Chapter Ten:

Chapter Ten:

The Taunting of Vampires

May 31, 2004—Edward Anthony Masen

The blood of my human victim pulsed through me, his murderous thoughts still running through my mind. He had wanted to kill that little blonde girl on the corner walking home from school. I had stopped him. It was a simple enough concept: The predator hunting and killing the prey. The vampire stalking and murdering the human before he could harm another living soul. Yet it still brought disgust and self-loathing to me as I thought about it. Something about it was still wrong, so utterly and inexcusably wrong. He was a murderer, a man that had wanted to do things with that little girl of eight years that no young girl should ever have to experience. And yet, I still couldn't shake it from my mind that he was still a human—no matter how corrupted he was—and by doing what I had, I was no better than him.

I had tried hunting animals again, but I couldn't do it. I had no motivation to be good while on my own, which is why I had been seeking out Carlisle and Esme, to apologize profusely to and hope they would take me back in. There was no way that I could have a conscience and stop murdering unless there were others to help me in my times of need.

It had taken several long, tedious years of searching, again and again sorting through dates and the names of the many different cities that Carlisle had moved to over the past eight decades. And every four or so years he would move again, resume a different position, and I would have to start anew all over again. So many mentions of him in public records that it took four years to finally locate him in Forks, Washington. With only his name and the address that I had taken off the job application that I had stolen from the local hospital, I had gone to the enormous white house he lived in only to discover it empty and full of dust. The scents of several unfamiliar vampires had reached my nose then, and I knew that Carlisle had yet again moved on after only a few months.

But why? my brain had asked as I left the great white house, dejected once again. Why would he move again? It had only been a few months, and Carlisle always stayed until the humans started to get suspicious of his young appearance. So, why?

I traveled again for another month--in a vain attempt to locate him once again--before I got another lead that Carlisle was in Canada, his home in the middle of the wilderness. The signs were obvious as I got nearer to where his home should be. They stared me coldly in the face. All the usual signs of an animal drinker were in the woods, relatively recently dug graves for dead and bloodless animals. The scents of the same vampires in Forks were here. Except for one. This one scent was the newest smelling and positively reeked of human blood, old and being burned up. The scent of a new vampire. But something was wrong about it, it smelled of fresh human blood too, something I could only pick out because of my long years of being around human drinkers, something that Carlisle would have never recognized or even realized was there.

It was in the town too, the smell of the same vampire.

And yet, despite the blood I could smell mixed in with the scent, it was beautiful.

Freesias, and strawberries, and the unmistakable sweet scent of a vampire. It was the best thing that I had ever smelled in my entire existence, and I wanted more.

I followed it to a large Victorian-style house, but the scent didn't stop there. It intermingled with Carlisle's, the two scents extremely fresh—as if they had just left the house only a few minutes before. I wondered if Carlisle realized that there was a human drinker among his family as I followed the scent, leaving the new house that Esme had renovated along with the other vampires that had joined Carlisle's make-shift family.

The clouds rolled in the sky, a storm was coming—that much was clear. The wind started to howl and pushed the scent around, making it fainter as I tried to follow it and went in circles in the effort to find the source of it. I had lost the trail and was just starting to lose hope of finding the scent again when a gust of wind blew it right into me, nearly knocking me over with the intensity of the sweet female vampire's aroma. This was nothing like smelling it as it faded with the wind, no! This was better, so much better.

I took off after it, determined to get to the source of the smell. The wind tousled my hair, icy cold to any normal person, but I wasn't any normal person. I relished in the sensation of flying as I ran with the dead man's blood rushing through me, being absorbed. I would see Carlisle again, and Esme. My parents. I knew Carlisle was hurt by our fight but it was worse for me, I had to live with the fact that I had hurt my father so much by my simple decision to change diet.

But Carlisle got his wish—he got a family after so many years of longing for a companion to join him in his journey through time. He had what he deserved after so many years of sacrificing himself to help others, going against our very nature by feeding on animals and being a doctor.

