So, how was your week? Mine sucked, sucked, sucked! One lightning storm brought down my entire business. I've worked all week to get phones, internet and ONE computer working.
I want to thank you all for your reviews and to Tarbecca for recommending TDP on A Different Forest. Reading your reviews has been the ONE bright spot in my entire week.
Mucho kisses and big hugs to my team: Sazzledazzled,Edwardsfirstkiss, Mullet86 and 2brown-eyes for supporting me on this journey. {{Kisses}}
Disclaimer: SM owns it all, but she's letting me play with her stuff and I'm eternally grateful to her for being so generous. Now, if she would slip me Rob's phone number, I'd put her in my will. Just sayin'.
The Devil's Plan
Satan's Demand
"Edward, how was your day?" The sound of his mother's voice foiled his attempt at a quick escape to the solitude of his bedroom.
"It was fine." He stated flatly and started up the staircase to the second floor of their new house.
Edward had only climbed two steps, when his escape was halted by his mother's hopeful face appearing at the bottom of the stairs. "Why don't you come into the kitchen and tell me all about it? I baked your favorite, sugar cookies with almond butter cream icing."
Torn between wanting to spend the next four hours lying on his bed trying to forget the last year and thinking about what his reaction to Bella meant for his upcoming year, Edward weighed his options.
"Edward, please come sit with me." Edward's shoulders slumped at the sound of his mother's pleaded request. As much as he wanted to lose himself in depressing music and teenage angst, he couldn't ignore her plea for company. After all, it was his fault she was alone in the house all day.
Edward gave in and turned around, he returned his mother's smile as he walked down the stairs to join her at the bottom. "Sugar cookies? I'm in." His mother's smile of gratitude was heartbreaking.
"Good. Come on, I'll get you a glass of milk and we can talk." She pulled him with her towards the kitchen.
Edward took his seat at the table and looked around the room. His mother's imprint was easily detected in the cheerful room. When they'd left Seattle, Esme Cullen had been forced to close her lucrative home interior business. The small town of Forks, while perfect for a family needing to lose itself in a fresh start, wasn't a place that had much need for someone with her talents. She'd gone from working fifty hours a week and being the toast of the Seattle social circle, to a stay at home mom with no groups or committees to attend and no friends to spend Wine Fridays with.
"Drink up, sweetie." For the first time in a long time, a sincere smile crossed his face as his mother placed a plate full of sugar cookies and a large glass of cold milk in front of him.
Edward immediately shoved a cookie in his mouth and thanked his mother. "Fanjk vou."
Esme was so pleased to see her son enjoy his snack; she didn't bother to scold him for speaking with his mouth full.
Since moving to Forks, she'd begun to feel utterly useless. Her husband worked as much as he possibly could, using his new position at the hospital as an excuse. Esme knew that he was really just avoiding his family. As soon as they'd arrived in town, Emmett had joined the football team, hoping to regain the team captain spot he'd lost when they moved from Seattle. He'd been training and working with the Fork's Head Coach non-stop since they'd arrived. She barely saw him other than to feed or keep him stocked with fresh underwear and socks.
That left her baby, Edward. She'd willingly given up her lucrative business, social circle and friends to help her boy. But now that the boxes were unpacked and everyone was gone all day to either school or work, Esme was alone and bored.
Alone and bored was not a good combination for a woman dealing with the betrayal of a best friend and the resulting breakdown of her family.
At the moment, her only outlet was mothering her family. A task made extremely difficult when there was no family around to mother.
"How were your classes? What did you have for lunch? Were you warm enough? Did you make any friends?" Esme sat down across from her son and proceeded to inquire about his day.
Edward swallowed his mouthful of milk, ignoring his mother's reproachful look as he wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt.
"Um, everything was fine." Edward shrugged and took a bite out of another cookie.
"Fine?" Esme had been alone all day. She needed more interaction. "No, no, no, I spent the day doing your laundry, cleaning your bathroom, cooking meals…You have to give me more than, 'fine'."
