AN: alright, just a heads up this is another violent chapter and not for people with weak stomachs.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: SECOND TASTE

…

Human blood makes us the strongest…

Jasper's been thinking about cheating—adverse as he is to the idea…

- Edward, Eclipse, Chapter 14

…

The turret room was in pandemonium.

While the room echoed with the thunderous sound of clamoring footsteps, I stayed perfectly still—near the bottom of the dais steps, my back to the three thrones—observing the chaos from a distance. I didn't see Aro or Caius amid the rushing bodies in front of me. Or the six bodyguards either. But all the other vampires were running with inhuman swiftness toward their prey.

And said prey was shrieking and scattering in terror.

The humans ran around the turret room as fast as they could, without any particular destination in mind. They were just frantic to get away from the vampires closing in around them. But I knew, having once been human myself, that they wouldn't get far before the charging monsters descended on them.

My heart sank with dread. And then I felt a rush of surprise for how I reacted to the chaos.

I wasn't surprised by my feelings. After all, I wasn't Caius, who, I saw from a quick glance over my shoulder, was watching from his throne, with a cruelly pleased expression. Or Aro, who I caught in another glance watching the scene from his throne with a look of manic glee.

No, the surprising part wasn't how I felt, but how my body reacted. When the humans started screaming, their blood spiked with adrenaline—a smell that was bitter, but strangely enticing. And when that scent of fear hit me, it whipped me into a sort of frenzy.

My legs tensed, ready to bolt. My teeth slicked with venom. And I felt my rational senses slipping. Giving way to the beast within.

Go on. Feed. You know you want to.

That darker part of my mind was right. My moral qualms were rapidly becoming unimportant the longer I inhaled that coppery bouquet of blood permeating the air. Ever second the blood clogged my nostrils, my ethical concerns seemed further and further away. Harder and harder to remember.

Why didn't I want to do this again?

My foot shot forward, of its own will. And my other one jerked, ready to join it.

But at the very last second, before my instincts compelled me to join the other sprinting vampires, I hissed, and rooted my feet in place. Then I wrapped my fingers tightly around my blazing neck. And I tried to swallow the small lake of fluid pooling eagerly on my tongue.

It was harder than I thought it should be—even with my poor coordination. But, using all my concentration, I managed to hold my ground. And tried to think about something else besides how badly I wanted to drink human blood right now. Anything else.

As badly as I wanted this, I dreaded it too. I was still too clumsy to effectively break a human's neck. So, like Alice had pointed out, I would have to take my second victim alive.

While they were still kicking and screaming.

My entire body shuddered. I didn't want to do that.

It was awful enough to begin with that I had to kill someone at all. But to have to listen to their cries of agony and have to fight off their struggling limbs while I did it?

The thought made me sick.

So, though it was like wrestling a grizzly bear, I fought back the frenzy hazing my mind. And rushed to come up with a plan, before I was lost entirely to my instincts. A way to alleviate my thirst, without creating another horrible memory.

After all, I hardly needed two awful feeding experiences to plague my mind whenever I wasn't busy training. One was already more than enough.

Of course, I wasn't sure if such a thing was even possible, no matter how I approached it. Feeding was, essentially murder. And I wasn't sure there was any way to make that bearable. Especially when Aro's humane methods weren't an option for me yet.

But I was determined to try.

While I choked the flames back, fighting past how parched I was to think, I tried to come up with a strategy. Maybe there is some other way besides breaking their neck that I can make their death quick and painless? Or at least to keep them from screaming?

I winced. I hated to admit it, but that really was my top priority. I couldn't stand the sound. Or, more accurately, the pain it implied.

But as I reviewed a hundred different, quick, bloodless ways to kill my prey in my mind—suffocation, blunt force trauma, hanging, inducing a heart attack, etc.—I realized all of them either required a mastery over my strength I did not yet possess or materials I didn't have handy. So maybe Alice was right. Maybe I would just have to suck it up and do what everyone else was doing.

Desperate for any other solution, I looked over my shoulder a third time. Aro, Caius and six bodyguards who protected the three Volturi leaders were all still in the same positions as before; motionless as statues. I stared at them in awe, wondering if their immobile faces might reveal some secret to their restraint. Anything that might help me avoid killing someone today.

But the more I stared at them, the more difficult I found their actions to comprehend. I couldn't understand how they could bear it. It had to be torture for them to resist the urge to participate with the scent of blood this thick in the air. God knew it was torture for me.

At the same time, I kind of envied them. I wanted to resist, too. I wouldn't have to kill anyone if I could manage that. Alice had promised me that.

But the warm, delicious, metallic smell pouring out of Jasper's victim, and lingering beneath the skin of all the other tourists was absolutely overwhelming. And I knew it was only a matter of time before my resolve crumbled entirely.

After all, ravenous was the predominant personality of most newborns. And I wasn't arrogant enough to believe I was an exception.

With one last glance at Aro, I tore my eyes away from the thrones. And focused back on scene ahead.

The rushing mass of cloaks had finally converged around the tourists. My thirst, which I'd managed to wrestle half-way into submission during the last few seconds, spiked again in my throat when the Volturi began to seize their victims. I guess the sight of other vampires hunting whetted my appetite now.

I tried to take a deep breath to try and calm myself down. But that ended up being a bad idea.

As soon as the air whistled down my throat, another rush of that coppery bouquet lambasted my senses. And it was so strong this time, that, despite my unresolved misgivings, I couldn't stop myself from lurching forward. And grabbing the nearest human by the shoulders.

I dislocated both of them in the process. Which made the woman I'd blindly grabbed scream, high and long, as her bones dislodged from their appropriate sockets.

Her howl of distress momentarily gave me pause. I felt a sharp pang of empathy. And I froze, staring uncertainly into the human's terrified brown eyes.

