If Only
This is the entirety of "Chapter 29: How Lovely the Scarlet Path." from Carlisle's point of view.
He listened to the sounds of her painting. The swift strokes of the bristles, back and forth. The sensual slide of the oils awakened his heart as he imagined the colors she might have chosen, slipping together in beautiful bursts of yellow and red and emerald green.
It was almost erotic – the way Esme had such control over the canvas, the way she commanded those colors with every motion of her fingers, the way her eyes glittered with the reflections of what she had produced.
Carlisle saw the world as she saw it through her paintings. Painting, by God, was the most beautiful practice Carlisle had ever witnessed.
There was, he thought, something spiritual about it. Carlisle was often able to find a spiritual side to anything, but art was somehow more poignant. He understood how men could make it their religion; how the soul could accidentally slip out of its shell and fall with a splash onto the soupy paints one swirled into images that fed his imagination.
He wanted to join Esme again, before that empty canvas, and he wanted to paint with her. He wanted to take the brush from her hand when her fingers grew tired and finish what she had started. He wanted to dip the bristles into his heart and show her just how bright these colors he kept deep inside were.
And if she was willing, she would open her heart and let him look at the colors she hid.
Something told Carlisle that Esme's colors would complement his.
Oh, the art they could make together.
These thoughts had consumed him night after night. And during those nights, they fed off his reason, growing higher and wider as thick, monstrous vines and leaves do in the summer, like foliage clotting his mind. Somewhere along his narrow path, Carlisle had stumbled. He had given into this foreign power and he had become its loyal subject.
It was almost easier when she was in the room withhim. He could see that she was a person, and not just a woman. He could see that she was his Esme, and he could witness all the countless things he loved about her. The care in her eyes and the warmth in her smile, her wild imagination smarting behind her gaze, and her creativity flowing freely off her lips… and the unconditional gratitude and understanding and tentative hope in all that she did.
But when she was not right in front of him, Carlisle sometimes thought… a little differently.
His fingers were tapping on his desk. For an hour now, his hand had been disgracefully idle. There was work to be done – always, there was work to be done. There were prescriptions to be filled, and patients to check up on, and documents to order. His mind was loaded with insufferable technicalities, and what-ifs peppering about like crushed berries, and all breeds of medical nonsense. But above it all, hovering like a fine swan, was Esme painting upstairs.
He listened as she rushed through the hall and into her room, the metallic cadmium scent of paint pigments following her trail.
She turned on the faucet.
Curses.
She couldn't have possibly needed to bathe. Esme was a disastrously neat painter. For her to run a bath for just the scent of turpentine alone was preposterous.
It was almost as if she were trying to torture him.
The swift slip-swish of clothes falling to the ground made his throat clench and his hands grip the sides of the desk. The dollop of her toes touching the water made him gasp. He wondered if she heard it.
It was utterly disgraceful, the tension between them across this household. She made one move – just one move – and it struck him like a dart, no matter how far apart they were.
He was tied to the wall, with his chest open, and his heart a fat target. Esme had perfect aim.
For some reason – Carlisle hadn't any idea why – he found his fingers blissfully working the buttons of his collar free. He was looking for something, digging beneath the stuffy wool of his sweater vest to find it…
With a sigh of relief, he found what he was looking for.
Rubbing the golden cross between his fingers, Carlisle struggled to find that tiny crevice of peace deep within. He used to be so familiar with this place, before Esme had begun... affecting him in this way.
That peace practically found him, once upon a time. Now he had to go searching for it, tossing and turning in a murky ocean with no sails to fly.
It was too deep beneath the water.
He let go of the cross, and his hand drifted slowly into his lap.
The water was too deep.
"Please, Esme..." The words were there in his mind, and they might have been on his lips as well. "Please."
He could plead with her all he wanted, but she would never hear him. And if she did, she would never know just why he pleaded. And well she shouldn't. She would think his only reason for changing her was to placate this wild fire in his heart.
Oh, but that had not been his reason! Why did God refuse to spare him these raging passions? Her change was an accident, an innocent accident caused only by his pity for her. He had wanted to care for her, to offer her another chance at what she thought she could not have. She thought she had failed, but he thought that maybe, with his help, she would succeed.
