Shahrazád's Ghosts


Chapter 4: Esme


"Edward did what?" Esme asked in a flat, venom-laced voice. Her perfect hearing had not missed the explanation, nor her mind forgotten the graphic visuals provided by the twins. It was her heart that could not accept it. The truth was undeniably worse than any of them had imagined.

"Good God, what did he become? How could he have come to this?" Carlisle said, his one hand covering his eyes while his other clung to the mantle where he stood. Esme had never seen him look so weary or tarnished before but the events of the last 24 hours had shaken him more than he was willing to admit to.

"I remember her," Emmett finally said, his unusually muted voice intruding into each of their internal roilings. "She was only there a day and then they said she committed suicide. They blamed it on her mother, the move, her own instability, but Chief Swan never recovered from her loss."

"I covered it up because I saw it would raise more suspicions if we left," Alice said. "By the time I saw what Edward planned to do that day, it was too late to stop him. I failed him and I failed all of you. If he hadn't…if I hadn't…maybe then…"

Her hitched sob was broken by Jasper's shoulder and his whispers into her hair when he wrapped his arms around her.

"Once wasn't enough, though," Emmett said. "He never could do anything half way, could he? He broke the secret of cloning just so he could kill her all over again."

"Over a thousand times," Isabella added in with a nod. "I saw the mass graves myself back after Sami died."

"No wonder you took off like a bat outta hell," Emmett said. "Finding out something like that about my parents woulda made me go a little crazy too."

"Mass graves," Esme said with a gasp and a hand over her mouth. "Oh, that poor child! Those poor women! Created solely for such a purpose!"

"Looks to me like he did more than clone her," Rosalie said between gritted teeth. "Or are these twins clones too?"

"Oh no. These ones were made the old-fashioned way," Jasper answered. "Edward liked to play with his food before he ate it."

Rosalie gave a growl of disgust and her eyes were lit with a fiery rage. "How many more kids did our dear brother produce?"

"I never knew about the children," Alice whispered. " I couldn't see them…they must have been hidden from me like Izzy was…and there were so many clones and they were so much alike, I could not keep track of most of their fates. I found Isabella by accident…or by fate…or divine intervention, however you want to explain it…but I never knew about Khalid and Kassim. I never knew about any others."

"Isabella, why didn't you tell us about your brothers?" Esme asked, hurt plain in her voice. She mourned, oh she mourned, but not only from the acid poured into the wound still aching from Edward's loss, but from the revelation of so much lost time with his other children.

"Because I was ashamed," Isabella confessed, tears streaming down her cheeks. "I didn't want to admit to where I came from. I didn't want to have to explain."

Esme was about to stand to approach the weeping Isabella, but Rosalie beat her to it. She pulled Izzy into an embrace as fierce as it was sincere.

"I'm glad to know the truth," Rosalie whispered. "It's ugly as hell, but I would rather know a bitter truth than a pretty lie. You don't have to explain anything else. We all know now and we don't love you any more or less because of where you came from. You are here now and we are all grateful for it. None of us have pretty stories behind us, but here we are, and we can be better for it or worse for it. I, for one, think most of us in this room have chosen to be better."

Esme caught Isabella's eye and gave her as warm a smile as she could muster. Esme's heart ached for what Alice and Isabella had borne alone for so long and that they made the choice to bear it alone, instead of finding strength within the family.

The silence rippling through the gathering in the drawing room was as somber as an interment for a lost family member. In a way, it was a funeral, of sorts. The Cullens together peered into the metaphorical coffin of their beloved Edward's memory and buried all their last of their hopes for the redemption of his life's legacy. It was Edward's own sons who gave the final eulogy, their visual memorial composed of the weavings of memories of both their mother and adoptive father, Alice's visions, and the findings of archaeologists from Edward's final home in Chad. Together, the tapestry of memory they displayed was more fitting for a horror story than a family reunion. Once, the Cullens had mourned for the loss of Edward's place in the family – his laughter, songs, jests, and loyal friendship. He had left them and relocated to Chad and he never returned to them again. Later, they mourned the loss of his physical body once Alice brought news of his death and cremation. Now, the Cullens mourned the loss of his soul as it became clear that the Edward they had known corroded and oxidized long before his body turned to ash…and he carried the souls of innocents with him into his unholy grave.

