Chapter 28: Rosalie
Gatlinburg, Tennessee, 1935
Edward is such an idiot, I thought, walking into the woods behind our latest high school.
I just walked out from lunch. We still had half the day left, but I couldn't deal with him anymore. He got a kick out of telling me the thoughts of every single person in the room when they were thinking about me, no matter if they were male or female. I knew every detail of my encounters with them in their thoughts, intimate or violent, but the sad part was these were the only times I really saw a smile on Edward's face. He walked around the house with a frown, hunted with a frown, went to school with a frown . . . he only smiled when he was bugging me, and I couldn't find it in me to tell him to stop.
I was still amazed that Carlisle thought Edward and I would ever be anything more than siblings.
Edward protected and reassured me from the very beginning, but I only felt like I had a brother, not a potential mate, in him. I could see in his face that Isabella—wherever she was—had stolen his heart, and, truth be told, I really didn't want it, not like that. I loved to hate my younger brother, even though he had lived longer and never let me forget that.
He was my brother, so I had no choice but to love him . . . but he wasn't enough anymore. I had the love and affection of family, but not of a mate. Watching Carlisle and Esme as happy as they were only made it worse, and Edward felt the same. It was common ground between us that usually brought both of us out into the woods to walk or hunt to get away, but I wanted that. I wanted someone to be happy with, someone to make me feel whole. I may have been married in my human life, but I was far from happy or complete. I was rich, and it was not the equivalent of either.
As soon as I was out of sight of the school, I took off, running just to run. I wasn't as fast as Edward, but I quickly learned the joys of running. He had described the rush during my first hunt, and I had used it as a means of escape ever since. I could let go of my control, be who I was and not who I had to be to keep up appearances. No one could bother me, and I was free to do as I wanted.
Something shot in front of me, going right across my path so I had to jump in order not to run it right over. I looked in the direction it was heading to see a young woman running deeper into the woods, her long brown hair flowing out behind her. She stopped and turned to face me for a moment, and my mind flashed back to the night I almost died.
Heart-shaped face with sad silver eyes, brown hair falling around a tired face . . . Isabella took off and I followed, running as fast as my newborn body would let me. I started gaining on her but stopped when a loud roar sounded from somewhere off to my left, followed by a cry of pain. I looked back in the direction Isabella had run, but she was gone.
I followed the cries to a small clearing. I gasped as I saw a bear swat at a boy laying on the ground under it, leaving massive cuts across his bloodied chest. The presence of fresh blood tickled my conscience, but I ignored it when he screamed again.
Running straight up to the angered bear, I roared, stopping it from swiping at the boy again. It was confused for a moment and went down on all fours, stomping the ground before getting up on its hind legs again with a roar. I knelt down, putting a hand on the side of the boy's face as I growled long and low. He was barely breathing, and his heart was failing.
"Stay with me," I whispered, and I noticed a strange hum as I touched him. It was a pleasant feeling, something I hadn't felt before. I was scared at first, but it changed to contentment, like—
The bear roared again, swiping its heavy paws at me, but I smacked them away hard enough to make the bear stumble back. The boy flinched and I ran my thumb over his cheek comfortingly, unable to help him until the bear left or I killed it.
All of a sudden, another larger bear appeared behind us, roaring at the first. I kept growling, looking from one to the other and back again, but something was different about the larger one. The first hadn't moved any closer, and I took the time to look at the newest.
It was big, much bigger than the bears we had seen while hunting. It was all black with paws twice the size of dinner plates. The face was sad as it stared down the other, rumbling and moving its weight from foot to foot as its head swung back and forth. I looked over it, and something didn't seem right. When my eyes fell on its face again, I realized silver ones were entrancing the first, driving it back without the bear's body doing anything more than just being there.
"Isabella?" I whispered, and just like that, I could see her through the body of the bear. She was standing at its head, her eyes just below the projection's. I didn't know what was going on, but I didn't get the chance to ask.
"Take him to Carlisle," she said roughly, as though she hadn't talked in a very long time. Her bear-image's rumbling got louder as she spoke. "Save him."
