Chapter 2-12: The Truth as Temporarily Established
A/N: It's late, and I've got to study tomorrow. Oh fuck it.
"So everything's cleared up?"
Alice sat on the desk in the middle of the office, her feet dangling just an inch off the ground. Contrary to Jenna, who was torn up and covered in scar tissue as her wounds healed, Alice's clothes were clean and her face unblemished. Only her right hand and sleeve had been dirtied by blood, covering her arm up to the shoulder. I honestly didn't want to contemplate how she'd managed to do that.
Jenna's nod was something between grudging agreement and murderous bitterness. Her arms were crossed in the manner of a petulant child, but her eyes seethed with a pent-up rage that no child should ever deserve to feel.
"If you wanna hear the sound of your own voice that bad, Wonderland reject, then speak the fuck up. Give me something I can use."
I noticed her use of the word "I" – not "we". She obviously wasn't too pleased with the fact that I was allied with Alice, nor that I had yanked her away from what to her must have been two free kills.
Alice leaned backward, seemingly finding a point of equilibrium in thin air. She corrected her clothes in an unnecessarily theatrical fashion before speaking.
"I'm going to talk for a bit, so sit back and enjoy the exposition."
I thought I saw a hint of that familiar Alice smirk, but I was almost sure I was mistaken when I looked at her face a second later.
"So, Jennifer, first things first. You've probably heard the intro to being a vampire a thousand times in the movies, so I'll make it quick. Crosses, silver, hawthorn, garlic, running water, millet seeds, whatever, don't do shit. Well, there are exceptions, and as you'll hear in a bit, a little uncertainty."
Indeed, Jenna seemed to have heard it before. She was juggling a hunter's knife in the same showy way as a child might draw in class, just to underline that she wasn't listening.
"Sunlight and fire are bad news. I dunno what a stake through the heart does yet, but they'll have to be able to get it in first. Way too many people nowadays think a stake is something you can hammer in by hand. We still have ribs even though we're not human, you know."
Fire? Well, that was news to me. I'd have to remember that. Not that I'd like being burned in the first place.
"You have to drink blood to survive, of course. You'll also need it to raise your body to higher levels of performance. If you're ever going to try a stunt like fighting off such a huge bunch of torch-and-pitchfork-wielding Catholics again – " Alice smirked grudgingly for a split second – "you better be well fed."
So Aro wanted us to exhaust our store of blood simply to fight him? Fine, I'd do that. It didn't really matter to me if I had to kill someone, not if I could survive to turn Aro into ash.
Alice sent a look in my direction, tinged with a sort of detached curiosity.
"Now, let's get to the crunch. Aro has done this, of course. Thing is, he doesn't quite seem to have control of it. There are some things I'd count as blessings more than curses in all this – we can pass as human, we can augment our strength with blood, and as far as I've seen, we've gotten more versatile. Of course, this isn't good news – if Aro himself has to compromise, it's not going to be pleasant. Also – Bella, come here for a minute."
Alice beckoned me over lazily – in itself a typical Alice gesture, but the distance that permeated the movement gave it a distinct awkward feeling.
"This mostly concerns you. I think you must have noticed that you were feeling quite much weaker after all that happened."
"Yeah. I was out running with Jenna, and well, I only did the 15-second mile."
I smirked at my own bad joke, but it must have had come out in an unnerving way, since Alice flinched a bit and widened her eyes.
"There's a reason for that. Back in the days, you must have wondered where all the blood we drank went. Well, I've checked back in the day – " she grimaced, recalling an undoubtedly painful experience – "and back then, our main area of storage, if you can say that, was in our chest cavities. In the area around our hearts, to be specific. Now, though, it's – well, show, don't tell."
With the same frightening grace I remembered, she conjured a scalpel from somewhere in her clothing and aligned it parallel to the artery in her left wrist. With an unnervingly practiced movement, she slipped the blade through her flesh, seemingly without any pain at all. She put the scalpel aside on the desk and used her thumb and index finger to pull the cut apart.
"See?"
Only a small trickle of darkish blood, slow like sap, came from either end of the blood vessel. Her exposed muscle tissue was a sickly pale pink, the color of the gills of a rotting fish, dotted with tiny red spots which I took to be clotted capillaries.
"It seems that in this state, the blood rests in our whole system when it's not in use. If you've experienced any weakness, it might be due to the blood taking time to move from your chest cavity out into your whole body."
She pinched shut the cut, pushing out a single drop of deep red blood, already beginning to coagulate outside the preservative effect of her system. Her flesh knit together seamlessly, leaving no trace of the inch-deep incision she'd made.
"About our abilities, it's a long story. Your friend might like to listen."
"…no thanks. I don't want to cause too much trouble right now. Touchy moment, I think."
Alice smiled mildly at my comment, for once without any obvious trace of bitterness.
"To tell you the truth, I haven't always had the ability to see into the future. That's mostly practice. What you saw before you met me again – I'll keep it short – is what I could do originally. Transfer of sensory input. Why I can do it again, I dunno. I thought I shoved it away with all the stuff from back then, but no matter."
Even if I'd somehow considered committing the unspeakable gaffe of asking Alice what "the stuff from back then" was, her expression would surely have stopped me. She was trying to keep a smile on her face, but the corners of her eyes were twitching and her pupils wide in abject fear. There was no sadness in that expression, no regret, no anger. Only pure, unadulterated horror filled her eyes, and she was wringing her hands, before folded upon her lap, with an obsessive rhythm I'd never expected of her.
"Okay, Jennifer."
Alice seemed to empty out all her emotion into that one name, churning it out in a disdainful, vitriolic sneer, somehow still with a smile on her face. Jenna looked up at her, obviously pissed that she'd been distracted from what she was doing – attempting to juggle daggers thrown to a height of twenty feet right outside the window.
"Hope you have something I wanna know this time, whore. Tell me something I need."
Jenna's answer held none of Alice's passionate vitriol, instead just an offhand hostility and a gratuitous insult. Alice pretended to ignore it and started talking.
"I'm gonna tell you about the others of our kind in the area. Listen up, and listen good.
Jasper and Emmett just finished having their fun. I can't even remember their body count, but what I know for sure is that a newbie like you has no chance of taking on the police. A shotgun blast to the head can still be lethal, and you should remember that."
Jenna seemed equal measures ticked off at Alice's insult and miffed at having her immortality doubted, but kept quiet.
"Renesmee… well, she's keeping some interesting company. Seems the first newborn she created was killed, and now she's trying to avenge her. Basic stuff, if you don't look at the people she's got tagging along. She's been creating new vampires right and left, and they're all dangerous."
I should have been worried. Nessie was my daughter, after all. Yes, I could feel some kind of worry, an instinctive reaction to having something of mine threatened, but the true worry just wouldn't show itself, and neither would the care about not being able to feel anything about it.
"Edward's… well, I'm not sure if he's been getting better or not. He's sure been getting quieter. Before, he was wrecking the place and screaming about having no soul. He's calmed down now, but I'm still not sure."
Edward… somehow, I didn't feel that strongly for him either. This had become a battle against Aro, and anyone who let Aro's tricks get to him was being a burden.
"Everything else… well, we'll just have to go out and look – I was getting hungry anyway. This isn't half boring."