His face soured significantly after this remark, however, like his next words were again going to be a huge disappointment. "But he already knew he was craving something else."
"It isn't hard to guess…." He trailed off uneasily, swallowing heavily before he finished in a somber voice. "Especially once you smell it."
Especially once you smell it. I wasn't even a vampire yet, but as soon as I had caught a whiff of the O negative Carlisle had nicely warmed up for me, I had immediately known that it was what my baby and I wanted. Just talking about it had started to make my mouth water and my stomach growl with want. And as soon as the delightful aroma had reached my nostrils, all doubt of its nutritional value had fled my mind. It smelled heavenly.
And it tasted even better… It was kind of frightening to think about, actually—that human blood had such a powerful effect on me already. And I could only assume that those feelings were enhanced tenfold for fully-fledged vampires, a thought which sent my head reeling.
Could anything possibly be that desirable?
As I was struggling to imagine what the experience of drinking human blood as a vampire must be like, I suddenly realized something was off about Carlisle's story.
"There was someone else in the cemetery," I commented flatly.
"Not when I started digging, but by the time I finished, yes," Carlisle stipulated.
He made sure that I knew that he wasn't intentionally careless enough to unleash a ravenous vampire in the vicinity of a hapless human being.
Which should have been obvious, really—Carlisle was neither neglectful enough for "checking for humans" to slip his mind. Nor heartless enough to not care if one was killed. So of course he had made sure the coast was clear, at first.
"I had made sure to incapacitate the guard who was supposed to be on duty that night," he assured me.
Carlisle didn't elaborate on how he managed to do this. But I had no doubts that as a doctor and a fundamentally humane person that he had used a method that didn't cause any lasting damage. He probably didn't just whack the man upside the head with his shovel and drag him outside of the cemetery gates. That was so not his style.
"However, I had not anticipated that another would take over his shift. And the decision was made too quickly for Alice to warn me..." Carlisle said before burying his face in his hands in utter shame for not foreseeing this.
I swallowed thickly as I realized what that meant.
"And there was nothing I could do to stop Jonathan…" Carlisle lamented. "He was newborn after all…"
I visibly winced as I remembered what Jasper had said about their strength. There was absolutely no way that Carlisle alone could have physically restrained Jonathan in the event that Jonathan wanted to feed. By all accounts the instinct to hunt was nigh-insurmountable at first. And with almost three times as much raw power to his name, thanks to the human blood still supercharging his body, Carlisle didn't stand a chance.
"Did he… did he blame you for letting him… you know…?" …Rip his teeth into an innocent human being and suck them dry?
Carlisle immediately understood what I was alluding to without explicitly saying it out loud. "No. He wasn't upset," he revealed with a miserable shake of his head. "In fact, he thought I'd lured the man there on purpose."
Carlisle shuddered in utter revulsion at the idea—it was a full-body quivering affair.
"He was… grateful." Carlisle shuddered again. Evidently he was thoroughly sickened at the prospect of being thanked for being an accessory to murder.
I shuddered too. Carlisle would never do that.
Once he'd finally recomposed himself, Carlisle cleared his throat and quickly finished his tale. "Once we returned home, I tried to remind Jonathan that we did things differently. That we hunted animals instead of humans."
The operative word in that sentence seemed to be "tried". Carlisle's morose expression already told me that it wasn't successful.
"But when we took him hunting with us for the first time, he found he wasn't… fond of the experience." The doctor's lips twisted into an even deeper frown.
"I attempted to convince him to keep trying. But he never hunted animals again."
Never again. That was a pretty staunch refusal in my opinion. And rather unwarranted.
But then again, I had never tasted animal blood. And I was starting to believe I shouldn't make any hasty judgments about those who found it distasteful, until I tried it. Edward had compared it to tofu. But perhaps that was simply the nastiest edible thing he could think of at the moment. Or he was being rather generous.
Whatever may be the case, the bottom line was that I absolutely refused to be a hypocrite. And I was starting to worry, based on Carlisle's story, that I might not be suited to his lifestyle.
If it wasn't for everyone…
"What happened to Jonathan after that?" I asked, curious to know where he had disappeared to, since he evidently was not staying with the Cullens.
"He's still around as far as I know," Carlisle revealed with a twinge more optimism. It sounded like idea that Jonathan was still in existence somewhere made the doctor quite happy, despite their disagreements.
"He left a few months after I transformed him, when it became clear that we wouldn't be getting along very well with our different diets."
Carlisle and Aro briefly exchanged knowing glances after this remark. The pair knew intimately how difficult living together was when their philosophies about the value of human life clashed so vibrantly.
The doctor turned away after a few seconds and softly cleared his throat again. "Jonathan joined a small coven in Canada not long after that. And that's where he's been ever since," Carlisle informed me. "He used to write us occasionally to let us know how things were going... But he hasn't sent a letter in decades."
Hasn't sent a letter in decades? "But you said he was still around…"
A lack of communication that long seemed to suggest to me that Carlisle's Jonathan was dead, though I didn't dare say so out loud. Esme's strangely glossy eyes (the vampire equivalent of crying, I guessed) didn't look like they could handle it as it was. And I really didn't want to be the one who caused her pretty little eye sockets to burst from all the pressure of unreleased tears.
