A/N:
Hey guys! I am so glad to get this chapter out to you! It felt much like pulling teeth to write it, but it's done now and I really hope you'll like it :-D
Title: The Undecided
Author: MarieCarro
Beta Reader: SarcasticBimbo
Genre: Supernatural/Drama
Pairing: Bella/Edward
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Good and Evil Witches. A Prophecy. An Unfulfilled Destiny. The Promise of a Leader. And it all rests on the shoulders of a "misunderstood" teenage girl.
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
Chapter Word Count: 2, 738
{Chapter 14}
I was standing on a cliff edge, looking down at the 3000 feet long drop that ended in jagged black stones and boulders.
Storm winds blew around me with dark ominous clouds swirling above, and just before the thunder resounded between the mountains, the hairs on my arms stood up from the charged electricity in the air.
There was someone behind me.
I could feel it.
Their intense stare at the back of my neck. The pure hatred they projected.
"I already knew you were stupid, but this is even below your intelligence," I said, but my voice was different. Darker, with a reverberating tone that sounded ancient. "Why do you think you'll get away with it?"
The person behind me answered, but I couldn't hear the words. It was as if they talked to me through a thick wall of glass, and I could only hear a muffled version of their reply.
"It's too late," I told them in response to what they had said, although I still didn't know what that was. "It's already in the works. I have seen it, and it will be as I said."
Another muffled answer.
I laughed with mirth. "You're like a stupid child. Of course I have documented it, but I will never tell you where to find it. You're unworthy of resting your eyes upon such knowledge."
The hate directed at me grew, and I knew that whoever was behind me was going to push me down toward my inevitable death.
"Kill me. Do it. It won't make a difference," I said and smiled to myself.
A strike of lightning brightened the world for a second, and then I felt two hands pushing violently against my back, and I fell freely through the air.
I didn't scream because I knew it was useless, and just before my body impacted with the ground, I closed my eyes.
I gasped at the burning pain in my eyes, and I sat up in bed and rubbed them in hopes of reducing the sensation.
"What's the matter?" Edward's hoarse voice asked from next to me.
"My eyes are hurting like hell," I answered and continued to rub, although it did no good whatsoever. "It feels like someone poured acid in them."
The mattress shifted under me, and I knew Edward also sat up. He pulled the curtain of my hair that hid my face from him behind my ear and over my shoulder. "Open your eyes, Angel. Let me see," he said, and I did as he told, although reluctantly, since it still hurt so much.
My sight wasn't blurry, as I would have expected. It was, pretty much, just as it should be, but as soon as I turned to Edward, he flinched back as if I had electrocuted him.
"Fucking hell!" he exclaimed in shock, and he slowly moved away until he was able to slide out of bed and stand before me.
"What?" I asked him, scared by his reaction. "What is it?"
When I first woke up and I felt the burn in my eyes, I thought it was my Original powers that were manifesting. I presumed my eyes were glowing in that swirly blue color I'd seen the day before, but Edward had already seen that, and judging by his reaction, this was something else.
He turned toward my dresser where he found my makeup compact, and then he stretched his arm as far as he could to give it to me. "Don't do anything too sudden," he warned me. "I have no idea what's going on with your eyes, but it's freaking me out."
I opened the compact and looked into the small mirror, and just as Edward had flinched, I did too. The compact fell from my hands and I didn't see the image anymore, but it was already etched into my brain.
My eyes were, in fact, swirling with their icy blue color, but the freaky part wasn't even the sudden additional dark purple rim surrounding the iris and the pupil.
The really scary shit was that the whites of my eyes were tinted blood red.
I felt myself begin to shake, and my breathing became shallow, as I was unable to take a proper deep breath. A feeling as if my head was slowly being squeezed in a vice had me clutch it and close my eyes tightly.
A wheezing sound escaped my throat, and I couldn't control myself. The windows started to creak as tension built up and threatened to shatter them, and the candles all over the room burst into flames.
"Angel?"
"E-Edward! H-help!" I cried out. "I-I don't what's happening to me."
An evil shrill shriek pierced my brain and it felt as if my head was going to explode. I curled up in the bed into the shape of a small ball, hoping it would somehow help me, and that was when the images began to rapidly blink behind my lids, or rather, in my mind.