No one dared move or break the silence. There was more they needed to ask and unanswered mysteries plainly evidenced by the presence of Michael and Bell before them, but Khalid and Kassim only shared visions of Edward's past, as they knew it, and gave the room the space they needed to let their revulsion percolate. The twins stood as still as sentries, taking it all in as if they were part of the furniture instead of part of the family. It was clear they had no warm feelings towards their biological father, but they were sensitive enough to recognize that the Cullens had once loved Edward, and in many ways still loved him, and gave them the space they needed to sort out their reactions. Carlisle released his hold on the mantle to edge his way to where the twins stood. He gently took each of their hands, earnestly meeting their eyes, and clapping their shoulders.

"Khalid, Kassim, I am very glad to know you both and you will always be welcome to be part of this family, if you wish to. I thank you for letting us know the truth."

Alice turned wide, pleading eyes onto her niece, the hurt evident on her face as she spoke. "Izzy, I understand not telling the others, but why didn't you tell me? How long have you known?"

Isabella shrugged. "I met them on the dig at Barzakh. They told me more about our parents than I ever dreamed of knowing. I met some of my distant blood relatives scattered around Chad. It was a life-altering experience, but one I did not necessarily want to talk about. I didn't really want to repeat what it is that I learned from their mother's memories."

"What relatives?" Esme asked.

"Our mother was not like the other concubines of the Desert Jinni. She was taught to speak and think and act as the Jinni's slave. She dwelt with him for twenty years before she escaped to save her own life. That is how she met our father, Amir, and became part of the Toubou, the People of the Rock. Her family named her Badiyah, which means "desert." The descendants of their firstborn outnumber our original village now," Khalid said.

"I could never figure out what happened to her," Alice said. "I saw her in visions for years and then, one day, she disappeared completely."

"The Desert Jinni refused to let her live her life with her new family in peace. He stormed into our village like a lion on hunt and stole our mother back and forced himself upon her. We are the fruit of that union. Our mother was a woman of great bravery and strength. She escaped from the Jinni not once, but twice, using her own skill and fortitude. She sacrificed herself for her family, both in agreeing to accompany her Jinni master and in giving birth to us. She breathed her last surrounded by those she belonged to and who claimed her as their own and who then claimed us in her honor. We are proud to be her sons."

"She was an incredible woman," Alice said, her eyes distant and weighted with extinguished dreams of days long past. "And one I had high hopes for. She was always supposed to be one of us, part of our family, if Edward had chosen a different path.

"When she vanished from my sights, I could barely leave my room for weeks. I searched and searched, but the only way I knew she was gone was when I had a vision of Edward discovering her grave and burying her in his room. He wouldn't leave her side for weeks. He was never the same after that. He never recovered from her loss...but he thought she died of animal attack…the one woman he truly loved and he killed her himself, the idiot, without even knowing the role he played. I don't believe he ever knew differently, but I could not see much of him after that. His mind was so decayed that he was not making decisions anymore, but simply floating along purely on his basest of impulses."

Up until this point, Michael and Bell had kept to themselves. Bell lay on the couch in the corner, a pile of blankets draped on her, and Michael knelt on the floor beside her, spending more time gazing into Bell's eyes or with his head leaning against her stomach than involved in the conversation happening around them. At whatever thoughts were drifting through the room now, he sat up straight and frowned.

"Why did they die?" he asked. "Your mothers, I mean. Did this Edward steal their blood away while they carried his children?"

"No," Khalid answered. "Childbirth is dangerous enough for the mothers of human offspring and we are not like human children. We grow faster and stronger than our human mothers are meant to bear and when we are born, we do not enter the world in the same way. I have spoken with some children of Jinn whose mothers were assisted by wise midwives and healers and were able to live, but most do not survive."

Michael's face was aghast and he clutched Bell's hand to his chest as he saw whatever mental images flickered through minds of the group. "Oh, this is terrible! The only humans I knew to die, died when they were eaten by vampires. I thought, as long as I did not let any vampires near her, she would be safe. You are telling me that there are other ways she could die?"

"Of course," Carlisle said, half in surprise and half in amusement. "There are other ways to die besides exsanguination…there are diseases, illnesses, violence, famine, accidents..."

Michael pulled Bell from the couch and cradled her into his arms as Carlisle gave his list of the pitfalls of human existence.

"Stop! Stop! I cannot hear any more! What do I need to know? Give me a list and I will make sure she is safe forever!"

