Prey for the Wicked
Chapter 5
Majaribu
. . . . . .
Helpless as it steals my soul
I've lost all control
. . . . . .
The house looks the same; Edward is surprised by this. The woman he once thought of as a surrogate mother has always had a penchant for architectural and interior design. She often altered the homes Edward lived in with his former pseudo-family members to one extent or another. Apparently though, even after all this time, she has left this one alone. It stands before him, battered yet preserved - a veritable time warp. He doesn't want to contemplate the reasons why she would leave this place untouched.
He moves silently through the tangles of long grass and weeds that choke the formerly landscaped grounds. The surrounding forest is encroaching upon the yard, as though seeking to reclaim the space that was cleared for the house. Edward finds a vague smile curling his lips at the familiarity that lingers, regardless of the overgrowth.
Splintered shutters, faded and weather-beaten paint, rotting steps on a previously grand porch, and still the home looks impressive and stately, even with the boarded up windows. Built in the mid 1800's and then refurbished and overhauled by Esme Cullen's competent planning and skill in the early 1900's, it is timeless in design despite its age.
When he opens the front door, vivid, unwanted memories spill out, wrapped in the smell of dust and the musty air of long unoccupied space. Memories of a time when he thought he could be what his maker and surrogate father wanted, of spending time with members of a family, trying to belong.
Family. Such a farce.
They were a coven of vampires playing a pathetic make-believe game of house, acting human during the day, striving to blend in, their diet meticulously planned and adhered to. If you could call a supplement of human blood taken from the willing yet unknowing donors that regularly visited the clinics Carlisle ran, combined with nights hunting in the woods, draining deer, bear and large wildcats, a diet.
Animal blood.
Edward vividly remembers that taste. Weak, pale sustenance with all the flavour and nourishment of dirt, it served one purpose and one purpose only. To curb the lust for the hunt and kill that is part and parcel of vampire nature.
Vegetarians, Carlisle Cullen labelled them with that wickedly handsome smile, all but patting them on the head with doting pride when they passed yet another hour, day, week, month, year, without slaughtering the luscious, flavour-filled townsfolk in their beds.
Doctor Carlisle Cullen. Coven leader, surgeon, family practitioner, caring, concerned citizen, determined to save human lives and not drain them away as vampire-kind is predisposed to do. His compassion and self-control remains legendary in the vampire world right up to this present day.
Even back then, with his wickedly sharp lancet and ever-present bowl, he was gentle and seemingly immune to the crimson juice that flowed freely around him. Soothing the patients he treated, guiding them carefully through the bloodletting process they all accepted as common practice in that day and age. And unlike so many other surgeons of that era, taking only what a mortal could easily spare before treating their real ails with medicines and advice much better suited to healing. Carlisle's patients rarely expired, which brought them in droves to his clinics.
No, there was no shortage of "sustenance" while Edward lived in Carlisle's shadow, but cooled, congealing human blood from a cup and warm tasteless animal blood couldn't slake a thirst like theirs. They lived in denial. Edward lived in denial, until that one fateful day when it all fell apart and he could live in denial no more.
Carlisle's presence lingers in this house, Edward realizes as he crosses the threshold and enters rooms nearly empty save for a few pieces of old furniture draped in sheets. His maker, his creator, his father for all intents and purposes, has a presence that will not be denied, even in absence. He is in the empty bookshelves that line the south walls of the living room, previously cluttered with his endless collection of medical textbooks. In the faded shapes of paintings that used to hang on the walls, carefully accumulated over his nearly four centuries of life. In the cross-shaped shadow that lingers above the winding staircase where the only relic of his human life hung in a place of honor. No doubt it has a likewise worthy place of note wherever Carlisle is now.
Edward's mind and emotions battle in on themselves, former happiness colliding with current bitterness. It was all such a sham, that former life, that distant existence. One he could not live even though the others could.
Alice and Jasper, Rose and Emmett, his adopted siblings in this grotesque afterlife, had each found a way to live the lie from the very beginning. Still lived it to this day, though it has been so long since Edward last checked in, he can't be certain. No, that isn't true. He can be certain. They would not forsake the life Carlisle created for them, no matter how difficult they might have found it, or may still find it. Only Edward has done that.
