A/N: I'm going to be busy this weekend, so I'm updating early. Happy Friday (for us in the southern Hemisphere), and thanks to Kim, Melinda and Leigh, as usual, and everyone who R&Rs. :)
Black Swan
Chapter 17
"Bella, please take a moment to reconsider this," the warden attempts to reason with me, her lips thinning with her usual displays of disappointment. "You want to make Edward a member of our family, and yet you're planning on murdering a member of his."
"In my time, he would have gotten the chair," I point out.
"That's irrelevant. Times have changed."
"Times change, we do not."
She sighs brashly. "I can't allow it."
I pull myself meticulously up from my day bed and stand-off with her. "Just because I tolerate you treating me like I'm your child, doesn't mean I am one. I'm getting really sick and damn tired of your constant lectures!"
"The day you start acting like an adult, is the day I'll start treating you like one." She doesn't waver, but then neither do I.
"You mean the day I join you in your psychotically masochistic diet? That is never going to happen."
She tuts, her scowl deepening. "You can believe that's all there is to it all you like, but no one in this family believes it. You will never mature until you put your past behind you."
"Have you, Mommy Dearest?" I fire back. "The human who lost her child and now projects that pathology onto all of us?"
She slaps me, hard and more than once. "I'm ashamed to call you my daughter," she says coldly, before turning her back on me and exiting my room.
"Good, because you've never been my mother!" I yell at her retreating form, my fangs extending on impulse. Never in my close to sixty-eight years has she ever struck me, but then I can't say I've ever truly deserved it before.
Next comes Carlisle's condemnation, but by this point, I am well and truly at the end of my tether.
"Bella," he grabs my elbow as he passes me on the stairs, "in this house, you will show your mother respect."
"She is not my mother," I reply through clenched teeth, "and your pity on the dying, ugly teenager doesn't make you my father either!"
"Bella—"
"How old do you have to be before it occurs to you that you shouldn't in fact force your existence, or way of life, on anyone, let alone dying children?!" I interject in accusation, jerking my arm from his grip.
"Bella..." he repeats, sighing with it this time.
"Save it. I'm leaving. Inform Aro if you must."
"You are not leaving," he challenges me in that ever constant patience of his.
"Let her go, Carlisle," Rose speaks up softly from the landing above us. "This is something she needs to do."
"Fine..." he relents after clearly taking a moment to reflect on it before pushing both hands into the pockets of his pants. "Do what you must."
"I don't need your permission, Daddy," I add scornfully, shoving past him and making my way toward the front door.
"Come back to me, bitch," Rose speaks up again, from behind me this time.
"I'm coming back," I assure her without turning to face her.
"Promise me."
"I promise," I mumble, my eyes falling to the marble beneath my feet. They're still muddy from my early morning hunt, but right now I'm under no misapprehension in regards to my primitive nature.
"Whether you want to believe it right now or not. You are my sister, and I'll love you every damn day of our miserable lives."
"God, you're a pain." I scoff ruefully. "I love you, too, Beauty Queen."
In an instant, she's beside me, her arm snaking around my shoulders. Leaning in, she quickly plants her lips to my cheek. "Get going."
"A week. Look after Red Canary. I expect you to kill for him, understand?"
"You think Em would allow any harm to come to his little buddy-buddy," she says wryly.
"Tell him to get his own."
. . .
Edward always asks me why I don't have a car, when I do in fact have one; a dark blue 2018 Ford Mustang convertible. I love the throaty growl and power that comes from under the hood, but I rarely drive it. I prefer to run, but today is an exception. Driving will give me time to cool my overrunning thoughts and plan my attack in advance.
And allow shame to trickle over me.
I spend the majority of the drive lamenting over my fight with Esme. I need to apologize. Despite my tantrum, which only confirmed every word out of her mouth in regards to me, she is my mother. She always has been. I treat her atrociously at times; again only reiterating that I am every bit the teenager she accuses me of being.
She took me under her wing when I was a scared, angry, irrational newborn, more animal than I was ever human. She taught me how to blur the lines between our kind and the human race, to see them as more than just a source of food. She was never successful, but I'm the vampire I am today because of her. I'm not sure it's exactly a testament to her, but regardless, I owe her my life and I need to stop being, as Rose would say, a little brat.
