All credit for the Twilight story and characters belongs to Stephenie Meyer. I just enjoy playing with the characters. My thanks to my wonderful beta, EdwardsMate4Ever, and to Jaspersdoll for the title.
Catching Bella
Chapter 10 – The Missing Mrs. Cope
"Mrs. Cope?" Bella asked, then stared in disbelief.
The woman appeared to be Mrs. Cope, but she looked Bella's age.
"Hello, Bella. I'm afraid under the circumstances I can't say I'm glad to see you," as Mrs. Cope pulled her into a hug, "but I'm glad to see you're all right."
The heavy door closed behind them, and the sound of a key grated as it turned in the lock.
Bella started crying, both relieved and terrified. "You've been here all along?"
Mrs. Cope nodded, touching her fingers to her lips as she pointed to a corner of the room. "Camera," she said, silently mouthing the words.
They released one another, and Bella took a look around the room. The stone chamber was furnished in an old-fashioned style and decorated with textiles. There was an intricately detailed blue and red oriental rug on the floor, and the walls were hung with tapestries. She touched one of the tapestries, feeling its age, admiring its beauty and complexity. The scene portrayed a medieval hunt, with knights and kings mounted on horseback, hounds at their sides, hunting deer and boar.
A large, four-poster bed [KM1] dominated the room. It was made of dark, heavy wood, with intricate designs of animals and trees carved into the headboard and posts. The curtains were fabricated from luxurious red and gold cloth with gold trim. The furniture was rounded out by a matching bureau with an elegant, gilded mirror, and several chairs and a small table against one wall.
"A gilded cage," she whispered to Mrs. Cope, who nodded sadly.
A heavy wooden door opened onto a bathroom containing an elegant white marble sink with a large mirror, toilet and footed tub. There was a door opposite the doorway she was standing in. Bella walked across the bathroom and tested the lever handle. It wasn't locked, so she opened it. The room revealed was almost identically furnished, except that the bed curtains were blue and gold instead of red and gold.
"Your room," Mrs. Cope said aloud. "They've been planning on your arrival. Or perhaps it was planned for your parents."
Bella turned to look at her again, unintentionally staring at her youthful face. Mrs. Cope mouthed her response, communicating through lip movements. "I'm like you. You've changed, I take it."
Bella nodded.
"What happened?" she asked, positioning herself to lean against a chair. Bella suspected she was blocking the cameras.
"Someone found me after I changed," Bella told her, "and they had some idea of what happened. I finally went back to the circus two days ago, but I don't know if my friends have realized I am missing, or where to look for me. I was drugged. O'Malley and O'Leary must have taken me onto the plane while I was out."
"They drugged me with red wine during dinner," Mrs. Cope said. "As I started to feel woozy, I realized that I hadn't seen them drinking the wine. I tried to go outside and alert someone, but I was too far gone to leave my trailer."
"Where's your locket?" Bella asked.
"I put it in the back of one of the bureau drawers," she said.
"May I?" Bella asked. Mrs. Cope nodded and pointed to one of the drawers.
Bella pulled it out and opened it. The locket contained two photos. On the left side was an aged, sepia-toned photo of two people, who she recognized as her parents. The other side had a picture of John-John, the circus strong man.
"John-John?" Bella asked. "All this time, and it was John-John?"
Mrs. Cope nodded sadly. "If we had gotten close, he would have realized my aging was all from make-up."
They spent much of the rest of the day reading, not saying much. In the evening, Mrs. Cope lit a fire in the fireplace, and they communicated by notes which they sheltered from the camera with their hands as they read them, burning the scraps of paper in the fireplace when they were done.
Bella learned that Mrs. Cope was her mother's sister. In turn, she told Mrs. Cope how she had changed twice, and how confusing each experience had been. Mrs. Cope nodded and smiled after reading about the confusion.
She wrote back that if there is an unplanned change, triggered by confusion or feelings, the animal side would be ascendant, and it could be hard for the human to get control.
If, however, the shifter decided on a form and focused on guiding the change, she had a better chance to gain control of the animal she changed into, and shift back when ready.
"Have you changed since you've been here?' Bella asked her.
Mrs. Cope nodded. "I've done a few shifts in bed, choosing an animal about human size. My goal was to control the shift, because I planned to change forms in order to escape. I was able to shift back and forth to a large dog several times. The dog wasn't happy about not being able to get out from under the covers, but it seemed to understand there was danger, and laid still.
I don't know if Stefan or Vladimir saw my changes on their camera, but I suspect they noticed. Vampires seem to have both strong sense of smell and hearing, and even I noticed the dog smell on the sheets the next day.
The main thing I achieved through these trials is greater control. I wouldn't recommend you trying it here, though, you're still too new."
"Why didn't my parents tell me?" Bella asked.
"Your mother was going to. She was waiting until you turned eighteen. Until then, we were just controlling it with the tranquilizers."
"No wonder I was so clumsy all the time," Bella said.
"It was a risk, but she worried that she and your father were being hunted. Their main interest was in keeping your birth a secret. Your parents were talking about leaving, taking a job elsewhere. Your father had been making contacts in the various industries that worked with wild animals, and he was being considered for a job at a zoo in St. Louis. Then the accident happened."
"What happened?"
"Your father had given directions to several friends as to what they had to do if he ever attacked a human when he was in animal form. Those instructions were carried out, that's all."
"Who?"
"It doesn't matter. A good friend, that's all," Mrs. Cope replied.
"John-John?"
"It doesn't matter. The human witnesses saw a lion outside of a cage attacking a human. What needed to be done was done."
Bella shuddered.
"Our existence is fraught with danger," Mrs. Cope continued. "We have a code that we live by. It's very strict. Assaults by humans must be handled in the human world, by the human justice system. However much we want to, we can't shift to protect one another, even in the event of an attack on your spouse. Especially if there might be witnesses. The risk of discovery is too great. After all, we are considered 'collectible' by other immortals, as you have found out."
Stefan and Vladimir brought their meals personally. They insisted on staying while the two ate, keeping up a mockery of polite conversation.
Bella noticed that Mrs. Cope responded to their questions and asked a few of her own, mostly on matters of news and world affairs. But she never answered any questions about her personal life.
The two vampires tried to engage Bella as well, and she followed Mrs. Cope's example.
The food they brought was always well-prepared and elegantly served. Bella tried to count the number of attendants the two vampires had. They appeared to have both human and vampire retainers. The chef was human, as they brought him to the room a few times to ask questions about their favorite foods, but the guard who opened and closed the door was an immortal.
After a week, there was a knock at the door. Mrs. Cope went through the usual charade of saying, "Come in," and Vladimir and Stefan came into the room.
"Hello, my dears," oozed Stefan. "We have brought a doctor who will make sure you stay in perfect health during your visit. He contacted us recently, and mentioned he has had some experiences with those such as yourselves. You will be in very good hands with him."
He stepped back, and a familiar blond figure stepped into the room.
"I'm Dr. Cullen," Carlisle said as he entered the room, giving no sign of recognizing Bella.
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By the way, I'm going to start posting a little Valentine's Day story on February 1st. It's a Jasper/Bella story, all human. (This is a first for me.) I will put up the final chapter on Valentine's Day. I hope you'll check it out.
[KM1]Looked this one up. Feels weird, but that's how it shows on the internet with all the photos