He continues his exploration, moving on silent feet through empty rooms until he reaches Carlisle's former study. An old desk remains, the antique wood warped in places from the endless damp weather. A few dusty, molding old books sit forgotten on the shelves. The smell of them, even corrupted by time as they are, wafts into Edward's nostrils and evokes another memory. Here, in this very room, Edward spoke with his father for the last time over a century ago. He stood on this same rotting carpet when it was still whole and placed a metaphorical stake through the patriarchal vampire's heart. Memories wash over him, taking him under, pulling him back to those last moments...
"I can't live like this. Pretending like this," Edward sneered, pacing in front of Carlisle's desk. "It's too difficult."
"Nothing is too difficult, son." As always, Carlisle's mind was filled with his usual abundance of understanding and patience. Useless emotions that had begun to smack of condescension to Edward. "It's only been days since the unfortunate...incident. Your eyes are still red; the blood still clouds your thoughts and actions. Give it more time."
"Unfortunate incident?" Edward stared at Carlisle who sat so calmly behind his desk, fingers steepled beneath his chin, looking so utterly, pathetically reasonable that it was all Edward could do not to walk out. "Is that what you're calling it today?" he asked, bitterness and frustration breaking the reins of his normally impeccable control. Years of denying his true nature combined with one irreversible moment had brought the entire facade of normalcy crashing down around him like a weak house of cards.
"I slaughtered an innocent girl, Carlisle, a near child, merely because she had the misfortune of crossing my path with knees and hands scraped raw by a tumble from her bicycle. A tumble she took because my presence startled her." Edward's rage grew with each word and with each sympathetic expression that crossed Carlisle's face. Especially since the sympathy Carlisle felt for the girl extended only so far, while his sympathy for Edward's plight seemed limitless in contrast.
He saw her death as tragic, but at the end of that day, she was an expendable casualty to him. A minor hiccup in the ongoing war his children waged against their base natures. Her death did not signify the loss of the battle to his thinking. It was merely a tactical mishap, an opportunity to reconfigure, regroup, and define new parameters.
Carlisle's thoughts centered on moving, starting fresh somewhere else. Edward's rage grew at what he saw as Carlisle's cold disregard for the life he'd drained away.
"She was sixteen, Carlisle!" Edward's voice careened loudly through the room, bouncing off the acoustical woods and brass lamps with their cut glass shades, amplifying the sound of it until it rang in his ears like bells in a church tower. A call to prayer said too late to save an innocent life.
"Giving in to your bloodlust won't bring her back, Edward. You'll only add to your sins."
"You're wrong." Edward tilted his head to the side mockingly. "Continuing to fight my bloodlust will ensure I'll add to my sins. How many more innocents will I slaughter, Carlisle, while I try to fight what I am? What we are. When a young mother on a corner steps by me with her babe in its pram, and the badly bandaged cut on her finger alerts me to her blood, what will I do? Perhaps I will let her pass, or perhaps I will leave her babe an orphan. Or will I even let the child live? What will stop the monster in from making her infant dessert?"
"You will stop yourself, Edward. You are no monster." Carlisle, as always, kept his calm.
Edward, however, saw beyond the patience and straight into the heart of Carlisle's thoughts. For a brief, unguarded moment, Carlisle easily envisioned the scenario Edward had just played out for him. He tried to suppress the thoughts, but the images his mind conjured at Edward's description came with the sharp smell of concern and fear, too ripe with possibility to deny. Not then with the death of the girl hanging ominously over all their heads, stabbing not just Edward's conscience, but Carlisle's as well.
Sins of the father, sins of the son...
"You're right, Father." The title was delivered in snide tones, full of the anger Edward was beginning to feel at the man who had so carelessly and selfishly made him what he was. "I will stop myself. But not in the manner you would force me to."
"I will not, nor have I ever forced you to anything, Son." Carlisle's voice tried for gentleness and failed, something of his suppressed anger and frustration finally breaching that implacable, unflappable belief that Edward was essentially good and still, despite what had happened, redeemable.
"You have forced me, guilted me, into this mockery of a life you lead, but no more, Carlisle. I will not slaughter another innocent because your lifestyle has made me weak."
"What will you do?"