"It's not uncommon for vampires to not speak to one another for long periods of time," Carlisle assured me in a warm voice, easily comprehending my fears and abating them. "I'm not worried about him. He's immortal now. And Aro would have let me know if he'd gotten into trouble."
Aro nodded immediately to convey his agreement. "Carlisle may have been unsuccessful at convincing Jonathan to dine as he does. But he did not fail to instill in him a respect for our laws. I've never had any trouble with him," Aro chipped in, mostly for my benefit, since everyone else seemed to already be aware of this.
"And the other two? Lizzy and Madelyn?" I asked, recalling that Carlisle had mentioned others who had presumably once been inducted into his coven, and later abandoned it to subsist on a the traditional vampire diet. "What happened to them?"
"It's very much the same story," Carlisle said wistfully.
He tenderly reached for and squeezed Esme's hand to comfort her as she buried her face into his shoulder. She silently sobbed into his sleeve, suggesting to me that there were some details about the closeness of her relationship with Jonathan that Carlisle had neglected to mention.
I guess even if their time together was brief, Esme still saw him as family.
"But whereas Jonathan was twenty-two when I turned him, Lizzy was only fifteen. And Madelyn was thirty-six," Carlisle informed me.
Remembering that Carlisle had once said that he had never transformed anyone who wasn't about to perish anyway, I felt it appropriate to ask, "How did they die?"
Rosalie twitched.
But Carlisle made no indication that my question surprised or appalled him. He calmly answered, "I'm not sure about Lizzy. She didn't want to talk about it."
"So you don't have any idea what happened?" I prodded, my curiosity getting the best of me. Even though Carlisle's hesitation should have warned me that I really didn't want to know.
"My best guess is that she'd been forced into prostitution," Carlisle relented with a sigh. "And in 1968 she had been…" He paused for a moment as though considering the most delicate way to describe the situation. "…pressured into a back-alley abortion gone terribly wrong," he settled on finally.
Recalling some of the more graphic pictures Angela had shared with me during her research of the topic of illegal abortions for a school paper, and having Edward recently threaten to perform a similar operation on me against my will, I felt like I was going to puke. I clutched my blissfully napping baby with a bear-like protectiveness.
What an awful thing to have to endure.
"The state I found her in was… ghastly…"
Carlisle buried his head in his hands for a few moments again. This time, it was to mourn the horribleness humanity could sometimes display, rather than his own shortcomings. He looked so completely distraught by what he had seen. No wonder he was so firmly averse to the idea of aborting my baby against my will.
After a moment he composed himself, shaking away the violent memories, and went on. "I was almost ready to just let her go," Carlisle confessed. "Allowing her to die would be merciful after the horror she'd been through."
His words reminded me that Carlisle very firmly believed in a benevolent God and a beautiful afterlife for all but the most heinous people. I wasn't sure how I felt about all that stuff—I kind of figured I would deal with any afterlife or lack thereof when I died. But I did understand that from Carlisle's point of view, letting Lizzy go to heaven would be the right thing to do. Physically and emotionally broken as she was, keeping her alive and forcing her to try and rehabilitate would be torturous.
Not to mention it was an effort that was unlikely to be appreciated, if Rosalie's reaction to having been rescued from a similarly violated, and near-dead state was any indication.
"However, just as she was about to slip from this world, Lizzy grabbed my arm with a ferocity I will never forget, and begged me to do all I could to save her," Carlisle told me.
He sounded like he had been just as surprised at the time as I was by her actions now.
"So as soon as we were alone, I did. And she was very grateful. She never once regretted asking that of me." Carlisle shrugged as though this baffled him.
I got the impression that, despite choosing the most humane route of existence he could, Carlisle was still a little uncomfortable being a vampire, so he probably couldn't imagine feeling as Lizzy did.
"I suppose immortality suited her a lot better than mortality ever had," he offered uncertainly.
But it wasn't hard for me to understand why, even if Carlisle didn't completely get it. Being a vampire seemed to mean that suffering abuse was a lot less common. Humans certainly couldn't hurt her anymore. And vampires didn't seem to be very interested in trafficking and oppressing their own kind. At least, not that I knew of.
"And… Madelyn?" I carefully probed, hoping that her story wasn't nearly as grisly as Lizzy's.
"Madelyn was poisoned by her husband," Carlisle answered matter-of-factly.
"What?!" Poisoned by her husband? I couldn't have heard that right…
"He only married her for her fortune," Carlisle quickly specified, to let me know that this unnamed husband had never actually loved Madelyn. Instead he was nothing more than a filthy gold-digger and a total cad.
The doctor continued to explain as politely as he could, "As a human, Madelyn was… not the prettiest…" His tone of voice led me to believe that this Madelyn was in reality quite ugly. "And since so many people are rather shallow, it was hard for her to find love."
Carlisle sighed. "The man who eventually poisoned her was the first man that appeared to genuinely reciprocate her feelings, rather than reacting with disgust. And although it was all an act, understandably, she fell for it."
I nodded to indicate that I understood. It was tragic, but I couldn't fault Madelyn for wanting to believe someone genuinely cared about her. To live a life absent of love... was an awful fate.
