May
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Edward
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My hands were twitching at my side. I reached out and punched it into the wall. The feeling of drywall cracking under my knuckles did little to ease my anger.
It was uncalled for, I acted out of line, and yet I wanted to go back into that room, wake her up and fuck her senseless. What should have been a rush of adrenaline was a rush of venom and pheromones.
Never, not in the three years since I'd known Bella, had I attacked her in one of my fits of rage. When she upset me and didn't listen to what I'd said, or lashed out at me like she'd done earlier, I had no problem with throwing her over my knee like a child.
I could hear her sleeping; I could see her in my mind, cherry red ass uncovered by the blankets, up in the air and waiting for me come back again. The next time my palm met with that soft skin it would be gentle and an apology.
I fell onto the couch and sat still to try and calm the racing in my dead veins. My eyes slipped shut and I tried to focus on nothing. The voices of other tenants in the building died, the danger of what I was doing was lost on me, but thinking of James made the anger bubble up again.
I thought, long and hard, about nothingness and everything all at once. I tried to avoid things that made me angry and focused on the good things that had occurred throughout my life.
Nothing from my human life came through other than the all consuming fire that ended my humanity and brought me to this one. Newborn years brought forth rough memories of a group of children who crossed my path. My sire had left for only a moment before I'd fled for the sweet smell of skinned knees and church scented clothing. The sounds of screaming children still echoed through my head.
Everything had violence and death leaked in between the cracks of my mind. Nothing could appease me or take the calm out to fight against the anger. I couldn't just go back in there and hurt Bella in my state of absolute rage.
At the thought of Bella my hand clenching the arm of the couch eased. A pang smacked my chest and took down my hunched shoulders, my legs released their tendons and I sunk into the threaded cushions.
I could see Bella on the side of the road, walking along the gravel ledge and becoming increasingly nervous as I followed her. When I stepped forward and she had stopped with those big brown eyes, shaking and terrified with no thought coming through her mind I was more than confused.
Slips of memories involving my time in her room, trying to read her mind and establish some kind of connection so I could just kill her already, were meshed with the long dark nights were she'd speak in her sleep. Nightmares were mixed with ridiculous mumblings of her home with her mother. I looked forward to each night and digging a little deeper into her subconscious.
But I couldn't help but think of how everything was now. Here I put her in constant danger, and yet I needed her around. If her mind was to open up to me one day, would I drain her like I'd intended to so long ago?
A being by my physical form jolted my eyes open, and before me wrapped a big, thick sweatshirt was Bella.
Her cheeks were stained with tears, her nose was running and she looked awful. Her red eyes met mine and her bottom lip quivered as she sucked in a deep breath. My whole body rocked forward to pull her down.
"I'm sorry," she whispered so quietly my ears strained to pick up her voice.
I wrapped my arm around waist and pulled her forward. She yelped as my wrist touched her tailbone and I winced along with her. Lying down, I pulled her on top of me, chest to chest and her head tucked under my chin. The anger was gone completely and replaced with the exhaustion that I was used to feeling by now.
"I acted wrongly," I murmured.
She shook her head. As always, she denied the truth of my words and believed the lies. But it was my fault, I had broken her down to a shell of a woman and continued to pick until I wormed my way in.
Her body trembled against mine with each breath she took. My eyes wrenched shut and I tried to ignore everything but the heat of her skin against mine.
--
Bella wriggled uncomfortably beside me in her seat. I had bought goose down pillows to put against the leather but she was still in pain.
We had left the city and were somewhere in Oregon. I burned furniture drenched in our scent to deter the nomads from catching onto anything. The burnt smell would spread around the area for days before they figured out that we were gone.
The worry dominated most of my focus, which was a good thing considering Bella had been traveling with her pants around her knees. I deserved the torture of an erection for hours on end after the damage I had caused her. Welts littered her ass and thighs, large ones had bled if she moved too much. I hadn't controlled my strength; I put too much pressure and hurt her.
I hung my head in shame the remaining time were in Washington, but Bella was constantly arguing that she had deserved it and that she was sorry.
It infuriated me beyond all reason.
Bella tugged on my right arm with timid fingers and I looked at her brown eyes that pleaded with me. My brow lifted from the glare I was casting on the road and I smiled at her.
"Where do we go from here?" she asked.
I sighed. "Wherever the wind takes us, or until we can acquire some help."
"Do you know anyone who can help?" she looked hopeful.
"Not a soul." Her face fell. "From what James said and thought, my sire is east."
"So, do we go and find him? Is it safe to?"
"Before he created me he was adamant about not killing humans. I don't think he would change his ways so easily, his will was too strong. Depending on how he views me—a creature which he abandoned—and how he lives his life now, we might be able to find an ally. But I also saw that he's taken a mate."