With an hour to go before I arrive at my destination, I push my mother from my thoughts and force James Nomad to the forefront. I googled his address before I left. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area in a loft apartment a mile and a half from Silicon Valley. The drive takes me nine hours, and after reaching the city, I immediately head to the apartment he occupies.
I drive slowly past the early twentieth century, red-faced brick warehouse several times, scoping the premises. He lives on the third floor, and I notice all three of the windows within the wide, arched front façade are open.
I won't have to break in.
I know nothing of James. I chose not to search for him online, because I prefer to find out about the humans I plan to kill in real time. It makes it more interesting.
The first thing I discover about him is that he's in a band, The Nomads, I read from a street poster as I blatantly roll my eyes. James is the grungy-looking male front and center, with even grungier-looking dirty blond hair that falls to his shoulders. It's not exactly hard to discern him from his fellow bandmates. He has a self-assured, arrogant smirk that almost reminds me of Fake ID. If he wasn't such a detestable creature deserving of death, he would almost be handsome—if you're into deluded 80's rocker-wannabes, that is. Though, there isn't a single feature on his face that he shares with Edward, and that I'm grateful for.
Three hours later, I find myself sitting at a small round table in a smoke-filled, seedy bar watching The Nomads play to roughly one hundred screaming girls. All are clearly drunk, high or severely lacking in average intelligence, or more accurately, all three.
James, the lead vocalist, is wearing a white, silk shirt buttoned to his navel, with leather pants and biker boots while singing about a car. It's not nearly as surprising as one would think, and I quickly conclude that it's simply not possible for the guy to get any more tragically pathetic. I almost feel sorry for him, but not nearly enough not to avenge Bree Tanner's death.
He notices me, of course; there isn't a guy in the bar who hasn't. Some approach me, and one a little more adventurous than the rest barely leaves with both testicles intact, but my eyes rarely venture from the blond rocker on the fog-filled stage.
He winks, flashes me what I'm sure he believes is his most winning smile, and motions to me several times, but I ignore him as I continue listening to the metal-grating sound that is an assault to my ears.
By two am, the shockingly bad performance is over, and this is when David Lee Roth himself sits beside me, clutching a near-empty bottle of Jack Daniels.
"Hey, gorgeous," he openly slurs, tilting in his chair and leering at me. He reeks of body odor, but he has quite intense blue eyes; granted they're filled with broken vessels and red-rimmed from his obvious pot use or alcoholism.
I scoff blatantly and pull myself to my feet. "Don't give up your day job, Bon Jovi," I bend down a fraction and say with a smirk, before tossing a quarter to the table top. "Tip." Just as his mouth falls open in shock, I turn my back on him and leave.
Later the same night, after climbing through his loft window, I perch myself at the foot of his bed and coax him awake. He sits up clumsily, immediately catching sight of me—and clearly still not fully coherent—he flashes me a drunken smile. I smile in return, allowing him to see my fully extended fangs. In the same way Edward first reacted to me, although somewhat delayed, he violently jerks back, hitting his head on the brick-face wall of his loft and knocking himself unconscious.
I snort, and standing languidly to my feet, I explore his apartment—his loft apartment that should have been well out of his price bracket. This is the Bay Area after all, and this talentless hack would be lucky to be earning minimum wage. My guess is his Mommy and Daddy gifted him with this cozy little million dollar loft.
I leave very subtle, tell-tale signs that I was here. I drape my cardigan over his dining chair, I leave two strands of my hair on his stark white kitchen benchtop, and using Rose's red Chanel lipstick, I write "see you tomorrow, Bon Jovi" on his bathroom mirror.
I return to the low-grade bar the following night and sit through another mind-numbing performance of cringe-worthy songs about sex and cars. He notices me immediately in the audience, though he pretends he doesn't. His anxiety is evident, and the self-assurance he was in possession of the night before has been replaced by a nervous fluidity that causes him to repeatedly sing off-key. That, I enjoy very much.
