I felt my body stiffen completely.
"Excuse me?" I asked uncertainly, my voice quivering, "Did you just…"
"It's the truth," Lyra said, a defensive tone entering her once monotone voice, "It's not a lie."
I shook my head in bewilderment, trying to sort my thoughts. "But… A vampire wouldn't attack a family and… eat them…" My mind's eye immediately flashed to the kind and loving faces of Carlisle and Esme. I couldn't imagine them hurting a person, much less an entire family.
"I don't know what type of creatures you think they are," Lyra spat out, "but they're evil, Bella. They'll always find a way to cause you heartache in the end, and they'll get you where it hurts the most."
I swallowed thickly, my retort dying in my throat. Lyra's words hit home for me. In the short period of time that I had known them, the Cullens had become the center of my universe, and when they disappeared, they left a massive hole in my chest that couldn't be filled. I thought of James. He, too, had wanted to take what was most precious to me: my mother, and when he came to avenge my death, Edward…
Edward. Edward, Edward, Edward. The hole in my chest turned into a chasm, so wide and deep it threatened to swallow me whole. I clutched at my chest, the physical pain of it causing my breath to come and go in short pants. I stared at Lyra, slightly hunched over, and she looked back at me with a confused and slightly concerned expression on her face.
"Bella, what—"
"My boyfriend was a vampire," I said, cutting her off. I could feel the chasm widening, the danger increasing, yet I went on. "His name was Ed…" I swallowed and took a deep breath, attempting to get the name past my lips. I could feel my heart disintegrating into a million tiny pieces, but I plowed on. I needed to tell someone and know that they would believe me. "Ed-wa-rd. Not long after we first met we ran into a nomadic coven, and their leader tried to kill me but he didn't succeed and was killed by the Cullens, Ed… Edward's family." I licked my dry lips and maintained eye contact with Lyra. I could see in her face that she did not quite understand yet, but that she was listening. "In September, on my birthday, Edward's sister, Alice, gave me a small party, just the Cullens and I. It was going well until I… gave myself a paper cut from the wrapping paper on a present. Alice's mate, Jasper, couldn't take the sight of my blood and he lunged at me. Edward stopped him, but I got hurt in the process… I think it was then that he decided he didn't want me anymore.
"He took me out in the woods behind my house and broke up with me. I tried to change his mind, but his mind was… unchangeable. He told me he didn't want me, and he left. I've never felt so alone in my entire life. I tried to contact them, the Cullens, to apologize, to do something, but… they had moved. Gone. They changed their address, their telephone numbers, emails, everything. I was alone." I halted in my storytelling, unable to go on. My body felt as if something were trying to dig out my heart from my chest, and I clutched at it, trying to keep it behind my ribs. I squeezed my eyes shut and dropped my head, unable to look at Lyra any longer. I had gone too far, I realized. The pain was trying to swallow me whole.
"Bella…" I heard Lyra's voice sound out, the tone distinctly sympathetic. "Bella, I'm sorry. To be abandoned, left for death or… insanity… I think I can understand."
Lyra's words washed over me and a small sense of camaraderie was left in their wake. The vast loneliness I had felt since September slowly began to recede and I found myself looking up to meet my roommate's cool green gaze.
"Tell me," I choked out, my hands still clutching my chest. Lyra closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, allowing her head to dip back briefly before her eyelids slid open and she focused her pale stare on me once again.
"My family and I have… had… a lake house in northern Washington. There isn't anything around that place for miles. We always go up and stay there for a week or so at the end of August, right before the start of the school year. Every year since I've been born, my mother, father, and two sisters would stay there. Just the five of us. This year wasn't any different.
"It was the night before the day we were supposed to leave when it happened. One of my sisters, Lily, heard a tapping noise on the outside of the house when we were all in the sitting room. It scared her, so my dad went to go check what it was. When he didn't come back after ten minutes was when the four of us knew something was wrong. My mother gathered my sisters and I to the corner farthest from the door, but it didn't matter. When I saw him walk through the door, nonchalant and chin dripping with my father's blood, I knew it was over.
"He was on us in a second. My mother had tried to shield us with her body, but he… he killed her easily. I tried to protect my sisters even though I knew it was useless. I felt my body being picked up and thrown across the room. I hit my head, and everything went dark. When I came to I remember being surprised that I was alive at all, and from what I could feel, relatively unharmed. I turned my head, and I saw the carnage and… him. He apologized for the mess and told me his name was William Moore. And then he advanced on me.
"I don't remember much after that, the paramedics later told me that I had a severe concussion. What I do remember is him telling me that I was beautiful, and that he liked a good chase from time to time. He told me that he'd find and come for me, kissed my hand, and left.
"Everything in the lake house was destroyed; the phone cord had been completely ripped out of the wall and my cell phone had no reception out there. They told me that I must have wandered through the woods for days before I came upon a road and a passing car stopped to help me and called 911. I told everyone what happened but they wrote me off as having gone crazy. My aunt only had to hear the doctor's suspected diagnosis before she booked me a room here. Though this place is much better than others I've heard about, I'd much rather be on the run.
