Stephenie Meyer owns everything, and I am enchanted by her work.

Chapter Twenty-One: Eadem mutata resurgo: "Though changed I shall arise the same"

We plunged feet-first into the icy water. Edward had my head cradled against his chest with one arm and my torso secured snugly to him with the other. One leg was wrapped around both of mine, keeping them extended. He was like a padded envelope around me- except for the padding. Just before our feet hit the water, he covered my nose and mouth with his cold fingers, which was good: otherwise I'd have gasped up two lungs full of ocean as soon as the shock of the water hit my skin.

I started panicking as we decended lower and lower into the cold ocean. Edward kept his arms tight around me and his hand over my face. He must have sensed my panic because he pressed a small, comforting, distracting kiss against my temple.

My ears were still ringing from the sound of the explosion, and now they were filled with icy water, and the new dull rushing sound whooshed deafeningly through my head. I started to feel pain in my chest from holding my breath. As our fall through the icy depths toward the ocean floor slowed, I began to black out. The only thing holding sheer terror at bay was Edward's grip.

"Bella! Open your eyes, damn it! Breathe!"

I felt a cough wrack my body, and water erupted painfully from my mouth and nose.

"Bella Bella Bella, please breathe now."

I was cold. Too cold to even shiver. I managed to open one eye, and at first I was confused. We were still in the water.

I felt a painful blow against my ribs, and another gush of water escaped every orifice in my face, shocking both eyes wide open.

We were in the water, moving at a speed that blurred the coastline. Somehow, Edward was swimming a one-armed backstroke with me draped over his chest, and he was pressing the water out of my lungs at the same time.

No. Clearly there must be a tow line. A boat was out ahead of us, towing us along.

My body felt heavier at around the same time I realized I was lying on wet sand. Alone.

I heard another loud explosion, not quite as close to me as the one before had been, and I sat up to see where it had come from. Rivulets of water streamed out of my ears and nose. I was shivering violently. There was no sign of a boat or a tow line or Edward. But suddenly two people appeared beside me.

Dr. Cullen and his wife materialized out of nowhere.

The beautiful young woman knelt at my side as the doctor sprinted ahead toward the source of loud crashes and animal noises. "Bella, sweetheart, I'm going to take you someplace safe."

I couldn't focus on her words because I was straining to see Dr. Cullen and Edward in the near distance. Creepy Guy and Edward had clearly been fighting, but once the doctor arrived on the scene, they broke apart from one another. Creepy Guy was backing away.

I strained my eyes to see if Edward was hurt.

I gasped.

There were no cuts and bruises, but his sodden shirt was torn and clinging to him like a second skin. I could make out his physique between the rips and drips, and nothing about him was seventeen years old.

His face turned toward me sharply as the breath caught in my throat- as though he had heard my gasp. In that moment when Edward's fearsome gaze was torn away from my would-be attacker, Creepy Guy disappeared.

I saw him tense into an almost crouch as though he were preparing to sprint away, and then he was gone. Edward's neck snapped back, his attention refocused on the direction in which Creepy Guy had vanished, but Dr. Cullen grabbed his arm and pulled him slightly in my direction.

The next moments were even more confusing than the previous had been because the sequence of events that I had just lived through began to catch up with me all at once.

The doctor leaned over me and peered into my eyes. He removed his sweater and bundled me into it. I wondered where his coat was. I wondered where his wife's coat was. I wondered how he wasn't shivering. I looked at Edward, suddenly worried about his anemia and the probability that hypothermia would kill him at any second.

Edward was kneeling before me. His fingertips planted in the sand in front of him. His eyes were darker than I had ever seen them, and they expressed so many different emotions at once that I could barely pin one down before another stuggled to the forefront. He was anxious, angry, weary, worried, fearful, focussed, distant, distracted, exhausted and exultant.

My throat and chest were burning and stinging and rasping. I wanted to curl up and let exhaustion take me. My ears hurt. My sinuses hurt. My entire body ached. I wanted to be unconscious so I couldn't feel it. But I was afraid to be unconscious because I didn't want to take my eyes off of Edward.

He reached a hand toward me, and my body flinched away from him. My instincts were sending alarm signals, and before I knew what I was doing, a stuttering gasp climbed up out of my throat, feezing Edward in mid-movement.

"What the hell are you?" I demanded.

"Bella?"

I scooted away from his outstretched hand, crawling backwards like a crab on the heels of my hands and feet. "Don't touch me. What the hell are you?"

I felt the doctor rise and move away from us, but my eyes never left Edward's. His gaze was intense. Wounded. I was sure that mine was equally intense. Accusing.

"Edward, you jumped off the cliff. You're not even hurt."

"Bella, we really need to get out of here."

"Go! I'm not stopping you."

"I'm not leaving without you."