"Her husband never wanted her—just her money. So after all the papers were signed to give him access to her wealth, he slowly poisoned her through her food over the course of several months." Carlisle paused in his telling of the story to make sure I was following.
At my hurried nod, he gravely continued. "And when there was finally enough toxins in Madelyn's system to kill her, he left town so that he wouldn't be around when she died."
I gasped in horror. I'd heard of things like this happening in movies. But I'd never stopped to consider that there were real villains out there who would do such a thing outside of the realm of fantasy. The thought of being tricked into love, only to be callously left to die, was an abominable one.
At least, I felt that way, until I realized that Edward, my husband, had done a similar thing to me. Certainly he hadn't been intending to kill me from the get go, (my pregnancy was most definitely an accident). But he had abandoned me when he believed I was going to perish. And the parallels between my story and Madelyn's were disturbing nonetheless…
Carlisle went on as soon as he sensed that I was ready to hear the rest of the tale. "But while Madelyn may not have been the easiest on the eyes, she was incredibly bright. As soon as she began to feel sick, she knew what had happened. And very bravely she telephoned me."
This bit of information surprised me. "Telephoned you? Directly?"
"She knew me rather well, since I'd helped take care of her invalid older sister for several years," Carlisle offered as her reasoning for knowing his telephone number and feeling comfortable dialing it instead of 911 in such a dire time of need. "And, unbeknownst to me, she had actually already figured out that I wasn't human."
Feeling panicked all of a sudden, my head whirled around on my neck to see Aro's reaction to this news. To see if the ancient was going to punish the Cullen patriarch for revealing his secret before the woman's transformation. Or not, since she had been transformed.
When our eyes locked, however—chocolate brown peering into crimson—it was clear to me that Carlisle's three-thousand-year-old friend wasn't concerned about this at all.
"Madelyn wasn't sure at the time exactly what I was," Carlisle stipulated upon seeing my reaction. "She just knew that I was different. That I didn't need sleep. That I avoided the sun. And that I didn't eat anything in public."
So she was observant. Like I was with Edward once I'd started to really scrutinize him.
But unlike me, she didn't have a Jacob Black to unwittingly push her research in the right direction. So all she was left with were misplaced theories, some of them probably just as ridiculous as mine had been.
And there was nothing wrong with theories, as long as no-one said the v-word.
"Since Madelyn insisted that she wanted to see me and no other doctor, I came as quickly as I could," Carlisle said. "But by that time she was already fading."
He sounded quite melancholy over the fact that he hadn't managed to arrive at her home any quicker. But I really didn't see any reason for him to be. He'd done his absolute best—Carlisle never did anything less—and that was all anyone could ever ask.
"In her last moments she asked me… to make her like me, if that was possible," Carlisle continued.
His recollection of Madelyn's bold request caused me to gasp again, though this time in astonishment rather than fright.
"Not knowing that she knew, I was initially very confused. But it quickly became obvious that she knew I was not human.
That must have been an interesting conversation, I thought. A woman dying from poison trying to explain before she faded away that she had noticed certain things about Carlisle over the years that made her believe he was something supernatural. And that she wanted to be the same if there was a way.
"I tried to explain that she might not want this—that she would crave human blood and possibly kill," Carlisle recalled with a grimace. A grimace which clearly told me that since that time she had, in fact, done both of those things since her transformation.
"She didn't care," he revealed with an energetic shake of his head. "She begged me. I…" Carlisle trailed off, looking down at his hands like they were alien appendages. Like he was some kind of pathetic monster for agreeing to her request when she clearly didn't really understand what she was asking for.
"I couldn't refuse her," he acknowledged with a tone of defeat.
I gave Carlisle a moment to wallow in needless guilt before I hesitantly asked my next question. "Did Lizzy and Madelyn ever try animal blood?"
Carlisle nodded once, slowly. "Lizzy did. And she had much the same reaction as Jonathan," he expounded with a heavy sigh. His shoulders slumped and his arms hung limply at his sides like he felt her rejection of animal blood was somehow his fault.
"She also joined the coven in Canada three years after Jonathan."
I wonder how big that coven in Canada is, I thought. Edward said it was unusual for vampires to congregate in groups larger than two, but I've never heard anything from the others to suggest that that is true. No one else thought it was surprising that Victoria and James traveled with Laurent. And every other coven I've met thus far has contained at least five people...
"But Madelyn… she never did try animal blood," Carlisle sighed, running his fingers through his hair in self-frustration. "She took one whiff and ran the other way. Told me she preferred to hunt criminals."
Carlisle clutched his temples like the memory caused him physical pain.
Aro affectionately patted Carlisle's free shoulder—that is, the one Esme wasn't shaking against—to let his friend know that he didn't fault the doctor at all for that turn of events. After a few seconds, the taller blonde finally began to relax under the elder vampire's comforting touch.
"Unlike Edward, Madelyn has to do a lot of research to find felons or catch them in the act," Carlisle decided to inform me, since I was familiar with Edward's method of using his telepathy to seek out guilty prey during his rebellious phase.
"But that's all she's ever eaten. She doesn't hunt innocents," he declared with a small measure of pride.