"The child I killed, her thoughts were not only of death when she passed, but of her life. It would seem I was not the first monster she encountered, only the last. Her eldest brother crept into her room for years to slip his hands beneath her bed coverings and nightclothes. Instead of waiting for my control to snap, I will feast on things nearly as evil as myself. I cannot give her back her life, but I can ensure its loss was not completely in vain."
"You would make yourself judge and executioner?"
"Yes."
The silence stretched out between them, Carlisle's mind nearly blank with his surprise. "You will be no son of mine if you choose this path," he said. The sadness and disappointment in his eyes meant nothing to Edward, and that lack of feeling cemented his decision.
"I have never been your son." Edward spoke disdainfully. "I'm something you coveted and stole. A means to end your loneliness with no thought to the suffering you'd impose or the consequences of your actions. Be grateful enough of your compassion clings to my skin that I'll choose to play judge and executioner rather than feast on the sweeter blood of innocents."
Edward left, without a goodbye or even an explanation to the others. He left those to Carlisle, along with the cutting, psychological wound of his betrayal. Edward didn't even pause long enough to touch Esme's cheek in passing, the lovely vampire who could have been his mother for all her gentle patience and sweetness. No words to the siblings of that life. Only his back as he walked away and slowly became...this.
Edward lets the ghost of those memories tug at him. As always he feels the sting of regret mingle with the anger he still has not let go. Carlisle had condemned him to this fate by selfishly creating him to abate his own immortal loneliness, and for that Edward hates him. But he'd also shown and given Edward so much more than just this curse. He gave him family and love and acceptance. Or he had, until that moment the son and father could no longer see eye to eye, and Edward spit upon the core of his sire to walk away and wallow in blood.
Yes, Edward muses, there are regrets. Life has been emptier, and the wounds his leaving might have caused do not sit easy on his lagging conscience. And still, he cannot think his choice was wrong.
No, their way of life is not for him. He does not have that kind of restraint, has no real reason to even strive for it. His existence has always been solitary, lonely. He accepts it. At least this way he has some purpose.
He shakes off the unwelcome anamnesis of those he left behind and carries the three books he's found into the large main living area. He drops them inside an ornately mantled fireplace. Dried, dead leaves and the remnants of a bird's nesting materials have made their way through the chimney to gather on the fireplace floor. Edward uses them as kindling, scraping his fingernails over the cool, scorched-stone interior, creating a shower of sparks that ignite what nature left behind. The books begin to burn, smoking heavily. Edward opens the flu; the last remains of the vacant nest and more desiccated foliage fall and add fuel to the flames. The smoking pages begin to blacken and curl. Edward leaves them to their cremation and continues through the house, making mental lists of things he must do to make it habitable again.
Upstairs he finds his old room much as he left it. A rotting time capsule. A few of his more precious belongings are gone, doubtlessly packed and stored by Alice or Esme. Otherwise the room feels like a tomb, a burial place for his old life.
He pulls dusty, moth-eaten sheets off furniture and rifles through old, mildewed journals, snorting in disdain at the lame attempts he made to put pen to paper and document an empty existence. Thin, sinuous centipedes scatter from their damp shelters, seeking new places to hide as Edward upsets their domain.
He turns his attention to fragile pages of faded sheet music scattered across his old desk. Remnants of another time when he used music and the composing of it to escape unrelenting thirst and boredom. The melancholy drivel he sees outlined on the aged and partially disintegrating papers, curls his upper lip in disgust.
Such a sham, such a farce, such a waste of...
Edward's head cocks; snatches of thoughts not unfamiliar to him fill his mind to combine with the sound of someone driving down the overgrown laneway. He scowls. His peaceful meandering down memory lane is about to be interrupted by one of this house's former inhabitants.
Jasper Whitlock/Hale/Cullen. His psychic sister's empathic husband.
How fitting. Alice is still watching, and she's sent her mate...to what? Beg, cajole, plead, bribe, threaten? With a sigh, Edward turns and descends the stairs, back to the main room of the house. A former family member has come to visit. Far be it for him not to play the gracious host. At least until he decides to be gracious no longer.
. . . . . .
The sleek, black, Aston Martin Vantage is ostentatious and fitting for a Cullen. Fast cars were, and apparently still are, a frequent indulgence for his former family members. In that past life Edward also indulged his love for speed in a collection of stunning vehicles, but when he left, he took nothing with him, cars included.