"If he has a mate wouldn't he be more inclined to help?" Bella nearly whispered this.
The back of my neck pricked with what would have been sweat. Awkwardness filled the car and I slipped in between two tractor-trailers to get onto the merge exit. The hand on my arm slipped to my thigh as Bella squeezed and closed her eyes at the near collision of the cars I pulled in front of. I laughed loudly and she breathed out her gasp.
"You act like I'd crash," I teased.
"You almost did!" she shrieked. "Pull up to this gas station; I have to use the bathroom."
I pulled along the side of the station and waited until Bella had the key from the clerk and was safely locked inside before I filled up the tank. I listened intently for a predator that would try and get into the women's bathroom and was happily pleased when Bella walked out, waved at me and returned the key.
--
Night had fallen; Bella was lying across the back of my Volvo, deeply asleep after fifteen hours of driving. I was going until I was further east. My goal was to make it to Illinois by sometime soon. Chicago was my destination in all of this after all.
Whenever I had troubled times in my life I would go to Chicago and visit the place I'd grown up in as a human. Somehow with Bella in the backseat of my car traveling along with me, I felt more accomplished. I wondered what she would think of my human home, the hospital where I'd died as a human, and the small wooden house that my sire had brought me to while I changed.
I wondered if she would come to the cemetery where my parents were buried and share in the unfettered grief that I always gorged on.
It had been ten year since I'd gone back and I wanted to see all that had changed. I wanted to see my old room with the multicolored floorboards that my father had to replace because I was a rowdy child who liked to splinter them with my new shoes that my mother bought. I longed for the photo albums that were so rare for middleclass families to have, but my mother always paid for pictures of me and my father every year.
The feeling of want penetrated me thickly and the depression sunk down on me. I hadn't had much of it before, vampires didn't take to emotional distress as humans did, but thinking of the faded memories that I didn't want to leave had a sob caked in my throat.
Bella stirred behind me and groaned into her pillow. The sound darted to my groin and she shifted again, this time releasing a leg from the confines of her blanket. I turned up the heat.
I was half focusing on the milky white of her thigh that led to the swell of her ass and half on the trucks around me that were going for an overnight haul as well. Bella grabbed my attention once more as she turned her head to face me and lifted an arm over her head. The movement of her elbow dropping the blanket and presented me with a lovely sight of her shirt bunched under her breasts and her lower half almost completely naked.
A truck beside me honked its horn as I swerved a bit out of my lane. The lust was intergrading its way into my vision while blocking out my senses. So many hours in the car didn't only affect Bella.
I turned the radio on and picked the first station without static, putting it loud enough for only me to hear.
I merged quickly and drove through a small area lined with strip clubs and malls, ignoring several women who came up to my car at red lights. I threw my jacket over Bella's legs and tried to keep the venom down. The scent of drugs, sex and blood were heady and I wanted nothing more than to get out and indulge myself.
Bella groaned and opened her eyes. "So bright," she mumbled.
"We're passing through to the next merge way," I whispered. "Do you need to use the restroom?"
She nodded and lay back down as I drove along, searching for a spot with the least amount of felons surrounding it. There was a dirty convenience store down a street lined with houses one on top of the other. I pulled into a tight spot and threw Bella her jeans.
"Where are we?" she asked.
"South Dakota, once we get onto route ninety we can go on until Iowa where there's a merge for eighty."
She frowned at me as she pulled on her pants. "Where are we going?"
"Illinois," I answered and got out of the car.
"Why Illinois? Do you think he's there?"
I extended my hand to help her up on shaky legs. "No, I don't think he's there. He's probably further east, most likely up north, but Chicago is a good place to stop and regroup. It's better than driving around aimlessly."
"I agree." She nodded as we entered the store. The clerk scrutinized us as we walked in. "Do you have a bathroom?" Bella asked sheepishly.
The clerk handed over the key, and while I gave Bella some privacy I looked around the store for things she might need in the morning. I grabbed a basket full of food, a gallon of milk, some paper eating wear and utensils along with a couple other things. We wouldn't be stopping for a while after this.
When we were both done, Bella and I went back out to the car. She scrambled to the back seat and pulled off her pants again, falling asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.
I merged onto the highway and tried to focus on the glaring red lights of the cars in front of me and the yellow blinkers, the orange roadway signs and darkness under the bridges instead of the anxiety that came with the thought of my childhood home.
--
"This is taking forever," Bella sighed.
"Only a couple more hours," I argued back.
"Why are we going out this far? Couldn't we have gone to California, or Florida? Somewhere, you know, nice." Her eyes narrowed at the gray sky and the wind picked, smacking fat raindrops on the windshield.
"I'd have to stay inside all day."
She pursed her lips. "You'd be a real vampire."
I threw my head back and laughed. "Yes, a real testy vampire who you would have to keep entertained."