I suppose he felt that this was at least a partial victory. And a sign that his attempts to instill humanity into his dissenting vampiric offspring weren't entirely unsuccessful.
But the fact that Carlisle felt "not hunting innocents" was an important thing to highlight about Madelyn's story didn't make me feel much better.
"But Lizzy and Jonathan do," I clarified aloud. That was the implication, at least.
Carlisle wrung his hands uncomfortably and slowly nodded. "Probably."
"I don't watch them hunt so I can't say for sure" was probably his excuse for not saying "yes" directly. But from what he'd told me, Jonathan at least didn't seem concerned with having killed a presumably innocent cemetery guard. And thanks to her lifetime of horrible experiences at their hands, Lizzy's opinion of humanity was probably so abysmal that she considered them all guilty regardless.
And Rosalie's rolling of her eyes at Carlisle's weak admission further solidified in my mind that "probably" meant "yes".
I gulped.
Aro's eyes snapped over toward me as he heard me swallow. But instead of grinning creepily as he sometimes did when the topic of killing people came up, he looked deeply concerned and a teensy bit confused.
Not about the fact that human death disturbed me. Based on his profuse apology earlier for offering to slaughter someone and feed me their blood, he knew quite well what my feelings were on that front. But about something else. And it was impossible from merely studying his perplexed face to understand precisely what it was.
After staring at each other in total silence for about thirty seconds, I finally looked away from Aro's mesmerizing complexion. My cheeks had started feeling rather hot for some reason.
I tried not to dwell on it—Carlisle was trying to make a point with these stories. And I needed to let him know that I understood.
"So what you're saying is... not everyone who has been introduced to your diet has stuck with it."
Carlisle nodded solemnly. "Very few find it bearable to live as we do," he admitted in a low voice. He sounded grieved at the fact that nature made it so difficult to dine humanely.
"Our cousins in Denali and I have invited many vampires, not just those we've transformed, but any who are willing to listen, to try our way of life over the centuries," Carlisle revealed. "You remember my explanation to Laurent?"
I bobbed my head vigorously. Of course I remembered that, because at the time it had struck me as terribly odd that Carlisle was trying to help someone affiliated with the enemy.
And I also remembered with how quickly Laurent had abandoned the lifestyle of the Denali clan. And how eager he'd been to drink my blood when he stumbled across me in the meadow.
Mouthwatering, he'd called me. I shivered just thinking about it.
While I fought to banish the deeply unnerving memories, Carlisle went on, "Just about every other vampire that crosses paths with us is curious about how we maintain a semi-permanent residence. And of course why our eyes are a different color."
This made sense—seeing a vampire with naturally gold eyes when you were accustomed to red was probably quite off-putting to the average member of the undead. And most covens had to keep moving to avoid human suspicion, so finding one that stayed put, at least for several years, was a novelty warranting explanation.
"I always offer the invitation to try our ways at the end of my account," the doctor revealed. "Many have taken me up on this offer, like Laurent did initially," he added brightly.
Though the warmth in Carlisle's tone was short-lived. "But out of the hundreds who have tried it, only the seven of us Cullens and the five living in Alaska have been able to maintain our so-called 'vegetarianism' long-term."
My jaw dropped. Out of hundreds?
Carlisle looked quite bewildered by my reaction. "Animal blood does not fully satisfy our thirst," he stated as if it were a mundane and obvious fact, like stating the sky was blue.
But to me this was news. Big news.
"It gives us enough energy to get by. And the worst of the pain in our throats abates when we drink it." His pale fingers drifted to his neck, lightly brushing over the skin in a manner reminiscent of scratching. "But we're left with a constant gnawing feeling in our stomachs that never completely goes away." He gestured towards his belly with a scrunched expression on his face as he spoke.
"Not unless we drink human blood."
My face must have clearly showcased my astonishment, because after a moment of allowing this stunning information to sink in, Carlisle noted with a frown, "Edward said he explained this to you."
I guess he did. Sort of. Thanks to my fallible human memory, I strained to recall if he'd ever mentioned these pivotal facts during his initial description of "vegetarianism" again. I did remember him saying the same kind of thing about animal blood not really being satisfying...
But I swore he hadn't mentioned that drinking it left him with a gnawing hunger in the background all the time which only drinking human blood would alleviate. He'd instead decided to soliloquize about how torturous it was to be around his own "personal heroin" as a recovering drug addict. How I in particular appealed to him, instead of how humans in general did.
I turned my wedding ring uneasily around my finger as I wondered why Edward had mitigated the appeal of all human blood. And I started to consider the remote possibility that he'd done so on purpose. That he'd intentionally left out the bit about stomach gnawing to convince me that he was more stable than he really was.
But that was just preposterous. After all his insistence that he was a dangerous monster, he wouldn't...
"It's different hearing you say it," I decided was my excuse. "You've never even tasted human blood befo—"
Carlisle immediately held up a hand to interrupt me. "I have never killed for human blood," he corrected firmly.
His words made my eyes to widen to the size of silver dollars. He couldn't mean...
"I cannot avoid tasting at least some when I bite to change someone," Carlisle reminded me in a serious tone.
Automatically I relaxed upon hearing this. Oh right. Alice did mention that before.
