7. Disbelief

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I stared at Bella, astonished. "You think… what? Why?"

"They're from a new family in town— it's so nice not being the center of attention anymore! I wish they'd come sooner. The father's a doctor and took a job at the hospital; he and his wife are young, but she can't have children so they've adopted or fostered these four teenagers. According to Jessica, anyway. There was more; she and Lauren went on and on, but I don't remember all of it."

She giggled at the face I pulled. She knew Jessica and Lauren were not my favorites among her classmates.

"Anyway, as soon as I saw them, they reminded me of you. They're pale and beautiful—the blonde girl is almost as beautiful as you are—and the way they move, they're so graceful. They all have old-fashioned names, and I don't think they ate anything at lunch the three days they were there. Their eyes are strange though, they're golden, almost. And their eyes are all the same color; how could that be if they aren't related? I think the two blondes are siblings, but the other two aren't supposed to be related at all."

I wanted to laugh, but restrained myself since I didn't want to hurt her feelings. "Do you hear what you're saying?" I asked gently. "The father is a doctor at the hospital? How could he be a vampire and constantly risk being exposed to flowing blood? Even when you're not thirsty, fresh blood is very difficult to resist. And if they were vampires, why would the teenagers go to high school? If it were college, perhaps I could understand, but high school? And their eyes… Bella, vampires' eyes are red or black, or somewhere in between. I've never heard of vampires with eyes any other color."

"Oh," she said, deflated. "Oh well."

"You sound disappointed," I teased her. "Surely you don't want there to be vampires attending your school?"

"Well, no, not really," she admitted. "But if they were vampires I was thinking that you could talk to them, find out how they change their eye color, and it would make it easier for you to blend in. You'd be able to do more things that you want to do— even go to college! You could stay in the area or come visit and…" She faltered into silence under my disbelieving gaze.

"Bella, you can't seriously expect me to stay with you?" I was sorry for my aghast tone when I saw the expression on her face, but really! What was she thinking?

She rolled away from me, onto her back, her cheeks a fiery red. She tried to pull her hand from mine, but I wouldn't let her. "I… I guess I shouldn't have expected… But when you said… I mean, I understand if you don't want to…"

"I didn't mean it like that," I snapped. Ridiculous girl—how could she even think I didn't want her? "Of course I want to. But I'm a monster, Bella, a foul undead beast. I don't deserve to stay with you." I could see the stubbornness in the set of her lips and cut her off before she could speak. "You deserve better than me. You deserve someone good, who has the same kind of brightness inside him as you have. Someone who can be with you in the sunlight, who can give you children." I shoved down the pain, and continued, my voice hard, "Someone you can tell people about, who you don't have to hide. Someone you can be safe with. Someone good, not someone like me."

That adorable furrow was back between her brows. "What do you mean, not someone like you? There's nothing wrong with you."

It took all my self-control to keep my face expressionless. "Have you not been listening to anything I've been telling you? And how could you so quickly forget what I almost did to you?"

She sat up and scowled down at me, saying fiercely, "You don't have to be bad. You've made some horrible choices, but you don't have to keep making them. You can choose whether to be good or evil."

I gave up. There was no way to keep the disbelief out of my expression or my voice as I told her slowly, "Bella, I am a vampire. I have to kill humans to survive. I cannot be good— by my very nature, I am incapable of it! Are you insane?"

There was a surprising amount of relief in asking her that.

Of course she ignored the question, insisting hotly, "I know there's good in you. You wouldn't be sorry for what you've done if there wasn't. And if becoming a vampire made you inherently evil you wouldn't have hated Tredan, or saved Emilie, or—don't you look at me like that!" She jabbed her finger into my chest with enough force that I had a fleeting concern that she may have injured herself. "You did save her!"

"If it weren't for me, she wouldn't have been there in the first place," I told her stonily.

"It wasn't your fault!" she cried. "It was Tredan's fault for being so… so… despicable! He was trying to hurt you, and he did and I'm so sorry, but don't you dare say you didn't save her—if it weren't for you she would have died a horrible, terrifying death!"

