Author's Note: Mind those CONTENT WARNINGS from Chapter 1. They definitely apply here and will continue to apply to the next chapter(s).
Chapter 6 - Terror
"Because I see you out the window, standing in my yard. But you don't have a phone in your hand."
If Edward had a beating heart in his chest, it would have stopped in that moment. He slowly rose to his feet from the floor where he sat, clutching that pink phone so tightly he nearly broke it.
He'd got it all wrong. He'd taken the most important gamble of his 100-plus years, and he'd lost. But it was his Bella in danger of paying the price.
His body tensed, instinctively preparing to fight to defend his mate, but he was a fourteen-hour flight away.
"Bella...you have to listen to me."
In stark contrast to the violent flood of emotions filling him, his voice was deadly calm. He had to get through to her. He had to. Her only hope — his only hope — was that his family was still close by, still keeping tabs on her like they'd promised, seven long months later.
"That's not me. I need you to scream, Bella. Scream for help, just as loud as you can, and keep screaming until my family comes. Right now. Do you hear me?"
He couldn't tell if she heard him or not, but she certainly didn't do as he ordered. He could already hear her footsteps while he was speaking, running through her house, down the stairs, straight toward danger, maddeningly going to investigate. She thought it was him.
She wasn't holding the phone to her ear, he realized. She was no longer breathing into it. He could vividly picture it hanging by her side, the Edward she could hear swiftly forgotten in favor of the one she could see.
"Bella, stop! Listen to me!" he yelled into the phone, but it was no use.
He heard her wrench her front door open, just before she finally spoke again.
"Edward? Is that you?"
Her voice was muffled. She still wasn't holding the phone in her ear.
She thought she was with him.
He had to stop this.
He dashed into the bedroom and grabbed his other cell phone from his suitcase, stabbed Emmett's number into the keypad at lightning speed. "Pick up, damn it. Pick up, Emmett."
He still held the pink phone from Alice tightly to his other ear, desperate for any sound from Bella's end.
The one he heard chilled him.
"It's me, love. I'm home."
It was a deep male voice, one that seemed distantly familiar somehow. It mimicked his own tone, his way of speaking — but it wasn't his voice. It wasn't even close.
That wasn't the chilling part. What flooded him with abject terror was the fact that Bella seemed convinced that it was his voice.
"I can't believe you're really here." She sounded hesitant, a little standoffish, definitely not running straight into his arms. It was exactly what he'd pictured in less optimistic versions of his many fantasies about returning home — a hurt, nervous Bella, biting her lip, absurdly insecure and disbelieving that he was really there to stay.
If it was him there, he'd have done whatever it took to convince her, no matter how long it took, until she knew he'd never leave her again.
But it wasn't him.
God help him.
His sweet, trusting Bella.
He wanted to yell for her to run, to scream, to fight.
But he restrained that very human urge. It was too late for all of that now. He was a predator himself. He knew exactly the instincts that such actions would fire off in the monster currently alone with Bella.
His own predatory instincts were screaming too. If that creature put one goddamn finger on her...
He jumped when Emmett's voicemail suddenly blared out in his other ear, cursing as he stabbed redial. Emmett was never without his phone and wouldn't ignore a second call, not from him, not since he pronounced himself Bella's chief protector in Edward's absence — that much Edward knew.
He turned his primary focus back to what was happening with Bella.
"Come here, Bella. It's okay."
The deep voice had gentled even further, its tone turning hypnotic.
The bastard was luring her in. Dazzling her, as Bella would put it.
Edward knew it for what it was.
A trap. A predator closing in for the kill, and Bella was the prey. He felt ready to burst apart from the inside out, completely helpless.
"Bella!" he yelled into the phone again. "It's not me! Bella!"
"That's it, love," he heard, and he put his hand right through the wall that he reached out to brace himself against. She was going to him. Listening as she handed herself over willingly — believing it was him she trustingly approached — was even worse than hearing her taken away by physical force.
Bella may not have been able to hear Edward's panicked pleas through the phone at her side, but he knew the vampire within feet of her could. The other voice had been getting closer to the phone all the time. Closer to Bella.
"I know you can hear me," Edward pushed out through clenched teeth, his tone deadly. He wasn't talking to Bella anymore. "This is Edward Cullen. If it's me you want, I'll gladly hand myself over. Just let the girl go. Don't hurt her...please."
The other vampire only redoubled his efforts, tenderly coaxing.
"Give me your hand, Bella. Just come with me, and I'll explain everything."
He was standing almost right on top of her now. Edward could hear his breathing.
"I'm warning you," Edward lowered his voice even further and dropped all pretense of humanity and civility. One monster communing with another. "She belongs to me, and I'm coming for her. If you harm her in any way, I will find you. I will hunt you, and I will tear you apart, slowly, if it's the last thing I do."
"Here, love...let me see this," was the only reply he heard, followed by a small gasp from Bella.
The line went dead immediately thereafter.