When I enter his apartment again in the early hours of the morning, he's out cold. The stench of alcohol taints the air with each breath he takes, leading me to believe he either deliberately drank himself unconscious or he's a raging alcoholic. Possibly both. I pay him no regard, though, and head into the bathroom. My message from the night before is gone, but I replace it with a new one. "In three days you die."
On Sunday night, the lead singer of The Nomads is conveniently absent, but then the police were at his apartment this morning, and poor James did look rather pale and peakish. He's taking refuge at his parent's house. I followed him a couple of miles north to the very affluent neighborhood of Ashbury Heights, and consequently, to the sky blue Queen Anne. It's a lot larger, but not unlike one of the Painted Ladies on a corner block of a typically busy San Francisco street. Unfortunately for James, his parents are out of town, and I'm not about to forewarn him again.
It appears he laid a trap and is lying in wait for me. I heard his half-drunken ramblings well into the night as I stalked his every move on the roof of his parents' house. He gave away his game plan, though, not that he ever had any hope of executing it. He left the third story turret window open with the lights out, and I enter through it allowing him to believe he's ensnared me. The instant he catches sight of me, he fires a handgun. I easily evade the bullet, and before he can blink, I disarm him and hit the lights.
"That's not very polite," I taunt him, leaning in as he sits frozen and trembling in an old wicker chair.
"What are you?" he demands in a guttural voice, squinting blindly up at me.
"The angel of death," I answer, smiling sweetly.
"Are you going to kill me?" He's breaking into a sweat. I can smell the salt in it, and it's nauseating. He obviously hasn't showered in days.
"Most definitely, but I'm going to allow you to choose," I explain as I meticulously turn over the pistol in my hand, inspecting it from every angle.
"Wh-what does that mean?" he stammers.
"Hmm...You can die by hanging, slitting your wrists, drowning, shooting..." I raise a pointed brow. "It's your choice."
"Why? Why are you doing this?"
I lean down to him again, faster than his eyes can track. He visibly shudders and turns five shades paler. "Why?" I echo. "An eye for an eye, James. You know that."
"I haven't killed anyone," he insists, but his guilt-laden, jittery voice betrays him.
"Really?" I play along, sitting myself down in the matching wicker chair and angling it to face him.
"R-really—it was an accident!" he clarifies, continuing to stutter.
"An accident? Hmm... Did you accidentally rape her, too?"
His mouth drops open, and in silence it opens and closes as he glances around the room as if looking for a means to escape. "It-it was... she g-gave consent," is his paltry defense.
"That's fine." I shrug an impassive shoulder. "You're going to give me consent to kill you."
"W-what?" he continues to stutter. "N-no I'm not."
"Oh, but you are, James."
He shakes his head adamantly. "No..."
"Don't concern yourself. No one will miss you."
"Please..." he suddenly begs, and I laugh.
"The thing about me is useless human sentiment has absolutely no effect on me."
"Human? Y-you're not human?" He clearly doesn't trust his own eyes because it's obvious he doesn't believe it.
"Not even remotely."
"Wh-what are you, then?"
"I already told you—good god, this idle chit-chat is tedious. Come on." I get to my feet and motion for him to follow.
He remains seated, and without waiting for him to comply, I grab a fistful of his filthy, greasy hair and drag him, hollering and whining down two flights of stairs.
"I didn't take you for such a baby, James," I say, slamming him down in the desk chair in the wood-paneled study on the first floor. "Or can I call you Jimmy?"
"Fuck you!" he grunts in a hoarse voice, planting both hands over his head to protect his grotesque mop.
"Poor baby. Did I hurt you?" I mock him before jerking open a drawer in the mahogany desk and pulling out several sheets of stationary. "Write," I instruct him.
"Write what?"
"Your suicide letter, of course."
"Fuck you," he repeats. "I'm not writing shit."
With deliberately measured movements, I lean forward from behind him, and plant both palms to the desk. "Here's the thing," I speak very calmly in his ear. "Either you write this letter, or I break every one of your fingers, one by one."
He shakes his head erratically, and before he can get that defiant word out, I snap the thumb of his left hand so far back it almost completely severs.