She ran forward, her bear following her movements and charging at the first. She raised her hands and the bear went on its back legs, and when she swiped her hands in front of her, so did the bear. She roared and a bear's came from her mouth, causing my vision to blur with the volume.
"Go!" I heard at the end and jumped into action, scooping up the large boy and running full-tilt back to the house.
Edward met me in the driveway, running ahead and opening the door as he called for Carlisle. He cleared the kitchen table with a swipe of his arm and I placed the boy on it. As I did so, I realized he wasn't really a boy but a young man, maybe just out of high school. He had short, curly brown hair and dark brown eyes that stared back at me dully as he continued to gasp for breath. I could hear a gurgling sound as he did so, that and the pink, foamy blood coming from his mouth telling me he was bleeding in his lungs.
"What happened?" Carlisle asked, assessing the young man.
"I was running through the woods and almost ran over Isabella," I started, and Edward's head whipped around to face me. His eyes had a spark of hope in them, but it flickered as though he were struggling to keep it alive.
"She ran across my path and kept going. I didn't know it was her at first, but she stopped and turned enough for me to recognize her from the night I was changed. She ran again and I followed her, but before I caught her, I heard a bear roaring and someone yelling in pain. I looked for her, but she was gone, so I followed the bear sounds and found this guy under a bear. It was attacking him, but I don't know why. I tried scaring the bear off instead of killing it, but it wouldn't go away. Another bear showed up before I decided to kill it, but it wasn't really a bear. It was Isabella."
"What do you mean?" Edward asked as Carlisle continued focusing on the man. "Show me."
I did, and his face screwed up in confusion, quickly followed by amazement.
"She projected a bear over herself to scare the other one away," he mumbled. "How, though? I didn't know she could do something like that."
"She must have a rune for something like that," Carlisle said without looking up. "I remember reading something on the Nephilim a few years back. What you're describing sounds like a glamour, an image she put over herself to change her appearance."
The man coughed and Carlisle mumbled a curse under his breath. He put his fingers to the man's neck and sighed loudly.
"If I am going to change him—"
"Emmett," Edward said suddenly. Both of us looked at him in confusion. "His name is Emmett McCarty."
"Well, if I'm going to save Emmett, I need to do it now. His body is failing, even if his mind isn't just yet." Carlisle looked at me tensely, glancing down at my hand. I hadn't noticed, but I had taken Emmett's hand in mine. I looked at his eyes and the hand I was holding twitched, like he was trying to close it around mine.
"Save him."
Three days later
Emmett awoke with a loud "ow," his hand shooting to his chest as he sat up. "What the hell just happened to me?"
"Well, uh," Carlisle stuttered, apparently unnerved by his question. "You were turned into a vampire.
"Like, fangs, blood-sucking, sleep in a coffin vampire?" he asked.
"Yes to the first two, ad no to the third," Carlisle said fighting a smile. "We do drink blood, but we only drink from animals. We do have fangs, but we don't sleep in coffins. We don't sleep at all, actually."
"Where's that bear-girl?" he asked, looking around. "Whatever that was, it was awesome."
"We don't know," Edward mumbled, but Emmett had moved on already, looking at me.
"I know you!" he exclaimed, pointing at me with a huge, dimpled smile that I couldn't help but return. "You got that bear away and brought me . . . well, here, I guess."
He looked up to the ceiling in thought, his newborn state very obvious from his lack of concentration. He shrugged off whatever it was and smiled at me again. I took a few steps towards him.
"Emmett, what do you remember from before the bear started attacking you?" I asked, taking his hand. It was so much larger than mine that I couldn't see any part of my hand as his closed around it.
"You have really small hands," he said, realizing the same thing I had. I laughed and shook my head.
"Concentrate, Emmett," I said. "What do you remember?"
"Well, I was at a party with a bunch of friends," he started. "What about my friends and family? Will they know what happened?"
"They will know you were attacked by a bear from the scene in the woods. They'll assume you died in the attack from the blood," Carlisle explained patiently. "What happened at the party?"
"Oh, I got really drunk," he said, laughing. "Someone mentioned that I could probably take on a bear with how big I am, so we decided to go find one. I thought I could, too, but I guess we were wrong."
He looked down at his lap, where he was playing with my fingers. I was about to comfort him when he suddenly broke out in a smile again. I shook my head and laughed.
