BPOV
I looked at my hand. It was being covered with blood from the man's neck. Hesitantly, I removed my hand from around the glass, letting the man finally collapse in a heap of flesh and bone.
I shivered when my hand felt cold. I was ultimately disgusted with myself for killing somebody, but knowing I was avenging two of my closest family members made it better; almost enjoyable.
Still in shock, I back away from the murderer's corpse and out the door, praying to God that it wasn't just the murderer that couldn't see me. I knew I wasn't dead: I would have known once I failed to pick up the glass, but no matter how much this state helped me, it was still very eerie.
"Bella!" I was so out of it that I almost didn't hear that wonderful voice calling my name. At first came panic, thinking he might be able to see me, but then concern at the hysteria. Edward was just worried for me; that's all.
Wait—Edward!
Hands suddenly grasped my shoulders and spun me around to a gruesome sight. I couldn't help but take a gasp.
Edward stood before me, his torso completely uncovered and incredibly blood, all pooling out from a long scar on his left side, right above the arcs of his ribs. His hair was matted with sweat and stains of blood.
"Edward." I gasped. "What happened to you?"
Edward shrugged off the question and pulled me into a tight hug before I could say anything.
"Bella, Bella, Bella, thank god you're alright." He murmured.
EPOV
She was all right—thank the heavens she was all right! I wanted to scream out to the world that she had not only possibly escaped from a murderer, but also woke up from a coma after barely a week, even though the best doctor I knew predicted it would be at least ten times as long.
I was hugging her so tightly to my bloody chest that I almost didn't feel her hugging me back with just as much force—if not more— and sobbing into my shoulder.
"Bella?" I cautiously pulled back slightly so I could see her face. "What's—"
"Jasper!" She whispered, her impossibly soft voice cracking painfully. The angel buried her face back into my neck and I resumed clutching her for dear life. "He killed Jasper. Right in front of me! And I didn't do anything to stop it!"
"Bella, shh… It's all right…" I tried helplessly, rubbing calm strokes into her back.
"No!" Her sob was muffled. It was then that I saw the cluster of glass in her back.
"Bella, what did he do to you?" I pushed back from her a bit so I could see her face. Tearstains lined her cheeks, and a sickly red rimmed her beautiful brown eyes.
"He couldn't see me, Edward." She whispered hysterically. "He couldn't see me. I came at him with a shard of glass and he didn't see me. I killed him, and he didn't see me!"
Invisibility: she was learning already. And her power was feeding on her nerves at the moment. If she kept doing this for any longer, I feared she would begin to go insane.
"Bella, we have to get you out of here." I concluded. If she did anymore, two deaths and my superhuman regeneration wouldn't be the only things in question.
CPOV
I also knew Edward was a hardy boy, but man, he can get up and go! Barely minutes after being stitched up, he's running around, saving his crush. Just like a teenager.
Sighing, I packed up my stuff, cleaning off the bloody spool and needle in the sink. Sometimes, I felt the needle tip prick into my skin as I washed it, but I completely ignored it in my thoughts.
How was Edward able to do that?
"Carlisle, Edward broke the railing…" Marcus had referred to the fact that the solid metal bars Edward had been grabbed with all his strength as an output for the pain had completely disintegrated beneath his finger tips. Just two piles of metallic dust at the sides of the operation table were left.
"Not a problem." Edward had practically sprinted down the hallway without even a red face, or panting breath. Like he was taking a stroll in a park. My first thought was that I was just woozy at the sight of my nephew's blood, but how can somebody survive an open-torso run like that? In the dark?
And I knew my nephew was not normal.
I recalled a conversation I'd had with Edward Sr. a few nights before he had died.
I walked into the stuffy hospital room, dressed in scrubs and holding a clipboard. Tears were ghosting in my eyes as I ran once more over my brother-in-law's test results. There was no use in sugar-coating it—he was going to die.
"Carlisle." Edward Sr. croaked pitifully when he finally noticed me. "When am I going to die?"
I sighed sadly. "No more than a few days. I'm so sorry, Edward."
He chuckled quietly. "Just keep my little boy safe." He looked at his son, Edward Jr., sleeping in a sort of horizontal fetal position on a couple of chairs. "They don't know which parent it came from."
"What?" I asked, confused. Who had what come from?
"Elizabeth is their next target." Edward Sr. continued to ramble. "They'll get her in just a few hours, at most." He turned to me then. "Whatever you do: keep Esme safe. She is too important to lose. Never let anyone know she is related to my Lizzie."
This must have had something to do with it. Whatever Elizabeth had had led to her murder, and it apparently was a family trait. And Edward had it.