"That's one," I say, clamping my hand over his mouth to muffle his cries.
He shakes his head again, and obviously needing more convincing, I break his index finger in the same manner.
"That's two—write!"
"No—you fucking demon bitch!"
Past patience, I again grab his hair and slam him face first against the surface of the desk. "There are two-hundred-and-six bones in the human body. We can be here all night," I warn him after pulling him back.
Blood oozes from both nostrils, and over his lips as he laughs at me. "No one's gonna believe I killed myself with so many broken bones."
"Oh, really?" I toy with him, and biting into my wrist, I allow several drops of my blood to fall against his broken nose. In seconds, the nasal bones reform with a sharp snap, making him jerk in his seat with a shriek. "By the time, I'm finished with you, Jimmy, there won't be a scratch on you, but you will be very much dead," I promise him.
His eyes are beginning to bulge from their sockets, and he's been rendered mute, but continuing to resist—from fear more than anything—he again shakes his head back and forth.
"That's three." I break his middle finger, and tearing his shirt from his back, I use it to gag him silent.
By the fifth finger, he's sobbing like a baby.
"Write the letter and I'll kill you quickly. Resist and...well, we could do this for days..." I speak softly against his earlobe after healing all five partially-severed digits. I'm not one to play with humans on such a scale and I'm fast growing tired of it.
"What...d-do I write?" he whimpers after pulling down the torn material from his mouth.
"Do I have to spell it out for you? The guilt over what you did to Bree is unbearable and you can no longer go on," I deride him, because I know he feels no such remorse.
He appears to comply, but it all too soon becomes apparent that he's leaving a cryptic message; the first letter of each sentence spelling out "I was murdered".
"SIX!" I begin again with his thumb, only this time I completely crush it.
"Okay...okay..." he begs desperately after I yank the gag from his mouth when he screeched like a banshee.
"Don't play me for an idiot, James," I threaten him, grabbing his hair and jerking his head back to lock my eyes with his. "And you will apologize to Edward, as well."
"E-Edward?" he stammers as though he misheard. "My cuz Edward?"
"The very one."
This is when he turns the chair partially to face me as an almost sly smile tugs on his lips. "Wait... Are you Bella?"
"What?" My voice practically fails, but I wasn't expecting this. How the fuck does he know about me?
"Oh, yeah..." A full grin slowly spreads across his face taking me further aback. "I know all about you."
My hand snaps out as if on impulse, gripping his throat tightly and all but crushing his esophagus. "How?!" I demand through clenched teeth.
"He told me..." he squeaks out.
Without releasing him, I tear him from the chair until he's inches from my face. "Prove. It," I challenge him in a seething whisper.
"My...phone," he chokes as his face begins to turn purple.
Whipping him around, I yank it from his back pocket. The screen's cracked, but it's still working. In deathly silence I hand it to him, fighting desperately to keep my composure intact as I watch him unlock it and click on his Facebook messages.
He hands it back to me to read, and the anger is now simmering along my flesh as if it were tangible, causing my entire body to pulsate in tune with it.
With slow, carefully measured movements, I take it and stare down at the conversation before me.
How you doing, Ed? James began the conversation.
Not bad. Was Edward's reply.
Met any hot chicks or are you still fucking the blonde?
Yeah, I met one, but man, she's beautiful and way out of my league.
Really? Got into her pants yet?
Nah, not yet. I'm working on it, though. She's gonna be a hard one to crack.
You not in love with her, are you? Along with that comment, James added a laughing emoji.
Fuck no. Edward answered with a vomiting emoji. Gonna fuck her and move on. She's pretty crazy, ya know?
Yeah, seen more of them than I wanna remember.
Edward's response was a laughing emoji.
What's her name? James asked.
Bella. She's beautiful, but a complete bitch.
Best ones to fuck, dude. With James' last comment, the chat ended.
From my periphery, I notice him raise his fist to hit me, but without severing my gaze from the hopelessly cracked screen and Edward's mocking words, I catch it as he thrusts it down; squeezing my fingers around his wrist until it breaks.