"But she is human," Carlisle answered gently. "All humans will die eventually. Even if nothing else intervenes, old age will take her in seventy or eighty years."

"Oh, I could not bear it! I didn't know! Help me, Carlisle! What can be done?"

"Well, have you thought about changing her to become like you?"

Michael considered this and then grimaced. "You mean like Peter and me and the others that Peter watches over? If that is the only way, I suppose I must accept it, but I think she is quite lovely as she is. I would miss seeing her as she is now, but her heart is just as beautiful. If changed to look like me, she would be safe?"

Carlisle was about to answer when Khalid interjected. "Michael is not the only clone. He thinks you mean to turn Bell into an exact clone of your son."

Carlisle chuckled. "No, I mean turning her into a vampire, like Alice and Esme and Rosalie. She would still look like Bell, but she would be stronger and much more durable."

"Oh yes!" Michael said, his face relaxing in immediate relief. "That's a good idea! Can we do it now? I don't want to wait a moment and risk something happening."

"First, you should consult with Bell and make sure she accepts the idea. Secondly, we will need to deliver the baby before she is changed. I think the sooner the better, but I will need to gather some supplies. Perhaps tomorrow. I believe a Caesarean will be the best option, considering all we know about other hybrid births."

Michael cried out at whatever mental images Carlisle gave and pulled Bell even closer to him. "What is that!? How dare you even consider cutting her open! What kind of a heartless being are you? No, you may not damage her like this!"

Carlisle sighed and rubbed his hand over his forehead. "Everyone, perhaps we should all take a short break and resume our discussion after lunch. I believe we have all heard as much as we can manage for this morning. Michael and Bell, let's talk about possible procedures and the risks of each option."

oooo


The inhabitants of the room scattered like roaches when a light is turned on, each thankful for vast empty wings of the castle where they could each seek solitude for a time.

Esme did what she always did when her heart was full and her mind troubled: she made herself busy. "Idle hands are the devil's workshop," Esme's mother used to chide her, when she was young. Then she'd hand Esme a dress to mend or a socks to darn or an old piece of lace to sew onto a hat. "Keep your hands busy, Essy and don't sit idle, dreaming your days away, and getting' into mischief."

Young Esme still managed to get herself into mischief, even with her hands busy. Beneath her petticoats, her feet tipped and tapped and stomped just as busily as her hands in her lap, just as eager to keep busy, all the while wishing for more exertion than could be found with a needle and thread or wash basin. Esme learned what her mother didn't say as much as what she did: a woman's hands could fix a multitude of ills, and if something's wrong, you gotta do something to fix it. Just the doing something helps.

Unfortunately, this philosophy did not do much to "fix" the recurring bruises on Esme's face or ameliorate her husband's temper. Her mother came and did a lot of "something," usually in the form of apple pies and scrubbed table linens and knitted mittens, but no matter how busy her mother's hands stayed, or how busy she chided Esme to be, it was never busy enough to stay her husband's ire.

It was a habit so ingrained in her that it carried over into her vampiric life, long after the needs she used to tend were obsolete and so many other of her habits were gone. Whenever she felt troubled and she couldn't think of a way to fix whatever ills were disturbing those she loved, she did what she had always done: she made herself busy and tried to fix the problems she could fix.

She went into the kitchen and started making lunch, grateful to have enough mouths to feed to give direction to her efforts. Rosalie came to help, not because Esme needed the help but because Rosalie needed her hands busy, too. Rosalie could speak her mind straight as a pistol shot through a cardboard wall when she wanted to, but the more upset and discombobulated she was, the quieter she got and now she was as silent as a librarian after hours.

Esme understood.

When she had been a girl, she had collected her trousseau in an old cedar Hope Chest, a gift from her great aunt. She had filled it with freshly embroidered napkins, each with a tiny rosebud in the corner. She bought gold-edged china settings and a complete set of her own silver. Her mother protested and said was too extravagant for a farmer's daughter, but Esme sold enough jars of marmalade and gave enough reading lessons to manage the costs herself. Her lesson books never did quite fit into that chest and neither did her bicycle, but her mother insisted she "wouldn't need those no more" once she was married.

Long, painful years later and the Hope Chest no longer had the china or the silver or the embroidered napkins, so Esme filled it to the brim with her lesson books and little baby's clothes. She couldn't bear to empty it again after that or fill it with something new. It sat as empty as her arms and she couldn't find the hope to fill it up again.