And I would get to meet the new vampire in Carlisle's now large coven. I wanted to meet her. I smiled at the thought. For some reason I felt an inexplicable attraction to her, though I had only inhaled her scent and had not even seen her, let alone met her. It was something so new, but I was willing to embrace it. Why couldn't I be happy? I had spent over one hundred years alone, so why could I not have someone who was my significant other, or even a close friend?

Carlisle's thoughts reached me, a faint whisper that continued to grow stronger and louder as I neared his position. The other vampire was with him, the female. From the hazy view I got of her through his thoughts, she was small and a little younger than me with dark silky hair. An angel.

I began to rush forward to the scent that belonged to the angel stuck on earth, but that's when I heard it. A muffled boom as the sound of stone on stone resounded, and a small, almost unintelligible cry of pain entered the air. The sound of a vampire colliding with another vampire. I froze, completely shocked as a loud, menacing laugh filled the forest, the sound of bells and chimes, yet scary and alarming at the same time. The voice that belonged to the angel.

And then she spoke for the first time, and I couldn't believe my ears as I heard what she said, causing so much pain to Carlisle with the beautiful voice that directed so much hate towards him. So much hate that it hurt me to hear it coming to me through the trees, even though it was not directed at me. "Did you honestly think that I loved you?"

Carlisle's thoughts screamed in agony as those words tore through him, cutting him to pieces as his mind made sense of the words. He had believed that she loved him.

The angel, or demon, or the being that I hopelessly wanted to be with, sneered, "Then you are a fool. An old, incompetent fool."

This was wrong, so very wrong. Never should a voice so beautiful yet so full of hate come from an angel, and yet here it was. The voice was twisted in hatred but somehow it made it even more horrifyingly exquisite. How could she hurt Carlisle like that? Her thoughts were coming as a blank to me, I knew she was there but I couldn't hear her as she continued to torture Carlisle with words. And I couldn't move, no matter how much I wanted to. I wanted to save Carlisle—he had experienced enough pain and misery in his life, he needed no more. But this girl seemed determined to give it to him and all I could do was stand there, dumbstruck, as she prolonged Carlisle's anguish.

"Oh, Carlisle, Carlisle, Carlisle," she sighed, her voice wistful and laced with barely contained fury. "Did you honestly think that I was that naïve?" she stressed. "That I didn't have a power?"

Carlisle choked as his mind went into a flurry of thought. I could hear him as he reflected on what he had believed in the past, that this girl—Isabella—had no power, that he had treated her like any other vampire. And I heard how he changed her. She, like me, had been dying. She, like me, had the Spanish Influenza. That she, like me, had been too far gone to save. And that she, also like me, had been changed to be a companion. Only she was to be a replacement for me. A child to help get through being a vampire and to teach to be good. Carlisle's thoughts went into overdrive as he remembered exactly how it had been with me when I had finished the change and laughed at the idea of vampires, the exact same thing she had done and that we were the only two vampires he knew that had laughed at the news.

She wasn't similar to me. She was almost exactly like me, something that Carlisle had failed to notice after he had changed her, or well, noticed but didn't think too much about. He had focused on her similar circumstances and attitude towards the world, not the outcomes of her decisions, such as the one to leave and drink humans.

And then what she had just said hit him and his mind froze in horror. She has a power. She knows everything.

But what was everything? I wondered.

"Oh, yes, Carlisle. A power so wondrously useful and yet so annoying at the same time. You see, I know things. I know that you suffer every day because of the bronze-haired vampire named Edward that left you," I winced as I realized exactly how much pain I had caused in my absence, "I know that you changed me to be his replacement, and I know that you are terrified that I will kill you."

All those things were true to some extent in Carlisle's eyes. But he believed she had spun it all out of proportion and had focused more on the fact that he had changed her because she reminded him of me rather than on the fact that he actually did love her, despite her beliefs. It struck me then that this angel, Isabella, was afraid of love.

"I know things you can't even dream of," she hissed, and Carlisle shivered from the undisguised power in her voice. It emanated through my mind as he spluttered, unable to form a coherent thought.