He must have taken her phone from her hand. By force.
Edward stared blindly in front of him, momentarily frozen in horrified silence.
He was going to lose her.
That was when Emmett finally answered the call in Edward's other ear. He sounded slightly breathless, like he'd run a long distance at high speed.
"Sorry, bro, she got away again. How the hell did you know we were chasing her, anyway?"
Edward neither knew nor cared what Emmett was talking about.
"He has her, Em," he choked out, his voice too loud, pitched with terror. "She's with him...right now."
There was a too-long pause as Emmett caught up with his meaning, made the leap from the "she" he had been talking about to the "she" Edward was talking about.
Not Victoria.
Bella.
Somebody had Bella.
Emmett's voice was furious. "Shit...shit! She lured us away on purpose! She has a partner! Jasper!"
The call ended then, leaving Edward reeling as he connected the meaning of Emmett's words.
Victoria. It had to be. Whoever had Bella was working with Victoria.
This was about hurting him. And he had played right into it, leaving Bella in unimaginable danger.
He didn't call Emmett or Jasper back, in defiance of his urgent need to know what was happening. He wouldn't risk jeopardizing their rescue efforts. They would be on their way to his meadow to save Bella, and that was what he wanted.
His hands ripped straight through the sides of the suitcase he'd been living out of for seven months, intent only on grabbing his passport, credit cards, and stack of cash — things that would help get him to her faster. The rest he left.
He'd be on the next flight to anywhere near home, even if it took violence to do it.
Bella had imagined this moment so many times.
Edward, missing her every bit as much as she missed him, no longer able to stay away from her. Showing up at her window, or at school, or even flying out of the woods and stopping her truck in the middle of the road because he couldn't wait one more minute to be with her again.
Sometimes she imagined herself running into his arms. At others, she imagined him not giving her the chance, swooping in and just capturing her lips with his own without asking, things heating between them quickly.
When she was feeling more realistic, she imagined herself tentative, not quite able to accept the reality of his presence so easily, of the fact that he was really there, that he really still wanted her.
But never in any of those fantasies — not even once — had it felt quite so wrong as it did now.
There he was, standing right in front of her, in her yard. And she felt nothing.
She had felt more emotion talking on the pink phone to Alice in the past months than she did looking into Edward's eyes now. Not even his devastatingly handsome features affected her. She had been more attracted to the apparitions that talked to her when she endangered herself, warning her to be careful, not to break her promises.
She had even felt more when Jacob Black had taken her hand in his at the movie theater a week ago, the night before he quit talking to her too. At least that had been warm, reassuring, even if it didn't stir her in other ways.
What she really wanted to do at the moment, in all honesty, was run back in her house and slam the door. Every instinct she had was screaming that that was exactly what she should do.
But her eyes and ears disagreed with the rest of her. They told her it was Edward standing there, his hand held out invitingly, his eyes drawing her in and hypnotizing her at the same time that they strangely repelled her. Her feet still steadily made their way toward him, not entirely with her permission to do so.
Her heart was beating out of her chest, but not for the usual reasons when Edward was there.
His voice was gentle enough, the same voice she had yearned to hear for months. She didn't notice the fog that enveloped her ears just before he spoke the first time, beckoning her toward him.
He asked to see her phone, startled her when he decisively removed it from her hand without waiting for an answer. It was only then that she remembered: she had been talking to him on the phone when she first saw him. But she hadn't seen a phone in his hand.
The Bluetooth earpiece she could now see in his ear seemed to answer that question, at least. If this was real and she wasn't dreaming — something she still wasn't too sure about —she could at least stop questioning her sanity. There weren't two Edwards. Only one.
One Edward. One who had clearly lied to her moments before, when he said he was in Brazil, right before she stopped listening because she'd decided to see for herself if that was really him in her yard or if she had finally gone completely crazy.
He obviously was not in Brazil. He must not have meant for her to see him standing out there, watching her.
Edward lied to her.
Was it the first time? She was beginning to believe it likely wasn't. Was anything he had told her true? Any of it? Ever?
Had he been this close by for the whole seven months, fully aware that she was falling apart without him? Pretending to be Alice when he called, listening to the depth of her pain but doing nothing about it?
A sick feeling was building in the pit of her stomach. Deep mistrust of Edward wasn't a thing she was used to. Looking into his eyes at that moment, it was all she felt. In fact, as she looked more closely and what she saw there made her shudder, she wondered how she had ever trusted him at all.
But she had also wanted nothing more than this for seven months, him standing before her, inviting her into his arms. Her entire life had fallen apart without him.
Things were bound to be awkward after so long apart. That was all it was, right?
She was supposed to be his mate — a never-ending bond. They had made commitments, promises, ones that encompassed eternity and felt far more serious than marriage vows.
If he had returned and was willing to honor that, she couldn't throw an eternal commitment away so easily, not based on some flighty feeling or change in her emotions. Renee was not who she wanted to be. She'd decided that very early on in life.