When she became the "mother" of her eclectic band of adopted "children," she had developed a new Hope Chest and its contents didn't involve prodigal sons, unanswered phone calls, empty place settings on holiday,or yawning mass graves .

She'd known it was bad long before she was willing to admit it out loud. She knew it the first time Edward missed their anniversary. For 235 years, Edward always wished her a happy anniversary on the date Carlisle first changed her. Every single year. Even during his first rebellion, he still remembered to call and tell her he loved her.

The first year his call never came, she wept for a month. She knew then. She knew in her bones that something terrible had happened. For Edward to forget…or choose not to remember…meant he was as far from ok as the equator was from the North Pole.

When that little baby burst into their lives, it turned their entire worlds upside down. The changeless monotony they had resigned themselves to evaporated like the morning mist when the sun comes out and filled their days with noise and tumult and novelty and purpose and they couldn't do anything but rejoice at their sudden good fortune. They were indebted to Edward for his final gift to them which so radically changed their lives and settled something in them which had long been unmoored. Esme's hands had more than charity knitting and architectural drawings to keep her going, but now they were full of dirty dishes and overturned milk and grubby little fingers. She packed lunches, cleaned scraped knees, and washed playdough out of carpets and she felt more connected to life than she ever had.

Rosalie, also, bloomed in a way she never had before. A part of her was resurrected and a deeply disjointed part of her soul was healed. Before Isabella, the Cullens had dwelt so long in homes built on the scaffolds of aborted lives and dissolute dreams that they had forgotten what it was like to build a life for the living. With that baby, they stopped "playing house" and started making a home.

But now they knew what a price had been paid for their treasure! It was unthinkable. The "wages of death" of Edward's sins had been paid by a woman who died at his hands over a thousand times. Edward robbed himself of his life as surely as he robbed the daughter of Charlie Swan of hers. Esme watched the interaction between Michael and Bell and her heart grieved. She remembered the pull she had felt towards Carlisle even when still a human. Edward could have had that, or something like it, and instead he chose to destroy himself and everyone around him.

"Remember, Essy," her mother had told her. "'The wise woman builds her house, but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down.' Make sure those hands of yours are building up and not tearing down or everyone around you is gonna have rain in their beds and birds in the rafters." Esme had taken that to heart, quite literally. She spent her days building houses and making homes, trying to use her hands to keep her family together and fighting with all her strength to make sure everyone under her roof knew they belonged there. Sometimes she failed. Sometimes she needed to empty out her Hope Chest and fill it up again, but it hurt like pouring antiseptic on a wound to do it.

Esme completed her platter of sandwiches and began to pour glasses of lemonade. Rosalie stilled. Without looking up from the tray of apple slices, she bit her lip and sighed.

"She was right," Rosalie said.

"Who?"

"Alice. She was right when she said telling us would lead to one of us dying. She doesn't need to tell me who she saw trying and failing. I already know. Carlisle would never, ever have given up on Edward, even if it cost his own head. He'd give everything he had if he thought it meant a chance of saving Edward."

"You are right," Esme said. She took the tray of apples from Rosalie's hands and placed it back on the counter so she could take Rose's hands in her own. "And you would have bit into Edward with all the tenacity of a bulldog and refused to let go till one of you won."

"Hell hath no fury like what I would have given him if I had known," Rose agreed.

"What a choice! Knowing that at the end of the day, someone must die and it is your decision who..."

"I wish there had been another way."

"Me too. I feel rather guilty, but I am glad you and Carlisle are still with me," Esme said and pulled Rose in for a hug. The hitched sobs that she found there only made her embrace her daughter harder.

oooo


Esme found Carlisle leaning against the rotted wood of the pasture railing, his eyes lost in mists of the rolling moors beyond. She knew he heard her approach, but he did not shift his position or turn his head to meet her. Instead he continued his quiet recitation of a poem.

"Immortal Heat, O let Thy greater flame

Attract the lesser to it; let those fires

Which shall consume the world first make it tame,

And kindle in our hearts such true desires.

As may consume our lusts, and make Thee way:

Then shall our hearts pant Thee, then shall our brain

All her invention on Thine altar lay,

And there in hymns send back Thy fire again."

"Amen," Esme whispered when he fell silent, letting the wind across the moor to recite the final stanzas. She took his arm in hers and leaned her head against his shoulder.