"That—that day in my office—when you brought up Edward—"

I saw and heard the day he was speaking of as clearly as if I were there when she had entered his office and seemingly inadvertently brought up the subject of me and who I was, as Carlisle realized that she had already known everything. Her next words were spoken as if she was talking about the weather, full of faux kindness and sounding just like how a person would tell a little child that two plus two equaled four, not three.

"Yes, Carlisle, I did it to hurt you."

My mind roared in protest as Carlisle's world shattered. "Why?" he gasped, thoughts empty of everything but that single word.

"Why?" she echoed, fury returning to her voice in full force, it rising to fill the air. "Why?!" she roared. "Because you are a sick, sadistic bastard, that's why!" I had to disagree a little. Out of the two of them, she was the one being the most sadistic, not him. "You changed me to make me into Edward! You changed me against my will!" she screamed, and I could almost see Carlisle's grimace as she pressed the foot that she had been using to pin him down harder and his ribs started to creak from the pressure being exerted on them. Carlisle's mind flashed to when she was first changed and had told him she wanted to die. Now he understood that she had not forgiven him at all, but simmered for more than nine months about it instead, plotting a way to get revenge. That she had not been crying because she was sad and willing to forgive him, but instead because she was enraged.

Even as he had tried to avoid the same 'mistake' of not helping her along he had made with me, he had inadvertently made another one. He had ignored the broodiness and self-loathing that I'd had for myself in the years following my change. Only her reaction was worse than mine. Much, much worse.

"You sick, sadistic—" Carlisle began, but he couldn't finish. Isabella waited patiently for a few moments for him to say the word that we both knew he wanted to say but couldn't: the word bitch.

Her voice turned low and dangerous in an instant. "You are weak," she finally said. "You are no father of mine." Carlisle's thoughts became pained filled. "I will leave you," she continued. "I will go, and feed on humans and do as I wish. And you will not stop me."

I saw through Carlisle's mind as she turned to leave, clearly satisfied with the devastated wreck of what used to be Carlisle Cullen.

But suddenly Carlisle lunged forward, latching onto her arm with a vice-grip in an attempt to keep her from leaving. Isabella was his world, the thing that had kept him going the past several months and he didn't want her to leave, no matter how much pain she had caused him. "Isabella, please—"

I suddenly unfroze when she whirled back on him, screeching at the top of her lungs in fury. "DON'T CALL ME THAT!" she roared as I sprinted through the trees, trying to get there before something happened. Something that was bad. I wanted to be near this once angel, but I had to protect Carlisle from even more hurt. He was my first loyalty, the one who was my sire, my father.

The trees were thinning, a clearing just barely visible through the trees, and Isabella continued to yell at Carlisle in that voice that was hers and yet not hers at the same time. "YOU KNOW NOTHING OF ME! HOW DARE YOU TOUCH ME?!" I could just see them through the trees, two white figures, one on his knees in the forest while the other was violently yanking her arm free of the man on his knees. Carlisle.

I put on an extra burst of speed, getting even nearer as Carlisle's saddened voice begged, "No, Isa—"

She cut him off. "Go to hell," she said, enunciating each word carefully. Her arm came up, and in an instant I knew what she was going to do. I growled—as much as I cared for this creature (though I didn't quite understand why), she had gone too far.

In the last moment before her hand came in contact with the side of Carlisle's face, I reached her. Thrusting my hand out, I wrapped my fingers around her forearm and stopped it from striking Carlisle.

She spun around to face me, bright red eyes furious and seeking the being that had stopped her from completing her quest for vengeance. Her already ashen features paled even more as she came face to face with me, and I was sure I was quite the sight with my eyes black-red from a combination of the blood and the fury coursing through me, my hair windswept and my gaze cold.

She was devastatingly beautiful, Isabella. Her hair was chocolate brown and silkily long and her pale features were highlighted by her round face and widow's peak along with fine-looking cheekbones. She was also very petite, probably only five foot three or five foot four, almost a full foot shorter than me. But even more stunning were her eyes, scarlet red in color, and big and wide. But what got me was the depth in them, the absolute amount of emotion showed in them.

