Venom

I couldn't move. I simply stood there, staring as the many Claires cackled viciously around us. Now and then Alice would shriek or whimper and finally Edward let her go. She scrambled to Jasper's side and clasped his hand in hers.

Jasper was lying in the grass, his shirt was torn down one side and I could see the slashes down across his ribs. His honey hair was splayed out on the grass and his crimson eyes were staring blankly at the sky. His legs seemed to be at an odd angle to his body, they were jutting out to the side as though they didn't belong to him and his arms were sitting limply at his sides, unmoving. In fact his entire body was unmoving, as though he was somehow paralyzed… That's when I saw it. As Alice grasped his hand I saw the deep wound in his forearm; the flesh was torn and I could almost see the bone. Around the wound there seemed to be some sort of deep blue ooze seeping from his skin, with tendrils of the same blue travelling up his arm underneath the flesh like some sort of ivy infecting his body.

"Edward", it was all I could manage to say, my voice seemed to have forgotten everything else. Edward simply bowed his head, a look of complete dread marring his features. He spoke quickly and quietly, "She sneaked up on him, she was so silent"

"Did she-" I was cut off by the entire circle of Claires. They sniggered as they spoke as one, like an entire swarm of bees buzzing the same, heavy tune, "We infected him", the girls' gravelly tone reverberated in my head, "Now he's stuck, like a bee in honey, a fly in the ointment", the high pitched cackling started again, an infinite chime of nails on a blackboard.

"Shut up!" Alice was on her feet, she moved closer to one of the Claires, "Shut up you bitches! Look what you've done!" she pointed to Jasper and her voice rose an octave, the girls continued to laugh. Alice picked one of them up by the neck and flicked her wrist, snapping her neck in an instant, but the laughing continued. In fact it intensified, growing in volume. Alice covered her ears and knelt to the ground, "Shut up!"

"Alice", Carlisle's calm voice seemed to be dragged away from him by the continuous snickering and giggling and he had to shout in order to gain Alice's attention, "Alice! I- I think he moved!" The laughing stopped abruptly with a short gasp.

The silence seemed louder that the cackling at first and I had to shake my head to regain concentration. Edward and I moved immediately to Carlisle's side as did an unusually silent Rose and Emmett. Alice darted to Jasper's side and grabbed his hand with both of her fragile hands. Jasper continued to stare towards the sky and lie completely still and we all began to believe that Carlisle had imagined it. But then he moved. His free hand curled into a tight fist, causing his knuckles to go almost transparent. Then his ruby red eyes moved to Alice's face and she smiled at him, as did the rest of us. However, the look in Jasper's eyes was not at all peaceful; his eyes suddenly widened and scrunched tightly shut. His back arched up off the grass and his grip tightened on Alice's hand. His body convulsed and shook and the circling Claires snickered and cheered as he struggled wildly on the lawn.

"Carlisle!" Alice's voice was a shriek, something that sounded more like a wounded animal than a person. Carlisle lightly pushed Alice aside and looked into Jasper's terrified eyes, which were continuously rolling back into his head.

"I don't think she injected enough venom to completely paralyze him", Carlisle was in full doctor mode and he spoke as though he were talking to any other worried family, "Emmett, hold him down". Emmett seemed to physically shake himself out of his statuesque pose and knelt down beside Jasper. He pushed both of his palms onto Jasper's ribcage and pressed down firmly, straightening Jasper's back flat onto the grass.

Edward spoke up, "What's happening to him?"

Carlisle looked into Edward's eyes with something that looked a lot like fear, "He's fighting the venom"

"Can he do that?"

"She didn't get enough venom into his system so, theoretically, he should be able to fight it"

"Theoretically?"

"Well, the venom is powerful. He could fight it and succeed or…" Carlisle's voice trailed off and Alice whimpered slightly.

Jasper continued to thrash around on the grass and Emmett pushed down on his ribs with such force that I thought he might crush them. Jasper's hands were clawing at the pristine lawn, grasping clumps of dirt into his palms and then letting them go quickly before grabbing more. I looked around the circle of the girl surrounding us, staring into the same face over and over again. She was silent now but the evil grin remained on her face, mocking us with her pleasure; I couldn't understand why she would enjoy watching someone fight for their life. I glared into each and every smug face, into each pair of pale grey eyes, and my eyes rested on the spot where the girl had been standing that Alice had killed. There, in the same space, was another replica Claire. She had replaced the dead Claire and was standing with the same pale eyes as all of the others. That's when I remembered. The first time I had seen Claire she had had deep, dark, menacing eyes. Eyes that seemed to penetrate my very soul, eyes that were filled with hatred and malice. But now, surrounding my family, all of these girls had pale eyes, eyes that held no emotion or anger. I moved to stand next to Edward and grasped his hand, I spoke quietly, making sure my face held no emotion so as not to warn the Claires,

"We need to find the real Claire"

"What?"

"When Alice killed that girl another one replaced her. When we were at the beach Claire had dark eyes but all of these girls have pale eyes. We have to find the one with the dark eyes and kill her. That way I think they'll all die", I glanced sideways into Edward's golden eyes and he glanced back, a wry smile tugging at his lips.

"I think you're right", he said, "Start circling them, look into their eyes and see if you can spot the real one".

Rosalie and Alice had obviously heard our quiet conversation and they began to search the eyes of each girl in turn, moving slowly around the circle. The Claires didn't move, they simply stood, grinning, causing my blood to boil and my anger to increase tenfold. I could hear Alice on the opposite side of the inner circle to me; she was hissing and growling at each girl, showing them that now they had touched Jasper, she was going to kill them, one by one if that's what it would take. I knew I would do the same if it were Edward lying there. I was inspecting the eyes of the nearest Claire when they suddenly began to speak,

"What are you looking for? You can't kill us all; we'll just replace our lost sister"

Alice hissed through her teeth and spoke, on her tiptoes, looking into the closest 'sister's' eyes, "We're going to kill you, Claire, don't you worry about that". Alice moved around the circle again and then stopped in front of another of the girls, she glanced once at Jasper and then back to the girl, "Its you!" Alice was a good foot shorter than the girl but she pushed her with the flat of her hand and the girl stumbled backwards, out of the circle.

The Claire spoke with a slight tremor in her voice, this time she was the only one to speak, "No! Not me! You're wrong!" I saw Alice whisper something even I couldn't hear and then, without thinking, she plunged her fist through the girl's chest. It sounded like someone snapping thousands of branches from a tree; Alice's hand emerged from the girl's back and she ripped it back through her body, leaving a small hole all the way through the girl's chest. Her ribs had snapped and splintered and were penetrating her flesh, shining a slick white in the afternoon sun. Claire staggered around for a few seconds, looked at Alice with complete confusion and dropped to the ground, her face mashing into the moist earth. I looked around the circle of remaining girls and for a moment I thought that we would have to do this to destroy all of them but, as I moved to inspect the closest girl, she began to claw at her chest, as though what Alice had inflicted on the real Claire was now being done to her. Each and every girl was doing the same; they clawed at their chests and started to scream in one, long drone. Within seconds each one of them had vanished. They each exploded in a huge burst of white light and all that remained of them was the original Claire, lying motionless in the mud.

Alice dashed to Jasper's side as though nothing had happened and she stroked his face once, tracing the scar above his eyebrow and then the one above his lips. He looked at her once and he seemed to relax slightly. That's when he started to scream.

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