"How are you so happy? You just died and came back to life as a vampire, and you'll never be able to see your friends and family again," I asked, happy he wasn't upset but still confused. His shrug didn't really answer me.
"What's with my throat?" he asked, trying to clear it.
"You're thirsty," Carlisle said, apparently happy something was going the way it should. "Rosalie, will you and Edward take him hunting?"
I looked to Edward, who nodded once. I moved away from the bed, where we had moved him after Carlisle had started his change, and he got up, my hand still clasped in his. The three of us walked out the back door, passing Esme, who had been quietly standing in the doorway the whole time. She went to Carlisle as we walked out, and I could imagine her smiling as she had when Edward had taken me for my first hunt.
Emmett took to hunting like it wasn't his first time, taking down a bear slightly smaller than the one that had attacked him. I could see him remembering as he looked down at the body once he had finished, and he flinched when I touched his arm.
Edward stayed back, not wanting to make Emmett feel threatened by the presence of another male. He looked sad whenever I saw his face, but he would give me a small smile when he noticed me watching him. I could see him drawing away from me, even in the few hours we were in the woods. When we got back to the house, he went straight up to his room without a word.
*Em*Em*
I love being a vampire! I thought, throwing my hands out as I sped ahead of Rosie and Edward.
It was four months after I had been changed, and I had never been happier than I was with Rosie. She had been there since my attack and hadn't left my side. We had a connection neither of us could put into words, and Edward had told me Rosie looked a lot happier than she had before Carlisle changed me. She showed me how to hunt and explained everything I didn't understand. She had a lot of patience with me, and she didn't make me feel like an idiot. And she was beautiful. Really beautiful.
I was running through the woods behind the house. I wasn't paying any attention to where I was going, but I somehow managed to miss all of the trees I was flying by. I didn't understand how, but I figured it had something to do with my enhanced abilities. Carlisle mentioned speed, grace, and strength (not that I needed more strength), so I guess that was another.
The trees broke suddenly, and I stopped in the backyard of a small cabin. A young woman was hanging clothes on the line to dry in the late summer sun, but I couldn't see what it was she was hanging. I couldn't focus on anything but the light rise and fall of the vein in her neck. My hands were on her shoulders and my mouth at her neck before I registered someone calling my name.
"Emmett, let her go," someone said from behind me. My vision turned red and I growled as I drank, my grip tightening on the fragile woman's arms.
"You don't want to do this, Emmett. Let her go," she said from behind me.
Something pulled the girl from me, and as I grabbed for her, my hands hit an invisible wall. I roared in frustration as the girl's body floated to the ground and turned to face the intruder. I recognized her immediately.
"Isabella," I whispered in shock.
I looked down at my hands as I finally caught up with everything that happened, a wave of shame washing over me as the blood on my skin mocked me, glistening in the setting sunlight. I tried wiping it off on my jeans, but my pale skin was stained by my actions. My knees hit the ground with a muffled thud as I realized what I'd done.
Isabella's hands wrapped around my wrists, stopping me from trying to wear away the skin off them. She turned them over so we could see my palms and placed one of my hands in both of hers, whispering a few words before doing the same to the other. They tingled for a few moments, and the blood disappeared before my eyes.
"Learn to stand by falling down, Emmett McCarty," she whispered, placing my hands in my lap and looking at my face. I got a chill from the emptiness I saw in her eyes, and the small smile only made it worse. I could tell she had once been full of life, but something—or many somethings—was slowly killing her. It was as though I were looking into a shell, not a living being.
"Use those who care about you to stand up again. Never give in." She stood and I followed her movements. She looked behind me just as I heard footsteps rapidly approaching.
"What about my eyes?" I asked, frantic. I couldn't let my Rosie see me like this.
"Motivation to learn from your mistakes. She will understand, Emmett, I promise you that. Let nothing dampen your spirit, young one," she said, and she took off into the woods.
"Isabella!" Edward called as Rosie kneeled next to me.
"Emmett, what happened?" she asked, but I didn't answer right away. For some reason, I couldn't help but think she told me all of that because it was what happened to her. And then I thought who was helping her stand up again?
