Disclaimer: I don't own these characters etc etc.

Chapter 26

Red

Edward's POV

"Carlisle, the scars?" I asked him quietly seven hours into the change. The gashes on Beau's chest closed themselves quickly. Silvery skin threaded together, but it puckered up to form three long ghastly scars. He wasn't healing properly. Venom was supposed to rid the human of their imperfections. Heal wounds as if they never happened, cure illnesses, etc etc. I remembered how the gashes from the bear that would have ended Emmett's life had sealed themselves seamlessly. But the marks the young werewolf tore into Beau weren't disappearing as they should be.

Once I had brought him into the house, Esme washed the blood off his body. Then Alice helped me change Beau into fresh clothes. She had kept the outfit waiting and ready for weeks.

"Always be prepared." She grinned while stuffing Beau's arm into the light weight blue denim shirt. He groaned and shuddered.

"Don't button it." I told her, seeing her fingers dart towards the fastenings. "I want to keep an eye on the gashes. At least for now." They had only begun to thread together at the time.

She nodded.

Beau was delirious, completely lost in pain. I cringed every time he cried out. The worst was when he kept begging me to kill him. I panicked. Beau changed his mind.

"Just let me die. Kill me, please. Please. Make it stop. Kill me." He writhed with agony.

Dear god, what had I done? I told him he could always change his mind and now. . .

"We all said that." Alice reminded me soothingly. "He doesn't mean it. It's the pain talking."

Still, it haunted me.

Carlisle thought the morphine might help with the pain of the transformation but we quickly realized the venom burned it off. The morphine did nothing, still he was screaming less than the others had. There was that, at least.

"It'll be over soon." I lied through my teeth. It had barely been two hours.

"What's our story?" Rosalie asked once Beau's screams turned into quiet whimpers. "Charlie will start looking for him soon. He'll come here first."

She was right. Beau had talked to him on the phone, for which I was very grateful, but it did put us in a bind.

"Your keys, Edward." Alice held out her hand. "Hand them over." I saw her plan in her mind.

I pulled them from my pocket. Beau wailed again because I had to adjust him to reach my keys. I winced. "Sorry, Beau."

"Rose," Alice tossed the keys and Rosalie caught them without even looking. "Edward's car needs to have a serious malfunction. Think you can reverse work on his car?"

"Are we talking like a brake malfunction or self combustion?" Rosalie raised her eyebrow.

"The works."

Rosalie grinned with the challenge. -Then we can drive my car around town.-

At least someone was happy.

"Emmett and Jasper." Alice now turned to the next and most important phase. "The hikers the nomads killed. . ."

Jasper nodded already on board. "Their bodies are still in the park to the east. Only the werewolves have found them. We'll use their corpses. We don't have time to dig up someone else." He grabbed Emmett's arm on their way out.

They were back in half an hour with the bodies.

Carlisle and Esme peeled the clothes off the hikers and replaced them with the ones Beau and I had been wearing. Beau's blood was splattered on both. Esme burned the hikers garments in the fire pit out back.

Jasper collected my phone and cleared it of anything incriminating. He held Beau's phone in his other hand and began a text to Charlie:

"Sorry about curfew. Edward's driving me home now." Send.

-I'll have your new phones ready in a few days.- He thought while he threw both of our cellphones into my car.

Right. I was dying too in this scenario.

-The papers will still take two weeks. I'll talk to my guy tomorrow and see if I can get that expedited.-

"Don't worry about it. It's not like we can go anywhere anytime soon."

Jasper nodded then ducked out to join Rosalie in setting up the car crash.

"Ed-wa-wa-rd-d?" Beau stuttered, and moaned. I turned my focus back on him.

"I'm here." I brushed his forehead. "I'm right here."

He grasped my arm. The grip didn't feel as weak anymore. Beau was already getting stronger.

2 AM.

The house phone rang ominously. Beau groaned at the disturbance and I shushed him comfortingly and whispered pleasant things in his ear.

Carlisle patted Esme on the knee sadly and got up to answer the phone. They've been waiting for the call and rehearsing their responses. "Dr. Cullen speaking." He answered professionally as a hospital doctor does in the middle of the night. A pause.

It wasn't Charlie on the other line, thank god, but someone else on the force.

"You need to come down to the hospital, Dr. Cullen. There's been an accident."

"Dr. Lewis is on call tonight." Carlisle replied diplomatically.

"It's. . .it's." The officer didn't know how to explain. "I'm sorry, Dr. Cullen. But it's your son. He's dead."

"My son?" Carlisle hiccuped.

"We think it's Edward, sir."

"Oh, god. No, no, no." Carlisle brought his hand to his forehead. The anguish in his voice was heartbreaking. "What happened?"

