6

A NEW DAWN

Chapter 8

Discoveries

It took a few seconds for my thoughts to calm themselves before I realized that I wasn't feeling any pain. There was no burning, no fire engulfing my body, I still felt as numb as I had been when I was inside my protective bubble.

I couldn't understand it, but then again, I didn't have much time to ponder it either, as out of the blue, another strange jolt rocked my body, after which, images and internal voices started popping into my head. It was like going to a website and being bombarded by a ton of pop-up windows, or sitting in the security office of a major casino surrounded by all the video monitors. I thought for a few moments that I had going insane, that somehow my brain was fried. However, slowly I began to tune-in individual windows, and made a startling discovery; these were actually people's thoughts and visions; images as seen through their eyes.

"I really hope Brady turns out ok, I don't want to have to destroy him."

"Please for mercy's sake let him be ok."

"I can't believe Bella is acting like that, she doesn't seem to care about him at all; girls suck."

I smiled internally, knowing that the last words were Seth's thoughts. I figured that the other two must belong to Carlisle and Edward, I couldn't imagine anyone else thinking about me in such a way. Besides, seeing through their vision, I could see that they were watching me. It was strange, seeing myself lying there, knowing what was happening to my body, but not actually feeling any of it.

During the next few hours, I worked on understanding and controlling this new ability. I was able to learn that the closest windows to the center of my mind were of those who were physically closest to me, as the windows spread out to the left and right, the outermost windows were of those who were more physically distant from me; although I had no idea exactly how far that was. Feet, miles, I had no clue.

I could listen to several windows at once, mute whichever ones I didn't want to hear, or make one the complete center of my attention; I could also minimize the windows, so that my mind was totally clear. I hopped through minds getting an idea of what was happening around me, although some minds weren't as easy to understand as their thoughts were in a foreign language. From what I was able to gather, only a few people seemed concerned about my presence, most were absorbed in the belief that the Volturi would destroy them all.

One mind in particular was quite panicked about the Volturi coming, this person couldn't decide whether he should flee now, or wait. His mind was extremely bizarre, flittering between thoughts without taking time to absorb them, like an extremely fast slide show. I imagined that whoever this person was, they were probably quite insane.

Most of my initial focus was spent in Seth's mind, hoping to hear the thoughts that I wanted to hear. However, his thoughts were mostly of sorrow and anger.

"How could I have let this happen? I should have known he would do something like this since it was the only way for him to get what he wanted. Why didn't I disable his truck instead of just taking the keys, how stupid of me. Now if something goes wrong, if he turns into an out of control newborn, will Jake really make me kill him? Argh, I can't think like that, I just couldn't do it. He has to turn out ok, if not I'll never be able to forgive myself."

Seth's thoughts made me feel sick, realizing what I was putting him through. But surely, things wouldn't turn out badly now, now that I was positive that I was in full control. Although, I also realized that if putting him through this was the only way to save his life, and the Cullen's lives, then surely he would let go of his guilt afterwards. However, I soon had to escape Seth's mind because he was really depressing me.

"What is Edward thinking? I just don't get it. He allows Carlisle to create a newborn vampire now, when there is so much to do. Let alone the fact that he is putting Renesmee in danger, no, he's putting everyone in danger. For a total stranger that has no ties to anyone here, there is just no reason to do that. We'd all be better off if they'd have just let him die; after all, he was the idiot who stabbed himself. They could have just chalked it up it up to a suicide, and none of us would have had to be put in danger."

It didn't take me long to realize that these were Bella's thoughts, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised considering how she reacted earlier, but I somehow thought that she would be more understanding considering how her father had welcomed me.

Soon my attention was brought back to myself, as I heard an external conversation that I quickly tried to match together with the internal thoughts that went along with it.

"Eleazar, I'm glad to see you, I'm hoping you can help," Carlisle said.

"What can I do for you, Carlisle?" Eleazar asked.

"I'm wondering if you can get any sense of what Brady's abilities might be."

"Give me a few moments and I'll see what I can sense about him."

Then three things seemed to happen simultaneously, first, that strange jolt of energy surged through my body again, and then I heard Eleazar think, "Oh great, another shield" and at the same time, several of the thought windows changed color. I didn't know what the colors meant, but before I could investigate, I heard Eleazar speak.

"Is there something in the water down here? What is it with all the shields, Carlisle? The last two vampires welcomed into your family both turn out to be shields."

"Are you serious?" Edward asked incredulously. "So he is like Bella?"

"I think so," Eleazar said. "It's hard to tell what type of shielding powers he will have, but he is definitely blocking me, what about you?"

"I was able to hear his mind up until Bella touched him, and then suddenly his mind vanished from my thoughts. I was very concerned, it happened so abruptly, that I thought maybe something had gone wrong with the transformation process."

"Unlikely, I've never seen anything go wrong with vampire transformation. It was probably more likely that he had been transformed just enough that his own shielding powers reacted to those of Bella's."

"That does seem plausible," Carlisle interjected, "It'll be very interesting to see what type of shield he possesses."

"So he's going to be ok then?" Seth asked quietly.

"Nothing is certain, Seth, but if Eleazar is right, then everything should be fine. Before his shield activated, he was fully in control of himself," Edward said.

