part two
Linda rolled her eyes. "Calm down, Integra. Think of something scary, or close your eyes and relax entirely. If you really can't fake it, stare directly into Edward's eyes for a second. And try not to hyperventilate."
Integra raised an eyebrow. The most frightening things she could think of didn't make her want to faint; they made her want to get her sword and kill something in a violent and deranged manner. And not only did she think there was something off about Edward that made him unnerving, she hadn't been particularly affected by a good-looking boy since she was thirteen. Possibly because she was always worrying about work rather than romance, and there had been that incident in the park from which the boy in question had never fully recovered.
Her pet vampire was not a good influence on her.
She continued to look over the script, and had to admit that the dialogue wasn't so bad. It was emotional in all the right places, although Alucard would never say something so sappy....she considered making him help her practice, just to see his reaction, and then got to the romantic scenes. She changed her mind. Her vampire was never, ever going to see this because he would mock her for all of eternity.
"I hope you and Edward have some chemistry." Linda said. "Oh, he's here. Where is everyone else?"
Edward came up the steps, onto the stage, and was immediately attacked by Linda. She gabbed at him excitedly, then handed him a script. He flipped through it, and regretted auditioning almost immediately. Not only was he going to have Integral falling into his arms, he had to be very close to her neck in a few scenes as well. It was just as well he'd stopped breathing when he came in. He'd have to get used to going without his sense of smell for more than two periods a day.
"Listen, I'm going to go get the others, okay? Edward, help Integra practice her swooning. Just stand there and catch her." Linda hurried down the stage stairs and out the door, leaving Edward and Bella alone. Mercifully, Integra spoke first, so that Edward didn't have to intake enough air to speak and risk eating her. The sense of darkness emanating from her mind was distinctly bloodthirsty today, and stronger; it was like listening to the thoughts of a thirsty vampire who was hunting. It made it worse for him.
"Stand behind me and hold out your arm." She ordered, and he complied, watching her nervously. Edward resisted the urge to inhale. He didn't want her falling into his arms now, when they were alone-she would be a perfect target-and even as the venom flowed in his mouth, he thought of Bella, still with him, and focused.
Integra tried to drop backwards and ended up nearly staggering into him. She scowled; at her old school in England, she'd participated in some 'trust exercises' involving falling into a 'trusted' person's arms and had the same reaction. A few more attempts at swooning into Edward's arms confirmed her teacher's hypothesis: she had obvious trust problems and needed to see a therapist.
However, she couldn't make excuses; it would not look good in the play if the maiden in distress was as stiff and disjointed as a badly-operated marionette. She shut her eyes, preparing to try again.
"Stand a little closer." Integra said to Edward, and he reluctantly did so. She told herself that with her reflexes, even if Edward dropped her, she'd avoid any serious injuries. She toppled backwards.
Edward felt the bloodlust coming from her intensify, and clenched his teeth together, uncaring of his expression so long as he prevented himself from killing her. And the worst of it was that, as she landed in his arms, he couldn't move away until she stood up. He could not risk her hurting herself and bleeding.
The milliseconds ticked by. To Integra, it had been perhaps a half-second but to Edward, time seemed to drag on and on. He was thirsty, and Integra's thoughts were so strong that they were almost invasive; he was having a hard time blocking them out, and he couldn't concentrate on two things at once...
He took a deep, slow breath, enjoying the scent, and restrained her. In the space of a second, he went from fighting his thirst to embracing it, even indulging it...His teeth touched her neck.
He was repelled; something hit him with enough force to push him several feet across the stage and dislodge his grip on Integral. Edward looked to Integra for an explanation; but he could no longer see Integra. There was something in the way, and he jumped back even further across the stage.
A formless black thing with unnecessary, undefined appendages, several red eyes; a monstrous shape that was seven feet tall and was quickly taking on a humanoid form. It had a scent he didn't recognize, a dead scent, but the thoughts were identical to Integra's except that they were stronger. In fact, they were Integra's thoughts. But they held a note of semi-madness that wasn't at all apparent in Integra's manner. Somehow, she was broadcasting the thoughts of someone else.
If the thing hadn't been snarling at him, and it hadn't hit him so hard, he would have been fascinated. As it was, Edward was tensed for a fight.
Alucard! What the hell was that?
He was going to bite you. Should I have let him, Master? Did you want his teeth in your throat?
I was referring to your overly dramatic display of shape-shifting, you imbecile! Go away!
And if he attacks again?
Just get out of sight, then, but do not compromise my cover any further!
Alucard looked disappointed at being denied a fight, but faded away quickly. Integra glared at Edward, trying to discern what he was going to do. He'd been fast, maybe at the level of a lid-range vampire. Not as fast as Alucard, though. And he'd been out for her blood, and since she'd been monitoring the city via a link with their police force for possible vampire attacks, he was either covering very well or he was feeding elsewhere.