Anger, pain, betrayal, self-loathing, fear, and—above all—hope. A hope for the future.

Carlisle Cullen

Edward was here. My Edward was here. With me, with all of us. He had returned. He wanted to be part of my family again. The hole that was in my heart from when he had left was already healing, and the one from Isabella was starting to go away. If Edward was here, everything would be okay. He would convince her to stay.

I remembered how, on the first day of her being a vampire she had said she thought she had no soul. Was that why she had done all this? Because she was afraid she had no soul? I remembered Edward's words he had used to justify his actions before he had left.

If I'm going to be damned, I might as well do it thoroughly.

But Edward was here now. I sighed in relief; things would get better now that he was here. He could meet the others.

I glanced up, watching as he stared intently at Isabella and knew that he knew most of the important details of what had happened the last few months, whether he heard it from my mind or hers.

Isabella turned her full attention to Edward and I could have sworn she had a heart attack, which would have required her heart to start beating again—that was how shocked she was.

I couldn't move as I watched the scene before me unravel.

Isabella Marie Swan

I froze, a multitude of emotions passing through me as my brain comprehended exactly who was in front of me.

Edward Masen!

What the hell was he doing here? And why did he just stop me from hitting this vile man before me? This was wrong, all wrong. Edward shouldn't be here, and yet for some reason I was glad he was. He was even more beautiful than I had first believed, his hair tousled and his square jaw set in determination. His features contorted in fury, and I was suddenly afraid. Whatever the reason he was here now defending Carlisle was not good for me. I tried to pull my arm from his grasp, but he didn't let go.

The wind started to howl and blow, the trees sweeping in the gust created. The leaves rustled loudly and the branches knocked against one another, creating a racket that continued to grow louder as the clouds rumbled and lightening began to flash in the sky.

Carlisle's sobs reached me faintly through the din, but they were less pain filled now than before. Then I realized it, Edward was returning to Carlisle to become an animal drinker again. That would be the only reason he would come back, and I suddenly started laughing at the hilarity of it all.

While I had been plotting to leave, Edward had been trying to find his sire. My master plan that I had believed to be near fool-proof had failed, collapsing upon itself when it was almost complete, simply because of this handsome, young vampire opposite me. It was too much—my plan had been foiled by the seemingly insignificant vampire before me, with next to no effort on his part.

The whole time I had been laughing, Edward had just been watching me, waiting for me to calm down. But I couldn't, this was too much. Lightning crackled over us again and thunder boomed loudly overhead. A storm was coming, both literally and figuratively, because Edward's eyes were just as cold as the coming storm. He was angry, furious even, and he was about to lose control. His red-black eyes danced with the emotional turmoil within his mind.

Finally, I had myself under some amount of control, and now I was angry. I had been counting on his hate toward Carlisle for everything to work, but instead he had come back and ruined everything! Now what would I do? I could not remain here, not after my confession, the revealing of my true feelings, but I could not leave now that darling Edward had come back to his master like the golden retriever he really was.

"Are you done now?"

His words were cold, but his eyes betrayed his true emotions.

I was disgusted as I recognized the familiar feelings of love and hope and fading hate. I tried to pull my arm from his, but his grip was too tight. If I had been human, I would have lost feeling in my arm by now. "Let go of me," I snarled, my fury only growing as he pretended that I hadn't even said the words, though I knew that he had heard them very clearly.

"Well?"

His indifferent tone caused me to roar and push at his chest with my free hand with all my might, but he didn't budge, despite the fact that I knew it was a very powerful shove, one that would have sent Emmett to the ground easily along with his ego. But Edward had fresh human blood in his system, something that even I lacked at the moment, so he was temporarily stronger than I.

"You had your fun, little Edward Masen. Can I not have mine? Release me," I ordered, though he paid it no heed. If anything, his grip tightened.

"Fun? Is that what this is to you? Fun? Some game to play until it either gets too boring or you win? Is it?" He growled, shaking me.