"Don't touch me."

He looked like I had stabbed him. I wondered if he could feel pain. My own head was swimming with it. Terror was ripping through my body. Too late. I should have been terrified a little while ago. Too late. The danger was gone. Too late. My reactions were all wrong. But my reactions were all I had.

Edward was closing the distance between us in a slow, even movement. I couldn't see him moving at all, but I could tell that with each breath I took he was imperceptibly closer to me. I tried to breathe in through my nose, to smell him, but my nostrils didn't work. I sniffed petulatnly, and my left ear popped. I felt a warm trickle of draining water escape from the ear canal, and I shivered.

"Don't come any closer."

"I'm not going to hurt you. You know that."

"Tell me what just happened."

"Let me take you someplace safe and I will tell you everything you want to know."

"Safe?"

"I promise, Bella."

"How can you promise that when everyone I know is disappearing?"

"I promise not to let it happen to you." He was reaching to me. "You trust me, Bella. I know you do."

Yes. I did trust him. I knew I shouldn't. I knew that he had lied and stalked and covered-up, but I also knew he didn't do those things to hurt me. Too late to be scared. I finally began to shiver; it felt like my skin would shake right off of my cold bones.

His arms wrapped around the doctor's damp sweater and he lifted me off the ground. The sudden movement made my ears ring. When I inhaled with my face so close to Edward's skin, I could taste him on the air. Not even the briney, sandy sludge that coated my cold lips could mask the Edward flavor in the air. Breathing him relaxed me. I let my head fall against his shoulder. He was running, and the world blurred. I closed my eyes, and the cold air threatened to take me away from him, so I clung to the remnants of his shirt.

"What are you?" I whispered at him as my fingernails broke against his skin. That wasn't right. My cheekbone bounced against his shoulder. It would leave a bruise. Not right. "I was so stupid," I murmured.

"Shh." He could have soothed me with that syllable, but there was no conviction behind it, so I kept my eyes closed tight and tried to dig my fingernails into him. It hurt. I felt the exhaustion that came to replace the adrenaline sweep through me. I would pass out in his arms while he ran at an inhaman pace with his inhumanly strong arms around me. I would pass out and then he would probably eat me for dinner.

I woke up in a strange room.

The first thing I was aware of was that I was warm and dry. And comfortable. The bed was softer than my bed at home, and much softer than a hospital bed. It was like a bed from a movie: fluffy and white and soft and warm and big.

A large window let moonlight stream into the room and onto my face. It was late. I sat up with a start. "Dinner!"

"Are you hungry?"

Who said that? I looked around the room frantically. I was supposed to make lasagne, but I wasn't at Billy's house, and someone somewhere was probably wondering about me. Maybe even worrying about me.

"No," but I wasn't hungry. Just scared. My eyes tried to cut through the darkness of the room to focus on the source of the hushed voice, but the moonlight shining into my eyes blinded me to everything beyond the reach of it's gentle illumintation.

A figure slowly materialized at the side of the bed, gliding toward me until it glowed like a ghost in front of the window.

Mrs. Cullen looked like an angel. Her hair was lighter than her brother's; it lacked the intense metallic fire that his had. It was the color of burnt sugar or weak coffee and honey. "Bella, sweetheart, you're alright."

"I'm thirsty." My throat felt like it had been ravaged by and army of fire ants.

She stepped closer and removed a drinking glass from atop the caraffe of water at my bedside. She poured out some water and lifted the glass to my lips while slipping her free hand behind my back to lift me up.

I sipped and then gasped. "You're cold." I looked into her shadowed face. "Like him."

She looked sad. She looked weary and sad and beautiful. "I'll go and get Edward to talk to you. He stayed until just now." She let me lean back against the pillows and I pulled the soft feather duvet up around my face. My hands smoothed over the warm pajamas that covered my skin. I was so comfortable that I easily could have forgotten the ordeal and the soreness and the headache.

I let my eyes close until I felt a cold touch on my hand. I looked up to see Edward's eyes gazing into mine. They were light again, like honey in the moonlight. I clutched at his fingertips. They were cold as ice and hard as stone. "Why didn't I notice it before?"

He looked down at our intertwined fingers. "I wanted you to notice. I wanted you to feel it and run from me and never look back, but until you did that I couldn't turn my back on you." His voice was low and melodic and sincere. I breathed him in. His scent seemed to dull the sharp stabbing in my head. I pulled his hand toward my face and I inhaled with his knuckles against my mouth. I looked up from his hand to see that his eyes were closed, as though the feel of my lips against his skin was as good to him as it was to me.

"Edward?"

"Bella, are you sure you want to know all of this? It's not too late for you to deny everything and move on with your normal life. Forget this. Forget us." His eyes were pleading. But were they asking me to go or to stay? I really couldn't tell.