His roars of pain pull my attention back to him, and dragging him to me, I clamp my hand roughly over his mouth. "Make one more sound and you die—and I won't make it painless," I speak coldly, my voice as dead as I can feel myself becoming.
He immediately nods, and I release him. "Heal me... and I'll tell you... more."
I do.
"Edward is... man, he's always been a spoiled, little rich kid. A smart girl like you? How'd he fool you?" He's appealing to my ego, and I'm not even remotely receptive to it.
"Don't bother—just continue." My tone is flat, and for the first time in my existence, I feel... I have no real words to describe it, but I don't like it. I can barely tolerate it. My mind is continuing to rage, but my soul—the very same soul I never believed existed—is... tired.
"That night with Bree... Okay, yeah, I got her wasted to fuck her, but Edward was no victim in any of it. He laughed the whole time."
Something within me snaps. It's as though he struck me, the same way Esme struck me
In the next second, I have him by the throat, and, with my fangs extended, I draw the blood from his veins. I draw my blood from his veins, but I don't feed off him. I can barely stomach it, and when I yank him back, repulsed by his closeness, I kill him as quickly as I promised. I break his neck sharply before he's aware of what's happening, and allow him to fall dead to the floor at my feet.
I dispose of his body in the San Francisco bay, and return to my car to make the long trek home. I obey the speed limit through every passing mile, and it takes close to fourteen hours to reach Forks. I needed the extra time to keep myself under control, because if I didn't, I knew I would kill Edward the instant I saw him. Even now, I don't want that.
It's just past three pm when I arrive at his parent's house. I knock on his front door as opposed to jumping through his bedroom window, and the moment he opens it, a broad smile warms his entire face. It only fortifies my resolve that no matter his flaws, no matter what he is, I can't kill him.
"Bella, hey—you're back!" He moves to embrace me, but planting my palm to his chest, I stop him.
"Your cousin is dead," I inform him without emotion.
His expression immediately falls as deep creases steadily malign his forehead. "Hey..." his voice drops to a whisper, "are you okay?"
"I'm fine," I answer, my tone stony but completely and utterly dead.
"Bella..."
"You had misconceptions about me, and it always frustrated me, but the truth is, I was just as fooled by you."
"...W-what?" he puts to me in obvious confusion.
"My face swayed you, and your scent swayed me, but don't worry, I will never feed from you again. The very idea of it sickens me to my stomach." I turn to leave, when he immediately reaches out and grabs my hand.
"Bella, wait—OW! What are you doing?!" he cries as I forcibly removed his fingers from me.
"Touch me again, and I'll tear your arm off!" I threaten him, and placing my index finger to his chest, I shove him, sending him sprawling on his back along the hardwood floors of the foyer. "If you so much as look at me again, I will kill you, Edward, and don't think for one second that I'm playing with you." My warning is absolute, but it's all a lie.
He immediately pulls himself to his feet and chases after me, but I'm in my car and pulling back down the driveway before he can get close. I can't shut out his voice, however. He calls out to me at the top of his lungs, screaming at me to talk to him, to explain. I ignore him; it's all I can do even as my chest begins to burn behind a barely acknowledged, but very real pain. Despite every effort I made to keep myself detached from this human, I inevitably began to feel something for him.
Esme meets me at the door when I return home with the sincerest concern overrunning her face, and it hits me right then and there exactly how much I have wronged her.
"I'm sorry," I sob, falling into her open arms. "I'm so sorry..."
Beta Note:
Clarification for those who has never visited San Francisco, California; like me in little ol' Georgia.
Ashely Heights is an upscale neighborhood that's peaceful and slow paced about 25 minutes from the fast paced city of San Francisco. The neighborhood has been around for decades and was famous with the hippie movement in the 70s. Queen Annes are the beautiful architectural homes located in Ashely Heights, and go for well over a million bucks in US dollars.
The Painted Ladies are in the same architecture, and are used as a point of reference here. Though, James' parents' home is larger, with a larger yard, and on a corner block. They are a historical landmark in SF.
Thanks for reading and reviewing!
~Kimmie45 (Kim)
