I'm sorry for making you all wait so long for this chapter. The following things have happened since Chapter 11 : Final projects, flu (not swine), interviews, quit my job, got a new job, finals, and in 9 hours, I will be a college graduate. Woo!!
I hope you enjoy this chapter. Big cliffy at the end. :)
CHAPTER 12
After my emotional breakdown, it was decided that I needed to keep myself busy. Luckily, the spring semester would be starting soon and would provide me a distraction. Carlisle had contacted his forger to make admittance papers for me to attend the University of Rochester as a premed student. I had not attended school since Esme had joined the family, but took the time since I experienced my hallucination at the church to brush up on my studies. The brunette resembling Anna as her witch character did not appear since that day, and I was unsuccessfully trying to push those images out of my head. I chalked it up to the change in diet. The switch to animal blood, however unappetizing, was still a better alternative to feasting on humans once again. But hallucinating didn't explain the soft feeling of her silk dress running through my fingers. Looking down at my hands, I could still feel the sensation through my nerve endings.
I had to admit I was a little excited for classes to begin. When I was human, I was almost to the age of attending university. Medical school was never in my plan. My father wanted me to go to law school, follow his path of success, but due to the war, my only option was to be drafted into the military. Now, I was following in another father's footsteps. The prospect of being able to contribute to my family and to society was liberating.
That first day of class, I sat in the back of the lecture hall, access to a quick exit if I needed to. Since these were first year classes, they were more lecture than practical. I was enrolled in the typical basics: literature, history, arithmetic and a general biology course. I would have to listen to the biology professor's mind to make sure there was no threat of being exposed to blood.
I scanned the lecture hall, listening to my peers to get an idea of the students I would be with this year. It was a bad habit from my years of hunting criminals, but would be useful for days I would need to miss class. My first class had been rudimentary, a literature course that had little to offer with the vast amount of reading I had done in Charlotte. Before I knew it, my last class of the day, European history, had breezed by and the students started to pack up their belongings. I had taken notes to look more human, carefully mimicking those around me, but I was sure I could learn more from Carlisle's life stories than I would from this professor. My excitement for classes quickly waned as I realized there would be a lot of pointless material to sit through until I reached the more intense coursework.
As I closed my textbook, I saw her. My hallucination sat in front of the classroom. She turned her head slightly for me to see her face, her hair shifting off her shoulder to fall in a curly cascade down her back. She caught my eye for a moment, smiling briefly. The group of boys in front of me stood up and blocked my view. I wanted to push them aside and speed down the hall steps to catch sight of her again. There were still no thoughts coming from where she had stood. I needed to find her, make sure she was real. Were the note and silk not enough to prove her existence?
By the time I gathered my things, she had disappeared once again. I rushed to the spot she was in, trying to catch a scent of her to track, hoping to find her that way. There was no scent, only that of the wooden desk and chairs. She had to be a figment of my imagination.
Everyday I attended class, I searched for her, but she did not show up again. I even went to the length of breaking into the professor's office to try and track down her name, but the roster sheet did not include this missing person. Everyone in the hall was accounted for. Finally, I broke down and asked Carlisle if he had ever heard of a vampire seeing things before.
"Seeing what exactly?" his eyebrows knit together in thought, a little worried. We were sitting in his office, and I had interrupted his paperwork. Carlisle would always drop what he was doing to help me out. I hoped to repay him someday for all his love and advice.
"People. I can't hear this girl's thoughts, there's no scent she leaves behind. She's crossed my path three times and all I have to show for it is a stupid note." I shoved the note at him. Frustrated, I let myself collapse into the chair across from his desk. He picked the note up carefully and read it. It was well worn, after countless times of me pulling it out of my pocket to analyze it, but I gathered no additional clues. The ink was starting to become faint, like my supposed sanity.
"What does she look like?" Carlisle was actually interested in helping me. I knew of all people that could understand, it would be him. He liked to believe Fate had something up her sleeve for me, just as she had for him and Esme. Treat a girl for a broken leg, and a decade later she becomes the love of your eternal life.
"Curly brown hair, average height. Average everything actually. She looks like Anna but with long hair." After my intense recounting of my history with Anna, he should surely be able to picture this girl.
I'm sorry you lost her, Edward. She sounded like a wonderful person.
"You don't think she was changed do you?" I asked anxiously, leaning forward in my chair. "Maybe the vampire didn't drink all of her blood." I could hear the desperation in my own voice.
"I'm afraid not, Edward. Her hair would have stayed the same, and we have a distinct scent." You said there was no heartbeat when you found her in the park.
"No, there was no heartbeat." I sighed and leaned back against the chair. He promised he would keep an eye out for her at the hospital. Silently, he voiced his intrigue with the idea of someone not giving off a scent or a voice for me to hear. I was about to shoot him a look of disgust, but if his never ending quest for knowledge helped me find this girl, I could live with it.
I tried to forget about Anna, throwing myself into my studies and my compositions to keep my mind off the overwhelming grief. I hoped it would be enough of a distraction. I never went back to the church or the flower shop, both known places of where she had once been. However, Fate was cruel and just when I would think I was getting over Anna, letting those memories slip from my mind, Anna the witch would pop up and remind me of what was gone.
She would always come unexpectedly, and never in the same place. Passing a shop window as I ran errands with Esme. Walking down the street after returning from class. It went on like this for two years without me getting any closer to her than that fateful day at the church. One night I was in the university's library doing last minute research for a final term paper when I felt the air around me stir. I looked up from the book and saw an arm reaching out to grab another text off the shelves. I thought nothing of it, just another student taking advantage of the late night library hours before finals.
"Pardon me," a sweet murmur passed over my ears. I was about to look away, go back to my research when I realized there was no inner voice coming from the space beside me. No musings of research or stressful thoughts of the semester ending. My head reacted so fast, the action would have caused a human whiplash. There she stood, in all her imagined glory. Anna the witch shot me a puzzled look as I analyzed her carefully. The shock of being this close to her had paralyzed me.
"Are you alright?" she asked, wrapping her arms around the book she pulled from the shelf. My mind drifted back to the day I found out Anna was a librarian, and how ridiculous that meeting had gone. I wanted to answer her, but my vocal cords were not cooperating. My hand started to inch towards her, carefully touching the skin on her arm. It was warm and soft, and pimpled where my cold fingers brushed. She was a real girl. Not a mirage of lovers past.
"Why are you haunting me, Anna?" My voice was strained from pain and wanting. I wanted Anna back. I wanted Helen. I wanted to live a life without grieving and anguish.
"What are you talking about?" Her voice betrayed her, laced with fear. I let my hand drop to my side in defeat. She wasn't Anna. She was just another girl, a human girl that would eventually die. Turning away, I decided against the additional research.
"Wait," she called out. I forced myself to keep moving. Looking back would only make leaving that much harder.
When I approached home, the thoughts streaming from my parents were alarming. Not worrying about people spotting me, I ran at vampire speed into the house. Two strong smells lingered together as I burst into Carlisle's office: bleach and human blood. The wooden door banged against the wall as I entered, startling Carlisle and Esme. They both raised their heads at the noise. I looked past the two of them to see a broken and bloody body lying on his desk.
"What have you done?"
~*~*~
Thanks for reading! Please review and answer the following questions if you don't mind.
1. Are the chapters too short?
2. Are there any scenes that you would like to see "Outtakes" on? Maybe a different characters point of view or an expansion?
Chapter 13 is half way written, and hopefully will not take 3 weeks to get done.