So with trembling fingers, fighting the urge to run away, she cautiously reached out her hand and lay it in his outstretched one.
His smile was the same gentle smile she knew, as he delicately lifted her fingers to his lips and pressed a soft kiss to her knuckles. The corner of his lip turned up.
"See, now? That wasn't so hard, was it?"
She should have melted right where she stood.
She didn't. It felt wrong. It was all she could do not to jerk her hand away.
His brows knit together at the way she stiffened, like her reaction threw him off. He tugged lightly on her hand, pulled her closer to him. He studied her for a moment before cupping her face in his hands and softly kissing her, just one gentle kiss that would ordinarily have had her pressing closer, determined to deepen it. She didn't protest when he pulled away.
Since when did Edward's kiss have no effect on her?
"Why are you here?" she asked with a trembling voice, studying him nearly as intently as he studied her. "Why now?"
Why did you lie, but she didn't dare say it. Something about his demeanor gave her pause.
He rubbed his thumb across the back of her hand, still carefully gauging her reactions. "You're in danger, love. Victoria is coming after us. I need you to come away with me now. I'll explain it all when I get you somewhere safe — somewhere we can be alone."
Fear flooded her at the mention of Victoria. And, truthfully, at least some of it was the thought of being alone with him. She tried to take a step back, rather than closer, and his grip on her hand firmed. It firmed a little too much before quickly receding in intensity, like he had just barely caught himself from hurting her.
She stopped pulling away. She really wasn't sure what he would do.
Being scared of Edward was a new feeling, one she didn't like. Even when he kidnapped her before, there had only been one brief moment she truly feared him, when extreme thirst and close proximity, combined with a tense situation where he had to physically stop and silence her to keep her from revealing their location to Charlie and endangering them all, had momentarily overpowered him. It had been over almost as soon as it started, leaving a very distraught Edward at the thought of what he had nearly done.
She had the uncomfortable feeling Edward was about to kidnap her again. And this time, he did scare her.
"I can't leave," she told him, nervously glancing over her shoulder. Stall, her instincts screamed. Strange that they screamed in Edward's voice, even when he was the threat. "Charlie will be home soon. I have dinner in the oven."
He stepped closer, ran the freezing knuckles of his free hand down the side of her face and kissed her forehead as he smiled at her. "All the more reason to find a place we can be alone." She shivered at that. "Come, love. I'll take you somewhere safe."
She yelped in protest when he abruptly yanked her by the arm and threw her on his back, far less securely and at a different angle than she remembered. She had no choice but to wind her arms around his neck and hold on tight when he took off into the trees, dashing away from her house.
Bella immediately buried her face in his shoulder to stave off the dizziness — she didn't relish the contact, but her instincts told her she needed her senses about her — so she didn't see him crush the little pink phone in his hand and throw it into the tree line at the edge of the woods.
She also didn't see the separate streams of fog he pushed out from his nostrils and blew in varying directions as he ran, creating false scent trails.
It wasn't until Edward was in the air on a chartered private jet, the fastest option he'd been able to find on short notice, that his phone finally rang.
Alice's number. Just in time, because after the rush of getting to the airport and throwing around cash, promises, and threats like a madman until he secured a flight, he'd finally run out of things he could actually do. He was coming apart at the seams.
The pilot already thought he was a lunatic or an escaped murderer, or possibly both. Fortunately, human greed could always be counted upon. For the amount of green he'd been willing to put up in exchange for an immediate, no-questions-asked flight to Seattle, it probably wouldn't have mattered if he was the devil himself.
He stabbed the button to answer Alice's call, with so much force that his finger nearly went through the phone.
"Tell me they found her," he pled by way of answering the phone. He'd never felt so helpless in his life, nor so desperate, pacing back and forth in the luxurious cabin of a private plane with nothing to do but wait, while Bella's precious life hung in the balance and he was too far away to be anything but utterly useless to her.
When he got her back — if he got her back — he was never letting her out of his sight again, he promised himself irrationally. She wanted to watch him hunt? Fine. He'd take her along. From now on, where he went, she went. And vice versa. Because if he believed one thing now, it was that he wasn't even capable of hurting her. He would never do anything that could lead to this feeling again. His monster could go straight to hell, without him.
"Not yet, Edward," was the devastating answer. "I'm so sorry. Emmett and Jasper were just changing shifts outside her house when Victoria lured them away. We had no idea she was working with anyone. She's been doing this for months and nothing ever happened. She must have been getting us complacent about chasing her away and leaving Bella alone, testing our response times."
"The meadow..." he started desperately.
"Is covered," she cut him off. "That's not where he took her." She shifted topics abruptly, which didn't escape Edward's notice. He knew her well. Alice didn't want to discuss the meadow at the moment. "I had a tracker on the phone I gave her, just like on yours. It never even made it out of her yard. I found it crushed, right at the edge of the woods."
His entire body tensed even further. There were too many terrifying implications of that to begin to consider, not when he was still far too many hours away, with a 30-minute refueling stop to endure at some point.