And now he was ruining everything.
I am a victim to the woman's hold, God. Help me. Guide me. Lead me into your Gladsome Light and away from this fire of impurity.
Carlisle found the courage to plead with God instead of Esme, and slowly, his fingers rose from his belt to his heart.
His breaths calmed and his eyes rested, and it was all the dust of nightmares.
Somehow he had found that sense of peace again. It was bright and still and quiet here. Content, but empty. It was as nice a place as he'd remembered it being. It was just getting harder to find.
The sounds of Esme dressing were so distant now. The pounding of footsteps up the stairs was so distant. The scent was so distant...
Then—
"Carlisle."
His name was spoken by his son, and he was there. The door to the master bedroom might have been a pile of splinters. He didn't care.
He urgently knocked his son's narrow shoulder and demanded, "How many? Edward, how many?"
But Edward's strain was too great to overcome. He knew he shouldn't breathe, and if he didn't breathe he couldn't speak.
Esme shouldn't breathe either.
Just as she opened her lungs to the scent, Carlisle's hand shot forward and smothered her nose and mouth. She whimpered against him, and he tried not to think of how soft her lips felt on the inside of his palm. He tried not to think of how she was still wet from her bath, how the drenched glossy curls of her hair clung to his arm as he restrained her.
He tried not to think of so many things that all he'd left himself to think of was the rising scent of blood in the air.
"Dear Lord."
This scent brought out the very worst in him.
He had to stay strong.
Edward rammed against the windows, his hands over his ears. "I can't stand it!"
The sight of his son in such distress left Carlisle more shaken than ever.
But strength, control... He needed to stay strong.
A delicious rush of instinct possessed him in that moment. Clasping his son's shirt in one hand and twisting Esme around with the other, Carlisle managed to rip the door off its hinges in a desperate escape.
The thrilling orchestra of shattering glass and Esme's fitful panting spurred his legs to carry him faster, over the railing and onto the ground. Edward was gone in a blur, and the trees swallowed them whole.
Away. They had to get away. As far away as possible.
"Don't breathe. Don't breathe. Don't breathe," Carlisle repeated the words like a terrified prayer against Esme's little ear, his own lungs throbbing with the clutches of the blood stained breeze that chased them.
But with every rapid step, he moved further away from it. This rush of their escape was so invigorating, it made him feel so strong. His veins were singing with venom that flowed like Esme's oil paints. It was like reliving the night he had saved her all over again.
Only now, he was the one who truly needed saving.
Esme kicked at him and clawed at him. She battered his every muscle, and scratched every inch of bare skin she could reach. Her knife-like teeth poked defensively at his throat, so close to those delicate lines of his scars, so close to swallowing that gold cross whole...
She shrieked obscene words and suggested terrible things, and she did not even realize it. It killed Carlisle to see her this way. His Esme, torn from the soul out, with her eyes blazing, blank and black. Her beautiful sunset eyes, darkened to a lost night.
Her voice was seductive and furious. Her fingers were everywhere, prodding him, plucking at him, spearing him with their heat until he felt the muscles in his arms unwinding, giving in to her wishes.
Carlisle almost forgot to ask for divine aid. He almost forgot that there was a higher power who could control them both.
Esme was just so strong. She was struggling, and God help him, he wanted to kiss the sense back into her, even like this. Even with her crazed eyes, and her terrible mouth. Because he could see the desperate woman beneath it all, trying to break free.
Damn it, he would break through to her.
He spoke to her unceasingly while he ran. It did not matter what he said, as long as he said something. And his words were as much for himself as they were for her.
"Sweet Esme... Please, come back to me. You cannot do this to me... Oh, God, Esme... You must find yourself. Remember who you are... Oh, I am still here with you. I won't leave you, Esme."
His arms held so tightly to her body he worried she would snap from the force of his hold. She was so small and light, yet so powerful in her struggle. Carlisle's heart shattered at the thought that she wanted to break away from him. But deep down he knew this was just the blood-lust, this was just the curse of her vampire instinct – a curse he had granted to her. She would hate him forever if he let her go, and though it pained him to do it, he had to restrain her even harder to keep her from going back there...
