I awoke in some abandoned building. It looked long consumed by nature, the sort of place that was just left with no plans for humans to return. I was lying on a table, shirt torn open down my body. My torso was purple and black, my ribs pronounced and distended in their irregular state, the opening of my wound bloodless and closed only in form, not in manner of healing. My throat was parched and all the blood I could consume was now absorbed into me. The rest was pooled and dried on the floor next to the table. What I had kept down had done little good. If I were granted that much blood, all the animal blood I could hold, every single night, it would likely be more than three months before I could heal enough to hunt for myself. By then, the other wolf or the Volturi would find us.
This was it. Without the aid of my family, I was out of options. I would likely die here.
I shifted myself to see what was about me. The room looked a bit like a classroom. There were chairs and tables, much like the one I was on, but there were too few perhaps for a school. Maybe a private school or else a home school. Or maybe something else all together. I didn't know. How could I know? I was just an ignorant, idiotic, confounding, confused vampire who was so very tired of trying and trying and never being able to hold on to anything good and real in this world.
I might not just end here. I might be readily and justifiably cast into hell. I wondered what my torments might be. Maybe make me a spirit, one that could do nothing but watch as everyone I knew and loved moved on without me. Or maybe they would strip me of all defenses, forcing me to endure the shame and guilt and grief of all my actions without any method of deluding my emotions or refuge in distraction or escape. Or maybe I would live out the lives of every one of my victims, knowing all their joys and hopes and dreams, all their woes and heartaches, with no idea how their precious life would come to an end.
Or… or maybe… maybe I will simply watch the life I could have had. Not the one where I never contracted influenza, the one where I never became a vampire; the one where I had faith. The one where I chose to believe Carlisle and Esme every time they said that they loved me. The one where I grew that love in my heart and let it heal me and make me stronger. The one where I believed that happiness was possible and not some pipedream. The one where I met Bella and loved her rightly. The one where I could meet her and stand beside her and be worthy to be loved by her.
I didn't know how long I laid there. I writhed slowly, over the course of hours and hours, into a miserable shape, curled cruelly around my heart, my destroyed heart.
Lissette returned. I am not sure when she did exactly. I simply became aware of her nearby. I gave no indication that I knew she was there, so she, of course, knew it immediately.
"You are awake," she said.
"How long?" I asked flatly.
"Six days," she said.
I said nothing else.
"What can I do?" she asked.
I twitched.
"Leave me," I said weakly.
She froze.
"Qu'est-ce que vous avez dit?" she half whispered.
I swallowed and did everything in my power to keep my voice even.
"I'm done," I said. "I'm done for. There is nothing I can do. My injury is too much for me to heal. Without healing, I can't hunt. Without hunting, I can't heal."
"I will hunt for you," she said, pleaded really.
"It isn't enough," I said.
"What is not enough?" she asked, as though wanting to be mad but not sure what she should be mad at exactly.
"The blood," I said. "The animal blood, it isn't enough. It hasn't been, not for a long time."
"I thought you said you could live on animal blood," she protested.
"I could," I said, "before. But it has been helping less and less lately. It does nearly nothing now. It wouldn't do enough. I could drown in animal blood and it would heal but a little. I am healing slower than a human. I am nothing but an ambulatory corpse now."
"No vampires can help you?" she asked.
I snorted.
"My father might be able to help me," I said, "but for what? He would condemn himself by helping me."
She looked at me, "I do not think that he would care."
"I care!" I snapped, in time with the snapping of my ribs as I surged with the vigor of my pronouncement. Her eyes pricked and welled at the sound.
"I care," I wheezed, leaning back and quieting down. "I could not stand it if anything happened to him on my behalf. And what is the point? Even if he did help, I would be right back where I started. Unable to feed and corpsifying by inches."
I looked her in the eye.
"I am not worth saving," I said. "I am a killer, a vampire. I am not worth loving."
She looked back into my eyes, a pain deep set in hers.
"You are more than that, vampire," she said. "More than that to me. More than that in what you do."
"Stop," I said.
"Non," she said. "You are not getting rid of me that easy."
I glared at her.
"You think that this is easy?" I demanded.
"Non," she said. "I think it is the path that requires the least effort. You are giving up."
"I am trying to do what is right," I hissed.