For whatever reason, this creature had gone through great pains to disguise himself as Edward and convince Bella he was Edward. What would have caused him to destroy her phone right in front of her? Had she seen through him, realized it wasn't really Edward and called him on it?
As much as he would have loved to believe that she would just know, Edward couldn't bring himself to hope for that. There was a very real chance that if Bella figured it out, her time would be up. His time would be up to find her. No. As much as it pained him, the longer she believed the lie and unknowingly reacted accordingly, the better chance he and his family had of finding her alive.
On the other hand, the things that could be happening to Bella in all that time...at the mercy of an impostor she thought was him...
"How did this happen?" he snapped. It wasn't really Alice's fault, and he knew that, but he was scared out of his mind. "How did Victoria get past you?"
Alice snapped right back. "You don't want to go there, Edward. We've all been chasing her off for months. Do you have any idea how frustrated I've been, trying to nail down what she was up to? Every time I tried, I couldn't see anything except you attacking Bella. I still didn't connect Victoria to it because there was no reason to. I thought I was losing my sight or that she hadn't decided on a plan yet, but this was her plan all along. I've been seeing the answer since day one. We just didn't recognize it for what it was — none of us, including you."
He dropped his head, scrubbed his hand over his face. Victoria had been there, frighteningly close to Bella, for months? Guilt and shame wracked him. Alice was right. This was all his fault. He'd left Bella alone with two monsters after her. It was unforgivable.
"God, Alice...if he touches her...if he kills her..."
"I know." Alice's voice was soft. "I don't have to see the future to know what you'd do. Carlisle won't let it come to that, okay? He made some calls, set up an arrangement. The wolves are out looking for them too, and Billy Black is helping keep Charlie Swan in the dark. He doesn't even know she's missing yet. It's not the easiest alliance, but we all want the same thing. They care about her too, it seems. We'll find her, Edward."
"Can you see her at all?"
She hesitated, chose her words a little too carefully. "There's nothing I can tell you right now. Just trust me, okay? We'll find her."
And then Alice was gone, leaving him to his own terrifying interpretations of why he clearly wasn't being told the whole truth.
To Bella, it seemed like a very, very long time before the dizzying sensation of flying finally came to an end. Edward had never run so far with her before, and she hadn't remembered it being quite this terrifying. Dizzying speeds and fears of hitting trees aside, she'd always at least felt secure and comfortable on his back. He'd made sure of it.
Not this time. The hard planes of his body and the awkward angle she rested against him had become uncomfortable some time earlier. Her ribs hurt, she was out of breath, and her legs were going to sleep.
She also had the sense that she was a long, long way from home, with no one the wiser. That thought made her nervous to the point she thought she would be sick. He hadn't said a word to her since they left her yard, not even when she asked him where they were going. It did nothing to inspire calm.
But he did slow, eventually, and she looked up to see a small, neat cabin emerging, well hidden in a circular clearing, with trees all around and a long bumpy driveway disappearing into the woods. A small, older model red SUV sat in front of the house, not at all the type of flashy vehicle she normally associated with the Cullens. Neatly tended flowerbeds framed the cozy porch.
"Where are we?" she asked, trembling a little as he set her down inside the clearing, a short way from the house. Her voice was a mess. She cleared her throat and tried again. "Whose house is this?"
Just for a split second, she thought she saw something moving around his nostrils as he turned to face her, some kind of...vapor? And it was coming straight at her. But that was ridiculous. She was starting to become paranoid.
"It's mine," he replied, closing in on her without warning and capturing her lips, his hand grabbing the back of her neck roughly, pulling her in.
She tried to return the surprisingly aggressive kiss, at least as best as she could when Edward was very clearly the one calling the shots. His tongue swept in, dominating hers as his hands gripped her head and held her still, barely giving her the chance to do anything but go along for the ride.
She wanted this. Didn't she? Her hands went to his chest, fisted his t-shirt for just the briefest of moments, before she just couldn't lie to herself anymore and she did something she had never done.
Wrenching her face away from his lips, she pushed him back from her, hard. Or tried to.
"Edward, stop," she heard herself say when he came at her again, her voice sounding panicked even to her own ears. She couldn't budge him.
When he abruptly let her go and met her eyes, doing nothing to steady her when she nearly lost her balance in the process, she was chilled to the bone by what she saw.
Anger. No, not anger.
Rage. Fury.
Malice.
For just a second, one terrifying second, she wondered if he was going to strike her. Or possibly something worse.
It disappeared as quickly as she thought she saw it, replaced by a soft, sheepish smile.
She doubted herself instantly. She was letting her imagination run away with her. It was Edward. He wouldn't hurt her. He certainly wouldn't force her into anything, and God, how could she even think that he was about to hit her?
He reached out a suddenly gentle hand to cup her cheek, hesitating at her slight flinch away from him. "I'm sorry, love. I didn't mean to overstep."
