AU: And Happy New Year!! Wow—three new reviews, two new readers. Thanks guys! This is another flashback chapter; picks up right where Chapter 1 left off, so this is the bit of Jasper's turning-to-vamp story that got "censored" for Bella's benefit. Enjoy! (Oh, and if any of this internal monologue seems similar to the narration from my Joker stories, that's only because Jasper's an empath too.)

3

"Get up."

When Jasper didn't respond, Maria kicked him squarely in the ribs and then hauled him up by his hair. He was "Whitlock" no longer; never mind the "Major." She'd done something to him, and whatever he was now, he belonged to her. And to her, he was Jasper. He barely noticed the pain. It was overridden by an intense, nauseating hunger, made sharper by fury and a steadily waning patience. He was weak, and but for the hunger, would have been happy to let himself lie and wait for the cold comfort of death. He didn't understand the compulsion to hurry. A shivering sensation buzzed at the corners of his consciousness, saying, Hurry, Hurry! It wasn't the insistence of the feeling that bothered him. It was the fact that the feeling wasn't his.

"Come along, Jasper," said the sweet-voiced demon at his side. "Let's get you something to drink." There was an edge of anxiety in her tone. That's when Jasper realized it was her impatience intruding on his thoughts.

A cold little hand circled the back of Jasper's neck, propelling him forward. They arrived back at the military outpost, the evacuation point to which he'd just taken the women and children. A few lumps of what looked like rag piles lay in scattered heaps outside, and the hard, packed dirt was stained red. (Red? It was the dead of night here—how could Jasper see red?) It was perfectly quiet, except for a strained whimpering somewhere out of sight. And above all, a sickly sweet scent, terrible and irresistible, hovered over everything.

The two blondes who had come ahead of them stood at the stables. Their dresses were splattered even more than before, and so were their mouths. They had something—or someone—restrained between them, struggling against the grip of their small, white hands. As Jasper drew closer, he recognized the soldier with the bayonet who had seen him off just hours ago. "Major Whitlock! Oh, thank heaven! We're under attack, sir, these two—" But he didn't finish. Jasper was on him within milliseconds of recognizing that heavy drawl, and his neck snapped back.

As the hot, juicy draft ran down to quench his thirst, three jarring emotions circled around him. One was simple: Terror, mixed with disbelief and a dull sense of irony—that was the soldier, surely. Then was Maria's relentless impatience, that Hurry, Hurry! along with a surge of wicked pride. The third, a mild curiosity, belonged in equal parts to the blondes.

Jasper didn't know how he felt. He couldn't feel anything. This place, this night, had taken on the fractured, fuzzy quality of a nightmare. It had jumped from place to place a little too quickly, although Jasper knew he hadn't missed anything in the journey from one to the other. Dreams could transport you much more quickly than riding horseback. Right? Was any of this real?

Yes. Of course it was. You never questioned your nightmares. Only in the cold light of reality did you hope to wake up from the horror. In a real dream, you fought your silent battles as valiantly as you could, knowing somewhere in the back of your mind that it would be over soon, and taking comfort in that knowledge.

Jasper tripped over the dead soldier's leg when he got up again, but Maria caught him. The dead man's blood pulsed thickly through Jasper's body, taking it over bit by bit until he knew it was no longer his. This cold shell was empty now, and Jasper was a small piece of consciousness watching hopelessly from behind its hard, dark eyes.

"Wha'd you do t'me?" he mumbled, slipping over his consonants.

"Don't ask stupid questions," said Maria. "We have work to do. Come on."