"I've tried to escape a couple of times, but never got very far. A few days ago I snuck a plastic fork from dinner and did this," She extended her forearms towards me, showing the white bandages that ran from her wrists to her elbows. I swallowed thickly, observing them. The bandages were pure white and unblemished, but I knew something ugly and deformed was beneath them. "But when I passed out I knocked over the lamp on the nightstand and the orderlies found me when they came to investigate the noise." Lyra gestured to a lamp on the small table between the two beds. I glanced at it briefly before turning my gaze back to her. "I've been on near-constant supervision since."
"How can you talk about this so easily?" I asked, feeling slightly uneasy at her expression, which had long since retreated to its apparent default—apathy. Something flashed across her green gaze, but it was gone in a second.
"I don't feel much anymore," she started, tucking a stray piece of hair behind her ear, "disappointment, fear, anger, indifference... there isn't much else. I've told the story so many times to so many audiences, and no one believed me. I almost stopped believing too. My dreams, though... They remind me every night of what I've seen. And of what is coming."
I felt a chill run down my spine at her dispassionate words. What she'd seen, and what or who would be coming. I felt an anxious tug in my abdomen. "William, you mean?"
"Yes," Lyra responded. Her voice wavered slightly and she cleared her throat. When she spoke again, her words were tinged with fear. "I think he wants to make me like him. Maybe. Or eat me. I don't know which one I'd rather have happen."
I could feel the fear and nervous energy building up in my abdomen. If and when the vampire found Lyra, I doubted he'd stop at killing just her. I voiced my concern. Lyra was silent for a moment before she spoke again.
"I never thought of that…" she started, voice hesitant. Her eyes were boring into mine. "I know what he's capable of. I've seen what he can do, Bella. Killing everyone in this place wouldn't even be a problem for him; he'd enjoy it all that much more." The fear in her voice increased with every syllable she spoke. The intensity in her eyes was becoming unbearable. "It's a waiting game and I'm nowhere near his level! I have to leave, I can't just sit here and – "
"It wouldn't matter," I interrupted, dropping my gaze and relocating it on her bandaged arms. "It wouldn't matter where you left to. If he's half as determined as you say, he'd find you no matter where you went."
"But if I didn't tell anyone where I was going, then – "
"Your scent. Everyone has one. If a vampire is focused enough on it and if you touched anything anywhere you went, he might be able to track you down." I interrupted again, cutting off her speech.
"Are you positive about that?" Lyra fired back. I kept my eyes on the white bandages.
"No," I admitted, "But from what I've seen, if they're set on it, they'll do anything to find you. Anything. It's just like you said. To William, this is a game. The harder you make it, the better it is to him. He's got forever to live; it doesn't matter if he has to torture people to find out which direction they last saw you going. Vampires like him… they'll do it, and they'll enjoy every second of it." I heard a sharp intake of breath on the bed opposite to mine.
"I…" Lyra whispered, her voice weak, "I don't know what to do."
I glanced back up to my roommate's eyes and was shocked to find moisture beginning to gather there. She closed her eyes as it began to fall, her body slumping boneless onto her bed. Her eyelids opened slowly and she fixed her sad, pale eyes onto my own brown ones.
"Maybe your Cullens could help?" she asked in a dejected voice. The hole in my chest began to open again. "Alice, maybe?"
I offered her a sad smile and shook my head.
"I don't have any way of knowing where they are or how I could even contact them." I began, lying down on my bed. Lyra's horizontal gaze kept with my own. "It's like they never existed."
Lyra heaved a deep sigh and closed her eyes once more. "I don't know what to do," she started, "my days are reduced to my wondering at every single moment, wondering if the next second is when the monster will come for me, and I feel trapped. It's a half life on good days and unbearable torture on the worst."
"I don't know what to do either," I said, staring across the gap between our beds at the dark-haired girl. One of her hands came up to cover her eyes.
"I don't want to die, Bella," she said, "I know I've done awful things to myself, but I don't. I swear I don't." I nodded my head, feeling my cheek scratch against the cotton bed sheets.
"I don't either." I said, "We'll figure it out. There's got to be other options… there always are."
"Yeah…" Lyra said, rolling onto her back, "Yeah, you're right."
The next morning dawned dark and hazy with the potential promise of snow. I awoke from a restless sleep to find Lyra, in jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, gazing out the window at the foggy fields below. I shifted in my bed and she turned towards the noise of it.
"It's so dark today... It always makes me nervous when the sun disappears." She said, turning from the window and sitting cross-legged on her turned-down bed. I sat up, attempting to run a hand through my knotted hair.
"It's always dark here," I said, grabbing a brush from my bag and running it through my hair, "but some days are brighter than others."
I heard Lyra hum in either agreement or indifference, I couldn't tell which.