Conflicted didn't begin to describe how she felt. She didn't want to push Edward away. She didn't want him closer, either. At least not without some explanations.
"I'm sorry," she echoed, staring at his shirt and trying to stop the tears filling up her eyes. "It's just...you've been gone a long time."
He pressed cool lips to her forehead, and she squeezed her eyes shut, tried to stay still. Why did his touch make her skin crawl? Nothing about any of it felt right. She hated this.
"Let's go inside," he urged her, taking hold of her hand. "We're staying here until morning. We have all the time in the world to get reacquainted."
His suggestive tone didn't sound nearly so appealing as it would have seven months before. He felt like a complete stranger.
"We need to talk," she stalled, surprised by the strength of her own insistence and the depth of hurt and anger that was evident in her voice. She looked up to see if he noticed. "You still haven't told me where you've been and why you left."
There it was again...that quick flash of barely restrained anger. He hid it quickly.
"Of course, love. I'll tell you anything you want to know. Just come inside, where you can be more comfortable. It's getting late."
She'd noticed. It was almost twilight, and the soon-to-come darkness only made her all the more anxious to be back home with Charlie. She bit her lip, considering her options, only to realize that she wasn't really sure she had any.
"Okay," she agreed finally, managing to force a small smile, and let him pull her by the hand toward the porch.
Something inside the little red SUV caught her eye as they walked past it, glinting in the last rays of evening sun. When she looked closer, her heart dropped into her stomach and her feet nearly pulled up short, causing her to stumble against Edward, who again did little to steady her.
A little pink glass heart hung from the rearview mirror. And it said "Princess" on it.
There were certain things she noticed within moments of first setting foot inside the cabin door and letting Edward lead her the short distance through the kitchen into the living room.
The feminine furniture and curtains inside the tidy little cabin, for one.
The clean dishes in the dish drain, as though they'd recently been washed...which would also mean they had been used.
The nails in the bare walls, places where it looked as though pictures had once hung.
As he pulled her down to sit on the couch beside him — far too close, because his hand still firmly kept hold of hers and he sat with his thigh pressed up against hers — she noticed the presence of dog hair on the couches. She'd seen no other indications of an animal's presence: no food bowl in the kitchen, no dog bed in the living room. But a dog had been there, and recently.
Vampires didn't keep pets, she was relatively certain.
She preferred words, for the moment, as opposed to any other type of re-acquaintance he had in mind, so she asked him questions about his absence, trying to keep him talking. She watched closely but saw no more signs of the anger she had felt from him before. He stayed calm, and his answers made logical sense, at least. He'd left to keep her safe from Victoria, he claimed, believing that Victoria would follow him to seek her revenge if she believed he no longer cared for Bella.
She didn't ask about what Carlisle had told her, that he had left town because he believed he was the danger to her. She was a little afraid to contradict him. The rage she had seen on his face earlier wasn't something she ever wanted to see again, not directed at her, and certainly not when she was alone with him.
He professed his love repeatedly. He maintained that everything he had done was with her safety in mind. He put every effort into charming her, as blatantly as she had ever seen.
She didn't believe a word. Not one single word.
There were other things she noticed too, things that didn't add up.
There was food in the kitchen, for one. Human food. She found that out when she claimed hunger as soon as the conversation dried up, mostly as a way of keeping him at arm's length, a way to give herself time to slow the situation down and think. She had hoped he would just take her home because of it. Instead, he led her to the kitchen and said she could have anything she liked, answering her questioning look by claiming the food was there for her.
That didn't explain the milk that had been expired for two weeks and the little containers of leftovers in the fridge. It didn't explain why none of the boxes of cereal she found on top of the refrigerator were the ones he should have known she preferred, the ones Edward had sat in her kitchen and watched her eat during countless breakfasts before he left.
It also didn't explain the monogrammed pink Yeti cup she found in one of the cabinets, the one with the initials L.M. She couldn't help the way she momentarily froze as her hand landed on it, a little chill running through her at the implication.
She felt his eyes on her after that, studying her intently as she continued searching the cabinets for a bowl and spoon, before mechanically pouring herself a bowl of dry cereal. His scrutiny was unnerving. She ate as slowly as she could.
He seemed momentarily confused again afterward, when she asked for a "human moment" just as he approached her again. He covered it well and caught up with her meaning quickly, but there was no doubt in her mind what she had seen. He didn't remember that phrase.
She used a portion of her few minutes alone in the bathroom to quietly search the medicine cabinet and the drawers beneath the sink, not even sure what she was looking for. They were empty but not completely clean — like they had been hastily cleared of their contents
But as she closed the last drawer a little too firmly in her frustration, she heard something move. Yanking the drawer back open, she bent to look.
There, in the very back of the drawer, hiding from sight, was a small bottle. Her heart raced as she stuck her arm in and retrieved it.
It was a prescription bottle, one that had rolled to the very back of the drawer and avoided detection when the drawer was emptied.
The name on it was Lacey Matthews.