Edward set down his half-eaten cookie and looked up into his mother's hopeful eyes. "My classes were good. I didn't eat lunch." He admitted quietly.
Edward sighed as his mother frowned at his admission. "I wasn't hungry, so I used the time to familiarize myself with the school." He was lying but he couldn't take the hurt that would appear in his mother's eyes if she discovered that his brother had forbidden him from being in the same room over their shared lunch period.
"Do you need more to eat?" Esme pushed back her chair already mentally going through the contents of her refrigerator.
"No, mom. I'm good. The cookies are more than enough." Edward promised.
"Okay, but don't do that tomorrow. You're a growing boy…" Her words died in her throat as she remembered that he was still a boy, yet he'd made a very adult decision that had nearly destroyed them all. "I'll make lunch for you to take tomorrow. You can eat it whenever you'd like." Edward nodded, he wasn't going to argue with her.
Neither would his stomach.
"So, did you make any friends?" Edward's mind immediately went to Bella. She'd called him an angel in gym class. But she wasn't his friend, as much as he thought he might like her to be. Though the prospect of anyone, much less the prettiest girl in the whole school wanting anything to do with him once they discovered what he'd done, was a long shot at best.
"Um, no. Not yet. I was pretty concerned with just finding my classrooms and not getting lost." Lost? That was a joke. Forks High school was not even half the size of the one he'd attended in Seattle.
Esme nodded at her son's lie. He'd always been so shy and introverted the opposite of her older son. Emmett was always the first to reach out a hand to a stranger and was never in need of a friend. Thinking back, she'd wished he'd had one less friend. No, that wasn't fair, she thought. It wasn't Alec's fault that his mother was a cheating whore.
"Well, now that you know where you're going, you can concentrate on getting to know a couple of your class mates," she said, while patting his arm and getting up from the table to continue her preparations for dinner.
Edward got up and put his dishes in the sink. "Mom, would you like help peeling those potatoes? He would postpone his scheduled wallowing session to spend a bit more time with the only woman who had never failed him.
"Really?" He nodded at her surprise. "I would love some help!" Esme exclaimed, grabbing another vegetable peeler and apron out of the drawer and handing them to her son. "I don't know if your father will be joining us tonight or your brother for that matter, but if he does grace us with his presence, we need to be prepared." She pointed to the sink full of potatoes.
"Yeah." Edward agreed, tying the plain red apron around his waist. His brother could eat a five-pound bag of potatoes by himself if left to his own devices.
"This is just like old times," Esme sighed, trying to keep the tears at bay as she took her place next to her broken son.
"Yeah, mom." Edward smiled and started in on the peeling.
~~TDP~~
"So, what did you think of Jasper?" Alice asked in the high pitched tone she affected after eating copious amounts of sugar. Bella held in her immediate answer as she wasn't able to shake the feeling that there was something very strange about him.
"You're decimating that poor candy bar." Bella pointed out, watching her best friend methodically peel and eat a Kit Kat bar one layer at a time, licking her fingers loudly between each bite.
Alice shrugged and continued her sweet destruction. "Stop avoiding the question. I can't have my best friend not getting along with my future baby daddy."
"Baby daddy? You met him today! You haven't even been on a date!" Bella spat out in disbelief at her friend's ridiculous statement.
"Maybe not, but we have a connection." Alice put down the remainder of her snack and looked earnestly across the bedspread to her friend. "When he came up to me this afternoon, it was as if I was under a spell. I looked into his eyes and my whole body shuddered as if I'd put my hand on an electric fence. At that moment, I knew I would do anything he asked of me. My will was his, completely." Alice sighed and stared dreamily off to the side of Bella's room with unfocused and glossy eyes.
Concerned about her friend's willingness to give up her free will, Bella leaned over the lavender bedspread, ignoring the numerous candy wrappers and lovingly touched Alice's hand. "Alice, that's not a good thing."
Alice flinched from Bella's touch and shook her head. To Bella, it appeared as if she was shaking off a veil or cobweb. "You don't know anything. You haven't met the one yet. Until you do, you won't understand. You're still a child." Alice snorted haughtily.