"You want me." I could feel my pulse in my fingertips where his hand gripped me a little too tightly.

"I really do, Bella." His lips parted hungrily. "More than you can imagine."

"Tell me what you are, Edward."

Silence.

Stillness.

Patience.

He sighed.

He slowly lifted my hand to his face and inhaled the scent of my skin as I had just done with his. "I want you more than you can imagine, Bella. You smell like heaven and hell." His toungue crept out from between his lips and crawled across the skin on my wrist. Edward's eyes closed lazily and a low rumble escaped from his throat. "I've dreamt of tasting you a million times, Bella." He lifted his shining eyes to mine again. "I've never wanted to kill someone like I want to kill you." He pressed his cold lips softly against the pulse that thudded at my wrist. "I've never wanted to love someone like I want to love you."

My head was swimming from the scent of him. His presence and his intensity were hypnotizing me. I sat paralized while my heart rate sped erratically and my ears thudded and my senses threatened to leave me. I was passing out.

I woke again with a cold grey sky spitting at the window by the bed. My fingers were numb with cold. I looked down to see long beautiful white fingers clasped around my hand. I started at the realization that Edward had stayed with me all night. He felt me jump and ran his other fingertips luxuriously through my tangled hair, pulling only slightly. I felt my heart thrum again. Would I just keep passing out?

I fought against it, turning my head toward his face. He actually smiled at me. "Good morning, Bella."

What was I supposed to say? The last thing I remembered was his pronouncement that he would kill me. But I felt so safe in his arms. I had slept happily. I felt happy. So I smiled, "Good morning."

I tried to disentangle myself from him and sit up. I seriously needed to pee and brush my teeth and drink a gallon of water, but his hand pulled me against his chest when I tried to raise my body from the bed. I looked up at his face in surprise, and I was troubled by the frown across his beautiful brow, "Where are you going?"

Again, what was I supposed to say? I felt my face turn a violent red, and Edward's cool fingers brushed across my hot cheek, "Bathroom?" I answered.

He released me and pointed to a door at the far side of the room. I felt his intense gaze cling to me as I dragged my weary body unsteadily toward my destination. What did he see in me?

There was a toothbrush there for me with a big fluffy towel. I thought I would want a shower, but when I ran my fingers through my tangled hair, I noticed it was clean and soft. I was mortified that someone had bathed me while I was unconscious. I hoped it was Mrs. Cullen.

The pajamas I wore were flannel and soft blue with large buttons up the front. They were comfortable and pretty and completely modest, for which I was thankful. I rolled the sleeves up to wash my face and was tugging them back down again as I re-entered the room where I had slept.

Morning was attmpting to break through the clouds, but there were more raindrops than sunbeans hitting the large window. Edward was still lounging in the bed: gaunt, louche, relaxed, swarthy, beautiful. He smiled at me, and it was an inviting smile. It was a smile that a spider would shine upon a fly. It trapped me, and it pulled me in, and Edward spun his arms around me as I crawled up his web. "Are you going to kill me today?" I meant to sound confident and light-hearted- teasing- but I actually meant the question more than a little, and my worry was apparent in my voice.

"Not today, no." He kissed my eybrow. "I'll get you some breakfast."

Instead of letting him do that I leaned against him. His body was solid and frozen. "What are you, Edward?"

His arms tightened around me. "Are you afraid of me?"

"A little."

"You should be more than a little afraid."

"Why? You know I trust you." He had said as much yesterday.

He sighed. "I wish you didn't."

"That's such a lie. You're releived and grateful and happy that I'm not afraid of you."

"You see right through me."

"You promissed you'd tell me everything."

He sighed. The scent of his breath washed over me, and I fought against the familiar dizziness. The prolonged exposure to the scent of his flesh, such as it was, had softened the effect it had upon me to some extent, but I still felt a giddiness each time I inhaled, and it was only magnified when I breathed his own breath. I thought about our kiss and my mouth watered a little.

"I'm the same kind of monster as James," he breathed his words very low into my ear as though confessing a shameful sin.

"Who's James?" My own voice was soft and calm. I thought I sounded rather like a new mother: tired and full of wonder at her own life and power.

"James is the beast who tried to kill you yesterday. The same one who destroyed William and Jasper."

I knew this. I had known it, but hearing it made my chest hurt and begin to heave. "And Rob. And Kris. And the old Davies man. And the others."

"Jasper killed Rob and Kris, Bella."

Those words hung in the air around us. They just hung there, floating, threatening to fall, threatening to crash down around us, threatening to bash my skull in. But they hung suspended, and I didn't let them touch me. Edward's hands were sweeping over my arms, up and down, up and down: soothing, distracting. The words wanted to pummel me. "Jazz?" The words wanted in my head.

"I'm sorry, Bella."