Rosalie pushed Emmett out of the room when he started laughing.

This wasn't funny.

"There was a car crash. We found him on the side of Bell's road. He was with Beaufort Swan. Charlie is. . . Charlie is already here." The voice on the line spoke glumly.

Esme disheveled Carlisle's hair before they left together for the hospital. In her pocket, she carried a handkerchief and a bottle of saline to create tears.

There wasn't much to identify at the hospital. The police wouldn't do a hard investigation. It was obvious. The whole town knew we were dating. The whole town knew what car I drove. Beau had texted Charlie letting him know he was on his way home with me. No one would question the identity of the badly burned bodies. Jasper had carefully left our wallets out of the fires blaze. Beaufort Swan and Edward Cullen died in a horrible car accident.

The black box for my car would read out an electrical issue that sparked a fire and that the brakes had been pressed but the car didn't react in time. It was the cars fault. Not mine. We didn't want anyone to point fingers.

"Ss-ss-sorry." Beau stuttered through clenched teeth. "Mm-mm-"

"Sh, it's okay Beau." I tried to comfort him. I never felt so helpless. "Don't try to talk. It makes it worse."

". . . mmmm-my ff-fault." He pried his eyes open.

A thick silvery haze clouded his blue eyes. I stopped myself from crying out in sorrow.

My favorite color was the way he used to look at me. Those sky blue eyes would never gaze at me again.

"It's not your fault, Beau. You did nothing wrong." I whispered, because I couldn't find my voice.

"Nn-nn-noo." Beau closed his eyes again. I doubt he was able to see through them now anyway. I remember this part. Everything beyond the pain was far away, like trying to look out a smoky window while being burned alive. I'm surprised at how alert he seemed to be. "I lef-ft."

"Shh." I cradled his face with my palms and relished in the way I could still feel his blood racing beneath my hands. Would he hate me when this was over? When his heart stopped beating, would he blame me for turning him into a monster? What if he doesn't want to live his forever with me?

Beau's brow furrowed. "Nn-no." He panted.

"I know. I know." I shushed him. "The pain will end. I promise. It will end."

He grunted and a small cry of torment escaped before he clenched his mouth shut again. He stayed quiet after that.

"Why don't I tell you a story? Huh? Would that be okay?" Beau seemed to be more at ease when I was talking.

I told him about our family friends in Alaska. I told him about the three sisters who used to sleep with men and kill them once they were done with them. I told him then how they started to have feelings for their prey and became vegetarians like us. I told him how Tanya had made several advances for me but I kept blowing her off for 40 years until I came out to her a month and a half ago.

Alice sat cross legged on the arm of the couch beside me and told the story of how she didn't have any memories of her human life but when she woke up into her vampire life she saw visions of Jasper and waited twenty years before she could find him. She spoke of how she and Jasper had waltzed into our family and took over my room while I was out hunting.

Carlisle and Esme returned in the late morning.

"Charlie is surrounded by good friends." Was the only thing Carlisle said of the matter.

-He's in bad shape. It's so awful.-

The phone kept ringing during the day; The town offering their condolences. Thankfully no house visitors.

We kept telling stories.

Rosalie talked about the night she was molested and left to die and went into graphic detail about the revenge she got on those men.

Jasper told stories from his time in the wars, both the Civil War and the Newborn wars.

I talked about the time I spent rebelling. When I had grown bitter about the life Carlisle cast me in and his expectations for me to ignore my new desires. I told him how I had tracked the evil bottom dwellers in Chicago during the 1930's. How I had befriended a crime reporter and beat cop to find where the worst of the criminals hid. How I followed their thoughts in the alleyways at night. I told Beau I was only fooling myself and the act of playing god weighed heavily on me until I couldn't stand to look at myself anymore. I told him how Carlisle welcomed me back with open arms, like the prodigal son.

"I'll be right back." Alice hopped off the couch in the evening.

She came back two and a half hours later with a duffel bag under her arm. She smelled like Charlie.

Charlie liked Alice. He welcomed her into his home. His eyes swimming with tears. They hugged and cried together. To his mind, Alice lost her good friend and her brother. She brought him food and cleaned his kitchen while others from the town arrived. After Alice said goodbye, she snuck in through Beau's window and grabbed a few of his things. Familiar things.

A family picture, when he was a baby and his parents were still together. A photo of his mom wrapped around his small 6 year old body on the beach. A picture of him around the age of 10 with a grumpy expression sitting next to Charlie in a fishing boat. A more recent photo from Renee and Phil's wedding: Beau kissing his mom's cheek and her laughter etched forever on the page.