"Hold on, dear Esme. We're nearly away. We're almost there. Don't leave me, Bright Eyes. I have you… Oh, I have you."
And then her tortured cries shuddered away; her flailing limbs fell limp as he carried her, and she began to sob. Her short spurts of breath tickled against the fresh marks she had left in his neck, and the fleeting spots of warmth they left behind were sufficient enough an apology for Carlisle.
How could he tell her she was all too forgiven? Would she even let him speak to her after what had happened? He held her close as he walked through the forest, needing no direction to follow. His heart was his compass, and Esme was the Polar star. Down she went, into the leaves, and she curled up into a hopeless tangle of lovely pale arms and bare legs.
A single raindrop chastised him with a conscious poke to his shoulder.
He tried not to notice the bareness of her legs.
His gaze focused instead on her eyes, hoping he could make her see that nothing had changed because of this. He did not see her any differently now than he had several minutes ago...but somehow he doubted she would believe that.
She looked down and away from him, as if her eyes could not stand the weight his imposed on her. A hopeless whimper churned in her throat as she pulled her arms and legs in, anxious that she might take up more space than necessary. As if she were a burden to the space surrounding her.
"Will I never have control?" She raised her eyes in fear of his answer, but he could answer in no other way.
"You will if you have faith."
She sobbed again, and Carlisle wanted to reach between his ribs and offer her his heart.
"Faith, Carlisle?" Her lips shivered through his name, and she must not have seen that he shivered as well. "Faith in what?" She sounded so lost.
God. The existence of your soul. Hope in the promised good to come.
But he could not speak of these things. Not now. Not when there was something she still had to overcome before she could conquer anything else.
"Yourself," he replied.
She knew it before he had said it. "I don't understand..." Her little hands rummaged through the caramel curls about her head in frustration. "What am I doing wrong?"
"Nothing." Oh, you are perfect, my sweet angel. Nothing about you could ever be anything but right. "You have done no wrong thus far, Esme." His voice surprised him with its strength, and he was glad to have her eyes so sharp and receptive as he spoke. His words needed to be heard. "This is how you must cope. Resistance will not always be within your immediate control. You have..."
He stopped, his tongue retreating from the word.
Me.
Would she accept this as a reason to keep on this path? Was it possible that Esme, in all her doubts and confusion and flooding emotions, could find in him the answer to everything? Could he be her burning inspiration? Could he restore her faith?
The idea was so frightfully appealing, so intoxicating. Like he could wield the very powers of heaven all for her. Oh, but this was such an arrogant thought!
Carlisle would be damned before he played God, but here he was, wishing for that kind of power. Just to have Esme for himself would be enough. To have her staring at up at him this way, like he was the sun and she was the flower. It was dangerously addicting, but it was not inconceivable.
He could be her salvation, and she could be his.
"You did it," she murmured with eyes full of awe. "How?" she demanded. "You had no one."
Oh, but he had One. Since the beginning he had One. And this was the One he wanted so desperately for his Esme to have as well.
"That isn't true," Carlisle whispered in defense. He looked away from her beautiful face, wishing she could see just how untrue it was. But there was no way to rush this kind of enlightenment. He had to be patient with her. She was still so...
"I... I'm so... so lost."
She slammed her hand against the tree, shedding bits of bark around her in a storm of little wooden splinters.
No, not lost. Not my Esme. Never lost.
Just to show how lost she wasn't, Carlisle moved closer to her, and folded her trembling hand into his own. She was cold, and the heat he offered her pulled a sigh from her lips and yanked a delectable burst of male energy from the very core of his body.
"You are not lost," he whispered fiercely above her. "I'm here, Esme."
Her eyes fluttered open, and a brilliant sunrise escaped.
"You're here, and I'm here," he said the words slowly, and even smiled a little because her eyes just had that affect on him, "and we're going to be fine."
He held her tighter, and her trembling calmed. The trouble in her eyes simmered away in tiny ripples.
"Edward," she remembered in a weak voice.
"He's gone further north," said Carlisle. "He'll find us on his way back."