Money has never been a problem for his former family members so the expensive vehicle Jasper drives is not a surprise. Apparently Alice's ability to psychically navigate the stock market and investment portfolios of her family members continues to pay off handsomely.
Edward mentally sneers in condescension. At the time of his leaving, he took only what had been in his pockets - twenty dollars and change, a handkerchief, and a small attractive stone he'd found by the river. With just that meagre amount, without help from anyone, Edward managed to accumulate a fortune that is solely his own. Amazing how a little gambling could stock a nest egg. With careful investing in everything from stocks to real estate, the nest egg has grown. Edward has his cold hands in many pies, and being nomadic and rootless only makes it easier. The end result is a current ridiculous fortune that can afford him luxuries he's never truly contemplated before today. Like all things, money and the amassing of it has merely been a hobby, a way to pass the endless hours between his next hunt and meal. A way to blend in the few times the need arose.
Now, as Edward contemplates such things, he realizes the money will be beneficial indeed. Keeping a human is going to require...things, purchases...not the least of which will be making this house human ready. Anything Isabella needs or could ever want is within his means to provide. He could build her a palace and place her on a throne if he wishes to.
Edward pushes aside those oddly pleasant contemplations and watches Jasper stretch his long legs out of the vehicle, rising to his full height. The man Edward once thought of as a brother is utterly unchanged in appearance, with the exception of his style of dress. Take away the modern designer clothing and it would be as though the century since they last laid eyes on one another never passed.
"Edward." Jasper's smile is expansive, the tone of his greeting warm. It breeches no ground, however, on his speculative thoughts that are shrewd and quick to judge.
Red eyes. Alice is right; nothing has changed. Such a loss and a waste. Esme's heart is going to break. Again.
"Jasper." Edward's smile is nonexistent, his greeting cool and rife with unspoken warning. Jasper is empathic. His gift allows him to literally feel Edward's mood, making outward threats unnecessary. It also allows Jasper to impart emotions, making him a formidable adversary for those unprepared to disregard and deflect.
Prickly as ever I see... "It's been a long time." Jasper exudes calm, pushing a wave of it at Edward while leaning his back against the car and crossing his legs in a casual stance, his arms in a slightly defensive one. "When was the last time we saw each other? Nineteen...oh three, I believe?"
Edward ignores the rush of affected emotion and the mockingly speculated date. Vampire memory is absolute, and the bait Jasper dangles is a weak effort at familiarity. Jasper has lived too long in the human world, and Edward has lived too long out of it, to play such infantile games or engage in needless reminiscing.
"Why are you here?"
Jasper mentally sighs. Nothing is ever easy with you... His thoughts switch to reciting the Battle Hymn of the Republic in Swahili before he answers. "Does a brother need a reason to visit? This was once my home as well, after all."
The mental hymn recital is loud. It cannot block Edward's telepathy completely, but it clouds the waters of Jasper's thoughts, making him difficult to read. Edward smirks, refusing to be annoyed at such an old trick. Once in their former life his family members all made a game of attempting to find ways to block Edward from their thoughts. Jasper is the only one who managed to become reasonably adept at the skill. Not even he can maintain if for long, though.
"That translation leaves much to be desired in Swahili. Your creativity at attempting to block me hasn't improved in the last century I see. Stop playing games, Jasper. Why are you here?"
Jasper feigns interest in the scenery and disinterest in the answer he gives. As though he's bored and not invested in what he has to say. "I was sent to remind you of the treaty with the Quileute. Carlisle is concerned about your presence here breaking it. The reservation is strictly off limits, feeding or otherwise."
"I highly doubt you came all this way to tell me something you're aware I already know. But feel free to tell Carlisle his defunct treaty with an extinct race of werewolves is quite safe," Edward can't help mock.
The treaty, an agreement made stating Carlisle and his family members vowed to harm no humans and stay off Quileute lands in return for the werewolves leaving them in peace, and likewise staying off land owned by the Cullens, truly is defunct. At the time the treaty was created, there was only one remaining tribe member left who carried the shapeshifter gene, an epidemic of influenza having wiped out all the others. Ephraim Black, sole shapeshifter, barely more than a child and not yet used to phasing, was more than happy to avoid bloodshed by making a pact.