Her eyes were brown, like mine had been when I was human. And the intense fright I saw reflected back at me almost made me lose my resolve. They reminded me so much of my former human self. It made me feel sick.

And I only felt worse when the woman trapped in my iron grip suddenly began to cry. Little drops of salty water spilled over her cheeks as she wailed—tears. And it hit me suddenly that I couldn't make those any more. Which was another harsh reminder of my true identity.

That I was a monster.

The woman whimpered pathetically. Then made a plea—probably for her freedom, or her life—in a language I didn't understand. Which made me feel rotten inside.

But I didn't let go. No matter how I felt, my throat couldn't stand to wait any longer. The woman's heart was thundering at a breakneck pace in my ears, making the blood in her veins pulse tantalizingly. And her scent—a heady combination of horror, adrenaline and metallic spice—was driving me crazy.

She is prey! You are a predator! my instincts helpfully reminded me. There is no reason for you to regret this. You do not have either Jasper's or Aro's gifts so it will be painless—exhilarating, actually. Go on! Bite her!

After a fleeting moment of hesitation, I gave in.

I yanked her body roughly closer to me. And descended on her neck.

I was stunned for a nanosecond at how easily my teeth sliced through the layers of the woman's skin. Like a hot knife through butter. Then, before I could think of anything else—like my ill-formed plans to make this as quick and painless as possible for my victim—I began to drink fervently from the wound. And slowly, my mind started to get lost in the hunt.

When the first mouthful of blood splashed into my mouth, the temperature shocked me. I'd felt it on my tongue once before, during my previous feed. But I still didn't understand.

How could anyone stand to be so hot all the time?

I wasn't exactly complaining. The more blood I guzzled, the more I became convinced that the natural warmth that human blood from the source had was actually the perfect temperature. Like a delicious soup straight off the stove. But with how weak humans were, I was surprised they didn't burn from inside out.

So hot. Had I really been this warm before?

I was finding that harder and harder to believe. And as I tried my best to just enjoy the blissful experience of drinking human blood, I started to feel, for the first time, like I had more in common with the other cloaked predators, than our horrified prey.

Perhaps my reflection was still an alien. Perhaps my inhuman body did not yet feel like my own. But I knew that after today, I couldn't go back to my room and try to delude myself that my transformation had not happened.

There was no use trying to pretend any longer.

I was no longer human.

And never would be again.

…

I continued to drink.

I had assumed before that this time would be easier. Definitely not emotionally. But I hadn't clumsily torn my victim's head off. So, I'd thought the logistics of avoiding a mess, at least, would be easier.

But despite the fact that this woman's blood wasn't spraying over my shoulders, I still felt like a lot of it wasn't ending up in my digestive system. Some of it had to do with the fact that the woman kept moving.

Every few seconds, she pounded against my chest, trying to push me away, each balled fist striking, feeling no stronger against my rock-hard skin than a brush of a feather. And every time she jerked underneath me, the vein I was drinking from in her neck changed position beneath my lips.

I hissed in frustration as she shook away from my teeth again, causing more blood to spill past my lips, and dribble down the front of her dress. I tightened my grip on her shoulders—hoping to force her to be still.

The continuous, shrill noise that had permeated my senses since the feed began, rang suddenly louder in my ears. I wasn't sure exactly what that was—it didn't sound familiar. Not quite like the high keening of a siren. But nothing like a whistle either.

But I tried not to think too hard about it. And instead focused on trying to suck as much blood from this woman's body as I could, with as little waste as possible.

I stayed bent over my prey for what felt like a very long time. And eventually the irritating, feathery brushing against my chest grew less vigorous. And that shrill noise faded, first into a low, labored moan. Then a dry gasp. And finally silence.

But even when the woman in my arms went completely still, too faint from loss of blood to struggle anymore, I couldn't prevent some of her blood from being wasted. It was surprisingly difficult to control the flow, especially now that her heartbeat had turned erratic. And I often got myself into trouble by slurping with greater urgency when her blood stilled between pulses, only to experience a rush of more than I could possibly swallow once her heart picked back up again.

Streams of thick, hot fluid poured past my lips, pouring down the human's neck and out of my line of sight. It stained her filmy white dress. And beaded in small quantities on the floor.

But I didn't dare detach my mouth from its current position to try and lap up the spills with my tongue. Because I feared I would only accidentally discard more blood by leaving the gouge I had made in her neck unattended.

I could only hope that whatever I managed to gulp down was enough. Because I wasn't sure I could handle killing any more than one person on any given day, my resolve to try and not feel remorse, notwithstanding. Especially now that I suddenly understood what that shrill noise had been.

That had been the sound of my victim screaming at the top of her lungs.

And now she was silent.

It took all of my willpower not to shudder.

…

When all of the blood finally exited my victim's body—whether it had ended up in my stomach or not—I slowly extricated my teeth. They felt strange, slipping out of the buttery layers of human skin I had buried them in. A fact I attributed to the viscous layer of venom clinging to them.

I kept my head dipped, after pulling out, to lick away any obviously salvageable trails. Until I was absolutely certain that I managed to drink up as much of the woman's blood as possible.

Only then did I fully draw back.

I tossed my head away from the suddenly limp, silent corpse in my arms. My heart flared to life then, and spread most of the accumulated blood outwards to nourish every cell in my body. My whole body relaxed as the warmth thrillingly rushed through me. And when it soaked into my tissues, coloring my cheeks a rosy pink, I gave a satiated moan.

The sensation that followed my cry was blissful, floaty. But it was so overwhelming that it made my vision fog over with red. And caused my fiercely clutching arms to suddenly drop dazedly to my sides, dropping my bloodless victim on the floor in the process.

Normally, I would have cringed as her body flopped ungracefully on the ground. And possibly began to apologize for treating her that way—even though words were meaningless to the dead. But I was too busy sailing in heaven to even notice that I had let go.