I saw a cloaked body falling from a high cliff, a hunched figure gagged and bound as it was being taken somewhere on a horse led by a faceless person, the same figure as it was abducted; cautiously, but also calmly, walking across a courtyard; writing in a book in a language I didn't recognize; roaming around in a library environment; performing blood magic, and finally the face of a boy that could have been my own brother.
I inhaled sharply, as if I hadn't taken a breath for hours, and then started coughing as the dry air reached my suffering lungs.
"Bella?"
As I struggled with my breathing, Edward cupped my face in his hands and looked intensely into my eyes before pulling me into a tight embrace.
"Fuck, Angel! Don't fucking scare me like that again, do you hear me? Never, ever again," he demanded in my ear, and all I could do was tighten my hold on him.
I had absolutely no idea what had happened, and I was positive Edward wouldn't know either, but I had to tell him what I'd seen anyway. "I-I saw these things. Images … or memories. I don't know." He let me go and I swallowed hard before continuing. "They weren't mine, and everything was in reverse."
"What are you talking about?"
I met his eyes and frowned. "I think I saw the past."
"You saw the past? Like a vision?" he asked incredulously.
I rubbed my temples with the tips of my fingers as I could still feel a dull throbbing in my head. "I think so."
"Have you had any ... visions ... before?" There was skepticism in his tone, and it caused me to fire up.
"I'm not lying to you, Edward," I told him fiercely. "What would be the point of that? You saw yourself what happened to me."
He shook his head. "What I just saw was my girlfriend going into a panic attack, her powers wreaking havoc before she started to convulse on the bed and then, nothing."
"What do you mean 'nothing'?" I asked with a raised brow.
"Exactly that," he answered me steely. "You were unresponsive for hours, Bella. You just stared at the ceiling with this blank look on your face, and I'm telling you that had your heart not been beating, I would have thought you were dead." He got up off the bed and started pacing the room. That was when I first noticed that he was dressed, and not in the clothes from last night. "Do you have any idea what it did to me, seeing you like that?"
"It's not like I chose … whatever it was that happened to me. Don't you fucking dare accuse me of anything, Edward!" I yelled, his change of clothes completely forgotten. I stood up from the bed myself, and for the first time noticed I was dressed as well. "Did you dress me?"
"I didn't think you'd want Charlie and Renee to see you naked," he answered.
"You called them? Why?"
He frowned. "What the hell was I supposed to do? You were unresponsive!"
"Well, you could have tried to, you know, not call them," I retorted. "They're not responsible for me anymore. I am a full-powered Witch, an Original, and the leader of our community. I can't go running to my mentors every time something weird happens to me!"
I know my anger was unjustified, but I couldn't rein it in. It only built momentum inside me together with every other feeling in the book. I felt delirious, and terrified, and sad beyond belief, but I also wanted to laugh out loud.
I also knew that the feelings I felt weren't mine. Not completely. They were tastes from the past. Breadcrumb trails left by the person I'd seen in my visions. The boy who looked so much like me it was eerie.
Who was he? What did he mean to me?
"You're not an expert on witchcraft just because you have your powers now," Edward shot back at me. "You've been practicing all of six weeks. There is no way in hell that you know everything!" He grabbed my upper arms hard and stared at me with fury glittering in his green eyes. "I've known I was a Witch from birth, Bella. I started practicing the art much earlier than others. My bedtime stories were spell books. There are few things I don't know about Witches, and I have no fucking clue what just happened, so tell me … Oh, Great Leader … what would you have done in my shoes?"
His sarcastic tone made me realize how irrational I was acting and I felt my anger drain away from me. I slumped in his hold and put my hands on his chest for support.
"I'm sorry," I whispered. "I feel so conflicted, and everything is so new still, and I am trying to wrap my head around it and remain calm as I should, but honestly, I am really fucking scared," I admitted, and the tension in Edward disappeared.
"Apology accepted. I called them about an hour ago, so they should be here soon. We should get downstairs," he said, and I nodded and allowed him to lead me to the living room.
We timed Charlie and Renee's arrival perfectly, and they came through the front door the second we reached the bottom floor.
Renee took one look at me, and then she was in front of me, cupping my face, looking all worried. "Bella, are you okay?"