She snorted, "This is right for no one."
I grabbed the leg of a table next to mine. I meant to hurl it into the wall next to her, but I hadn't the strength. I nearly pulled myself off the table trying to do so. She ran to help me and I froze her with a look.
"You need to leave," I said. "I am dead weight now. Either that wolf or the Volturi will find me. And if that happens, there is a good chance you will die too."
She snorted.
"I am a survivor," she said. "I survived my father, Luc and your Volturi. I will survive this, and the next trial, and-"
"You don't know that," I said. "Just because something has gone one way your entire life doesn't mean it always will."
Silence hung between us. I realized at that moment that I didn't believe that. If I had, I would have never needed to leave Forks.
"Je tem, Édouard," she whispered. "I always will. Dying will not change that."
I felt like my heart was being ripped out all over again.
"Just go," I said harshly. "I cannot stand it. Go!"
I smacked her across the face with all of the little strength I had left. She barely staggered.
"Go!" I demanded, half crawling towards her. She saw me about to fall to the floor, became afraid, and bolted. And like that, she was gone.
I don't know how long I was alone. I drifted back and forth between consciousness and unconsciousness, with no thought to time or the future.
Alice, I had decided. Alice would have to come. I would die without intervention. Surely she knew that. She would come. She was on her way now. She had to be.
Days passed, or at least, it felt like days. It might have been hours or weeks. I could not tell. It wasn't long before I began to long for Bella.
Not the Bella of the world, the one which I had no claim to, the one whose blood would drive me utterly mad should she arrive there. I longed for the Bella who had been here, with me, through my courtship of Lissette, who was as much myself as she was herself, who knew my mind as though she were a telepath as well. I did not want to be alone, not even in my own mind. This was the beginning of my end, from which there was no escape. Then again, perhaps not. Meeting Lissette was my end, falling for her charms and her wit and wishing not to be apart from her. This was perhaps the middle of my end, or the beginning of the end of my end. I knew that I would cease, or else, go on, in torment. If there was a next place, I had no hope that what I would find there would be good, leastwise not for me.
But Bella didn't arrive. I remained alone. There was nothing else for me.
But then, I heard a sound. It was a muffled sound, an attempt at struggling and crying out, but without success. I listened hard and it came to my ears that someone was coming, or rather two someones. I could hear them, one at the power of the other, helpless and futilely struggling.
I sat up as best I could, but really it was little more than a hunched lean. I looked out into the room, filled with a night I could not remember beginning. Without warning, there was a clatter at the rotten door jamb, and then Lissette was back, shoving a young man roughly before her. He was frantic with rage and fear, his mouth and hands bound. Large though he was, he was no match for Lissette's strength.
"Here," she said. "I brought him. Now, drink."
I blinked at her.
"Did you hear me?" she demanded. "Drink."
The young man was finally able to work the gag out of his mouth.
"What is this?" he shouted in frantic Russian. "Who are you? Why did you bring me here?"
He called her a string of slurs, all of which she wouldn't have tolerated so well had she understood him.
"What is this?" I asked, not wanting to believe it.
"You need blood," she said. "You know it and I know it."
"No," I said.
"Oui!" she bit back. "I will not let you die!"
I looked at her, hurt.
"You would make me a killer again?" I asked softly.
The young man didn't speak English. He knew a few phrases from repeated watches of American movies, and their vague translations. But he knew the word killer.
"I am no killer," he hissed.
Lisette kicked him in the stomach and he doubled up, staying where he fell, trying to breathe and not vomit.
"I will do what I must to let you live," she said passionately.
"Will you discount my own wishes so easily?" I asked.
She gave me a wild look, one as frightened as it was frightening.
"Oui!" she howled. "There is nothing I would not do if it meant keeping you, alive!"
She gave the young man a sour look.
"He is worth so little to you," she said. "He is un gangster, un violeur. You would be doing the world a service by taking him out of it."
She was correct about the character of the young man. He was currently bulking, knotted in a tight ball on the floor, wondering how we could possibly know.
He had assaulted his first at sixteen. She was the closest person to him, someone he could have had a relationship with, but when their first physical encounter happened, she was reluctant. He pressed and she withdrew and he pushed harder. She had gone along with it, I could tell from his memory, but she was far from consenting. He had enjoyed more than the physical pleasure. He had liked the feeling of power, the control he had with his hand on her throat. He felt like he could do anything to her and she could not stop him. It had been more exciting to him than the sex would have been alone.