"She may have still died a horrible death," I pointed out inflexibly, trying to keep the pain from my voice.

"Even if she did, at least it was in a place where she was safe and taken care of, because you cared enough about her to save her," Bella insisted. "If you were evil, or a monster, or whatever other horrible thing you think about yourself, why would you have done that?"

I opened my mouth to respond, then realized I could hear someone's thoughts. No, two people… thinking about hunting… approaching quickly… too quickly to be human. The wind blew their scents toward me and I reacted instinctively; in less than a second we were across the meadow, with Bella's back pressed against a tree and myself in a defensive crouch before her.

"Edward?" she whispered. Her heart was racing.

"Shh," I whispered back. "Just be very still. And try to calm down."

Two vampires burst through the trees, stopping short at the sight of us. Dear God, how was I going to be able to save her? One was so big, the biggest vampire I'd ever seen, and the other was literally covered in scars. He'd obviously survived hundreds of battles. How could I protect her from both of them?

I dug into their thoughts. They had smelled me, old scents in the forest, but had approached from a different direction than we had and hadn't realized I was here now. They were surprised, and cautious, but there was no malice in them—maybe they didn't yet realize that Bella was human.

"Oh shit," the big one said. "Jasper, that's Bella Swan." Images of her flittered through his mind. She was at a table with some other humans, in what appeared to be a school cafeteria.

Wait. School?

I looked at their eyes. They were golden.

She was right.

There were vampires at her school.

If we survived this, she was never going back there. We were going to leave this town and go somewhere safe.

"Listen, dude," the big vampire said soothingly, "I don't know Bella, but she seems like a nice girl. You need to move away from her."

I crouched lower, digging the toes of my shoes into the ground to give me more thrust when I lunged, and growled menacingly. Bella whimpered behind me.

"You're scaring her, man. Just relax. You don't want to hurt her."

He continued on in that vein, his mind saying the same thing as his mouth, except for one fleeting thought which made no sense to me: Damn it, if we have to move already Rose is going to be pissed.

The scarred vampire was contemplating emotions, which I found an extremely strange thing to do at a time like this. Panic… fear… surprise… horror… determination… desperation… confusion… protectiveness… love…

He looked surprised at that last thought. "Uh, Emmett, I don't think what's happening is what we thought was happening."

Had those been my emotions he was thinking about?

The vampire named Emmett laughed loudly. "You sound like that guy in The Princess Bride! 'You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.'"

The vampire named Jasper sighed. "Whatever, Em. You can stand down. I don't think Bella's in any danger." He looked at me assessingly. "She's not in any danger, correct?"

I stayed in my crouch. "Not from me."

"Then she's not in danger at all," Emmett said cheerfully, in his booming voice. "I'm Emmett, this is Jasper. We live nearby. And you are?"

I straightened from my crouch almost despite myself. "I'm—" My head snapped slightly to the right. "Someone's calling me."

Why had I said that? I had never, in my entire existence, let slip any indication that I could read minds.

"What? I didn't hear anything," Emmett protested.

"No, I hear her," I heard myself say. I felt unnaturally relaxed for the situation we were in; in fact, I felt more relaxed than I could ever remember being as a vampire. I frowned at Jasper. He could feel emotions—could he project them, too?

He felt my suspicion and looked at me thoughtfully. Wow, that was fast. I don't think anyone's ever realized so quickly what I could do. I wonder if Alice is right about him being a telepath. He's definitely gifted in some way.

I fought to keep my face impassive, although I may as well not have bothered since my shock and fear clearly registered in his mind. Who was Alice, and how did she know anything about me?

This was a debacle. I needed to get Bella out of here.

A/N: Poor Edward. LOL Obviously, I've had the Cullens arrive in Forks a couple of months after Bella did, since they would have smelled Edward around the town (and possibly on Bella) long before now, and he would have smelled them and likely have moved on from Forks before ever singling Bella out. The next chapters of this will be up on Wednesday and Friday, and hopefully I'll have the next chapter of The World Itself posted by the weekend. Thanks for the reviews- I love knowing what you guys think!