I smiled a sinister look that reached my eyes, as the corner of my mouth lifted in response. A look that I knew screamed predator.

Abruptly, my face turned innocent, something that I knew disconcerted Edward immensely. He grew uneasy with me, though he would not show it. "Why, of course, little Edward Masen. Why else would I do it? This man has damned me to a life of loneliness and hate. Should I not return the favor? Is it not my right to do so?" I questioned. Edward's face turned stony.

"You have no right. Carlisle has tried to help you."

I laughed again, my voice ringing in my ears and around the clearing. "Carlisle tried to make me into you," I mocked, jabbing his chest with my finger. "A replacement. I know you can read minds, little Edward. I know you heard his thoughts. And you heard mine. You know our stories."

Edward's brow furrowed, his grip tightened on my arm yet again. The waves of frustration clearly rolled off him, and I suddenly realized something that made me burst into fits of demented giggles all over again. "You can't read my mind," I taunted, sounding beyond gleeful, which I was. "You can't read my mind," I ridiculed. "Ha," I said, smirking, my voice choked with the amount of amusement I found in the situation yet again. "You, the knower of all, can't read a simple girl's mind. You can't even see the truth—," suddenly I was cut off as Edward's hand appeared out of nowhere, one moment at his side, the next wrapped around my neck as he lifted me from the ground. Good, I had made him angry.

I still managed to laugh at him as he tried to throttle me, ignoring Carlisle's weak pleas for him to stop. Both his hands wrapped around my neck in a desperate attempt to silence me. "I'm not one of your human victims, little Edward," I choked out in a voice full of mania. "You can't silence me," I squeezed out. I was trying to irk him, and it was working. And the best part was that he didn't even realize it. "Who'd ya kill to get the blood in your system right now, Edward? Was it was little girl? Did she squeal when you strangled the life out of her small body—?" He slammed me into a thick tree, hands still tight around my throat. I knew very well that he had killed the man who wanted the little girl, instead of her, but we both knew that he had really wanted her, the blood of an innocent.

My face would have been red by now and my lips starting to tinge blue if I were human, but I wasn't, so I instead enjoyed the rage that filled his face, his hands trying to crush the life out of me. "Or was it the young boy who walked after her, after you killed the sex offender? Maybe just a little snack to get the vile taste of villain out of your mouth?" I had run out of air, and I slowly sucked in some more to continue. "Tell me, did you enjoy it? Did you like the taste of the boy's blood? We both know you slipped—you couldn't help yourself. And his cries for his mummy and daddy—were those satisfying too?"

A roar of rage, similar to that of a mountain lion's, came from his lips as he yanked me down from against the tree and pinned me to the ground, causing a large dent to appear as we landed. His eyes were wide, furious, his hair fell forward into his eyes, but he didn't dare move his hand to push it back, less he lose leverage on me. His body straddled my waist, a knee on each side of my hips. I grinned, and suddenly he realized that this was all a game to me, nothing but a way for me to get satisfaction from the fact that I had infuriated him, the controlled one, and the one who rarely lost his temper. It was all a game.

He jumped up, dashing away so that he stood by Carlisle only ten feet away. I sucked in oxygen, though I didn't need it, rubbing my neck where he had gripped it so hard that it had crushed my larynx before it healed quickly upon his release of me. My smirk was malicious as I looked up at him from the little Bella-sized crater he had created. "And you know what is really pathetic?" I told him.

Neither responded, not so much as a nod in my direction to indicate that they had heard me, so I continued.

"I was counting on you to save me from this hell," I said, keeping my gaze level on Edward. My eyes bored into his and he flinched, looking quickly away. "I was counting on your hate for him," I jerked my head in Carlisle's direction, "to help me get out of here and make him pay. I guess the joke's on me."