There had been three others. He had left two alive for certain, but the last, how he had left her, beaten and unconscious, on a cold night, could have easily died. He had held up the shield of ignorance, but in his heart of hearts, he knew she was likely killed.
I looked at him.
"You," I said in Russian.
His head came up.
"I know what you are," I said. "I know what you have done. What have you to say to me?"
He gave me a defiant look.
"Who are you to me?" he asked. "No one. I have done nothing."
I gave him a flat look.
"She would have loved you," I said. "Your first. Katarina. She was scared it was too fast. If you had listened and understood, you might have had her in love and kindness."
He looked as though I had just pointed a loaded gun at his head.
"You are a rapist and a murderer," I said. "You know it. You believe it. What would you say to me?"
He started to look angry again. He spewed a string of epithets at me, cursing me and my mother and all manner of rude and horrible things.
I frowned.
"Have you no remorse?" I asked at last.
I listened to his mind, hard. It was true. I could not read his emotions. I knew nothing of guilt or regret save for his expression and how I could interpret his thoughts. And, there was some connection there. When he thought about those girls, he kept slipping back to a moment, a memory of shame and embarrassment. His mother had caught him masturbating and had punished him soundly. But, even so, I could not tell if he thought of that time in shame or because he sought retribution.
And, alas, I realized what I was doing. I was considering his murder, weight their worth against my beliefs. It was abhorrent.
"I won't do it," I said in English. "I won't kill him."
She gave me a cold look.
"Fine," she said, her accent thicker than usual. "If you will not then I will."
She walked over to him and grabbed him by the shirt. She then dragged him over to me, all business. In a flash, she pulled out a small blade, little more than a penknife really, and slapped the flat to the side of his throat, well placed for a deep cut to his carotid artery. It wasn't a large blade, but with her strength, it wouldn't have to be.
The young man froze the moment the blade touched his skin. He had been abused, that much was certain. The abused ones have the same tendency, like a puppy pulled up by the nape. As soon as they are caught in the power of something more powerful, the abused become meek among the godly.
"You think I will not do it?" she asked. I studied the wall.
"I can't stop you," I said. "Nor will it change anything. You cannot trick me into condoning murder, Lissette. Even if you kill him, his blood will be worthless as soon as it cools."
Which would take a few hours, but what she didn't know would kill the young man.
"We will see," she said, and drew the knife.
The young man screamed, "You've killed me! You've killed me!"
But in truth, the cut had not drawn his life's blood. However, Lissette had been clever. Not only had she cut him just deeply enough that the blood flowed, but she had whipped it in such a way that flecks of blood landed directly on my face.
It was as though someone had poured molten metal down my throat through my nose. I had to cut off my air, but the burn was overwhelming. I could taste him on the air. I knew how good it would be. I hadn't had human blood in well over nine months. It was all I could do not to breathe deep and let the hunting instinct take over.
It was a tense moment, one of the most indecisive moments of my life. I could easily have done so many things. I could have killed them both. Honestly, it would serve me right. I would kill of the girl how wants me most in this world for tempting me into murder, but still committing said murder anyway, leaving me alive and also alone. Once she was dead, I could walk into the halls of Volterra without a qualm and be released from the Volturi's enmity, save that they would thus learn of Bella. Even so, it would solve everything, like thermonuclear war. Nothing cures climate change quite like nuclear winter.
And then, I couldn't fight it anymore. I breathed deeply. He did not smell as good as Bella, but he smelled better than just about anyone else. My face distended, the bones and musculature becoming all but demonic as my vampiric nature began to consume me fully. The young man started screaming even harder than before. My fangs slid out and he began fighting with a might only brought forth in times of mortal dread. Still he could not break Lissette's hold.
"Do it," she said. "Do it and be healed, Édouard."
I was furious. She was trying to take everything away from me. My morals, my humanity, my choice. She would damn me to hell all over again, just so she wouldn't have to lose me. It was a choice I had been prepared not to make, and she was making it. She was shoving me back onto a path that would invariably keep me from Forks forever, and there was little I could do about it. But not nothing.