Or not at all, which would explain why he'd suddenly tried to eat her.
"What are you?" Integra asked. Before Edward could fabricate something that sounded acceptable, the double doors opened and Linda, followed by the rest of the actors and crew for Dracula, entered. The tension was broken, but Integra gave Edward a look that said she would not forget this incident.
And then she turned her back, trusting Alucard to watch it for her, and walked away.
Edward left out the other door, giving Linda a transparent excuse with the last of his air, and drove away as fast as he could. Rosalie was going to murder him, and Jasper would be furious as well. At least now he knew why Alice hadn't seen this coming.
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"Did you see his eyes?" Integra asked. She had driven home, ignoring the abnormal wind that was blowing and grumbling about overly-dramatic vampires who were having too much fun playing with the weather. Her apartment was only ten minutes from the school.
"They were amber." She said, leaning back on the bed. It was one of the few pieces of furniture in the room. There was also a dresser and a nightstand with a laptop plugged into the wall sitting on top of it. The floors and walls were white, as was the small, spotless bathroom. It was comfortable, if impersonal. "Vampires generally do not have amber eyes. Red, or whatever color they were as a human if they're young. But not amber. And his eyes were black before." She reached for the laptop, setting it in her lap and pulling up a certain file, courtesy of Walter. "Have you ever encountered anything like it?"
"I may have, while I was still in Romania. It was a brief encounter. But their eyes were red."
"Damn." Integra glanced through the file. It was a carefully compiled database of the students at her school, the faculty, and various useful persons and locations around the city. Edward and Bella both had files, but they were perfectly clean and almost devoid of detail. She suspected forgeries, because there had to be something. Records would have come from another school, even if they transferred. The too-clean records were abnormal.
"We could just find them, Master." Alucard suggested. She nodded absently.
"I'll speak with him tomorrow. He'll have to tell me something; he can hardly pretend he didn't try to eat me." She shut the computer, neatly wrote a note on a piece of paper, and went over to the closet. There was a fax machine there .She faxed the paper to Walter and turned her attention to her homework.
For about an hour she worked studiously. Then she put away her books and pulled out her script, intending to look over her lines in more detail. She would have to start learning them now. Unfortunately, Dracula was emblazoned across the cover of her script, and Alucard came over, interested.
"What's that?"
"One of the girls at school redid Dracula for the stage. You wouldn't like it; she's taken rather a lot of liberties with your character."
"Really."
"Remember that love poem I received anonymously at school one year? Your love confession sounds like that." The poem in question had been entitled "The Most Beautiful Flower Of Perfect, Sunkissed Youth".
"Confession to whom?" Integra winced-she'd been hoping to avoid telling him this for as long as possible, but she supposed it was best to get the mocking over with now.
"Mina Harker." She admitted. "The one I'm playing." Hoping he would let it go and knowing he was going to laugh like a loon as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she forced herself to read her lines over and over again.
She was not disappointed. Alucard did burst out laughing.
Pinching the bridge of her nose and adjusting her glasses, she reached behind her and threw a pillow at his face.
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The worst part was Carlisle's disappointment.
Rosalie and Jasper were understandably angry that he'd acted so stupidly and endangered them all. Emmett had more sympathy, having made a few mistakes himself. Alice was upset but was distracted by the puzzle of what, exactly that thing that had defended Integra was and how it was connected to Integra as to make her invisible to her clairvoyance. Esme and Bella had forgiven him on sight.
And Carlisle loved him, and forgave him, but to disappoint him was the worst, because there was no one who Edward admired as much as his surrogate father. After he'd told them the story of his encounter, he'd endured a few awkward moments before Carlisle began speculating on what the thing might have been.
"I would think it was one of our kind, with the power to create illusions, but an illusion that repelled you? I've never heard of anything like it."
"Was it like Renata?" Bella asked. At the mention of Aro's bodyguard, Edward shook his head.
"No. It was like I'd been body-slammed by another vampire."
They discussed other theories, but even the most unlikely ideas were incompatible. Eventually, they gave up.
"I'll see what I can dig up." Alice sighed. She reached for the nearest laptop-the Cullens owned several. "A giant black blob with several eyes. Great."
The rest of his family separated to do their own research, and to his relief he saw that no one intended to go and kill Integra just yet. He'd worried that they would, the way Rosalie and Jasper had planned when he'd rescued Bella, but so far she was in the clear. It would be inexcusable to allow her to die after he'd nearly killed her. The scent of her blood, appealing and intoxicating, was hardly her fault.
He found a laptop of his own and started searching, but he'd scarcely began when the sound of a gasp reached his ears. It was Alice, and he saw what she had seen for an instant. Immediately, he rushed along with the rest of the family to the living room where she sat.
"I saw her." Alice explained rapidly. "Integra. She was in a dark room, with Aro, Jane, and Chelsea. There were carvings on the walls, but I didn't recognize the language."