Pursing my lips in thought for a second, I picked up one of the bloody and gory scalpels and went to the microscope at the counter. Placing my flashlight in place of the usual light that ran on electricity, I tapped a drop of Edward's blood to the sheet of glass, covered it, and placed it securely on the metal stage.
After all, blood tells the truth.
EPOV
I glanced down both ends of the hallway before turning, pulling the slightly hysterical Bella behind me. All clear. I quietly stepped to the emergency exit of the hospital wing and put my hand on the door. I knew that we would only have so much time after the fire alarm went off to get out and away, but we could manage. I was quickly regaining my strength.
"Bella, we're going to have to hotwire a car once we get out." I whispered quietly in her ear. She just kept on with her soft whimpering and crying, as she had since I had found her. Poor, sweet, innocent angel: she didn't deserve all this grief. She didn't deserve this fate, but she still got it anyway.
I kept to the shadows, trying to avoid the gazes of the few, frantic policemen and firemen scurrying around the hospital, trying to save patients and get the power back on. If they had seen us, what would they do? Interrogate us, namely me, test us, and admit us back to the hospital. We couldn't go back, though, and I highly doubted that it would help our case if I told them Bella and I would literally die if we went back. We would just be sitting ducks.
I finally got us to the parking lot undetected. My lips twisted into a smile when I saw a fast-looking car parked a few spaces away. A Saab, and it was black.
Oh God, how I missed cars.
Breathing slowly and deeply, I gently placed my hand over the passenger's door lock and closed my eyes. I focused solely on getting the car's door open, and within a few seconds, heard all the locks click as they popped up simultaneously.
"Bella, come on." I opened the door and Bella slipped inside. I went to the other side of the car and go in, too. "Bella?"
"Yes?" She asked. Her voice was dead and quiet.
"We're going to have to go dark for a while." I paused, looking at Bella out of the corner of my eye before bending down to look into the ignition. Once again, I put my hand over the hole and concentrated, starting the car quietly. "Nobody can know where we are."
"I think that's the point of doing dark." Bella said flatly. When I straightened up in my seat, I saw her staring straight ahead, her eyes unfocused.
"Bella?" I asked cautiously. She didn't answer until I nudged her.
"What?"
"You blanked out for a second. Are you alright?" I rose my hand to her forehead, which was burning up. "Bella, you're sick!"
"What did I do?" She yelled, slapping my hand away.
"You're sick. You have a fever." I clarified, and laughed when her stomach growled. "And hungry."
Well, she hadn't eaten in three days…
"What happened?" Bella asked quietly, curiosity burning in her voice. She leaned her head against the window, watching the scenery fly past as I pulled out of the parking lot. "How long was I out?"
For a second, I hesitated. I didn't know much about her, but I though she was the kind of person to freak out at the mention of them coming out of a coma early after nearly dying trying to save their gardener/protector.
"When Jasper found us, after you found me, we both blanked out from loss of blood." I began. My knuckles were grabbing the steering wheel so hard until they were white. "You were in a coma for a few days, which my uncle Carlisle thought would actually be a month."
"I-I w-was in a coma?" Bella whispered.
"Yes." I said simply.
There was silence for a few minutes, and then, "Edward, do you know why that man couldn't see me?"
Yes, yes I did, but I wasn't going to explain this to her in a car, and Bella being nearly hysteric and probably going into shock.
"I might." I settled with. "We're going to a friend of mine's to figure it out."
CPOV
Super-blood.
That was the only way I could describe this phenomenon going on in my nephew's blood. The blood cells, though the same basic structure of normal ones, had twice as much room for carrying oxygen, telling me that Edward could probably run for miles and not be out of breath. The bits of bone I scraped up from the Petri dish used to store the broken bone in Edward's shoulder were twice as dense, yet half as heavy, like they were some kind of hollow diamond. No wonder we had had trouble getting the drills into his ribs.
But what I couldn't understand was how he could have possibly been hurt by mere cement and people when his bones were this strong. And then I realized that he had been beaten and tortured for months on end, and that could easily break down whatever was keeping him healthy.
I gave out a shaky laugh, writing down some notes on a notebook I carried with me on my hospital rounds, creating a new section for Edward's peculiar features, and quickly cleaned up everything in the operation room before anyone came back.
"Never let anyone know…"
I had a feeling my brother-in-law had meant it.
A/N: Sorry, guys. I went a bit dark on this story for a while (a BIG homework surge from school: God knows it'll only get worse), and I'm hoping that won't happen again for another couple of months.
And, often, when I stop writing on a story, it means that I don't have the time to just sit at the computer and think for hours on end, so I can't come up with ideas. It would be a great help if, when I haven't updated for a while and you're getting impatient, that you give me some ideas.
No worries! (hopefully)
Kylie M.