"Bathrooms are down the hall by the elevators," she said suddenly, uncrossing her legs and standing from the bed, "you'll have to be quick, though. Breakfast is soon." And with that, she turned back toward the window and resumed searching the tree line beyond the Rockford grounds. Taking this as my cue to leave, I gathered my toiletries and padded out the door.
The bathrooms were fine; they were clean enough, though I wouldn't make the mistake of walking on the off-white tiled floors barefoot again. When I returned to my room, I quickly pulled on a pair of black leggings, a crew-neck sweatshirt and my converse low-tops.
"Ready," I called softly to my roommate. She nodded, turned from the window, and we walked out of the door.
Breakfast was an awkward affair. I was quickly introduced to the two boys I had seen Lyra with the previous day. Lucas, the lighter-haired one, was pleasant, if not a little cynical while the darker-haired Nick didn't seem down in the least and only slightly manic. After stumbling through introductions, our section of the table was mostly silent, save for Nick's animated chatter about the weather, the newest batch of orderlies, etc.
"That Paul character, though, I've heard some not-so-good things about him." Nick stated as he finished the latest section of his tirade, leaning back on his stool. His dark eyes swept across Lucas and Lyra's impassive faces, obviously wanting a reaction. Getting none, he turned them to me.
"Uh," I muttered, feeling awkward under his black gaze, "why's that?"
Nick grinned rather wolfishly and leaned in from the other side of the table. Unintentionally mimicking his body language, I found out faces mere inches apart as he began to speak in a low voice so as not to be overheard. The lowering of his voice was unnecessary, though, seeing as we were the only four people occupying the end of the long table.
"Well," he began, glancing at Lucas and Lyra out of his peripheral vision, "Allie told me the other day that he'd cornered her in the hallway on her way to midday group. She'd gotten caught up you see, something about helping the kitchen staff clear off the tables. Anyway, he saw her, right? So he asks her what she's doing out there alone when she's supposed to be in group. The poor girl said she tried to explain the situation and that's when Paul pushed her up against the wall and asked her if she wouldn't like to go somewhere else and hang out with him, seeing as she was already late for group and all—"
"Allie is an attention whore and a pathological liar," Lucas cut in, pushing the remnants of his breakfast around on his plate, "did you honestly believe anything she was saying?" Nick recoiled at this, cutting his gaze over to Lucas in a half-glare.
"Well, why not?" The dark-haired boy asked, folding his arms on the table and leaning towards the sandy-haired boy, "There have been accusations before, and some of them have turn out to be true. What if Allie is actually telling the truth?"
"That'd be a first," Lyra commented, pushing her plate away from her. She spared Nick a fleeting glance before turning her attention to the windows. Nick scoffed and turned his attention back to me.
"Think about it," He started, leaning forward once more, "Allie's the perfect person to target, no one would believe her, and she has no self-esteem. She'd probably do next to nothing to stop him from doing whatever he wanted, poor girl. She weighs like 90 pounds too, she's practically defenseless."
"Did she say if he ended up doing anything to her?" I asked, openly curious. If this was the same Paul that had walked me to the cafeteria yesterday, which it probably was, he hadn't seemed bad at all. Then again, the hallways had been nowhere near empty then. The corner of Nick's mouth twitched upwards; he was obviously pleased that I was following along with his story so well.
"She said he managed to cop a feel before he heard another orderly coming. Apparently he escorted her to group after that and told her to keep her mouth shut."Nick picked up his plate as he finished his story, motioning with his head towards the front of the cafeteria where patients were beginning to dispose of their plates and form lines. The bell had probably rung, and I must have been too caught up in Nick's story to notice.
"Allie's full of shit Nick, you know that." Lucas said as he stood and followed the dark-haired boy with his plate. Lyra and I did the same.
"Maybe," Nick said, his voice decreasing in volume as we became surrounded by patients and orderlies alike, "but the look on her face when she told me makes me a little unsure it was just another story she'd made up to get attention. Speak of the devil."
I glanced up to see Paul stride into the cafeteria and stand with some of the orderlies who had begun to gather at the room's doors. He greeted his fellow students jovially and cast his eyes out into the crowd of patients. The corner of his mouth hitched up in a grin I could best describe as slightly predatory, and he winked. I followed his gaze, my breath catching slightly when I saw who he'd been staring at.
"Tell me you didn't just see that!" Nick whispered at my back, his hands clutching my upper-arms in excitement or anxiety, I didn't know which. There, staring back at the tall blonde student, dark eyes wide and lips parted in an expression of shock and slight horror, was Allie, seemingly frozen in her spot among the crowd of patients and their lines.
I swallowed hard as I looked back at Paul, who had diverted his gaze and was now staring directly at… me. My mouth went dry as I quickly ducked my head and moved behind Lucas. Perhaps rogue vampires weren't the only terror I would have to deal with here at Rockford.
Author's Notes:
It's been awhile! School's busy, but I've finally uploaded the latest chapter of this revamped story, hope you all enjoy!
Love it? Hate it? Leave a comment and let me know!