Thanks to the already weakened lineages caused by diluted bloodlines, which would have become more common in the last century, Edward is fairly certain it's unlikely any werewolves of Ephraim's line exist in this day and age. If there are any, he believes he would have detected their presence by now. Their unique stench isn't something he would miss, and the wolves were known to be territorial.
Of course, since the werewolf gene is only triggered at puberty with a small two year window – and even then only in the event of a direct threat by the presence of vampires – it is possible there may be an heir, just one that is untransformed. Since even an untransformed werewolf can be a threat however, Edward doesn't need Jasper's advice to know he needs to be wary.
He already spent a few hours watching the reservation for curiosity's sake when he first arrived in town, even before he found Isabella and made the decision to stay. After all, Edward was a part of the ridiculous treaty's formation in 1898, and he'd always considered the Quileute wolf shape-shifters an interesting anomaly.
He found nothing that would lead him to believe any roamed these parts, and the lack of attacks on his person verified this. They seemed to have been relegated to campfire stories veiled in the guise of legends.
"Tell me the real reason you've come," Edward demands, leaving memories of puppies behind.
Jasper sighs out loud this time, his expression narrowing as he drops the weak excuse and gets to the heart of his sudden...visit. "Alice saw you coming here. Saw you make the decision to stay." He studies Edward, his copper eyes hard. "And the reason why," he adds. Edward doesn't need the ability to read Jasper's thoughts. He catches the flash of disapproval mingled with curiosity that tinges the copper of that narrowed gaze with onyx. It's gone an instant later, wiped away by a grin that borders on true amusement and flirts with antagonistic desires.
"I suspected you were still feeding from humans, Edward," he continues, "but I didn't realize you were keeping them as pets now, too." Jasper's grin becomes a smirk, antagonism fully engaged. "It's been a while since I've fallen off the wagon, but if she's sweet and you're willing to share..."
The growl that erupts from Edward's throat lags behind the movement that carries him to Jasper, and the action that slams Jasper into the car hard enough to dent the quarter panel. His forearm presses hard to Jasper's throat, his hand to his chest, keeping him pinned. "Touch her, no – strike that – go near her, even remotely near her, and I will tear your limbs off, then your head, and send them to my meddling sister in a box," Edward hisses. "If I don't burn it first."
As quickly as he executed the attack, Edward ends it, letting go and stepping away. He is wary, watching to see how Jasper will retaliate, but his former brother only straightens his clothing, smirk still present, unaffected by Edward's hostility.
"Protective of your food? You do realize humans are abundant, Edward."
Back in control of his actions, Edward merely replies coolly. "What I do is none of your business. It's time for you to leave. You should have known not to come in the first place. Give Alice my regards."
Jasper's smirk vanishes at this, the hymn he managed to continue in his thoughts breaking off mid-verse, anger, not only in his mind but reflected in his gift, radiating off him in waves. "I won't give her 'your regards.' She deserves more than that from you. I know she won't get it, but you can be damned if you think I will play a part in how you hurt her, you selfish asshole."
It's Edward's turn to smirk. "Protective as always, I see, even when she sends you on these useless, fact gathering missions." He shrugs. "It doesn't matter what you tell her, Jasper. I made my choice a century ago. You should help her accept it instead of coddling her dependency on me."
"Dependency? Is that how you view family and love now, Edward?" Jasper shakes his head, his disgust apparent in his thoughts and the emotional waves he emits to stain the clean air. "You know we've all held out hope that you would change. Realize how empty and pathetic this choice you've made really is. Alice most of all."
He gestures to the house, his mind running back through the past. "You screwed up when you killed that girl, Edward, and I know it did something to you, broke something inside of you that was already cracked, but this?" The subject of his gesture changes to put Edward in its spotlight. "What you are, what you've become? It's not you, not really."
"Don't tell me who I am!" Edward's hands curl into fists.
"Do you think I never regretted a life I took?" Jasper continues, ignoring the state of Edward's temper. "We've all suffered failures, Edward. The choice we made to not kill humans isn't easy, but it's worth it..."