Alice grabbed his favorite books. Two-thousand League's Under the Sea, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Frankenstein, and Ender's Game. Each book was scribbled on with notes in the margins. Pages bent over to mark his journey through them over and over again. I imagined him reading late at night, with a flashlight when he couldn't sleep.

His quilted blanket was tucked into the bag. An heirloom likely passed down from his grandparents that Charlie would never think to look for.

And the clothes Alice recently bought him were in the bag too.

These things all smelled like Beau. It was only until that moment did I notice that the Beau in my arms didn't smell like that the Beau imprinted on these objects. He didn't smell human anymore. The objects smelled like a stale copy of him. Like the last relics of his life, soon to be referred to as his "old" life.

I ran my hand over the scars on Beau's chest out of habit. I was already so used to the way they puckered out that when I felt trenches in his skin instead, I gasped out startled.

"Carlisle?" My brows furrowed and I tried not to let panic seep into my voice. Beau stirred but settled down after a moment.

Carlisle examined his chest again. The scars were now thin crevices, like cracks in stone. Beau's skin was crystallizing.

"I don't think this is going away. There must be something in the claws of the werewolves that counteracts our ability to heal completely. Beau will have those scars forever, perhaps, but it looks contained." It was Carlisle's best judgement but he hadn't seen this before.

Esme and Alice set up his things in my room. Alice shoved my clothes to the side and gave Beau 65% of my closet space.

After laying Beau's quilt on my couch Esme tilted her head in thought. -Should I order a bed for them?- I heard her calculating how long it took for her and Carlisle to get to a place where she could desire him and ignore the need for blood. It was a year and a half after she was changed but we didn't plan to stay that long in Forks. She shoved the thought out of her head.

Emmett got bored and turned on the TV. Before he could change the station the local news had a small blurb about two teenage boys that died in a tragic car accident in the small town of Forks. ". . . Could this happen to your child? After the break we talk to car safety experts." The news anchor tapped her paper on the desk before going to commercial.

"Sorry." Emmett muttered before putting on ESPN. The sports commentators started breaking down a particular play.

Beau groaned loudly and I couldn't help my smile. "He doesn't like sports."

Emmett rolled his eyes and turned the TV off as he got up and sat with Rosalie while she worked on the jeep.

We were coming up on the 56th hour when Beau started panicking. "Aaah!" He cried out.

I wrapped around him.

"I know. I know. It's okay. It's okay. It's part of the process."

His heart rate started to increase. The venom was pulling out of his extremities and drawing up to his heart. The final stage. Carlisle was right. The extra bites helped to speed the process up.

"It won't be long now."

Carlisle came down from his study and confirmed the progress. "He's almost finished. Give or take twenty minutes now."

With my right hand, I traced the scars on his chest and mildly thought to myself how sexy they were. My lips twitched as I fought off dueling emotions. I buttoned up his shirt then and patted his chest. It might be awhile until Beau could want me like I wanted him. I could be patient.

I studied his features and let my hand graze the side of his cheek. He was stunning. His hair was shinier. His angles more pronounced. I could see the diamond like facets in his cheeks and it took my breath away. I didn't create a monster. Beau was an angel. A devilishly handsome angel. More devastatingly beautiful with every passing moment. He took my breath away. Even though his face was clenched with unbearable suffering, he was still the most gorgeous creature I'd ever seen.

Beau began writhing; the last dredges of humanity being burned out. I held him tighter and he bucked against me. I was surprised at the force he blindly shoved with.

"Hold steady, Beau. You're doing fine. This is the worst of it and then you'll be free."

Beau tightened up as his heart began beating faster and faster. Too fast for any human. It was happening.

My family descended into the room. They wanted to witness his first moments, while his flying heart beats signified their own end.

The drumroll of his heart thudded loudly. Beau crushed his hand on mine. Ow.

I sorrowfully remembered the moment in the meadow when I counted the time passing with his steady heartbeat. My Beau. My Beau. My Beau.

He arched his back and cried out in agony. His heart stuttered. Then beat determinedly a few more times. Then finally his heart beat once more and never again.

No one breathed.

His heart may no longer pump in his chest. But I would carry the sound of his heartbeat forever.

My Beau.

My Beau.

My Beau.

My Beau opened vibrant red eyes.

AN: This chapter kind of breaks my heart.

So let's take a deep breath! Hold. And release.

- Rosalie

P.S. If you are interested, I'm thinking on another story right now which I actually hinted at in this chapter. I'm going back in time.

I've always been interested in Edward's "rebellious" years. So I'm currently drafting a story about that, making it like a murder mystery with a noir vibe. A very different story, obvi. It's a work in progress. If you'd like to be notified when I start publishing it make sure you are following me.