"Esme, I am a fool," Carlisle said, his golden eyes muted by sorrow. "Despite all my mind told me, I still wanted to believe that Edward was not so far gone, that he had not lost all grasp of goodness."

"You are so good, Carlisle, and you genuinely believe other people are like you. That's part of what makes them want to be."

"I am not good, Esme, and that is what grieves me the most. It was my own selfish desire for companionship that caused me to change Edward. I wanted a family. I wanted my own progeny who shared my ideals and wished to participate in creating a world based on the same principles that I held dear. I wished to replicate myself through Edward and I wished to be his salvation from death, but who can save other than God? I have had to repent of my pride and my desire to play God more times than I can count now, Esme. How many must pay the price for my weakness?"

"Oh, Carlisle. It is not weakness to long for a family, it is strength. We are all better for it, even if we sometimes grumble over the events that brought us together, we are better for being together than we ever were before."

"I failed him, Esme. I was a coward. I failed to walk in courage and go after my lost son. Maybe I could have said something, done something that would have changed it, saved lives and hardship."

"There you go again. In one breath you are repenting for trying to do the Almighty's job and the next moment, you are bemoaning that you didn't do the Almighty's job. You couldn't save Edward from evil anymore than you could save him from death. That, too, belonged to bigger hands than yours.

"You did what you could. You gave Edward everything he needed to become the man we all knew he could be. He had the freedom to choose his path and he chose it. There is nothing else you could have done to change his mind...and no, following after him to try to change his mind would not have made a difference.

"What is it you like to remind the others? 'And we know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love Him and have been called according to His purpose.' We know there has been good. Look at those beautiful children. You have to agree that they are a good that has come out of incomprehensible darkness."

He gave a slight nod, but it was weighted down by the thick fog of emotion plaguing him. He fell back into his reverie, watching the sweeping movement of the clouds over the moor. Esme stood beside him, running her hands over his arm, wishing there was something she could say or do to help, but she couldn't.

If the affair with Edward shook Alice's faith in her visions, then for Carlisle, it shook his belief in the innate goodness to be found within others. Esme remembered what he had been like, that first time Edward struck his own path and rebelled against Carlisle in every way possible. Those days had been as dark and gloomy as the gathering clouds were now over the craggy hills. Carlisle stopped whistling and he forgot to smile until she forced him to remember. His eyes constantly stared out the front window, ever-watchful for the day his prodigal son would return, and his arms ever-ready to welcome him back again in an embrace. He never once lost faith that some day, somehow, Edward would come to his senses. He never once stopped his daily petition for Edward's soul from the Lord of Hosts and more than he stopped trusting that his prayers would be answered.

When they were, Carlisle's joy was enough to fill the Missouri River twice over. Carlisle had not cared if Edward's eyes were as red as a cabernet or if he carried the weight of a hundred ghosts on his conscience, his son who was lost had returned and Carlisle's heart overflowed. Carlisle would have moved mountains and drained oceans for Edward if it would have helped his firstborn kindle a sense of his own purpose and place in the world.

When Edward left that second time, Carlisle never once gave up hope. He still watched for his son from the front window, no matter where the family moved or how many years evaporated from headlines to history books. Esme wasn't much better. She kept his room for him to make sure that anytime, anywhere, he would always have a home to come back to where he knew he belonged.

But he never came. And when even the occasional phone call ceased, it was like putting a lid over the candle of Carlisle's hope. The flame flickered and shrank, but it still refused to entirely extinguish, no matter how many silences sought to steal away what oxygen remained. Still, his hope glowed and flickered, a constant vigilant light in the darkness, twinkling in the window and welcoming his beloved son to come home.

But how can hope live on after death? Somehow, Carlisle's still did. Oh, he mourned for the loss of his son with all his heart and soul, but he clung to his hope that his son's life and subsequent death were still rooted in the ideals that Carlisle so desperately clung to. It was impossible for him to do otherwise. Carlisle could not believe that his son could permanently stray and turn away from the brilliant guiding light that Carlisle sought more than life itself.

But this was the first time death crept into the Cullen household to remind them that while they might be untouched by sickness or age, they were not immune to death and even the immortal had limitations.

"Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;….

Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,

And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well

And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally

And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die."

Carlisle had whispered those words in the private memorial he held for his son after he received news of Edward's death. Esme stood by his side, of course, her own tearless sobs watering the rose bush Carlisle planted at the grave in Chicago where Edward's body should have dwelt. He buried more than a son that day, but a tiny fragment of his dauntless hope stayed there, too.