I staggered backwards a few steps involuntarily, my back still sharply arched in delight. And remained in that unnatural position, totally lost from reality for who knows how long.

…

When I finally filtered back to earth and comprehended that my hands were now empty, I firmly avoided looking at my feet, where I knew the body of my second meal lied bloodless and crumpled like a discarded candy wrapper. Still feeling a bit dazed from the blood rush, I wasn't ready to face what I had done.

Instead, I surveyed the rest of the room, watching with morbid fascination as the rest of the Volturi continued their feast. I was intent on trying to make myself more comfortable with the grisly scene surrounding me. Because this was far from the last time I would see such a thing.

Ten humans were already dead, their lifeless bodies scattered haphazardly throughout the room. But only the twins were finished with their meal, I was a little stunned to notice. Everyone besides Aro's daughters, who were sitting again on the dais steps, swinging their legs back and forth childishly, was working on their second or third victim.

Marcus drank from a plump red-head, while his first victim—a slender brunette—lied contorted and unresponsive at his feet. This didn't really faze me as much as I had anticipated it would. Nor did the sight of Heidi with two sienna-skinned men piled in front of her while she guzzled from a third. I knew that their powers expended a particular toll on their bodies, and this was the price for using them.

And the gore itself, gruesome was it was, especially to my new eyes which did not miss a single detail, was starting to have less of an impact. I was becoming desensitized.

However, just when I finished resolving to view the rest of the primal feast without shying away from even the most uncomfortable implications, I heard a loud, high scream. And, on impulse, I pivoted to face it.

When I spun around, I saw Vera tear a man from the grip of his wife. She ignored the wife's heartbroken shrieks in favor of biting the husband's neck. And I flinched in horror.

Witnessing the kill itself didn't disturb me anymore. In fact, the gory visual sent a strange tingle of excitement down my spine. But at the same time, I couldn't help but mourn what was being lost.

My mind spiraled back to the list Heidi had been working on. I knew, having seen many of the faces around before on her papers, that most of the tourists Heidi had lured here were unmarried orphans, with no close friends—no one to miss them when they died. But the husband I had just witnessed get eaten had been wearing a wedding ring.

And as I watched Corin come up from behind and seize the wife, I wasn't sure what to feel. If there was some sort of afterlife, as several well-respected vampires had hinted towards, then I had no doubts that they would be reunited in death. But if not—and I hadn't yet decided what I believed in that regard—then their love, however profound and beautiful it had been, now ceased to exist.

All because a few vampires were a little thirsty.

My lips quavered with the beginnings of a sob while Corin enthusiastically chugged down the woman's blood. It didn't feel right for something as rare and precious as true love to die for such base purposes. I thought that vampires, of all species, with their undying devotion to their mates, ought to recognize the significance of what they were destroying,

But Corin paid no mind to her victim's weak, terrified gasps and frail kicks against her impenetrable calves. It was like they didn't exist at all.

I shivered at her coldness. And a wail of sorrow bubbled in my throat for the human lovers' loss. But ultimately, I stopped myself from dryly bawling at the last moment.

These were precisely the sorts of sacrifices that I needed to get comfortable with making.

Perhaps a few couples would die to feed us. But thousands—no, millions more, I corrected, remembering what I had seen in Alice's vision—would live because of my contribution to the Volturi.

Killing people is okay, I chanted to myself, willing myself to believe it. Because their sacrifice means so many more will live.

Just as the words were starting to sink in, a dark shape whipped past me. Acting on instinct again, I whirled around to catch sight of whatever was bolting so close. And as my mahogany hair settled around my shoulders, I was astonished to recognize the back of a wavy-blond head.

Jasper.

His gusto confused me. There were still plenty of humans to pick from. And most had given up all hope of escaping. Instead, they simply cowered with their hands over their heads on the floor, waiting to face their horrible fate.

So, there was no real reason to run.

But, though it wasn't rational, Jasper ran anyway. His hands shout out as he dashed over the dusty stone floor, and roughly seized the first human in his path by the collar. Then he practically shoved their throat into his mouth, chewing hungrily through their skin. And proceeded to scarf down all of their blood in record time.

As I watched, I felt ice shoot down my spine. And suddenly I was no longer confused. My new instincts automatically understood the reason for his haste.

He truly was famished. More so than I had ever seen anyone.

And because of that fact, the man whose head he had bashed in earlier, and the one I just watched him slash into were not enough. After Jasper finished, he apathetically cast the corpse of his second victim aside. And dashed off in search of another.

His chosen prey this time was a short, plump woman with curly black hair. Though, I hardly thought Jasper noticed anything of her appearance. Because before she could even blink, he had thrown down a fist into the top of her pretty little skull, concussing her to death instantly.

Lifeless, she quickly toppled to the ground. And Jasper followed her down, catching her by the collar of her pale blue blouse. Before wrenching her up to his mouth.

Again, Jasper drank with incredible haste, gulping huge mouthfuls of blood down loudly. And I twitched, struggling to resist the urge to recoil in horror.

I'd never seen anything quite like it. Even Alice, last month, had not seemed this voracious. Jasper was so wild with thirst, I felt like I was watching a starved lion hunt. And yet, at the same time, he was so precise with his movements, I felt like I was also watching a super-solider-turned-assassin cutting down the enemy.

So deadly. So accurate. So beautiful.

Jasper sucked his third victim dry in record time. And he even continued to hungrily suck at her utterly empty veins for a few seconds after he had drained everything. Like he wished there was more. Like his thirst was still nowhere near being satisfied.

When he pulled away, I noticed, to my astonishment and horror, that was true. His eyes were no longer black wells of ink—a relief. But, even after swallowing so much nourishment, they were only a shade lighter. The dimmest maroon I'd ever seen.