But Carlisle wasn't finished. "And," he startled me by going on, "Once, when the gnawing got especially fierce, I did… what you are doing to feed your child," he admitted, pointing toward the haphazard pile of Styrofoam cups still resting on the coffee table.
I waited for the caveat—that Carlisle had put something else in a cup and drank it than what he was alluding to. But it never came.
Instead, the Cullen patriarch cringed in embarrassment for having shared such a profound moment of weakness. And it soon became clear that he actually did mean what I thought. And he wasn't about to rescind his words.
I blinked twice in shock. "You mean..."
I couldn't finish my sentence. The mere idea of Carlisle having red eyes for any reason just didn't feel right. Even if it was only once. And even if that decision was prompted by incredible pain.
Carlisle nodded with a kicked-puppy looking his eyes that told me that he still beat himself up over it, even though no one had been harmed as a result.
"No one is more upset about that fact than I am, Bella," Carlisle admitted morosely. "But I always keep a little blood hidden somewhere in the house in case of an emergency," he told me. "It is preferable to drink from bags than to attack people, yes?"
"Of course," I answered immediately.
Aro flinched a little, probably feeling chastised for suggesting the latter first.
I ignored him and turned to the half-dressed blonde. "But Rosalie, you said..."
Rosalie sighed in annoyance. "We don't like to establish a dependence on human blood, bagged or not," she explained flatly with her arms crossed in front of her barely covered chest. "Besides, bagged blood is donated to help humans. Sure no one dies when we drink it. But the effort it took to produce it wasn't expended for our benefit."
At my puzzled look, Rosalie added with a huff, "Drawing blood takes away human energy, Bella."
Her words conjured up images in my mind from the last blood drive sponsored at my high school. Images of endless plates of cookies and juice which were meant to help compensate for the significant loss of calories that drawing that much blood caused. Images that reminded me that Rosalie was right.
"People willingly give up that energy for the specific purpose of helping other humans," Rosalie insisted, staunchly putting her foot down on this one. "Not us monsters."
I opened my mouth to protest her disparaging self-designation. I didn't think of her as a monster. But her baleful glare made me instantly snap my lips shut.
"When we," she gestured to all the vampires in the room, "...take bagged blood home, we're stealing," she said in a tone that suggested thievery of that kind was almost just as despicable as murder.
I didn't agree that it was quite that severe…. But I did understand why she might think it abominable to selfishly take someone else's sacrifice. From a certain perspective, it was like taking the Christmas presents donated to the poor. While you might appreciate having them, they weren't given up for you.
"And the supply of bagged blood is more irregular than the movies make you think," Rosalie added sourly. "There isn't enough for all the humans who need it and us. Plus, they keep that stuff under lock and key. Breaking in or having Carlisle take enough to feed all of us on a regular basis would be extremely suspicious."
Aro nodded in response to this last observation of the gorgeous vampire in front of him. Clearly he agreed with the idea that stealing from blood banks consistently was a risky activity as far as maintaining the secrecy of the supernatural went.
Rosalie snorted at his gesture. Probably because his solution to this conundrum was mightily different than hers.
"Not to mention that even with refrigeration, whole blood expires after a month!" Rosalie threw her hands up in the air to convey that, even if bagged blood could be regularly obtained without arousing suspicion, the paltry rewards were hardly worth the extreme effort.
"It's no good to us then," she spat, firsthand experience causing her nose to crinkle in disgust. "It's just impractical to eat that way," she announced with a shake of her head.
I think I was starting to understand her point of view and why she was so upset that Aro and Carlisle had provided me with human blood. "So... you think it should be for emergencies only..."
Rosalie nodded once. Then she lifted her still-crumpled nose slightly in the air in a gesture of superiority. "Yes. Only in dire times. Not as just regular food," she said with a vicious frown that caught me slightly off guard.
Warily, I staggered backwards a few steps from her irate form. I glanced pleadingly towards the others to see what they thought.
Distressingly, Carlisle and Esme both wore downcast faces that told me they believed Rosalie was right. It was then that I realized that drinking bagged human blood was only marginally less taboo in this house than traditional vampiric hunting of humans. It was something to be avoided if at all possible. And something to be ashamed of in the event that it became unavoidable. Not to be the first resort in a time of uncertainty.
When my worried eyes finally turned to Aro however, I felt pleased to find that he looked like he vehemently disagreed with Rosalie's thinking.
My reaction at first puzzled me. Why should I be happy that this man sees nothing at all wrong with completely disregarding the interests of mortal people? Why should I be happy that he condones taking their blood (and often their lives too) on an alarmingly frequent basis?
But as I turned over things in my mind, I realized that the only reason I found solace in Aro's position was because he was supporting me.
When Rosalie started to shriek at him for "brainwashing me to his side", Aro vocally defend my choices.
Since they had helped facilitate the process of feeding me human blood, I hoped that Carlisle and Esme would also come to my defense as Rosalie mercilessly slandered my name. But alarmingly they said nothing, opting to remain neutral in the verbal sparring that erupted.
Only Aro stood up for me.
It was obvious from his rebuttals to Rosalie's biting remarks that he whole-heartedly believed that my act of drinking donated human blood was completely blameless. Not to mention that it was the best possible thing for my child.