Their conversation soon began to bore me; of course, I knew I was ok, so none of their speculations concerned me anymore. I was more concerned with why certain mind-windows had changed color, including Edward's, Bella's, and Eleazar's. There were several others that shifted color as well; some seemed to have a different shade of color, although others remained unchanged, including Carlisle's and Esme's window.

As I concentrated on each window individually, I could feel something unique about them, each seemed to make my mind and body sense something, almost react to that sense. When I concentrated on Edward's thoughts, I had this strange but brief tingle in my mind. When I viewed Eleazar's, I had this strange tingling in my heart. With Bella, it felt like my body was being pushed. Other colored windows had those same types of reactions, although some were similar, but yet slightly different.

The fact that I was able to feel something was strange in itself, but the sensations themselves I didn't understand. Why some windows, and not others? What did the colors and sensations mean? I knew it meant something, I just didn't know what.

Was this part of my 'shield' ability? Although that in itself didn't make a lot of sense, because I was able to read minds, so to me, it was obvious that I wasn't a shield. From what Seth had told me, vampires only have one ability, so I certainly couldn't have two. But what was up with Edward not being able to hear my mind, and now Eleazar's abilities didn't work on me either. What was going on with me?

I minimized all of the mind-windows and concentrated on trying to put everything together. The sudden blocking of Edward's mind came when Bella touched me, so I started from that point. It took me some time to piece it all together, my theory anyway. The nice thing was, I knew I still had several hours before the vampirization process was finished, so I had time to be patient and think. My mind was becoming increasingly more and more fluid; it also seemed to be expanding in depth. It irritated me that I kept going back to computer analogies, but it felt like my brain was suddenly a high-powered CPU with seemingly endless memory. Needless to say, I could compute the possibilities quite quickly, even though I wasn't in any hurry.

When I finally formulated my theory, it was quite startling to me. If it turned out to be true, then this would make all the difference in the fight against the Volturi. However, I wouldn't know until I could test it, but I couldn't do that until I could interact with the other vampires that were here at the Cullens' house.

With this theory came another realization, based upon something I heard in Bella's thoughts. There was only one person I could confide in about this revelation right now, and that person was Bella, of all people, the one who would rather have me dead than alive. Bella's, and apparently now mine, were the only thoughts that Edward couldn't hear. If my theory turned out to be true, then Aro must not learn about my abilities before the time is right. If he knew, then he would make decisions that could possibly stop me from having the effect that I had to have.

I wasn't sure if Bella would go along with the plan I was hatching, but thanks to things I learned from her thoughts, I was betting she might be more willing to go along with me, if it meant protecting those thoughts. Obviously, I had already proven the lengths that I would go through to save everyone, so a tad bit of blackmail wasn't out of the question for me. As with Seth, I'm sure after everything is said and done, she'll understand and forgive me—I hoped.

For a long period of time, I laid there scrolling through the windows of thoughts that saturated my mind. I was getting familiar with these vampires, and learning about their skills through their mind and observing their talents through their own eyes. I began to realize that each vampire skill resulted in a different colored mental window; this was why some of them were colored. Those without talents, had no coloration, but those with color, had a color that appeared to represent their individual skill. As I learned about their skills, I began mentally matching the coloration to the particular physical sense that I felt when I initially observed their mental window. Apparently, each ability gave me a unique physical sensation- probably to alert me of their ability, which was most likely the same reason for the colored windows. It appeared that the Cullens had assembled quite a team of talented vampires… lucky for me, very unlucky for the Volturi.

All at once, I heard something strange, and then realized that the sound was coming from within my own body. I hadn't been giving it any notice before, but now it had my entire attention; the sound was the erratic beating of my own heart. It was racing faster and faster, it threw my mind into a panic, wondering what was going on, then I heard the voices and thoughts from around me.

"Sounds like it's almost time," Carlisle said.

"Yes, I think your right, I better go get the others," Edward replied.

"What's going on?" Seth said in a panic.

"Don't worry Seth, nothing bad, the transformation process is almost done," Carlisle said calmly.

I heard Edward's thoughts; they were full of concern, as were Carlisle's. Seth's thoughts were more of fear and emotional angst; if I could have physically sighed, I would have.

However, at the moment, my body seemed to be involved in a battle between life and, well, whatever was happening to me; I preferred to think of it as just an evolution of life, it wasn't death. No matter what it was called, it was coming soon. I still couldn't feel my body, but I could certainly hear it. My heart was sounding like a bad lifter in a car engine, hammering away until it would finally shatter. My heart would soon be just like that lifter, finally reaching its breaking point, and then it would stop, forever.

For some reason this thought made me panic, realizing my heart was about to stop, it would be the end of humanity for me. Even though I knew that I wasn't going to cease, I still felt this sudden fear of the unknown ripple through me. It seemed like every one of my worst fears decided to wait until the last moment to spring forth and ambush my brain. All of these terrible thoughts were spiraling around my mind like an out of control vortex, and I couldn't seem to calm them. Not until, abruptly, my heart loudly thudded twice, then once more, and then it was silent. At that very moment, all of the fears evaporated, and my mind became clear and controlled once more.