So naturally, still thirsty, he dropped his third kill. And, before it could even land floppily on the ground, he rushed off, in search of more blood.

But now there were no more humans left—all twenty humans who had been cruelly manipulated into entering this room had been drained. And they were slowly getting deposited, by the vampires who had killed them, in a towering heap beside the circular grate resting in the center of the floor.

A few stray drops of blood littered the dusty beige floors here and there. They spotted the clothing of the deceased. Or had dried atop cold, marble-like skin. But it wasn't even enough to be worthy perusing.

Or so I thought. Until Jasper suddenly dropped to the floor. And began eagerly licking up the paltry, dirty beads of red like his life depended on it.

My hand flew to my mouth to stifle a gasp as I witnessed the disgusting and peculiar sight. And Aro, who had just risen from his throne to organize the disposal of our dead prey, suddenly paused.

He turned away from his bodyguards to frown deeply at the disconcerting scene before him. Then, in a flash, he zipped over to where Jasper had fallen on his stomach. And lowered into a crouch so he could tenderly stroke the tense muscles of the famished southern vampire's back.

"There is no need for that," Aro purred delicately into the younger man's ear.

Jasper ceased lapping the ancient stones beneath him. And looked hesitantly behind him.

"Come," Aro beckoned, extending an arm for Jasper to take and inclining his head in a jerky motion towards the room's exit. "I will take you hunting. Outside the city limits, of course."

Jasper's expression turned suddenly paralytic. And, when he looked down at his hands, sticky at the tips with dried blood, it wasn't hard to guess why. He began to tremble, the toll of having caused so many deaths finally catching up to him. And when he buried his face in his dirty hands, I felt my own throat surge with sympathetic bile.

Thankfully my swallowing reflexes were just as fast as my gag-reflex. So, I avoided coughing up my recent meal. But as Aro graciously assisted Jasper to his feet and whisked him out of the throne room, off to who-knows-where, I still felt sick. More people were probably going to die. And the one who was going to slaughter them was probably going to deeply hate himself for it.

That was what restoring Jasper's long-neglected health cost.

I could only hope that in the end, it would be worth it.

…

Once Aro and Jasper had gone, the guard—including Alice, but minus myself—immediately began the same horrifying process of disposing of the leftover bodies. I had seen it enacted the last time I had been here. But my vision hadn't been what it was now. And seeing this through new eyes, was a thousand times worse.

Someone had grabbed the messy corpse I had carelessly left on the floor and added it to the pile, I was disturbed to notice. And several others were scurrying around with supernatural swiftness to collect the three crumpled forms Jasper had left strewn wildly around the room.

After a few seconds, all of the human remains were amassed in one place. They were stacked haphazardly atop one another with arms and legs jutting out at unnatural angles. Wide glassy eyes stared up at the ceiling. And deep, crescent-shaped holes were carved out everywhere.

Some of the holes were more jagged than others, I noted—probably an indicator of how forcefully the victim had been bitten. And they were most commonly found on the neck. Though a few were found on the wrists or closer to the collarbone.

The peculiar wounds reminded me of the blunt grooves riddling Carlisle's body in his human memories. They were utterly dry except for a few spots of crusted blood. And I shuddered involuntarily as I recalled from his memories precisely what it felt like to wake up, riddled in holes.

While I watched, the cloaked guard searched with impassive expressions every purse and pocket of the dead humans with their cold hands. They fished out spare change, wallets, phones and other valuables, which were set carefully aside in one pile. Next, they harshly ripped away the corpses' clothes, shredding the sweat and blood-stained fabric, before it was thrown into another stack on the other side.

I tried not to stare while the human's limp bodies were bared. It felt extremely disrespectful to do so.

But none of the other Volturi treated these humans' sudden nakedness as something forbidden or embarrassing. To them, it seemed, human nudity was about as unimpressive as animal nudity. And as I looked at the hairy, porous, splotchy and frankly really gross skin that covered the bodies of our victims, I was beginning to grasp why.

There was nothing alluring about them now. Especially not contorted and lifeless as they were.

It stunned me, as I watched the guard coldly go about their work, which things they prized above others. Especially how pearls were regarded as more valuable than people. And as the pile of money, cameras and jewelry swelled higher, I suddenly felt as though I was looking at a Vanitas painting.

This sudden awareness only happened because I'd taken a short online humanities course during the summer to convince my father that Edward wasn't the only thing I was passionate about. And that art style had particularly stood out to me for some reason. Probably because it was rather morbid. And I had almost died at the hand of James only a few months before.

A typical Vantias painting was extremely weird at first glance. Just a motley assortment of random objects and a skull, or some other obvious representation of death. But it was all symbolic: a reminder that all of those things and what they stood for—books representing scholarship, crowns representing politics and so forth—were eventually doomed to crumble away to dust.

At the time, I had tried to use the paintings as leverage to gain immortality. My whole life will be vain if I just grow old and die like everyone else, I'd told Edward. But now, as I looked at all the refinery that had been gathered up by the Volturi, juxtaposed with the owners' pale, bloodless corpses, the sentiment of the painting style hit home harder than ever before.

Which was extremely bizarre. Because the idea—that all earthly treasures and pursuits were ultimately meaningless because mortality meant that they could never last very long—no longer applied to me. As long as I wasn't ripped to shreds and set on fire, I was everlasting. And any objects, knowledge or titles I gained, I was likely to keep for good.

But for our victims, the Vanitas story held very true.

Everything they had possessed, earned or become in their short lives was in vain. Because it did nothing to prevent their bitter, bloody end.

Their whole existence had very anti-climatically led up to this.

And they wouldn't even leave a legacy behind to be remembered by to the rest of the world. They had been specifically selected for our consumption because the world wouldn't mourn their loss. In most of these cases, the world wouldn't even know that there had been a loss at all. The disappearances of a handful of invisible people, primarily lower-class individuals from countries with poor record-keeping meant nothing to most of humanity.