Amidst Rosalie's furious cries that we ought to have tried animal blood first, and Aro's astoundingly passionate defense of the logicality of using a "tried and true sustenance" for our experiment, one thing became increasingly clear. Aro wasn't lying, as Edward had trained me to believe all seemingly benevolent red-eyed vampires must be. Aro really meant what he had said. He didn't care a whit about any other considerations than my health and happiness.
It was bizarre how comforting that knowledge was.
But my bliss at the realization that I could now fully put my trust in the ancient to be my protector (whatever his reasons were) was quickly shattered.
A guttural snarl ripped through Rosalie's throat all of a sudden. And her silver-stiletto-bearing feet hunkered into a feral crouch.
Panic flooded my being as I heard Aro respond to this taunting by also adopting a more combative stance. And to make matters worse, he hissed threateningly. A sound that made every single hair on my body stand on end.
They were going to fight, I suddenly comprehended in terror.
And thanks to my stupid, clumsy, human frailty, there was absolutely nothing I could do to stop them. At least, nothing that wasn't completely suicidal, like leaping off the couch and diving between the two vicious immortals.
And thanks to the fact that I now was responsible for the life of another person besides myself, (one whom I loved more than the world), I felt extremely disinclined to be my usual, stupid, self-sacrificial self. Anything that hurt me could hurt the baby.
So I could only watch as the horror unfolded.
Except that it never quite did.
At the exact moment when the pair was going to pounce on the other, and Carlisle and Esme were about to try and intervene, Emmett opened the front door absolutely without ceremony. He strolled comfortably into the entryway, perfectly at ease. He obviously was not expecting anything to be wrong when he returned.
But he quickly stopped in his tracks on the pale carpet once he noticed that we were all congregated there in a tense, suddenly silent circle. With Rosalie and Aro looking ready to leap for each other's throats.
A chorus of awkward glances were exchanged as the giant bewilderedly surveyed the scene. And to my utter relief, Rosalie and Aro both straightened under the man's curious gaze and instantly set about ignoring the other in favor of staring at opposite walls.
Realizing that he must have interrupted something serious, sheepishly Emmett scratched the back of his neck and asked, "So, what'd I miss?"
…
Despite not feeling up to the task, since no one else really wanted to talk about it, for fear of starting another fight, I ended up being the one to fill Emmett in on the drama that had ensued since his departure. When I got to the part about Carlisle revealing that there had once been others, I was a little stunned to see him react to the stories about the former Cullens with a profound sadness. I hadn't expected that from the goofy giant. He didn't cry—that just wasn't part of his macho personality. But it was obvious that he mourned their loss just like the others did.
I guessed, even if the three hadn't stuck around for very long, it was a big deal that they had left. Family was family, no matter how brief, it seemed.
Once bringing Emmett up to speed was out of the way, the six of us had a short argument about whether or not Aro should stick around, since the problem affecting my health seemed to be resolved now.
Aro very clearly expressed that he wanted to remain here at least until my delivery to have a full account for his histories. And to make certain for himself that my child was born healthy, without harming me.
But despite being a very powerful and influential vampire, (one of the three co-rulers of the most powerful coven on earth), his opinion surprisingly didn't carry a lot of weight around here. I supposed that without his guard to back him, the others didn't see him as a potential threat. But that was awfully short-sighted of them in my mind.
The guard could always exact revenge.
Regardless of any danger that they might face for defying his wishes, though, Rosalie and Emmett both fearlessly expressed a strong desire to kick Aro out of the house.
Rosalie wanted him gone because he was "no longer needed" now that he'd addressed the source of my malnutrition. And of course because she hated him passionately for drinking human blood.
Emmett, on the other hand, was more worried about the wolf pack finding out that Aro was here. He seemed concerned that they might treat us like we were harboring a fugitive.
Which I hated to concede was a perfectly logical fear, given the wolves' hatred of red-eyed vampires...
But to my relief Carlisle quickly pointed out that nowhere in the treaty did it say that the Cullens couldn't associate with vampires who fed differently. Just that all vampires who found themselves within the boundaries established by the Quileute tribe were expected not to hunt humans within it.
It was a subtle nuance. But the doctor assured us that it would be enough. Battling vampires was extremely risky for the wolf pack, he reminded us. And even if they vastly outnumbered Aro, I had a sneaking suspicion that he hadn't managed to survive for thousands of years just by being charismatic. He was probably quite dangerous on his own. And if not, I highly doubted that the tribe wanted to incur the wrath of the Volturi.
Which killing their leader would certainly do.
"If Sam has an issue with us allowing Aro to stay here, I'm sure he'll realize soon enough it's in his best interests to leave it well alone," Carlisle told the group. "Taking on the newborn army whose numbers were half that of the Volturi was a taxing enough ordeal. And those vampires were almost completely untrained," he reminded us.
Emmett gave a curt nod as he processed this information.
"The pack is in no condition to fight a well-coordinated and highly-gifted vampire army," Carlisle insisted.
He was right. Jacob had been severely injured during the fight in June. And from what I had heard, many others had encountered very close brushes with death. It was nothing short of a miracle that everyone had survived. I couldn't imagine that even Sam, who hated all things vampire and only grudgingly tolerated the presence of the Cullens, would be eager to dive into another dire scenario like that any time soon. He was smarter than that.