Oh, if only this were certain.
The hope in Esme's eyes was a sword in his gut.
Her face was like heaven in all its wild white glory. She was perfect, from her plush, quivering lips to her wide, glistening eyes. Why would God ever mold such a marvelous creature? What sick, holy vendetta did the Good Lord have against an innocent doctor?
Esme was perfect, not only for her beauty, but for her concern, her love, her deep protection over Edward when he was missing.
"You worry for him so much, Esme," Carlisle marveled, at the expense of her velvet chin in his hand.
"So do you." Her soft words made his heart ache. How true they were. How plain was the truth in his eyes in that moment?
His head bowed low, and his hand fell away.
There were so many unpredictabilities with Edward, but Carlisle could not think of these now.
Not with Esme here, in that scant piece of silk as thin as a flower petal, wrapped languidly around her lithe body. Every which way, circles and diamonds and triangles of creamy white skin peeked out at him, begging for just a touch, just a swift stroke of one finger. But he knew he would never be able to stop at just one.
He found it ironic that if she were still his patient, he could touch her and have the excuse of propriety on his side. But now it would be unthinkable to reach out and graze his thumb freely over her flesh.
The rain was teasing him now, falling drop by drop in a crystalline song. On him. On her.
Esme. Covered in silk and raindrops. On the ground. Inches away from him.
She pulled up suddenly, murmuring something about the clouds and how they should move along to avoid the rain.
Avoid the rain? Why on earth would they want to avoid this spectacular blessing of water from the sky?
"We'll be safest here," he muttered the first sensible reason that spilled into his mind as he tugged her firmly back. "The air is clear here, and the rain will help it stay that way." His eyes sparked significantly. "We don't know what's out there, Esme."
"But Edward..."
Her eagerness to reach Edward touched him, but he could not let her leave his sight.
"He'll come to us," Carlisle assured hastily, and again he pulled on her hand. "Please... I don't want us to lose each other."
She must have seen the pleading in his eyes, or heard the desperation in his voice. Wordlessly, she settled back against the tree beside him, a bit closer than she was before she stood up. As if to celebrate her acquiescence, the rain fell down in gloriously heavy sheets, soaking everything from the ground to their clothes.
These clothes... They felt so...hindering. His pants were pasted to his hips and his shirt was stuck to his back and his collar was choking him. To just strip himself bare sounded so wonderfully appealing right then, and not only because his clothing felt uncomfortable.
Carlisle vented his frustration onto his necktie, plucking it from his collar and tossing it aside. He was aware that Esme was watching him as he did it – her eyes were scorching little holes in his control, and the rain was trying to cool him, trying to fill those holes.
She sighed and tugged on his hand. Immediately, his free hand covered hers between them, and he dared to move closer, every particle of air moving indulgently out of his way in warm welcome.
Copious streams of heat filled his cheeks and crept along the back of his neck as Esme's robe wilted around her chest in the rain. Every fiber of Carlisle's conscience was scolding him for staring, but his gaze was hungry. His eyes stubbornly sucked in every detail of her soaked body, the way the silk seemed to sink into her, tighter and tighter, closer and closer. He was afraid that the fine fabric would simply melt like milk, slide off her body and leave her bare. Already, the separate swell of each breast was boasting beautiful contours beneath the silk.
The raindrops wept down her chest, sliding beneath her robe. How he wished to be one of those pitiful droplets of rainwater! Some were anxious to feel her flesh beneath, and they fell rapidly, in a race with the ones around them. Some were slow in their path, savoring the slippery slope into the soft heaven that awaited them.
Oh, he was so jealous of those droplets.
If not for the fierce hold both his hands had on hers, Carlisle feared he would have reached across and blindly snatched the silk from her body.
He had to save himself.
He had to rescue Esme's precious modesty…from himself.
Nearly sobbing from the loss of contact, Carlisle pried his hands away from Esme's and quickly began to undo the buttons of his vest. Each of those buttons was a frustrating challenge for his quivering fingers. He felt her eyes watch every one as they slipped through the slits. She was rapt.