"Spare me the psychology lesson. You know nothing of my choices or the reasons I make them. That girl merely tipped the scales in making me realize what a dangerous farce the lifestyle you choose to tout to me is. I lived it. I know. And the failures you speak of, I've watched take place. Not just in myself, but in all of you, with the exception of Carlisle. Or have you forgotten the bodies I helped you bury, brother?" The word brother is spoken with derision strong enough to steal the last of Jasper's patience.
"You don't want to compare body counts with me, brother," Jasper snaps in reply, painting brother in a matching tone to Edward's. "I haven't spent the last one hundred years in merry murder."
"No," Edward acknowledges softly, lethally. "You haven't. And yet, I wonder. Were we to compare innocents, how would our tallies fare then, Jasper Whitlock?" He watches the other vampire draw back physically as though struck. His past life before Alice – before Carlisle and the ridiculously named 'vegetarian' way – is stark and present knowledge between them. Edward's use of Jasper's true surname is evidence.
Ah, the wounds one can inflict when secrets have been shared between those who once claimed love between them. Jasper's time as a soldier in a vampire army, killing humans and vampires alike, could not be rivaled in its brutality and body count, not even by the most blood-thirsty of their kind.
Edward watches his barbed accusation bite deep and feels nothing more than mild justification.
"Like I said, we all have our personal regrets." Jasper gathers himself; the emotional air he exudes now is icy and reserved as he stands straight, regarding Edward with a look of pity. "The difference is, I've laid my ghosts to rest, made my peace and chosen not to be a slave to our nature. I live. I feel. I love. I spend every day holding the mate I adore, without regret, without hate. You? You're nothing more than a walking corpse. Cold and dead, inside and out."
Jasper looks around, and Edward can see in his mind the way those eyes take in the emptiness of the dark house and the overgrown mess of neglect growing rampant around them. It all screams abandoned, alone, and he feels that niggling at him as Jasper's thoughts play out the warmth and light he left to come here.
"Say what you will," he continues, softer now, "justify it as you will, but at the end of the day, I will take my tally of deaths over yours any day in exchange for the peace I have now, and the family I love." He strides forward and holds out the keys to the car, dropping them. Reflex makes Edward snap out a hand to catch them before they hit the ground.
"Consider it a gift. Take it and the last bit of advice I'll give you." His feet move backwards, carrying him slowly towards the encroaching forest behind him. "You cannot change the past or bring back the life of the girl you killed without intent or malice. But if this innocent human woman you toy with dies at your hands – and it seems she will, Alice has seen it played out a hundred ways – that won't be an accident. Ask yourself if you can live with that kind of stain on your soul after you've touched her body, felt her pleasured response, heard her honeyed cries and tasted her kiss; for oh, yes, brother, you reek of her. Ask yourself whether you can live with her death for you're out of room to run, Edward. If you cannot escape the ghost of a girl you did not know and did not mean to kill, how will you escape one whose body you've loved and whose death you courted?"
Jasper pauses at the very edge of woods, his last words thought and not spoken, each one accompanied by an image, a memory of Alice crying pale-red tears, looking lonely and sad over the last one hundred years since Edward left her. Hundreds of them, thousands, flickering with vampire speed through the vastly numbered channels of Jasper's mind.
Alice, the sister whose heart he broke in half when he turned his back and left her behind...
Jasper doesn't say his last words out loud. He just lets them slide through his thoughts, dark and heavy with meaning they couldn't achieve otherwise.
I wash my hands of you, brother. The next time I come, it will be to make you pay for Alice's pain and then to end that pain once and for all. Better she briefly grieves your death than spends another century mourning your loss while you still live…
Jasper vanishes into the dark on silent, swift feet, taking his images of Alice with him, but not the lingering taint of them. They remain, festering in the conscience Edward despises.
He turns and re-enters the house, returning to his room, drawn by evidence buried inside. In the top drawer of his old bureau, he finds his last journal. The yellowed pages are brittle. He turns them with care until he finds what he seeks. A newspaper clipping, its ink faded to a barely readable state. The artist's sketch of a heart-shaped face, still soft with the remnants of baby flesh, does no justice to the perfect, photographic-like recall of the girl's true image that he holds in his mind. He reads the words, though his recollection of them is just as perfect as the image.
Missing Girl.