At least, I hoped so.
Thankfully I was not the only one who agreed with Carlisle. Esme wholeheartedly agreed as well. Even Emmett, who had initially raised the concern, decided that his surrogate father had a point. He concluded that as long as Aro didn't breach the treaty, everything would be alright.
Once it was decided that his departure wasn't mandatory, Aro surprised me by asking if I had any objections to him staying here. He expressed a desire to remain at least until the delivery, and possibly longer, to "observe the development of my most unique offspring".
At least, that was the reason he gave for wanting to linger. Though Esme's worried glances toward her husband seemed to suggest otherwise.
Whatever his reasons for desiring to be in my company longer were, however, I thought it might be useful for him to stick around just in case we came across any complications later in my pregnancy. Certainly all seemed well for now. But if another unexpected catastrophe befell me (as it was almost certain to, given my luck) it would be wisest to have an all-things-vampire expert close on hand.
As long as Aro didn't have any other obligations he needed to attend to, of course...
Carlisle and Esme quickly agreed with this reasoning of mine.
Aro swiftly assured me that there wasn't anything else near as important as this.
And just like that it was decided that he would stay until I wished it otherwise.
Naturally, Rosalie was furious with this decision. She stormed off to her room in a huff and slammed her bedroom door so hard that it shattered into thousands of infinitesimal splinters. But although she spent the remainder of the day in her now doorless room, fuming about being overruled in this matter, I wasn't worried about her volatile attitude.
As the five of us who remained downstairs more or less resumed our usual activities, strangely, I felt optimistic. I knew Rosalie wouldn't dream of hurting my baby, or me, as long as I was attached to it. She wanted to live vicariously through me badly enough to prevent that.
And if she did try to do something stupid, like ambush him while I was sleeping, Aro was perfectly capable of protecting me from her.
So instead of fretting that night about the fact that my original protector wasn't pleased with the current arrangement, I smiled as my new protector helped me settle comfortably back onto the living room couch that had been doubling as my bed this past week. I felt completely at ease that evening as Aro devotedly tucked me in beneath an enormous assortment of warm blankets. And I was comforted by the knowledge that he was dutifully watching over me as I slumbered peacefully in the dark.
…
When I awoke, the first thing I realized was that it was totally the wrong time to be getting up. The forest landscape beyond the pristine, floor-to-ceiling windows that lined the east side of the living room was still shrouded in thick darkness. And the dim red numbers on the Cullens' DVD player, reading 3:07 AM, confirmed my suspicion that it was way too early.
Valuing my rest and seeing no pressing reason for me to stay awake I was about to roll over and fall back asleep when I noticed something else unusual. Aro was no longer sitting on the opposite couch watching me slumber. And there were faint voices coming from the kitchen that sounded rather disgruntled about something.
That's odd, I thought. I know vampires don't need to sleep... but what on earth could they be arguing about at this ungodly hour? I wondered.
After a minute or two of intense listening, I finally recognized the voices as belonging to Aro and Carlisle. Which explained the former's absence from my bedside.
And after a few more minutes I started to be able to make out what they were saying—their intriguing words acting like caffeine in my blood, jolting me wide awake and encouraging me to try and follow their secret conversation. Based on the time they had chosen to have this discussion, and the sensitive content, it wasn't hard to guess that they hadn't wanted me to overhear it. But that fact naturally only made me more curious.
I desperately hoped that neither of them would hear the sudden change in my heart-rate and breathing patterns that indicated that I was now awake. It simply wouldn't do for their conversation to be cut short on my account.
"Please Carlisle, I must tell her," Aro pleaded quietly, desperately, in the other room.
"Aro, she's a married woman," Carlisle protested in a clipped voice. "It wouldn't be appropriate."
"I suppose marriage does mean she is bound to him, under human law…" Aro conceded with no small measure of disappointment.
He paused in defeated silence for a moment before he continued. "However," Aro countered in a voice dripping with honey, "by our laws she still remains unmated…" he emphasized in a much happier tone.
Apparently the notion of this mysterious woman being single according to vampire standards made him immensely joyous.
Carlisle, however, certainly did not share the sentiment. "Unmated?" He sounded simultaneously affronted and confused by Aro's claim, like it was not only false, but preposterous, given the circumstances. "By what stretch of the term?" he demanded in a slightly louder voice. "She and Edward have most clearly mated! The infant growing within her womb is only present because of that fact!"
The doctor's sharply whispered words jolted me. They're talking about me, I realized. Aro wants to tell me something, but Carlisle doesn't think he should because I'm married to Edward. It wouldn't be "appropriate", Carlisle had said.
However, Aro seemed to think that despite the fact that our marriage was consummated, that we were not bound according to vampire custom—and therefore he could divulge whatever it was that had Carlisle on the defensive.
But why would Aro think that? I wondered. Edward had told me that the word "mate" was simply the term vampires preferred to use to refer to their "spouse" because it implied something more permanent than any transient human relationship. Had he lied to me?