I am not sure what happened to the young man. He was simply in the way, and then he was anymore. I heard breaking glass but I couldn't be sure if it was by my action or his choice. Once he was away, I turned my entire focus on Lissette.
This was not the same as with Bella. It had been cold, emotionless hunger. This was hunger of a different calibur. This was heat and anger. This was rage. This was filling an emptiness but also taking control. Hunting and hurting Bella had been an anti choice. This I chose.
Lissette looked scared. She had never seen me like this. She knew that if I retained enough of my strength that I could close with her, there would be nothing she could do. She was entirely at my mercy, and I could smell how much that excited her, could see it in the tremor of her hands and the reddening of her lips. I could practically feel the heat coming off of her in waves, pushed out from her with every breath, resonating with her every heartbeat.
I came at her slowly, savoring it, knowing that she was mine and that there was nothing she could ever do to make it otherwise. With what little blood I had left, I created an artifice of myself. I made my body react in equal excitement to hers, the way a man's would, but rougher, hungrier. I came to her and she did not run. I kissed her with all the force of a blow, and her hands danced about me, as though unsure of whether to clutch me to her or cast me away. Before she could make up her mind, I did it for her.
I forced her roughly upon the table that had been my bier. I tore her garments from her and my from me in equal measure. With total disregard, I took her completely. I had her, utterly, in every way a man would, but since I could take no physical pleasure in such an act, I took that in the vampiric way.
My teeth slid cleanly into her, the cut deep. She cried out identically how I had taken her before, and I clamped my mouth to her neck. And it was incredible. It was not the same sort of brilliant addiction of Bella's blood nor did it have the total draw of human blood. It was fine wine, to be savored and deconstructed for all its notes and intracisies. It was full bodied in a way I did know blood could be. It gave me strength and vigor. I took all that I could and when I was sated, a wash of undeniable ecstasy struck through me. I felt my body seize as the blood worked itself upon me, straining as I felt myself heal painfully fast. I cried out as it completed its work, losing the will to stand. I toppled down atop Lissette, the table finally giving way beneath us. I lay with my head on her breast, spent beyond words. She stroked my hair and I felt myself slip towards something like sleep.
"Are you alright, mon amour?" she asked me quietly. "I felt myself start to come back to myself.
"Did I hurt you?" I asked.
She giggled, which startled me.
"Oh oui!" she all but cried. "Though I cannot complain. No one has hurt me that well in a long, long time…"
I sat up and looked at her. She was quite the tableau, splaid in her immodest fashion, half lit in starlight, looking heartily content and nearly drowsy.
"I would paint you, had I the skill," I said. I stood, and I heard her suck in her breath. I turned to see her gazing at my naked form.
"I would have every night and twice a day, if you let me," she said, her voice filled with longing.
I shrugged, "I can't make any promises. It isn't something I have a lot of experience with."
She sat up too, slightly swaying in a way that made her more nubile aspects of her jostle and jounce. I was sure it would have been more appreciated to someone who enjoyed such flesh. I simply found it as pretty as I normally found her.
"You really do not enjoy yourself at all?" she asked.
I smirked, "I know you well enough to not risk bruising your ego."
She laughed.
"You are smart for un homme mort," she said. "But nonetheless. I want to know."
I swallowed.
"What I told you before was true and is unchanged," I said, with as little emotion as I could put into the words. "I do not find pleasure in sexual acts."
Her lips twitched.
"You do find pleasure in sucking on my neck, though," she said with certainty.
I looked at the ground.
"I…" I began but she stood up and took my hands, looking in my eyes.
"Édouard," she said. "You already have my heart. It is no trouble for you to have my blood as well."
I didn't meet her gaze.
"S'il vous plaît, mon amour," she said, kissing my hands, each in turn. "I know what you are. I understand what you need. You wish not to take the blood of humans, and you cannot take the blood of animals. Have you any other options?"
"I don't want to hurt you," I said softly.
She chortled.
"If you take it as you just did," she said, "I would gladly give it to you…"
She gave me a heated look.
"…as often as you would give it to me," she finished with a smoky lilt to her words.
She kissed me on the mouth, and it was like before. Slow and sweet and tender and everything I could reasonably ask for. I kissed her back in equal measure and couldn't help but feel more than a little guilty. I also couldn't find it in my heart to care.