"I've never had a problem in the past." She winked at me and laughed. Bella was going a bit stir crazy being locked up with me.
I stopped off at a Howard Jonson to let her bathe and sleep in a real bed for a while. I hunted only finding rabbits and squirrels, a few doe on the outskirts of town, but nothing to put away for future traveling reference.
We were close now, only a few hours off our mark and the tension surrounding us was hanging down from the from the roof of the car like oxygen masks. Bella wanted a bed, I wanted Bella, we were both going to be getting what we wanted in the end.
"Why Chicago?" she asked and stretched her arms over her head. Her chest pushed out with unrestrained breasts and hard nipples from the open window.
"I have a house there," I answered distractedly.
She put her arms down and looked at me with a stunned expression. "You have a house there? Why? You've been in Washington for three years."
"And several places before that," I said. "The house belonged to my parents before they passed." She gasped. "I bought the house with a fake name, since I had 'died' during the influenza. I pay to keep it restored and in proper condition."
"After all these years." She was trying to pull information out of me. I never told her much about my past, only the basics of what defined me.
"Yes, I respect my parents, even if I don't remember them fully."
"Is it hard?" she whispered.
I smirked. "It's always hard."
"Edward, I'm serious!"
"No, it's not hard," I lied. "I don't remember them; I can't even remember my mother's face clearly without looking at a picture first. They're gone, dead, as all humans wind up being."
"I don't think it would be so bad," she murmured as her eyes moved to the window. "I'm leaving my family now and I don't feel awful like I should."
"Because you'll be going back. You're not a blood drinking monster who would kill them the second you came in contact."
"I could be," she whispered.
I jerked the car to the shoulder of the road and she screamed at the sudden movement. I was leaning over her an instant later. Her eyes were wide mouth gaping and I grasped her jaw in my hand, trying to resist the urge to squeeze.
"Don't say that," I hissed. "Don't you ever fucking say that."
"Why won't you change me?" she mumbled awkwardly with my hand still gripping her jaw. Tears sprung in her eyes and I let go, but realized too late it wasn't from pain.
"What the hell do you mean, Bella?" I growled and leaned back into my seat. My thumb and forefinger pinched the bridge of my nose.
"Why can't you just change me? If I was like you we wouldn't have to run away from those vampires. Or does this go back to before? If I'm not human would you throw me away like I'm certain you would?" I said nothing and she fumbled with her seatbelt, sitting on her knees. "Say something! Defend yourself!"
"I have nothing to say. You're not being changed."
"Fine," she yelled and yanked her door open.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," I hissed and was out of the car a second later.
She was walking into the woods on the side of the highway. Bella threw her leg over a chain link fence and vaulted herself over. She stumbled but stuck the landing. I was yelling after her the entire way. Once I was out of sight from the highway I ran towards her and threw her over my shoulder.
"No!" she screeched.
"Where the hell do you think you're going?" I asked angrily.
"I'm going into the woods to get eaten by a bear," she sneered. "Maybe if I'm lucky I'll find a vampire and they'll use me as a snack."
"That's ridiculous," I sighed.
"Why won't you change me?" she screamed again.
"Bella shut your fucking mouth." She stopped making noises and I set her down her feet again. She was crying silent tears but her face was red in anger.
"Stop controlling me," she mumbled. "You control everything."
"You're damn right I control everything. You're a human and I'm a vampire, I win over control."
"I'm not a child."
"Obviously," I sighed. Her face lifted a bit. "You are still a child. Nineteen years old is a fraction of my life and you know not what to do with yours if you want to waste away eternity."
She flamed with anger. "You don't know anything," her voice was quiet and threatening.
"I know what I need to." With that I turned and picked Bella up, squeezing her tightly to my chest and hopping back over the fence.
Her screeching was lost on me as I threw her into the back seat and put on the child locks. I drove toward the Illinois limits and sighed as I crossed into the state. Bella stopped her punching and kicking at the upholstery after an hour or so, she collapsed in on herself and curled up into a ball, sobbing and crying weakly.
When we reached the house, old and brown with climbing green tendrils up the side, she was asleep and whimpering in her dreams. Her arms pushed me away when I pulled her to my chest.
A hole tore in my stomach as I set her down on my old human bed and watched as her arms curled around her knees, rocking in unconsciousness.
A/N: So much drama.
I don't normally advertise within stories, but I think this is something everyone should know about.
The Fandom Gives Back is going on right now with author auctions to support the fight against childhood cancers. Cancer is something that runs in my family and I've witnessed the effects first hand.
I'm auctioning a boat load of stories and even a collaboration with Kitschisme for a one-shot. You can check out my profile for a link to the Fandom Gives Back web page and to see what craziness I'm willing to write. I'll just have to give up recreational reading for a month or so.
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