His venom was racing in excitement, with the false anticipation that any removal of clothing would end remarkably. But there he stopped, at the very last button, and peeled the drenched blue wool away from his chest to offer it to the woman who needed it more.
She accepted, her fingers grateful and quick.
"Thank you."
Oh, do not thank me for this.
To think she had once thanked him for taking an article of clothing away… How tragic that they had moved backwards from that moment.
Carlisle nodded once and tore his eyes away, the pain of Esme's innocent voice echoing heavily in his chest.
For a few strained moments, he poised himself to fight his wavering control. It was a hefty war indeed. Esme was well-armed with many a weapon: the sounds she made as she absently fingered the buttons, the low, throaty thrum of her breath, the clouds of her ferociously feminine fragrance licking him softly from all around.
Her scent was like exotic fruit – a poisonous delicacy that would kill him were he to consume it.
It was not worth the price to taste.
Whatever had happened to her venom to enhance her sweetness was slowly killing him. There was a sudden burst of her ripened flavor, and the scent was so strange as he drank it in. It sent tiny, nimble threads of need coiling between the base of his spine and his belly. The reaction frightened him just as fiercely as it pleased him, but he had no way to obey what his body was begging him to do.
Because what his body was begging him to do right then was unthinkable.
His hand raised to cover his nose, to block out the toxins that set fire to his lust. What mutiny had caused such a swell in the battle smoke?
Was it really just her? Or was there still the scarlet danger upon the air?
Finding no sense in keeping still with this madness wringing inside him, Carlisle lifted himself restlessly from the ground. Without a thought, he scooped Esme up with him.
"The scent of blood lingers," he said, hoping to mask the panic in his voice, "I can't tell if it's human or not. It's still very far away, but we should move on."
"The scent of... blood..." she repeated, almost wistfully. The aroma was far enough that it would only make her slightly dizzy, but it was enough to quicken his pace.
He had to keep her lucid.
He had to stop breathing.
She had to stop emitting those treacherous perfumes.
"I should have known better than to stop so soon," he rambled a little angrily to himself, frustrated by the denial of unsoiled air. His poor lungs were dying a slow death, and so was his throat. "We need to find something to feed on out here…"
It was a noble assignment to find fair blood in this part of the forest, but Carlisle was devoted to keeping Esme as content as possible. This situation was already a grand disaster – he could not bear to make it worse.
But holding Esme was quite distracting.
Good God, her fingers were dangling around his neck, touching his hair, almost experimentally. Her legs would rub together every so often, nudging the inside of his elbow with the smooth underside of her knee as she did so. Her every motion sent fresh chills of longing shooting through him, and her hands kept turning up in places he wished they wouldn't, and her eyes were still staring dependently up at him, and Blessed be the name of the Lord.
"Edward is close by," she alerted him eagerly, breaking gently into his tumbling thoughts.
It was true; Edward's scent was rich in the air, but not potent enough to ensure the possibility that he was still close by.
He could be anywhere from fifty yards to fifty miles away...
There was still a nagging fear in the back of Carlisle's mind that Edward might be farther than they both thought. But he wouldn't dare tell Esme. It would destroy her. Worst of all, it would send her beautiful eyes crumbling from sunset to midnight.
"I told you we would find him." Carlisle gazed down at the woman in his arms, hoping she could see in his eyes just how blessed he was to bear her weight with his every step, just how elated he was that she was here with him.
He smiled, the reaction helpless but so weak. It was a false hope that flooded his chest, and Esme didn't even know. Her eyes were churning with the destructive, innocent colors of longing and wonder.
Her breath caressed his lips, and the warm touch awakened his senses with stunning brutality. He hadn't realized how close they were.
His feet slowed from a run to a walk, then from a walk to a standstill. It must have happened quickly because he never remembered slowing down at all.
It was quiet. She was clinging.
"I suppose I can...put you down, now..." his words felt like raindrops themselves, slippery and a little clumsy but somehow beautiful.
They trickled down his chin and fell onto hers.
Just a moment more. Don't let go of her, you fool. Not yet. Just keep her for one more moment...
Carlisle foolishly obeyed the whispered wishes of his heart. He didn't move.