But he never stopped watching out the window, though Esme did not believe he did so consciously. It was as if he still thought that if he kept vigil fervently enough, his son would still come home to him.

That made it all the more jarring when he did, resurrected from the grave as an older version of the one who had been buried.

"Do you think, knowing what you do now, you would have kept yourself from changing Edward?" Esme asked.

Carlisle thought upon this for a time before he responded. "My mind tells me that I would change my decision, but my heart tells me otherwise. Esme, for all his faults, I loved that boy with all my heart and I cannot imagine my life without him. And I know myself. Perhaps it is foolish and too idealistic of me, but I loved him too much to ever give up hope that he would change and become the man I saw he could become. I could never keep the fear of his potential for evil prevent me from placing my hope in his potential for good. Yet, there I display my own weakness again. In my selfish desire to cling to my son, I risk the lives of over a thousand others. I prove I am no better than he."

"That is not fair," Esme cried out in protest. "Edward's selfishness led to him casting all evidence of a conscience out the front door. What you call your 'selfishness' led to you wanting your son to live to have the chance to become a better man."

"Yet I also compromised my conscience when I changed him, and there have been repercussions for that. More than we even now realize. Perhaps it is the reminder that there are some ends worse than death and the greatest of salvations is not an invitation to immortality in this life. It is our redemption from the darker sides of our natures and restoration in the next life that is our true salvation."

"Speaking of ends worse than death and invitations to immortality, did you manage to convince Michael and Bell about the benefits of a C-section?" Esme asked.

Carlisle chuckled. "It took a while, but I think so."

"What are her chances of survival?"

"I have heard I am given to hope too much at times, but I think it is possible."

"Maybe your hope is not all in vain, then, Carlisle. Maybe they both will live and thrive. Maybe Michael can grow to become something more like the man you wished Edward would be."

"Or maybe he will choose to devour all of Ireland and set himself up as the king of the leprechauns."

"Or that," Esme said with a laugh. "I'd believe almost anything at this point."

Oooooo


The sun had vanished behind the western horizon before they reconvened again. Esme bustled in and out of the drawing room with bowls full of grapes and crackers and plates of cheese. She placed these on coffee tables and side tables before she fetched extra slippers and pillows for Bell. Emmett was trying to whisper to Michael and Bell, but his whisper carried across the room and so Esme could hear it all.

"You never knew any of this?" Emmett asked the pair. They both shook their heads.

"No," Michael answered. "I do not know if Peter even knows of this. He never thought about any one named Isabella or Badiyah or Edward when we were with him, but we were not with him very long. Did he ever mention anything to you during your time with him?"

Bell shook her head.

"Does it bother you that Edward was, you know, like that?" Emmett asked.

"He was an evil man and I am happy that Alice set him on fire," Michael said.

"But you are Edward, too."

"No, I am Michael."

"Yeah, I guess you are, but you are somehow created exactly like him."

"There are many who look like me where I come from, but we are not the same. We only look the same."

"That's crazy to me. So there are just a bunch of genetic copies of Edward roaming around somewhere? How are you not all exactly alike?"

"Khalid and Kassim are not the same."

"I guess you have a point. This still all blows my mind."

"Blows your mind? There is wind in your head?" Michael asked.

"No, I mean, it's, uh, a lot to think about."

"I see now. I did not see you thinking about wind...oh, now you are...now you are thinking about wind blowing your thoughts against the sides of your skull..."

Khalid cleared his throat and called the room back to order. Esme stopped her attempts to find something else to fix or clean or sort and sat on a chair next to Carlisle, his hand in hers.

"From what we have learned, Edward allowed three cloned women to live. He trained them to assist him in his daily tasks around Barzakh. The first, and the longest living, was our mother, Badiyah. After she escaped, she was replaced by a woman named Buffy."

"Buffy? Like the Vampire Slayer?" Emmett asked.

"Who is this vampire slayer?" Khalid asked.

"You haven't seen that show? Oh, I guess it came out before you were born. Ok. Never mind. What happened to Buffy? Did she hunt down any vampires?"

"Edward released her," Alice said. "He felt it was a way of atoning for the death of the first Isabella Swan. He also created a human clone of himself as a way of giving his human self another chance at life. Edward sent his human clone to Buffy before he died. Buffy lived in London for the next sixty years, eventually marrying Edward's clone."