And the few who were well-off enough to contribute cameras, watches and baubles to the small pile of loot, would only be another unfamiliar face amid the millions of missing people that were never found.

It was tragic.

And despite my earlier determination to try and accept the ramifications of my new life now, it made me want to be sick.

Why Aro? Is this sacrifice really necessary? I questioned skeptically, my throat surging with bile as I looked upon the tear-stained face of my own victim amid the fleshy tomb of her fallen fellows. Couldn't we extract blood without killing them? Dine on bagged blood instead? I reasoned.

I assumed he must have his reasons. Maybe setting up a clandestine connection, like the one he has with his military contractors, with the Red Cross is harder? Too hard? Or at least too hard to do without being suspicious?

But I still didn't like it.

Feeling nauseous, I clapped my hands over my mouth to prevent anything precious from spilling out. My intestines tremored with guilt. And, as I stared down at the pile of carnage, the enormous tidal wave of self-loathing I'd been fighting back all this past month threatened to wash over me again.

In another few seconds, however, the human's torn, bloodless bodies were removed from my vision. The circular iron grate was removed from its resting place in a depression in the middle of the floor. And all twenty lifeless figures were quickly shoved into the pit beneath it.

It was so deep I only heard the tiniest of thuds when the heavy clumps of dead flesh came in contact with the bottom. I shuddered, wondering how far down the black pit went. And how thick the layer of ash that coated the bottom was.

Hundreds if not thousands of years of bodies, I reminded myself. That's got to leave quite a lot behind. Even if they are mostly incinerated.

I watched the guard pile them all in, until the last body was dumped unceremoniously into the cavernous darkness below. Then the grate on the floor was replaced with a loud, reverberating clang. And while the sound still echoed in my ears, suddenly, someone handed me a mop.

I blinked in astonishment as my fingers automatically curled around the handle as it was thrust into my palm. And, a fraction of a second later, I whirled to face whoever gave it to me.

Corin?

The little brown-skinned vampire standing behind me had a mop of her own. And next to her feet was a bucket filled nearly to the brim with a soapy liquid that carried the strong chemical bite of chlorine. It burned my new nose.

At first, I was confused. Until I remembered that this was still part of the clean up process. A process I was now, evidently expected to participate in, now that I'd contributed to the mess.

I took in a sharp breath of air. Was I supposed to help clean up last time?

I felt a little bad. I hadn't known.

But before I could let the memory of the awful mess I'd made before consume me entirely, I quickly decided it didn't matter. I was helping now.

I gripped my mop tighter, ready to scrub. But before we started mopping, Corin tied the hem of her cloak around her neck, to keep it away from the bleach that could steal some of its all-important darkness. And I copied her. Though I hardly cared where exactly I stood in the hierarchy, the cloak was a gift from Aro. And I didn't get the sense he would be happy if he had to replace it so soon.

Once the fabric no longer brushed against the floor, Corin dipped her mop into the bucket, and began, unexpectedly, to speak in thickly accented English.

"I'm sorry for what I said earlier," she apologized quietly.

I dipped my own mop into the bucket. And looked at her, my face filled with surprise.

She was apologizing to me? But she was right. What real chance did I have to be the savior from Alice's visions if I couldn't handle a little human death?

"Feeding was not easy for me at first, either," she confessed, dipping her head in shame, while she started to work her chlorine-soaked mop across the stone floor. "It's just been so long. It is easy to forget what it was like in the beginning."

I smiled wryly, despite myself. "Thanks."

I started to push my own wet mop across the floor, sweeping up the little beads of red that were scattered in front of me. And I watched, half disturbed, half fascinated, as they dissolved instantly in the bleach, and floated away, the liquid following the gentle slope of the floor toward the grate in the center of the room.

"I can help you, you know," she offered, her voice soft, and reassuring.

I made a face. "Addictive contentment?" I asked, remembering what she'd said in the conference room during my induction. And Corin gently nodded.

I shook my head. I still wasn't sure exactly what that entailed. But anything with the word addictive in front of it set off alarm bells in my head. I didn't want to use Corin as some kind of crutch. Or a drug to drown my sorrows in. Especially not when it sounded like it would be hard to wean myself off later.

Corin shrugged. "If you ever change your mind, the offer is always open."

I pursed my lips. And kept my eyes on the swirling streams of bleach sloshing past my feet, and pouring through the holes in the central grate, into the unfathomable depths below.

"Do you really think I'm that bad at being a vampire?" I asked, self-consciously.

I figured the answer was a solid yes. But I wanted to hear Corin's opinion. Just how terrible was I?

To my astonishment however, she disagreed.

"You're actually doing quite well for a newborn," Corin unexpectedly praised. "I sometimes forget that you are one. Alice's mate acted more like one today than you did," she added under her breath, like it was something scandalous.

I grimaced. Jasper had been rather savage today—the way Alice had taught me newborns were supposed to act. It was impossible to miss that.

And yet, despite my sour feelings about his evident suffering, I felt a bit buoyed up by Corin's remarks.

"You really think I'm doing well?" I asked, incredulous.

Corin nodded. Then she dipped her mop in the bucket again, before spreading it across a new section of floor. And, though I technically outranked her, I followed her lead. After all, this was an area in which she had more experience.

"Yes. I think so. It's easy for me to forget how difficult hunting is at first," She confessed. "I came to terms with it myself a long time ago. But I know you don't resist your thirst for bad reasons—you care about people. Which is usually a good thing."

Not when you have to murder people.

"And I also know you are also trying as hard as you can to do everything Alice and our masters need you to," Corin added, as a further assurance of her faith in me. "I'm guessing it can't be easy when she hasn't told you everything yet."

This assertion made me stop short. "What?"