'When?" Emmett asked. "When are the Volturi coming?"
"I don't know." Alice said. She shut her eyes for a moment, and then shook her head. "I can't see them. They've made a decision that leads them somewhere where I can't see. To Integra."
"Here." Edward said quietly. "They're coming here."
"I can't see anything else, either." Alice sighed. "I'm looking, I am, but I can't see anything in between. It's just for that-" She blanked out again, and Edward saw through her eyes as he tried to make sense of what she was seeing.
"Three months." Edward said. "This occurs in three months. You can see past that point, Alice?"
"No. Just that much. It's in flux after that. Decisions have been made that are going to lead to the Volturi coming here, Integra meeting them. And why can I see her for only that one point?"
"Something changed for her. She's human; you should be able to see her. Maybe it's that thing. She has no thoughts of her own; perhaps she's under its control."
The rest of the Cullens, keeping up with the conversation, looked at the two. Edward and Alice continued to theorize, and Bella broke in, finally.
"Shouldn't we do something? Integra could be in danger. The Volturi might hurt her."
"If we tell her anything, they will kill her. We have to keep quiet." Jasper pointed out.
Bella said, "But we can't just let things go as they are! Right now she's going towards the Volturi! We might be able to help her. Besides, she might figure it out on her own and blurt it out. Wouldn't it be better if we got involved?"
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"Alucard. Come here."
Alucard looked up. He'd been sitting on his coffin, drinking a blood packet, and now he threw the empty packet onto the floor and walked over.
"Pick that up and throw it away. It's disgusting. Then come here, I need your help."
The blood packet floated over to the trash can and fell in. She looked disdainfully at it before getting up.
"Hold out your arm-I'm going to practice swooning again. And don't say anything." She added as he opened his mouth. Sighing, she stood, her back facing him, and closed her eyes.
Alucard will catch you, she told herself. And them she leaned back and fell.
She landed easily in his arms and looked up at him. It had been much easier to convince herself that Alucard would catch her. The gym teacher had been right; she obviously needed help if the person she trusted enough to faint onto was a five-hundred-year-old homicidal vampire whose hobbies were ripping ghouls and other vampires into little pieces with his bare hands.
"I thought you were pretending to swoon." Alucard jibed, seeing that she was distracted. She rolled her eyes and reached up to smack him.
"Only an idiot would swoon over you." She informed him. "Let go of me. The Cullens are always at school early, and I should go to bed so I can be there before them."
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The morning came, grey and dim, and Carlisle found his son sitting up on the roof while his wife was in their bedroom.
Edward.
"Carlisle." Edward greeted him. He looked out at the sky.
Is something wrong between you and Bella?
"No. Why would you think that?"
You two seem forlorn. Separate. I'm worried about your happiness.
"We're just...adjusting." Edward lied. He had noticed that something was wrong between Bella and him-the way they talked, the way they acted, the way they hadn't slept together for months and neither of them brought it up. When they were at school they were the same as before, but it was almost a duty rather than natural affection.
But he wasn't going to further worry his parents by letting them know that.
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Edward and Bella got out of their Volvo, and Integra was waiting, leaning on her motorcycle. She waved at them and began walking towards them. Edward looked over to Bella, who looked right back, equally unsure.
"What are you going to tell her?"
"What we planned. I'm going to tell her she's out of her mind. No one will believe her."
"Okay." Bella whispered. "I'll wait for you in class, 'kay?" Without waiting for an answer, she strode off towards the building. Edward waited as Integra approached purposefully.
"What are you?" She asked.
Edward gave her a look. "I don't know what you're talking about, Integra. You must have hit your head-"
Integra smiled at him. This was a carefully perfected you're-going-to-die smile, one normally reserved for serial killers and cynical old ladies, and Edward hadn't expected it.
"Don't insult my intelligence by assuming I'll play along with your charade. Answer, or I'll inform the appropriate authorities. Abnormally pale skin, amber eyes, superhuman speed, and a desire to drink blood. What are you?"
"A normal person who doesn't tan easily."
Integra shook her head. "A normal person does not feel the urge to rip out the throats of his classmates." He looked into her eyes, trying to read her face, and realized that she was smart enough to have figured out so much about him. She was too smart; too unsurprised. Either she was trying to get him to confirm a suspicion, or she honestly thought that he could give her an explanation that didn't come straight out of a horror movie.
She was in danger if another one of his kind ever found out what she knew. She was bold, to come up to him like this alone .Either she was certain he wouldn't kill her, or she'd planned for it already. That thing's protection, perhaps? Edward knew that he had to tell her something.
"You're safer not knowing." He warned her, and then he moved to go into the school. She didn't follow him; rather she answered him, her voice perfectly calm.
"You're safer telling me now, rather than waiting for more drastic reaction."
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