Esme lay there in his arms, and she seemed so content, so at peace in the cradle he provided. A part of him rejoiced that she had not yet struggled to slip away from him, but another part was clanging with warning.
His muscles were coiled so tightly he feared he would be frozen in that position, unable to lower her to the ground if he'd even wished to. But why would he want to let her go?
Why lose this delicious nearness? This wet, warm, pressed up against each other proximity?
Little clusters of hot and cold settled into his stomach, and Carlisle felt that everything he could give to Esme was stirring down there, taunting him, boiling to be set free.
She reached up, boldly with one hand to clutch his collar, as if preparing herself for the inevitable moment his arms would give out.
And he gave her the ground.
It was what she wanted, so he gave it to her. As soon as she showed the first hint of a sign.
She gasped softly as he placed her down. Her fingers lingered around his neck as she unwound her arm from around his shoulders, and his body was suddenly wrought with a tingling brush of luscious fatigue.
"We should circle the area to alert Edward to our presence," Carlisle said, feeling the need to speak softly because of their closeness.
Why were they still so close?
Esme did nothing but encourage the hushed conversation. "Will he hear our thoughts?"
"Either that or he'll catch onto our scents. He can't be far." Carlisle gulped down the venom that had been building since he'd first picked up Esme in his arms. His heart all but growled in displeasure as he took one step away from her. "Let's start in this direction."
Something was wrong. She wasn't touching him.
He would not go on without some sort of connection. He would not leave her for an instant. It was as much for his good as for hers.
"Stay close to me," he ordered, his voice faint but rough. The fact that Esme had obeyed him so promptly was explicitly delightful for reasons Carlisle could not dare name.
"Here." He grasped her hand carefully and splayed her fingers against his side. "Don't let go."
The spot her hand now rested happened to be one of the most sensitive he could have possibly chosen. But it was too late, now. There Esme's hand clung, and there it would stay.
Hopefully.
He trusted her to hold him, to stay close.
All this closeness... it was killing him. It was ironic how the most dire of circumstances often brought about these moments of desperation. They were forced into this closeness, and neither was completely comfortable with it – this was obvious.
Her fingers fidgeted against the slope of his waist, drifting lower, then tightening, then gripping and pulling slightly, then creeping higher. Each separate digit offered a different suggestion to the flesh beneath, and the tiny muscular reactions he sent back to her were helpless. The fibers of his flesh were flexing with every step, as if to show off for her fingers.
Esme unwittingly showed Carlisle just how many different ways she could hold him. And each one was more delicious than the last. She was making art on that spot of his waist. She was molding the muscle, reigning his reactions, teasing the tension.
Then she had to say it.
"I'm thirsty."
Oh, so am I, my darling. So am I...
"We'll hunt properly as soon as we're reunited with Edward. I promise." He sent her a glance meant to seal this promise, and she seemed to sigh her acceptance.
For a while Carlisle continued the path he had set, one step at a time, patient but hasty. They were nearly there.
"Carlisle..."
He responded to his name faster than he would have had it come from God Himself.
His hand shot out to grab her arm. "You need blood now?" he asked her urgently.
She nodded with another unbearable whine, her wet curls trembling.
He almost scooped her up off the ground again.
"Alright, we'll find something," he promised, fastening her arm in his steady grip. "Just hold on. Don't let go of me."
She kept making these helpless little noises while they walked, and no matter how he tried to keep his pace as brisk as possible, he was only able to barely meet her heels with every step. Soon she was dragging him... and he had no idea where she was taking him.
He tried calling her name. Right in her ear. He tried whispering her name. He tried pulling her back with all his might. But she was already free from her prison.
Carlisle reeled in shock as Esme pounced away from him. She was like a pretty piece of paper, fluttering away on a gust of wind. Even his impeccable reflexes could not seize her from the air.
Somehow, at some point in time, Edward had appeared at his side. Their paths had been bound to cross, but somehow it was a miracle he was here. It was like the boy had never left. He was yelling about something, trying to warn Carlisle what was about to happen. But he already knew.
It was just too late.
Esme's tiny body raged with unfathomable energy as she hurled herself into a single small figure in the heart of the forest. A timely streak of white lightning graced them all with a clear snapshot of her first murder.