Edward glanced at me, an expression of sadness in his eyes. He was sad that I had fallen this far. He felt pity for me. I spat venom from my bitten tongue—the product of Edward's attempts to strangle me—onto the ground, disgusted. "I don't need your pity," I spat, angry. "I don't want it. And I don't want your sadness or grief over 'what I have become.'" I quoted him, knowing that this was the thought that had been going through his mind since he had released me. He jerked, looking straight at me again in shock before it turned to sadness again. He empathized with me that I had to know so much, be the bearer of such knowledge that even he never really heard, the mind reader. People could lie to him through their thoughts, but I knew the absolute truth no matter what.

"It's not what you think," I growled at him. "At least I know when I'm being lied to. At least I can protect myself from plotting little vampires," I mocked him. He didn't take the bait this time, instead turning to Carlisle, who still lay on the ground, and helping him up. Carlisle embraced him, purely happy now that his Edward was back, his darling little son. I felt only a touch of envy for Edward, the loved one out of us two, before I eradicated the very thought of that from my mind. I didn't need love, least of all from Carlisle, the creator of my hell.

Carlisle released him, holding him at arms length to examine him. He sighed, relieved and reassured that Edward was there for real this time and to stay. Edward glanced in my direction, at my small, crumpled form still on the forest floor, and then back at Carlisle. In an instant, I knew they meant to take me back to that wretched house, back to those people.

I jumped up, turning on my heel and running in the opposite direction of the house, determined not to go back. I would not, could not! I would not go back to the place of my plotting, back to where a coven of vampires awaited my return. Not back to Alice, who would have told the others some of what had happened by now. I would not face the shame that I had failed.

I knew before Edward had caught up to me that there was no hope for me, that I was going back whether I liked it or not. So it was no surprise to me as Edward launched himself at me from over fifteen yards away, wrapping his arms around my torso and pinning my own arms in place as he locked his hands together and we fell to the ground, rolling a few times before our momentum faded and Edward was able to stand with me pinned to him, my back pressed tight against his chest to prevent me from turning around in his grasp and escaping.

I kicked and twisted, trying to free myself as Edward walked at human speed with me back to where we had left Carlisle not to far back. I really hadn't gotten far before Edward had caught up with me. Carlisle looked down at me with deep sadness in his golden eyes. I spat at his face, snarling as Edward paused to let Carlisle wipe the venom from his face and allowed him to grab my legs. He adjusted his grip on me and then we were off, the wind whistling past us at that flying speed that only we could achieve, though instead of being liberating for me as it usually would have been, it only made me feel more trapped as my prison neared closer and closer.

I still struggled as hard as I could against Edward and Carlisle, but it was no use. So I resorted to screaming and yelling my protests and insults at them as we entered the Cullen's house, the Cullen family staring at me as Carlisle and a strange bronze-haired vampire towed me in through the front door and up the stairs to my room, or more appropriately, my prison cell.

WHOOT! You guys all rock! This story has 200 reviews; 12,835 hits; 66 favorites; and 152 alerts! Gosh, you guys all totally rock; give yourself a pat on the back. I'm so excited!

Edward&Bella Forever: Thanks for the review! I'm just sorry I wasn't able to reply personally. I guess I can't say that I'll update soon because I just have, but thanks for the encouragement!

And thanks to all of the rest of you who reviewed and those who didn't, even though I strongly encourage you to drop a review ;)! You guys totally encouraged me to write this chapter! I hope I got back to all of you, and if I didn't I'm sorry!

Thanks also to my beta Jimita for editing this tremendously long chapter (for this story, anyway) and having such a large amount of patience with me while I was writing it. You rock!

By the way, the whole DocX thing is extremely annoying. If you trust the person enough to have them beta for you and to communicate with them, you might as well exchange e-mails and do it that way. I mean, most of us already have our e-mails available for people to see on our accounts, right?

Also I just learned about this website. It's called www (dot) FreeRice (dot) com. It's a vocabulary website and for each vocab word you get correct, the UN World Food Program donates 20 grains of rice to help end hunger in other countries. If you all could just go and check out the site, that would be awesome. There's no need for e-mails or anything. Sponsors of the website pay for the rice donated. You might save a child from starvation.

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V.H.