"Oh please, Isabella," Corin pleaded with me to see reason, her voice dropping to a whisper so low that, even with my enhanced hearing, it could only barely be heard over the squelching of her mop. "It's obvious, isn't it? That Alice suspects one of us? I mean, I hate to agree with Afton, on anything. He's a moron. But he's right. One of us would be most able to avoid being seen in Alice's visions."

I pursed my lips. Corin had a point.

I'd thought at first, when Marcus had shared the coven's history with me, that we were looking for an enemy coven. Someone who resented the Volturi for their hold over them—like the Egyptians or the Romanians.

Then, when Aro had showed me his board of pins, marking every vampire in the world, I'd thought, perhaps our culprit was a traitor. A former Volturi member. Someone who had known Alice that was no longer with us. And there was still a possibility that was true.

But what if all the three brothers' outside searching was a ruse? What if the real reason we hadn't interrogated anyone yet, was because Alice suspected the enemy was one of the current Volturi? And Aro, Marcus and Caius' list needed to be shortened, not out of logistics, but because Aro didn't want to alienate too many of his loyal followers with accusations of treason?

It made altogether too much sense.

And it would also explain why Alice had been so vague with her explanations. Why she hadn't shared any concrete plans of attack. Why Alice hadn't shown me what she'd seen me do with my powers. Even though that was something extremely important. Something that I ought to be training to do right away.

It also made sense of what the coven leaders had done so far. Why all the combat Caius trained me in was generic stuff everyone else already knew. Why Marcus' lessons hadn't gone into much detail about newborn armies, even though that was what we were going up against. Why Aro's etiquette and marching patterns were so bland….

I realized they were training me in every way they could to make me a functional member of the guard. But there were some things they couldn't teach me yet. Not when I might accidentally tell someone else. And that someone else might turn out to be our enemy.

I felt a rush of horror wash through me. Then I looked over my shoulder, watching surreptitiously as the other guard members, even the six bodyguards who'd been lurking in the stone antechamber, worked on different sections of the large circular room.

My eyes flicked suspiciously over them. And I couldn't help but wonder…

Was Corin right? Was there a traitor in this very room?

My first thought was of Aro. With his power, the likelihood of anyone he interacted with being the culprit was slim to none. Obviously, he would see it in their thoughts right away, I rationalized as my eyes fell on his form, milling about, overseeing the cleanup.

But then again, if whoever the culprit is could evade Alice's powers so completely, perhaps they could dodge his as well?

Alice had mentioned earlier that Jane could make her mind go blank and not think about what she was doing whenever she wanted to hide certain things from Aro. So perhaps others had picked up that skill?

I didn't like that idea one bit.

My eyes flicked to Chelsea next, mopping near the room's dim entrance. She didn't look up when I stared at her. And I wondered, as my eyes sank into the curtain of light-brown hair that obscured her pale face, if she knew who it was.

Could that be the secret to her anger? Could it be that she wasn't really angry with me? But with someone else?

My eyes moved again, toward the other person who might have some inkling of what was going on. Chelsea could manipulate emotional ties. So, I imagined she must have some sense for their current state. But Marcus could see emotional bonds very clearly in his head.

Aro had described it to me once. It was like a fiber-optic network. Or a thousand neural pathways lit up with bright, flickering lights. Each string represented a relationship. The thicker and brighter the strand, the stronger the bond. And the color of the strand gave some indication of the type of relationship it was. Bonds built on mutual trust and understanding glowed blue. Bonds forged out of a need for revenge glowed red. And those built on love were the brightest of all, glowing a whitish silver.

There were other colors, of course. Relationships were complex. And it had taken Aro and Marcus hundreds of years to make sense of what they were seeing. And there were still parts of his power that mystified them.

Like why, even after all this time, Didyme's line connecting her to Marcus still glowed, silvery and bright as ever, when she was obviously dead. When Marcus had seen her glittering ashes, and his son's slightly smaller pile beside them, for himself.

But as I looked up at Marcus, who had resumed sitting on his throne, now that the feast was over, and studied his expression, I was itching to know what he saw. The way his brows were narrowed right now, contracting his dusky skin, made me suspect he was seeing something suspicious.

Perhaps, he knew the identity of the traitor?

I couldn't be sure. And the longer I watched Marcus furrow his brow and think very hard, the more convinced I became that not even he could be sure.

After all, what if what he was seeing, was just another mistake?

I swallowed, and turned my head back toward the floor I was mopping. As my head wandered away from Marcus' stiff form, I noticed Alice was cleaning the floor nearest to the dais steps leading up to the thrones. And I paused my neck's movements to observe her.

Her back was turned to me as she worked. Someone had handed her a big, fluffy white towel, which she was now using to wipe down the ancient stones. And soon enough Corin handed me a towel of my own, to signify that we were moving on to the drying stage.

I turned briefly to take the towel from her hands. Then I turned right back around to look at Alice again. I had so many questions for her now.

Was keeping me in the dark about so many things all part of the plan? And how robust was her plan really? How meticulously had she plotted our future?

But when I turned around again, Alice was simply gone.

She'd vanished. Without a trace.

…

Corin and I kept talking while we finished drying off our section of the floor. She spoke to me a little bit about her own experiences as a newborn. Which made me feel a lot better. Apparently, during her first meal with the other Volturi, she'd been so thirsty that she'd shoved Aro out of the way—a big no-no.

Somehow, I laughed at that. It was horrible, in a way, that Corin had been so thirsty, that she would violently push past her master in her haste to kill a human being. But it was also kind of relatable now. After all, for a split second there, I'd wanted to steal Jasper's meal. To shove him out of the way, so I could sink my teeth in where his had been.

I tried not to think about that specific monstrosity I'd nearly committed too hard. My stomach wasn't completely settled yet. Blood still sloshed around inside it, not fully absorbed. There was so much blood in my system already, left-over from my human life, that my absorption rate was slower. At least, that was Alice's theory as to why I took a little longer to digest than others.