The scent of blood was heady and multiplied by the wind as the storm blew debris and thousands of inferior scents against her witnesses. As Edward came upon the scene, crashing into Carlisle, he noticed with terror that even his father's eyes were reduced to coal at the smell.
"Hold her back!" The doctor ordered harshly, seizing Esme's waist with both arms and tearing her thrashing body away from the slaughtered child.
All three of them were growling fiercely – at each other, at the possessive power of the single soul-slicing scent. Esme's newborn strength was disarming, but thankfully not enough to overcome the combined force of two male vampires. Carlisle pounced onto her back and held her to the ground with all his weight as Edward wrenched her wrists in place, face to face with her crazed ruby eyes.
The feral grunting that emitted from Edward's throat finally settled to a low, anxious vibration. He calmed as he heard Esme's growls fade with her prolonged exposure to clear air.
"Stay with me, Esme," Carlisle murmured roughly into her ear from behind, arms locked desperately around her small frame. "Stay with me..." His voice cracked uncharacteristically after another crash of thunder.
But the scent of blood was proving to be difficult for more than just Esme's senses.
"Carlisle..." Edward whined helplessly, fighting every impulse to keep his head from snapping in the direction of the fresh corpse, covered in gushing bite marks.
Immediately, Carlisle's rain-streaked face whipped up from Esme's hair to stare at his son in warning. "Edward, no. Please, Edward. Find yourself. Keep yourself. Son."
Son.
"Carlisle."
"Don't think about the blood. Look at me, Edward."
Son.
"Father."
The thunder hurt Edward's chest.
Carlisle continued to stare at him through the wind, the water, the blood. "You're going to make it, son."
"Esme..."
Carlisle's head snapped down to stare at the woman on the ground. She had frozen in place, little more than a soaked rag doll stained with blood and earth. Her blank eyes stared past Edward at the dead body behind him, unmoving and glazed over, her pupils alarmingly contracted.
"She's in shock," said the doctor.
"We have to go back."
Carlisle ignored his son's pleas, instead turning Esme over beneath his body, framing her face between his palms and touching his forehead to hers. His voice was exhausted as he tried in vain to bring her back. "Esme... my Esme..."
The blood was dead. It had been cooling from the very first brush of wind. The once sweet scent was now sick, and the body they could see was now even smaller in size. Helpless. Dead.
The appeal was gone.
"Carlisle. Please take her back. Take her away from here." Edward sounded like a child, and he didn't care. He needed to be heard, needed Carlisle to hear him more than anything.
Compassionate golden eyes gazed up through the sheets of rain, understanding written all across his face.
Help me carry her.
Carlisle lifted the woman into his arms, cradling her so close that her face became a part of his neck, arms limp at her sides. She was not fighting him.
"You don't need my help," Edward reminded calmly. His voice was drowned out by the intense rumbling of the storm, but he knew his father heard him.
Slowly, the boy began to retreat.
"Wait! Edward!" Carlisle called, voice shaking with terror.
"I need to do this, Carlisle," Edward answered, his tone disturbingly calm compared to his father's. "You know it. I can't stay here and watch this any longer. I need to get away."
"No, please..." Edward could see that Carlisle would have been on both his knees if Esme had not been stuffed between his arms. "Son, I beg of you." He sounded like he was crying.
"You know what needs to be done," Edward said darkly. "Neither of our minds will truly be at rest until it's taken care of."
They were not just speaking of Esme now.
Carlisle froze, knowing it was useless to fight with Edward's will. Still, his thoughts crashed through his head, and his love churned in his heart. Some part of Carlisle wanted this just as desperately, because he thought that Esme would have wanted it.
It was so wrong that it had to be the right thing. But it was so right that it must have been wrong.
He could not hold onto his morality without slipping, especially in all of this rain.
Carlisle should have asked his son one last time to leave the fates alone, to come home and move on with this life as if nothing were missing.
But as a father, Carlisle hadn't the strength. With Esme in his arms, he hadn't the strength. With the Word of God upon his heart, he hadn't the strength.
So he let Edward run.