Mary Adele Lawrence was last seen riding her bicycle after leaving Forks General Store. Mr. Matthews, proprietor, says the girl was in to buy a small ration of flour for her Mother, and after accepting a stick of peppermint as a treat, left promptly to return home at around six in the evening.
She has not been seen since. Anyone with information on her whereabouts is asked to contact Constable Miller Hutchinson or the girl's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Stuart Lawrence, at their home.
A reward of fifty dollars is being offered for anyone with information that leads to finding Mary Adele. She is sorely missed.
The last three words find a way to breach Edward's hard shell. The painful ache is sweet, and he relishes it. Holds it tight inside and lets tentacles of it burrow deep into his cold, dead gut. His reminder, his penance, his reason to never doubt or forget.
The picture does not do her justice. She was a pretty child with the bloom of womanhood just beginning to show, and he remembers her scent. So alive and lush, the way it slammed into him the second he stepped out and startled her.
Had he wanted to startle her?
He cannot say. Not then, not now. He'd blamed it on distraction. He was thinking of other things, but the excuse was weak then and weaker now. Vampire senses miss nothing, overlook nothing, are distracted by nothing...
Had he wanted to startle her? Had he wanted her to fall? To scrape away soft tissue and skin and free the blood he'd smelled rushing so hotly through those sweet, thin veins so he could see the purest color of crimson known to earth dot the ground at her feet? Fill his sinus cavity and his mouth and throat and lungs with the ripe scent of the very thing he resented being denied? Had he wanted more than just to see and smell? How close to the surface was the monster that day, any day...
Before his presence caused her fall, before his teeth ever sank into her throat, had he wanted her?
Edward traces the faded outline of the drawn image with no clear answers. His mind drifts to Isabella. There are no doubts there. He wanted her and he meant to act as he did, to take as he took. He discovered new wants in that taking, and he certainly means to take more of both.
He wonders if Isabella is alive now because Mary Adele is not. Would he have found the strength not to kill her if Mary Adele never found her death at his hands, if that lesson was not learned?
Kill no innocents. Only their tormentors. He's spent a century atoning, seeking out the evil in others to feed the evil in himself.
He remembers his first taste of that evil. Mary Adele's pedophile brother, Clive Lawrence. His screams echo easily through Edward's head on command, blending briefly with the screams of his recent kill, Mike Newton. The would-be predator's screams make a lovely falsetto to the echoed and deeper baritones of Clive's pleas for a mercy that never came.
Yes, he has atoned.
Edward places the clipping back in the book and the book back in the bureau drawer among the residues of hatched spider eggs and the thin silvery threads of their webs. With one last look around, and one last mentally completed list of things yet to be done, he leaves the room and then the house, quick sure steps carrying him out the door.
The last of the daylight is fading. A warm wind stirs the dead leaves and debris that litters the dirt drive and pushes the cloud cover across a darkening sky.
Edward ignores the car and moves into the woods, his steps sure and quick.
He needs to see her. To touch her, breathe her, feel her, taste her…
Isabella. His reward.
His.
. . . . . .
A/N Still a slow reveal but are you starting to see the picture take shape? Next chapter, Bella's carefully crafted world begins to fall apart around her as secrets are revealed, and Edward makes his presence known, again.
Just a few notes of interest on this chapter – Bloodletting was a practice where a physician (in this case Carlisle) would cut open a patients vein, most often in the forearm, using an instrument such as a lancet – a sharp, pointed, two-edged surgical device. The patient's wound would be allowed to bleed freely for a period of time, often into a bowl or cup for easy disposal. This very common practice originated in ancient times and continued on until the late 19th century. It was wrongly believed to be therapeutic and beneficial in treating illness and disease. It also provided a rather convenient means of feeding for our fictional Cullens. ;)
Timeline - I've taken creative license here by making Forks Washington the dwelling place of Edward in the late 1800's up to 1903. In actual fact, Forks did not officially become a town on the map until 1945.
I've also taken creative license with the treaty formation. According to the Twilight lexicon, the treaty was formed in 1936 (which is why Ephraim is described here as very young) while the Cullens lived in Hoaquim. In addition to this, once again, creative liberty has been taken with Edward's age and the date of his change. As was made apparent in this chapter, he's much older in this story. More about that will be explained, later.
