Ch 8: That Burning Sensation

A/N: Ok, finally, the long awaited transformation.

Disclaimer: See Ch 5

"Do you want to live?"

"What the hell kinda question is that? Of course I wanna live."

"How badly do you want to live?"

"hm…." I thought about all my plans for the future, the things I wanted to accomplish, not to mention the things I hadn't done yet. Hell, I hadn't even been out of the country yet. "Pretty bad."

"Even if it caused you extreme pain? Even if you might never be the same again?" At this I straightened up out of my slump. I made sure that I was looking Bella in the eye (well, more like staring on account of her hypnotic eyes), seeing unimaginable pain flowing just beneath the surface. Normal people wouldn't notice it, but I had looked into the mirror after a bullying session far too many times not to recognize it, well hidden as it was. What was that saying? The eyes are the portals to the soul. When I was done with my assessment, I maintained eye contact and I asked, "Bella, what are you getting at?"

#Bella#

Jeff stared into my eyes like he was trying to gaze into my soul, and to tell the truth, it was kinda creepy.

"Bella, what are you getting at?"

"Jeff, I know a way to save you, but it will be extremely painful, so much so that you may wish you hadn't been saved. I won't force it upon you, the choice is yours."

"God damnit Bella stop beating around the bush and save me before I really do die." I gaze into Jeff's eyes. Is that really what you want Jeff? Do you really want to live that badly? I find no hesitation in Jeff's posture, even as he passes out from pain. I slowly lean down, ignoring the urgent ringing from my cell phone, the ringtone of the house, and slowly bite into Jeff's neck. I try to keep as much of the blood inside his body while injecting in my venom. I lick the wound to close it, repeating the procedure on the other side, and pull away afterwards. It's as much as I can do at this point to hold my breath and not drain him of his blood. I dash away from him until I'm a good 5 meters upwind. I breathe a few times to clear my nose and release a sigh of relief and flip open my annoying cell phone.

"Bella! Thank god! What on earth is going on there?" Came the frantic voice of Alice over the phone, "I suddenly had a vision of you biting a mangled Jeff. Is everything alright? Please tell me you didn't give in to temptation." Alice's voice was truly begging at this point. "You do realize what will happen if you did bite him. The treaty hasn't changed that much that you can just bite anyone at will!" She ended in a shout.

"Alice, he was dying, what did you want me to do?"

"That doesn't give you the excuse to bi-"Whatever Alice was about to say was drowned out by a scream of pain from Jeff.

"Alice, I'll have to call you back." I stuffed my cell phone in my pocket and rushed over to where Jeff was.

#Jeff#

I was burning. It felt like there was liquid fire… no, lava, flowing through my veins. I don't really remember how it started; all I do remember is that one minute Bella was doing something weird to my neck, and the next I was burning. It spread from my neck down to my chest, and them out to my limbs. As I lay there writhing on the ground, I cried out in pain. OH God make it stop! I was screaming it in my head and somehow (I found out later) I was screaming it out loud. An errant thought broke through the pain. I wonder if this is what it's like to get a third degree burn. Unfortunately, this burn was worse. Normally a third degree burn hurts when you get it and then you can't feel it because the nerves are charred. This one was like getting it over and over and over again. As the burn moved up from third to forth, and then later to fifth, I continued to cry out in my head (and accidentally out loud) at lulls when I could think through the pain. Oh God just kill me! Please, make it stop! If there really is a God in heaven end it now! The screams kept coming, eventually drifting into French and then into Hebrew as the magma in my veins slowly turned my body into what had to be a pile of ashes. I felt something cold against my hand but it lost all meaning in the raging inferno.

At some point in time I realized that I had passed my pain threshold long ago and probably should have passed out, and then I realized that I had been, to an effect. I didn't lose consciousness so much as sort of drift. My mind would blank for a period and then I would start thinking again. Three drifts later, the burning in my toes and fingers lessened (by a few degrees). By the time that my hands and feet were free, I had already drifted ten times. What really got me was, as I lost heat in my extremities, I gained heat at my heart. Fourteen drifts later, my forearms and shins were freed, and my heart got so hot I swear it must have been glowing red. Twenty-five drifts later, everything from my waist up and my shoulders down was free, and I had long since quit trying to figure out how many degrees of a burn I was getting inside my body, losing count around thirty. I realized around this time that it was getting easier to think, and my hearing was improving. I could literally hear the individual valves opening and closing in my heart.

After about nineteen more drifts, my torso was freed from the burn, but my heart was not. It felt like my heart must be glowing white hot, and surely it must be irradiating the area. One could probably prepare a three course meal on my chest and still have enough heat left over for a habachi dinner. My heart beat sped up, sounding like a jack hammer, and the heat intensified. Several drifts later my heart sped up again, this time it was like machine gun fire. Up until this point I had almost been adjusted to the heat, but this was something else. My heart sped up again, this time so fast it sounded like the beats were tripping over each other. The heat became so intense it felt like a mini sun was in my chest, and my back arched at the heat peaked, and then my heart shuddered, giving a few slow beats, like someone chopping at wood, and then, with a noise that sounded (at least to me) like a firing cannon, my heart thumped for the last time, and stopped.

All was quiet.

A/N: Well, let me know how I did. The transformation was tricky, so all comments would be appreciated.

Omake

"Jeff, I need to ask you something."

"What is it?"

"What is the ultimate answer, to life, the universe, and everything?"

"I know it, but you probably won't like it."

"Just tell me."

"42."