We moved on to other topics after we stopped chuckling. I learned Corin had an embroidery hobby. She sewed too, but she especially liked stitching little flowers into everything she made. And she said, if I wanted, she could stitch my favorite flower onto a little handkerchief or something.

I declined the offer for now. I wasn't even sure what my favorite flower was. Hyacinth? Lily of the Valley? Lavender? One of the desert flowers back in Phoenix? When I'd dated Edward, it had been freesia. But so much had changed since then. I wasn't sure any of the answers I'd given him when he'd grilled me about my favorites had stayed the same.

My favorite color certainly wasn't brown any more. Before it had served as a rare reminder of warmth, of and of home. But now, brown was everywhere. And as weird as it felt to admit, I missed the over-abundance of green back in Forks.

I wasn't sure it had grown enough on me to be called my favorite color. But I was starting to wonder if I should ask Alice for a fake, plastic plant in my room all the same. I'd become accustomed to the ever-present foliage. And I was starting to think this place would never quite feel like home without some. Even if it was fake.

Corin and I discussed my hobbies next. I told her I liked reading, but hadn't been able to do much since my transformation, since I was worried I might accidentally rip any book I was trying to read in half when I went to turn the page.

Corin was sympathetic. She'd torn a lot of fabric when she'd first started embroidery. And she offered to give me some scrap muslin to test my control over my strength with—something she wouldn't mind at all if I shredded to ribbons.

I thanked her, knowing I would probably take her up on that. And, despite my earlier reservations, we were tentative friends by the time the floor was finally cleaned and dried.

While we put our mops, buckets and towels away in a little supply closet not far from the secret entrance, and filed slowly back into the room, Vera pulled something out from the depths of her dark cloak. It was the same, large silver flask I'd seen last time. A flask filled with heavy, pungent gasoline.

I could smell it from all the way across the room as Vera poured quite a lot down the drain in the center of the room. Chemical. A little sweet. But at the same time harboring an edge of toxicity.

I wrinkled my nose. In most ways it smelled much better than the bleach. The harsh chlorine scent was so strong, I swear I could taste it burning in the back of my sinuses. But I knew the scent that was going to follow the gasoline was going to be less pleasant.

Vera pulled a matchbox out of some unseen pocket. Struck a match. And let the little stick of flame fall between the bars of the metal grate, into the fathomless depths below.

The bodies buried in the piles of ash beneath the grate roared ablaze a second later. And, though my nose was wrinkled, the smell of cooking flesh, once again burned my nostrils. A thousand times worse than before.

I felt the bile rising in my throat. All those bodies…

And it took everything I had to keep it down as I ran from the room.

…

I don't think I'd ever brushed my teeth so hard in my entire life.

I was a little worried that I might sand off my own teeth. The toothbrush Alice had provided me had steel bristles, and a handle that looked suspiciously like it was made of tungsten. Of course, I couldn't be sure. I was still learning my metals. But the point was it was very strong. And I didn't want to repeat an incident like the one with the soap and my shoulder with my teeth.

But I just couldn't help myself. When the smell of those bodies, cooking beneath my feet, reached my nose, I felt like a disgusting monster all over again. And the only way to get that feeling to go away was to get clean.

Preferably as quickly as possible.

The steel bristles easily scraped all of the evidence away, which was extremely relieving. I didn't want to have to worry about bloodstained teeth. But the once pleasant minty taste of the toothpaste was sour and rancid to my tastebuds now. So, rather than take my time, I scrubbed vigorously for a few seconds, then quickly spit it out.

When I was done, I turned the sink's chrome knobs—mangled from previous use—to rinse out my mouth. I splashed some of the sink's water over my hands, too. Then reached for another specially crafted bar of soap resting on a little dish, and very gently scrubbed any dried blood off my hands.

I put the soap back in its little dish only a fraction of a second after grabbing it. It gleamed dimly under the florescent bathroom lighting like my skin. A reminder of the diamonds that lurked inside.

Then I toweled off my hands. And took the first, tentative glance in the mirror.

I didn't look anywhere near as bad as last time. I hadn't gotten any blood in my hair. Or on my legs. A few droplets of scarlet littered my jacket here and there, the spots getting thicker around my collar and my wrists—the places that had been closest to my victim's spurting arteries. But it wasn't horror-movie levels of gore.

I might have even been able to deem the mess acceptable, if it weren't for the thick mass of dried blood smeared messily around my lips, clinging to my chin and trailing down my neck.

As my eyes followed it down, my curious gaze turned into one of horror.

Feeding on human beings and liking it was one thing. But seeing the evidence of the fact that I was a savage murderer now was much, much worse. It made me feel rotten to the core. And even more alien than usual in my own skin.

I tore my eyes away from my reflection before my stomach could lurch again. And turned the sink knobs frantically, until they sprayed water into the porcelain bowl again. Then I grabbed the soap, and viciously began to scrub.

My skin felt a little raw when I was finished. But I was clean. And my skin healed very quickly.

Just as I was about to leave the bathroom, however, I remembered something important. I had forgotten to floss.

I wasn't sure if vampires needed to floss. But as I ran my tongue over my teeth, I felt something stuck between them at odd intervals. And I knew, even if I would never get another cavity in my entire life, that I wouldn't want to walk around with whatever that was in my mouth forever.

Figuring Alice had prepared for this, I dropped to my knees in front of the sink, and wrenched the cabinet door open. It came off its hinges entirely, much to my frustration. But the door wasn't in too bad of shape itself. So rather than breaking it up and throwing it into the trash, I simply set it down on the tile floor beside me. And peered into the shelves under the sink.

Alice had stocked the shelves here just as well as everywhere else in my room. I'd thought, since vampires didn't need skincare products or a great number of other things humans needed—like nail clippers—that the shelves would be pretty bare. But I was mistaken.