L.M. Just like the cup in the kitchen.
All things considered, a terrible suspicion formed in her mind — one that she thought best to keep to herself.
Edward had said it was his house and then managed to artfully evade any of her later questions on that topic. But this house clearly belonged to a human. A female human. One who was nowhere in sight, and neither was her dog.
There were only two possible conclusions she could think of, both of them impossible to reconcile with the Edward she remembered. But she was starting to wonder if that Edward had been a fantasy of her own infatuation? Because she had no problem believing either possibility of the Edward she'd just spent the past few hours keeping at arm's length.
Possibility one, Edward had been living there with another human girl, which might explain his absence for the past seven months and why he lied about where he had been.
Possibility two, Edward had killed the owner of this house and taken it for his own.
She couldn't ignore the sickening possibility, either, that it was both. Her blood had always appealed to him so strongly. Was it outside the realm of possibility that his senses had been captured by someone even more appealing, both in scent and looks? She didn't find that part difficult to believe. She had always questioned why someone who looked like him would waste his time with someone like her.
Maybe he had only come back to her because he had lost the battle with his thirst for his newer, more potent obsession.
Maybe he had just abandoned his struggle with his thirst completely and she was next.
Maybe — and it was a blindingly terrifying thought — there had been hundreds before her. Maybe this was a game he had played for decades.
That thought had never, not even once crossed her mind in all the months she spent with him before, but maybe she had just never opened her eyes and looked carefully. Because after the past six hours, it seemed very, very believable.
She was running out of ways to avoid his touch. And it was very, very clear what he wanted from her in this cabin.
So when she emerged from the bathroom and he reached for her again, she kissed him as convincingly as she could before asking if they could talk more in the morning, because if he wasn't taking her home, she was exhausted and she needed to sleep for a while. Her heart pounded in her chest, not entirely sure he was going to let her get away with that.
But he did. The clenching of his jaw was the only indication this time that he was angry with her.
He was going to kill her. Albert told Victoria as much when he stepped outside hours later to take her call, glad for the opportunity to drop the sickeningly patient boyfriend act for a while.
The fact that he fully intended to kill Bella Swan wasn't a new revelation. He had always intended to kill her when he was done using her for his revenge.
He always killed his victims. Always. Watching the life leave their eyes was part of the thrill for him.
Just like the last one, the leggy brunette whose cabin they currently occupied. She hadn't had a boyfriend, and her parents were dead, he'd learned when he chatted her up in a local coffee shop. She was a writer, holed up in her cabin, churning out her next insipid romance novel. No one was going to come looking anytime soon, including the yapping beast whose neck he snapped minutes after he was done with her.
She had almost been too easy, with no one for him to imitate. But she looked enough like Bella Swan to be at least somewhat acceptable practice, so he'd rehearsed his Edward Cullen persona on her. It was an effective one. She'd screamed that name a few times in ecstasy before she screamed it in terror and begged him to stop. Before she died like the rest. He didn't even bother showing her his real face.
Yes, killing them was always the plan. It was just that he was probably going to kill this one, Bella Swan, by accident, before he did half of what he wanted to do to her — simply because she was pissing him off.
He wasn't used to seeing suspicion in his victims' eyes, at least not until the final moments before he revealed his true intentions. He was far too good at what he did. He was far too good at earning their trust, imitating their lovers and improving upon them, becoming the very embodiment of their secret wishes, the changes they wished for.
He wasn't used to being doubted.
And he sure as fuck wasn't used to the simpering bitches questioning him during his seduction phase. Telling him no. That wasn't how this part was supposed to go.
But this girl had him off balance, had him making stupid mistakes. From the very first moment, she seemed to sense that he wasn't everything he projected himself to be, and it was throwing him off his game.
"I went into this blind," he raged to Victoria under the cover of darkness, trying to keep his voice low enough that the little bitch in the house wouldn't overhear their call. He wouldn't put it past her to eavesdrop, since he knew full well that she wasn't really asleep, like she'd been pretending to be for the past several hours to avoid him. Not only could he hear her heartbeat and breathing, which were enough to know she was wide awake — he could also smell her fear. It might not be part of the plan, but it was intoxicating...more than enough to make him want to accelerate his schedule.
"Edward's on his way to Forks," Victoria hissed. "Stick to the plan. We can't blow this now."
"That's going to be difficult if she doesn't trust me," he pushed out, letting his anger show. "I warned you about this. I told you we should have waited until he returned, until I had a chance to watch. I've never even seen them together. Are you even certain about the nature of their relationship?"
He was used to stalking, watching, knowing the relationship between his intended prey and her significant other. All he knew of Edward firsthand was that the self-righteous bastard had failed to even kill him properly, sparking the torturous nine-day transformation that resulted from being left for dead with barely any blood left and only a small amount of venom to begin the change. He knew that part well. And he knew that he hated him for it.
Of course, Edward's threats through Bella's phone, back in her yard, made it clear enough that he considered the human girl to be his mate.