Bella pulled back her hand, hurt by her friend's rebuff. "If meeting the one' involves me losing my free will, then I'll die a virgin. Because becoming an order-following, glassy-eyed robot for any man isn't happening to me." Her voice had an angry tone she'd rarely used with the girl that had been her surrogate sister since they were children.
"What about that new guy, you know, the one you were practically undressing in gym class? I have a feeling that you'd put your free will aside for him." Alice challenged.
"Edward?" Alice nodded. "Um, well, you know, he's cute." At the mention of Edward, the temperature in Bella's room suddenly increased as she willed her body to not betray her further.
"Cute?" Alice challenged. "I don't believe that I've ever seen your face go that red over a boy that was just cute." Alice's eyebrows lifted in challenge.
"It wasn't that red."
"You looked like a human tomato. You obviously thought the new boy was attractive. You should ask him out. You need someone in your life." As attractive as Bella thought Edward was, she was slightly offended that once again her best friend was suggesting that her life was lacking simply because she was single. A status that Alice had shared only scant hours ago.
"You know there's more to life than having a boyfriend, right? Friends, family-they're all important."
The air in the bedroom suddenly felt thicker to Bella as the face of her surrogate sister twisted into an icy glare. "Nothing else matters. He's my life now." She all but sneered.
Not since the night her mother had run off had Bella's heart filled with such dread.
~~TDP~~
"Have you found a vessel?" Ba'al's eyes met Astarte's in the dimness of the room. She shrugged and retreated further into the dark corner of the room in the stolen home she'd claimed as her own. The low light in the room made it difficult to clearly see her appearance, but Ba'al didn't need bright light to see that fear and apprehension marked her face as surely as it was evident on his own.
Swallowing hard, Ba'al answered his master. "Sire, we have found a suitable vessel and have made contact with the brother as well as a friend of The Swan, both are well under our contro-" A loud, menacing voice interrupted his statement.
"Did I ask you about a friend or a brother?!" The bellowed question echoed in the dark room. Astarte pulled her legs up closer to her body, trying to make herself disappear. It pained Ba'al to see the once proud goddess, cower in a corner like an animal. But there was little he could do to change their predicament. They were under Satan's thumb and they both knew it.
"No, sire. I apologize for my impertinence. I only meant to explain what we have accomplished." He said humbly.
The blood in the chalice that was serving as an Earth to Hell telephone churned and gurgled, reflecting the mood of the being on the other end.
"Unless you have secured my vessel, you have not accomplished a fucking thing!" Ba'al recoiled slightly as drops of blood flew out of the cup, landing on his hand. The smell of the curdled wolf's blood caused him to swallow thickly as bile rose in his throat.
"My vessel must be secured! If you feel that task is too much for you and that sorry excuse for a goddess you call, sister, I'm sure there are plenty of souls down here willing to try, and then you and Astarte may return home. I've kept your rooms warm for you. The decision is yours!" With that threat delivered, the blood stilled, thus ending the call. Ba'al's shoulders sagged in relief of having that call completed. They'd been given a second chance; Satan rarely gave second chances.
"What are we going to do?" Astarte asked quietly from her corner, her long, blond hair hung low on her face, hiding her eyes from her partner.
As both of them had been powerful beings in their old lives, Ba'al had never felt responsible for the welfare of another demigod. They had both reigned supreme in their former lives, however as a human male, he felt the all too common burden of responsibility for his sister-in-arms.
"I'll make contact with him tomorrow." He assured her.
"How? He never appears at the mid-day meal period." Ba'al of course knew that. He'd tried for a week to corner the boy, but had missed him every time.
"I will contact him tomorrow," he said defensively, "the boy must go somewhere to eat, and I'll simply track him down and get his consent." Ba'al ignored her snort of disbelief and continued his statement.
"He will consent. He won't have a choice."
Lots of theories out there this week. Did this chapter confirm anyone's thoughts?
Until next time, happy reading.