"What?!" came from various parts of the room in unison.

"That's, uh, cute? And weird? And a little creepy," Emmett said.

"Alice? You knew about them?" asked Esme.

"Yes."

"Why didn't you tell us?"

"What would you have done if you knew? Oh, wait, I do know. You would have stalked the poor man and insisted on befriending him and tangling him back up in our world all over again. And his wife had been traumatized enough. She couldn't have handled it. They wanted to be normal. They wanted to be human. Our desires didn't matter. If Edward's last wish was for them to get to have a happy, human life, why not let them?"

"Ok, so I am assuming they are long dead now," Emmett said. "Any kids?"

"No."

"Huh. I thought we had a pattern going. That just blew it."

"Why do you like speaking of blowing of wind?" Michael said.

"It's an expression, ok," Emmett answered. "It has nothing to do with wind...more like a volcano or a bomb kind of blowing."

"What are those? Oh...I have seen mountains before...they can explode and catch fire? Does this happen often?" Michael asked, terror growing on his face as he caught Emmett's mental explanation of a volcano.

Khalid cleared his throat again. "There was another, a third one, one we know very little about. Our mother met her briefly, but their interactions were limited. This third clone spent only a few years with Edward and these occurred after our mother's death so we have very little information about her. We do not even know her name."

"I saw Buffy decide to keep her and I saw Edward use her for the creation of the clone of himself, but I never saw her changed," Alice said. "I assumed she died with the others on his last day. I never looked for her again. I thought we were done with all of Edward's mess, but I was wrong. Again."

"We did not hear of anything until a few years ago," Khalid continued. "Barzakh began to receive strange visitors of jinn from distant lands. We crossed their trails and saw them travel across the deserts in directions that could only lead to Barzakh and we wondered. What business could they have there? Why travel so far to hunt when there are larger cities and more plentiful food sources in other areas? Perhaps one or two could be explained, but it grew to a constant stream of visitors. We followed one trail until we found its owner and then we both feared because we thought our father still lived."

"But it was a clone?" Jasper mused.

"Yes. One who claimed his loyalty belongs to the Mistress of Barzakh."

"You never met her?" Emmett asked Michael. He shook his head.

"I was sent to the Volturi as a gift from her, but I never met her."

Jasper leaned forward then and studied Michael. "You were sent to the Volturi?"

He nodded.

"For what purpose?"

"Information, I think. I was sent messages which told me to speak to different people and ask specific questions. I did what Aro told me until I was summoned home."

"And you could not give Aro any information because you only knew what Bell knew and thought about," Jasper surmised.

"Oh, no. I only knew what Bell taught me. I cannot read her thoughts."

Startled gasps filled the room again at this revelation.

"Wait, you can read all our thoughts, right?" Emmett asked.

"Yes," Michael answered.

"But you can't read hers?"

"No."

"Well, that explains a bit more how Edward could do what he did," Emmett said. "If he didn't have to hear them..."

"So much suffering...all those poor girls...," Esme said, sadly.

It was Alice's turn to bring the discussion back to the topic at hand. She rapped her hand against a table and frowned. "Well, one of those poor girls somehow convinced Edward to change her...or he accidentally changed her...and she is now building an army."

"What kind of army?" Jasper asked. "A newborn army?"

"In a way. It's an army made entirely of Edwards."

"For what purpose?" Jasper asked.

"To overthrow the Volturi."

oooo


Author's Notes:

Wow, so this chapter went through some transformations. It was supposed to be Michael's perspective, then it was going to be Kassim's, then it turned into Carlisle and finally settled on Esme.

It also ended up a bit heavy and depressing, but I wanted to finish up dealing with the repercussions of the far past before we deal with the next generation of issues in the more recent past. We spent a lot of time rehashing the past here, so if any of you are new to the story and you are still lost about what happened before this story begins, let me know so I can clear it up. :)

We are going to step away from the Cullens now and travel to Volterra next.

Quotations from this chapter are as follows:

"The wise woman builds her house..." Proverbs 14:1

"And we know in all things, God works for the good..." Romans 8:28

"wages of sin" comes from Romans 6:23

Prodigal Son: Luke 15:11-32

"Death be not proud" by John Donne (1633)

"Immortal Heat..." Love II by George Herbert (1633)