I gently removed her hands from my face and attempted a smile. "I'm fine, now."
"Are you sure? Edward sounded really worried when he called?"
I nodded. "I promise. I still don't know what happened, though."
Renee took my hand in hers and led me over to one of the couches. "Tell us everything you can."
I did as she told me, and told her everything I could remember from when I first woke up from a dream I couldn't remember anymore, about my eyes hurting, and then the panic attack that led to the visions.
When I was done, Edward gave us his version of it so that Charlie and Renee could hear what it had looked like from an outside point of view.
It was scary to hear that I had apparently started to convulse as if I'd had a seizure, and then just stopped moving completely. I'd been completely gone for two hours, and according to Edward, I hadn't been breathing at all the entire time. That was why he told me that if my heart wasn't beating, he would have thought I was dead.
Charlie looked deep in thought as he appeared to study the mantelpiece of the non-functional fireplace. "This boy you saw in your visions, what did he look like?" he asked without turning to me.
"Like me," I answered honestly. "He could have been my brother."
Charlie hummed. "And in the visions, were you always observing the events or did you see from his point of view as well?"
"Yes, I did." I swallowed hard as I focused on the visions once more. "He performed blood magic, and it was as if I was him." For some reason, I didn't tell them about the library I'd seen. Something in me had me keep it to myself like some sacred secret. I knew it was important, though. It was a taste at the back of my tongue, and I had to find this place.
Charlie and Renee exchanged a look, and I knew that they knew what had happened to me.
"Tell me."
Renee cleared her throat. "You've seen memories of the Seer. The way you describe him is so accurate of how he looked, it can't be anyone else."
I frowned. "But you said he passed away. I thought you meant of old age, not that he was murdered," I accused them, referring to the vision of him being abducted and then falling from the cliff.
"We don't make a habit of telling other Witches about that detail," Charlie replied. "It wouldn't go over too well if it was known that the most powerful Witch to have walked on this earth before you were born was murdered by someone who wasn't nearly strong enough." He glanced at me through the corner of his eye. "Originals have always wondered how it was possible. You didn't happen to see how it went down, did you?"
I had seen it, sort of, I realized as I started to remember fractions of the dream I'd had. I had been the Seer in that dream. He'd been talking to someone about some knowledge only he had.
His murder had not involved magic. He had been physically pushed over the edge, and he hadn't even attempted to fight back, even though he would have won the fight, hands down.
Why?
Once again, I instinctively knew that this was not information I should share with my mentors, though, and that was why I shook my head. "No. The visions started when he was falling. I never even saw who abducted him."
Charlie huffed in disappointment. "That's too bad. The first time in centuries we could possibly get a clue as to who committed a crime that baffled the community, and that small, but important, detail simply wasn't included." His tone told me that he didn't believe for a second that I didn't know.
Was I such a bad liar, or did Charlie just have an uncanny ability for knowing when people lied to him? Neither Renee, nor Edward, questioned what I said, and that told me the latter was more likely.
I tilted my head to the side and stared at the side of Charlie's face. "Yes, it's too bad, isn't it?" He knew I was lying, so I wasn't going to hide it from him, but if he so much as attempted to get anything else out of me, he'd be sorry. I was the most powerful Witch since the Seer, after all, and he didn't have any powers except his Original powers.
I turned to the less hostile Renee. "Why do you think I see the Seer's memories, though? Am I related to him somehow?"
She shook her head. "Not at all, although, no one knows which family the Seer came from. He wasn't from America. He traveled around the world all the time and never stayed in one place for longer than a year. His body was found in the Samaria Gorge in Crete."
"So why am I seeing his memories?" I asked again.
Renee sighed. "The only explanation I have is that he did a spell which wouldn't activate until you were born and received your powers. He knew of you, of course. He was the one who predicted your prophecy."
"But why did he choose me?" I pressed, as I slowly got annoyed that I didn't just get a straightforward answer.
"I don't think he chose you. The Goddess did. Just like she chose him once," she said and crouched down in front of me and grabbed my hands. "Bella, I believe you are the new Seer."
A/N:
Say whaaaaat? A little teaser for next chapter, Bella is kind of tired of hearing all the things she apparently is xD
Hopefully, the next chapter should come to you much faster than this one did!
Kisses :-*