But from the reactions he was getting from Bella, Albert was truly beginning to wonder if it was one-sided, if Edward was perhaps more like himself than he'd have given him credit for. Did Bella have feelings for Edward Cullen at all, or had she been an unwilling mate? Because she certainly didn't seem open to his advances when he approached her tenderly, romantically. Maybe he was going about this the wrong way...
Victoria soothed him, assured him that wasn't the case, that the girl was just as enamored of Edward as she was of him. Their plan depended on it, after all. He needed to play the patient, loving boyfriend for just a little while longer.
That might be easier said than done.
It had been difficult for Albert to maintain control when he heard Edward's despised voice for the first time in decades, especially daring to threaten him through the phone. He'd considered throwing the girl on the ground right then and there, outside her house, making Edward Cullen listen as he defiled his mate and then murdered her; make him listen to her screaming his name as she begged for mercy.
But he couldn't do that. It would be over too fast. It just wasn't enough. Edward deserved more — much more.
He deserved to get back a mate who could barely stand to look at him.
He deserved to know his enemy was coming for her again — and that he couldn't possibly protect her forever.
He deserved to know exactly what would happen to her when he failed, and at whose hand.
And when he had suffered enough, when Albert and Victoria inevitably took her from him again, he deserved to know that his mate hated him when she drew her last painful breath.
Albert was going to give him all of those things.
He just had to be patient. There would be a day for having his way with Bella Swan and then killing her. A different day.
For the present, he just needed to keep control. His false trails would be wearing off by dawn. Edward's coven-mates would find his real trail soon enough afterward, and he would have Bella in the woods, ready for them to find her at exactly the right moment — in exactly the position he wanted them to be found in.
All he had to do was restrain himself, keep his dick in his pants and do just enough to terrorize her, to destroy her trust in Edward Cullen.
And then Edward could have her back...at least for a little while.
She jumped at every sound, every little pop and crack the cabin made during the night. There was no way he didn't know she was only pretending to be asleep. She expected Edward to burst in on her any moment — and she didn't even want to think about what might happen next.
Never in her life had she been more relieved than when Edward didn't follow her into the small bedroom he pointed out to her. He'd just kissed her on top of the head and wished her sweet dreams. Somehow, it had almost sounded like a threat.
She'd closed the door behind her, resisting the temptation to lock it because he would definitely hear that and it wouldn't protect her anyway. She didn't want to risk making him angry again.
She hadn't seen him since, although she occasionally heard movement just outside her door. It froze her into terrified silence every time, her breathing ragged.
The little bedroom was stripped just as bare of anything personal as the kitchen and bathroom. She knew because she opened the drawers and closets before she climbed into the bed, her heart pounding and her eyes flicking back and forth to the door. She held her breath the whole time.
She found nothing.
Hours passed, agonizing hours of trying to lie still and not move around. Tears leaked into the pillow where she muffled her sobs. She didn't have a watch, and there was no clock. She knew it had to be getting close to dawn. It was still dark outside, other than a small dimly lit area close to the porch, which her window faced.
When the front door suddenly slammed, hard enough that she actually yelped in fear, she couldn't take it anymore. She rose up on her knees in the bed, peeking out the window.
He was outside, apparently on the phone. She could see him pacing back and forth in the darkness, gesturing angrily. She quickly ducked back down.
Her breathing increased at the thought of that phone, wondering if she could find a way to get her hands on it without him knowing — at least until she realized there was no one she could call. Jacob was just a 16-year-old kid who wasn't even speaking to her anymore. Involving him would only get him killed, even if she managed to get hold of him. Charlie could bring the entire Forks police force and still have no chance to save her from a vampire. And Alice? Carlisle? Her trust in the entire Cullen family felt shattered. For all she knew, they were in on it. How was she to know they hadn't been covering for Edward for decades?
It was a terrifying thought, one so mistrustful she'd never have thought herself capable of it.
But she'd looked in his eyes all evening and tried not to admit it to herself. And she was finally ready to put a name to what she saw there.
Evil.
There was no doubt of it. The only question was how she had ever looked into his eyes and not seen it.
Reality hit her like a lightning bolt. No one was coming to save her. She was on her own. He was still outside. And she might not get a better chance...especially considering what was likely to happen if she stuck around until morning.
He couldn't hear her thoughts. She just had to get far enough away. If she could get through the woods and find the main road, flag down a passing car, she might have a chance.
Decision made, she sat up and quickly slid her feet into her shoes. As quietly as she could, she opened the bedroom door and made her way to the back door she had spotted earlier when she went to the bathroom. Her fingers trembled as she struggled with the lock, but moments later, the cool night air hit her and she started to run.
There was no light on the rear side of the house. She could barely make out the tree line in the moonlight, running as fast as her feet would carry her, across the clearing and into the woods.
She was only a few hundred feet into the trees when it happened. Her feet hit something, something large. She toppled forward, landing with enough force to knock the wind out of her.