I counted eighteen separate bottles of scented bodywash, each with a unique blend of herbs, chemicals and essential oils. Every brand of toothpaste—I guess, in case I wanted to find which kind had the most tolerable flavor. And, next to a huge stack of big fluffy towels, a rack of expensive designer perfumes I had no clue what to do with. What was the point in wearing perfume when my natural scent was already better than anything a human could craft?

After a bit more searching, I found the floss. Normal floss wouldn't be strong enough, of course. But Alice had set aside a few small metal wires that were thin enough to slide between my teeth in a plastic bag in the back, which she had labeled floss in florid Sharpie.

When I picked up the bag, I noticed there was also a little note inside. A note which read:

Be careful. This wire is pretty sharp. Try not to cut up your gums.

She'd drawn a little smiley face after the last line. And I had to repress the urge to burst into hysterical laughter as I opened the little bag, and took out one of the little wires. Leave it to Alice to try to turn this situation into something lighthearted and fun.

After shaking my head, I rose to my feet again, so I watch myself carefully in the mirror. Then I inserted the little wire between my furthest molar and the next one in on my right side—one of the places where I felt something stuck between my teeth. And slowly, methodically, began to rock the wire back and forth.

I hadn't really given what I might find there much thought. Flossing had been such a routine habit in my human life that, although my tools were slightly different now to accommodate my increased strength, I hadn't even bothered to stop an consider that anything would be off.

Of course, when the little wire came back up with a small, remarkably mushy, tannish chunk sticking to it, I immediately recognized what I was seeing. And I nearly lost my dinner over it.

Human skin.

Inmy teeth.

Oh God, that was nasty.

The little wire I had been holding immediately fell into the sink, and disappeared down the drain. My knees felt wobbly all of a sudden. And my hands had to reach out and clutch the edges of the sink to prevent me from falling backwards.

This was just too much.

Bile pooled in my throat instinctively in response to the horrible vision. And though I tried to reign in the impulse, I reflexively choked. I spit a sizeable glob of half-digested blood starkly into the sink. Then my throat seized again, ready to spit more out.

I panicked when I realized what was happening—that I was losing some of the progress I'd made today. That if I kept vomiting, I might be forced to feed again. To kill again.

So, before any more than that first glob could come out, I forcibly tilted my head backward. And made myself swallow the rest.

It wasn't very comfortable to force my dinner back down my pulsing throat. It felt chunky and wrong. And its taste was ruined by the sickly-sweet taste of my own venom.

But the alternative—having to kill another innocent person—was much worse. So, I forced myself to do it. And when I finally managed to get my esophagus to stop spasming, I took a few deep breaths. And waited until the nausea abated.

It took a few minutes to go away entirely. Minutes I was willing to wait.

Then, when it was finally gone, I fumblingly turned the sink valves to wash away the splatter of regurgitated blood I'd left behind. I didn't look. But simply let the water run for a few seconds, listening to the rush of the faucet, to know when the basin was clean.

When the sound changed, I took another few deep breaths, checking if the coppery scent was flushed away. Checking to see if it had been replaced with the scent of the sterile, faintly floral air. And once I received that confirmation, I reached for another little wire.

I can do this, I affirmed to myself, trembling as I hefted the small metal object and bent it effortlessly around my fingers in preparation to slide it between my next set of teeth. It's just a little skin… that's all. Besides, you don't really want that to stay in your mouth forever, right?

I coughed as my extremely unhelpful imagination conjured up an image of decaying, moldy bits of flesh lingering in my mouth after thousands of years. And I nearly dropped the wire again.

Ewwww… ick, bleh! Oh gross!

Definitely didn't want that.

So, with the horrifying consequence of not flossing fresh in mind, I courageously returned to the activity. I winced a bit whenever I came across something gooey. And I even shrieked a few times when the yield was particularly large.

But after several painful minutes of see-sawing those little wires back and forth between my teeth, and staunchly avoiding looking in the sink, I made it all the way across both the top and bottom row. Then I furiously rinsed out my mouth about a hundred times to make sure that I had absolutely nothing human left in there. And the appalling chore was finally finished.

I felt a moment of reprieve. Then, suddenly, I heard someone coming this way.

I tensed automatically, my instincts suspecting the worst. But I would recognize the clack of those stilettos anywhere. Alice.

She opened the door to my room. And I walked out of the bathroom to greet her, I was hoping that maybe she could answer some of the questions Corin had raised in me earlier. But before I could get out a single word, she abruptly froze in the doorway.

At first, I thought that I had spooked her. Or maybe she had seen my decision to ask her about her plans, and the futures she saw spiraling out from that decision were bad ones.

But I quickly realized the expression on her marble face was not the slightly startled look I had been expecting. Instead, the look I saw in her wide crimson eyes was the strangest combination of excitement and confusion. And the words that spilled out of her lips next were ones I could have never predicted.

"It's Jasper and Aro. They've returned!"

"So soon?" I asked urgently.

Aro and Jasper had only been absent from the castle for, at most, a half hour. And I had a hard time believing they'd been able to quench Jasper's thirst that quickly. Not if they wanted to hunt far away enough from their city not to draw attention.

I knew vampires were fast. But had they really just taken one of the Volturi cars to Florence, let Jasper gobble up the first few people he saw, and sped right back?

That sounded… foolhardy.

"Yeah, Jasper didn't want to take too long. He found something in Seattle on his way over. Something he brought with him in his luggage. Something he wanted to show us earlier, but was too thirsty to." Alice revealed cryptically. "Something that might help us find the culprit."

My eyes shot open wide. Really?

Now I was even more curious. But before I could ask what exactly Jasper had found, Alice hopped to her feet. Dashed to the door. And motioned with an insistent hand out into the ancient hallway.

"Let's go!"