Based on what he was saying, Aro didn't sound like he agreed with that definition. And I was reasonably confident that he wasn't the type to just make crazy stuff up. But there was no way I could logically mesh his statements with what Edward had told me.
There has to be some explanation for this discrepancy, I decided. Either I'm simply misinterpreting what I'm hearing, or one of them has to be lying.
I stifled a gulp as I pondered the latter possibility. The idea that either one of those men would act deceitfully toward me twisted my heart.
Aro was my new, and incredibly enthusiastic protector. And he was the one whom I was entrusting my life, and the life of my darling son to.
And Edward… Oh Edward… He had meant more to me than anything else in this vast, beautiful world. Being worthy of his love, of his regard, of even just his gaze—that was all I could have ever dreamed of...
At least it was, once.
Until we miraculously created a new life together—the one rapidly growing inside me now. Then my whole world had been thrown upside-down and abruptly shattered into a million tiny pieces.
"Shhh… Isabella is sleeping in the other room," Aro gently reminded Carlisle in barely more than a whisper. His soft, melodic voice was full of concern that their argument might disturb my slumber.
I didn't have the heart or the guts to tell him that it already had.
Aro went on. "Besides, you know as well as I do that the mating ritual cannot be completed when one party is human…"
Mating ritual? What nonsense is he spouting on about? I thought, panicking at the mention of supernatural terms I wasn't familiar with. Perhaps I would have to rescind my judgment of Aro not being the sort to invent ludicrous falsehoods to justify his position.
Much to my horror, however, Carlisle didn't demand in bewilderment to know what Aro was raving about. He merely sighed, like he knew exactly what these unfamiliar words meant, and breathed out a solemn, "You're right," in acknowledgement of Aro's ridiculous claim.
Apparently he was already quite familiar with this "ritual".
And not only that, but he agreed with Aro that Edward and I had not performed it.
This whole conversation was starting to make my head swim. What on earth could be missing from our mating bond? I worried. Is it even something I want? The word "ritual" made the practice sound kind of creepy and possibly sacrificial. Do I want to go through with something like that? I wondered frightfully. Will it bring me and my husband closer together? Bind us as one for eternity, or something? I thought hopefully.
Or is it merely a cruel rite of passage into the vampire social world? One that no doubt involved slaughtering innocent humans—and therefore was something I wanted no part in?
There was no way to be sure with such little information. But now that my interest had been piqued, I felt like I had to get to the bottom of this. I leaned ever so slightly forward on the couch cushions so I could hear the pair of vampires better.
"The ritual may not be formally complete now. But when the time comes they will finish it," Carlisle steadfastly affirmed.
"You believe young Edward will agree to this when he returns?" Aro sounded extremely skeptical of the possibility of such a thing occurring.
Why wouldn't he? I thought quizzically.
Unless my worst fears really were true, and this ritual was of the sinister sort, I couldn't imagine that Edward wouldn't want us to be recognized as mates in the vampire world. Part of his insistence on us marrying rather than just moving in together was that it made a irrefutable public statement that I was his and he was mine and that no one else ought to interfere with that.
But if Aro's remarks were any indication of how the greater supernatural scene felt, apparently my connection to Edward was not irrefutable in the minds of vampires until we finished this "ritual". And knowing my husband, I knew that he wouldn't be fond of other vampires openly flirting with me. So of course he would insist that we complete our "mating" as soon as I became immortal. Right?
Carlisle sounded equally baffled. "You don't?"
"Edward will never agree to finish his ties to Isabella because has no intention of transforming her," Aro announced coldly, like the matter was already set in stone. "That necessary step is one he shall never allow to occur."
Never allow to occur. Edward would never allow me to become a vampire.
As much as it pained me to admit, and as much as I desperately wanted to believe that my missing husband intended to keep his promise to transform me—since I had agreed to go through with the horrific embarrassment of a public wedding ceremony, (and that was our bargain)—I knew that what Aro was saying was true. Edward didn't want me to be a vampire, his begrudging agreement to transform me after we were married notwithstanding.
Even after our honeymoon, he had continued his habitual routine of begging me to remain human longer.
But what really solidified the verity of Aro's remarks in my mind was the fact that even when my life was in danger (a life which he had dramatically demonstrated on multiple occasions was inextricably tied to his), and that life could be saved by making me a vampire like him, Edward could never bring himself to want that. He couldn't bring himself to mean it when he told Aro in Volterra that he would change me, even when the guard was itching to kill me. Nor could he bring himself to want me transformed after my baby was born, even though it was probably still my only shot at survival.
Even though it meant in the best-case scenario that he would long outlive me—he wanted to keep me mortal.
I had never understood why, his constant excuses notwithstanding. But I had never doubted his firmness in that position.
"He's just uneasy about the possibility of taking away her soul," Carlisle easily supplied in his son's defense.
This was the same explanation he'd given me before Edward had abandoned me the first time. But I felt it was inadequate, given my repeated willingness to give up said soul. There had to be another reason.
"I don't buy into your theories about Edward being somehow 'broken'," the doctor snapped, obviously referencing something that Aro had asserted earlier about Edward. Something which he vehemently disagreed with.
Broken? I paled at the suggestion. Especially when it came from Aro, who seemed to be the prime authority on all things supernatural. Broken how?