Her eyes were starting to adjust to the moonlight, enough to see that she had come to rest on a tarp — a very lumpy one, covering a large mound of...something.
She should have got up and kept running.
She didn't. She had the sick feeling she had just found what she'd been looking for all night, and she needed to know. She was breathing hard as her fingers skimmed across to find the edge of the tarp, and after only a moment's hesitation, she yanked it back.
The scream that ripped out of her throat was probably going to be her undoing. She couldn't even bring herself to care.
"You killed her."
She should never have said it. She knew that.
She knew he was standing right behind her, so close that his fingertips nearly brushed her hair. She shuddered but stayed where she was, utterly shocked, still kneeling on the ground, staring at the jumbled-up pile of belongings tossed like garbage into the woods and hidden, covered up.
A picture frame dangled from her numb fingers, the glass broken from the lack of care with which it had been dumped.
Her eyes could just make out the image of a beautiful, young, dark-haired woman and her dog, a golden retriever.
There were other frames, other pictures. The same smiling girl with an older couple that must be her parents. A much younger one of her, standing beside the same red SUV parked in the driveway, victoriously holding up the keys. A group picture with what must be friends.
Bella stared at them in horror, burning them into her memory. She knew the woman's name, from the prescription bottle inside her house.
Lacey Matthews. L.M.
She had owned a pink monogrammed Yeti cup and frilly curtains. She had kept her first car for years, and she loved her dog. Somebody had called her Princess, someone she loved enough to have a reminder of it hanging from her rearview mirror.
It wasn't much, but Bella wasn't going to forget any of it. If she lived, she wasn't going to forget.
She looked down again at the horrifying mess before her. Clothes were strewn everywhere in an undignified heap, coats and hats and jeans, fuzzy slippers and strappy sandals — the sad remnants of a life cut short, all wallowing forgotten in the dirt. Everything that had identified her, dumped and forgotten.
Erased.
Toiletries and hairbrushes and even a box of tampons looked like it had just been dumped into the pile with everything else.
There was a dog bowl and leash in the trash heap. The dog was probably dead too, she realized.
She nearly screamed again when he touched her shoulder. But his tone was gentle, placating.
"Bella, it's not what you think. Come here." Strong hands effortlessly pulled her to her feet, turned her to face him, gripping her arms more tightly when she shrunk away from him, staring up into eyes she didn't even recognize.
She still had a chance. She could pretend. Let him sweet-talk her and act like she believed him.
But then she said it.
The words were out of her mouth before she even realized what she was saying.
It was impossible. But she knew it was true the second it left her lips.
"You're not him."
She should have been terrified. Instead, the relief she felt nearly buckled her knees.
Her Edward wasn't a murderer. He wasn't a liar. Whatever was about to happen to her, at least she would die knowing that much.
The face in front of her had turned murderous. Edward's face.
But not Edward.
"What did you just say to me?" he snarled, intimidating.
Her voice only grew stronger. Defiant. In stark contrast to the tear rolling down her cheek.
"You're. Not. Him."
He tightened his grip on her arms with enough force to bruise and yanked her up against him hard, his nose millimeters from hers. She could feel the icy chill of his breath, matching the coldness in his voice. Edward's voice, but not. "Oh really? Then who the fuck am I, little girl?"
She trembled. But she didn't break.
"It doesn't matter. He's going to kill you if you touch me again."
She heard the angry growl before he grabbed her and the ground rushed up to meet her back, just before her shirt was ripped down the middle with enough force to lift her up off the ground again, slamming her back into it when the material gave. She tried desperately to back away across the ground, but his weight pinned her to the earth, straddling her hips.
She stared up at him in terror as he leaned forward to whisper in her ear, grasping her throat with one hand. She clawed at his fingers, trying to get air.
"He tried that once already."
Fifteen grueling, tortured hours after he had to stand by helplessly and listen as Bella was kidnapped by a monster with his own face, Edward was finally almost home, on final approach to Sea-Tac. It was all he could do not to kick the side wall out of the plane and jump. Every muscle in his body was tensed, desperate for the chance to finally do something to help.
He knew Alice was waiting for him at the airport before his plane even landed. He could hear her already blocking him as soon as he came into range, studiously translating...something. He didn't care to bother identifying it. He just wanted to get around it.
The fact that she felt the need to hide her thoughts terrified him in a way nothing else had yet. His last update had been several hours earlier.
But the news wasn't what he expected. Alice was waiting at the empty airport terminal where he disembarked faster than he should have. She pushed the limits of believable human speed too, when she ran to meet him and grabbed him in a fierce hug.
"She's alive, Edward. The boys tracked her down less than an hour ago. We have her."
Relief washed over him, nearly buckling his knees in the unexpected intensity of it. He'd been braced for the worst. He hadn't dared hope for this.
But Alice was still carefully blocking him, and that did nothing to set him further at ease. What it did do was scare the hell out of him.
TO BE CONTINUED...