5. Despair

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Bella's heart rate was elevated, and I turned my head to frown at her.

"Why are you stopping?" she demanded.

"Are you okay? Your heart is racing like mad."

"I'm fine!" She rolled her eyes when I continued to frown at her, then took a few dramatically deep breaths. "Better?" she asked, a bit sarcastically.

Her heart was still beating too rapidly, but it had slowed quite a bit. "Yes," I conceded. "Anyhow, Tredan liked to bring his prey back to wherever we happened to be staying so he had more time with them. We'd stayed in so many filthy, abandoned buildings… He had snatched a little girl from her bed that night, and when we got back I realized she was the youngest sister of my friend Jack. I had known we were close to where I used to live, but I hadn't recognized which house he got her from. Tredan sometimes liked to make his prey scream for my help, if he could. The futility of it amused him, and he enjoyed how much I hated it. So you can imagine how delighted he was when Emilie started screaming my name without any prompting from him."

"Oh, Edward," Bella gasped, horrified.

I stared unseeingly at the clouds and tried not to hold her hand too tightly. "She was screaming, and he was hurting her and telling me everything he was going to do to her. I could hear his mind; he was so damn elated that he'd found someone I knew. My memories were fuzzy, but Jack had been one of my closest friends and I'd known her since she was a baby, and then she turned her head and looked at me… the look on her face… I just… I snapped. I lunged at him and pulled him away from her, and I don't know if it was the fighting techniques I'd gleaned from his mind, being able to read his moves in his head before he made them, or my rage, but it was surprisingly easy to destroy him. I tore him to shreds and spit venom on him and lit him on fire with his own matches. I was so angry, out of control, still growling like a rabid beast, and there was venom running down my chin, and Emilie…" My voice broke, the grief and horror spilling over me afresh.

Bella rolled onto her side and pressed a kiss to my shoulder. She gripped my arm with her free hand and rested her face there against me, her breath warming me, and I was so thankful she wasn't yet running away.

"Emilie was terrified of me. He'd broken so many of her bones—her legs, some ribs, one of her arms—but she was trying to push herself away from me, making these horrible whimpering cries every time she moved. I tried to approach her, to help her, but she got hysterical and I was afraid she would hurt herself further. Her mind was incoherent with terror. I had to leave the room and wait for the pain to force her into unconsciousness. Then I stabilized her fractures as best I could and ran with her to the hospital. I banged on the door until I heard someone coming, and hid in the shadows until she was safely inside. I tried to follow the minds of the people who took her inside, so I could see that she was well taken care of, but I didn't have the control over my gift that I now do. There were so many minds inside there, and I lost her. I left the city then, before the sun rose, and I never returned."

Bella pressed another kiss to my shoulder. "You don't know what happened to her, do you?"

"No." My voice was heavy with sadness and guilt.

"We can try to find out, you know. There are websites with census records, birth and death certificates, that kind of thing. I mean, we can't know what she said to people or what kind of person she turned out to be, but we should at least be able to find out if she lived. If you want. What was her last name?"

"Haddon," I said quietly. "And yes, thank you. I would like that."

"Okay, we will then." She sounded marginally more cheerful. "So where did you go after you left Chicago?"

"West. There were less people to the west. I didn't know what to do. I didn't… I don't think I can explain how much I loathed myself. I tried not to remember my human life, but there was always this nagging in the back of my brain that I was supposed to be good. Kind, gentlemanly, respectful, responsible… and now I'd become this evil… thing. A monster. I wanted to die."

Bella made a noise of protest, but I continued on, my tone dispassionate. "The first sizable river I came to, I tried to drown myself. I knew I didn't need to breathe, but I'd hoped if I filled my lungs with water… When that didn't work I wasn't sure what to do. I thought perhaps if I jumped from a mountain my body would break into pieces, but without someone to burn me I wasn't certain what would happen, if my body was capable of reassembling itself. So I decided to try to starve myself. Other beasts would die without food, so I reasoned the same would be true of me.

"As the weeks went by I grew weaker, but unfortunately it was mentally as well as physically. It became more and more difficult to think rationally. I tried to stay in desolate areas away from people, but the days began to run together and eventually I was mindlessly wandering, rather than planning where I would go. I drifted too close to Yellowstone National Park— it was quite the tourist attraction, even back in 1919—and one day I smelled the most delectable scent… The next thing I knew, I was surrounded by dead bodies. It had been a family: parents, three children. They'd been picnicking. I didn't even remember killing them, and somehow that made it worse. They deserved for me to remember."

Bella was crying, her slow tears seeping into my sleeve. I was glad someone was able to weep for them on my behalf, but at the same time it was monstrous of me to distress her this way.

"You don't have to listen to all this, you know. I'll take you back to the truck whenever you like." And then I'll leave you alone, I silently promised her. My chest ached at the thought.

She swiped at her face and said in a surprisingly steady voice, "No, you promised you would tell me. I want to know." She wrapped her hand back around my arm.

I stared at her in disbelief for a moment. Was she really going to stay through all this? Why wasn't she fleeing?

I sighed and fixed my gaze back on the clouds. "Very well. Let me know if you change your mind. No one could blame you for not wanting to pollute your mind with this."

She nestled her face against my shoulder and said grumpily, "You lived it, I can listen to it. Stop stalling, Edward."

A surprised laugh burst out of me. "Okay, okay. So, after my complete loss of control, it became clear to me that starving myself wasn't an option. It made me too mentally fuzzy, and without knowing for certain that it would eventually work I couldn't take the risk… I couldn't allow myself to ever kill children or a family again. I was forced to accept that I was stuck as a vampire. I decided I would only hunt criminals: murderers, rapists, and the like. I had tried to do that as much as possible while with Tredan, using my mind-reading to single them out, and it seemed a somewhat reasonable compromise. For several decades that's what I did. And over time, I lost what vestiges of my humanity were left. I couldn't empathize with humans anymore; I could barely remember having human concerns. I was a monster who was forced to feed upon them, so I couldn't afford to feel any sympathy for them. I think, subconsciously, I made myself mentally separate from them. Humans were food, like cattle or chickens. That was all."

Bella murmured, "That makes sense."

I scoffed at her. "None of this makes sense."

She lifted her head and frowned at me. "I mean, you had no choice but to feed from humans, so it makes sense that you mentally distanced yourself."

"I suppose," I agreed grudgingly.

She lay her head back down, and took a deep breath. "Killing criminals sounds like it probably was the best choice you could have made. Why did you… that's not what you do anymore. Why?"

A/N: Tomorrow we'll find out why, and some other interesting things. You'll also see why I gave the poor guy such an evil creator. I posted a picture of Emilie to my Tumblr, so check it out. Thanks for the reviews- I love knowing what you guys think!