I was never aware of any of this. All I know was told to me later, when I started to hunt down my past.
It would seem that my good friend Dr. Veravaz was a vampire. I hadn't noticed anything strange about him, but what did I know?
And Dr. Veravaz had formed a special attachment with all of his patients. He was always sure to keep them human. He never bit them or killed them. He had an impeccable track record. In this way, he was much like Carlisle.
James, on the other hand, was a vicious killer. He had stopped by in this town to feed, and he had gotten a whiff of me.
For him, I was la tua cantante, the singer. My blood smelled better to him than any other human's on the planet.
So he sought me out, eager to play his sadistic game. Dr. Veravaz had to make a choice.
He announced he was quitting his practice and shut down the asylum. The rest of the patients went to jails or hospitals. Me, he took with him.
Unsure, he at first tried to outrun James. He put me in his niece's clothes, to confuse the scent, and changed my appearance drastically.
He cut my hair with arts-and-crafts scissors and let me borrow his niece's dress. But it wasn't enough, of course. He knew it wouldn't be.
Dr. Veravaz took me in his car and trekked across the country. I lay across the backseat the whole time, so motionless and still he must have thought me dead, except he could hear a pulse.
He swerved, took strange exits, trying to throw James off the scent. But nothing worked, of course.
Finally, we ended up on the other side of the country, Washington State. We were, in fact, dangerously close to Forks, where the Cullens lived. Of course, at the time, Rosalie, Emmett, Jasper, Bella and I had yet to join them.
Dr. Veravaz knew he had no choice. James had backed him into a corner. He was on the coast of the Pacific Ocean. He could either go down south, or go east.
Going south was dangerous. It was sunnier, and there was more of a chance he'd be discovered. The absolute last thing he needed was having the Volturi after him, too.
But going east was equally as dangerous. He'd inevitably cross paths with James, and that could not end well.
He left me in a hotel room and went out to seek James.
James was sitting in a car. Stolen, judging by the Nevada license plate. He was drumming his fingers on the wheel when Veravaz approached. James grinned a tooth-bearing smile.
"Veravaz, my old friend," he addressed him. "It's been decades."
"James. Stop. Just...stop," Veravaz pleaded.
James kept smiling slyly at him. "Why?"
"Because this girl's been in our asylum since she was seven," Veravaz answered readily. "She's lived a solitary life, full of torture and hatred. Can't you just spare her?"
"Who gave her that life?" James countered. "Who's the one running the asylum here? I'm going to put her out of her misery."
"James. I had to," Veravaz stressed. "You don't understand. Her parents blackmailed me. I sought them out after a few years. The child was calm, docile - totally sane.
"They instructed me to keep her locked up, and keep up the shock treatment. If I didn't, they threatened to disclose our secret.
"This information doesn't go past this car, James. Even if she survives this encounter...even if anyone who knew her sees you again, tell them everything but this." Veravaz interrupted his rant and shook James by the shoulders. "Say it! Swear to it!"
Frightened by the old one's power, James answer, flustered. "I swear," he choked out. "But she won't survive."
With that, Veravaz knew what he had to do.
He would turn the girl into a vampire.
He would never tell another soul about her parents' blackmail.
He would kill himself after the bite.
This was turning into quite a morbid runaway tale, but it had to become such. He had no other choice.
It frightened him, but he had to do it. For the girl, he reminded himself. For the girl.
Veravaz wasn't entirely sure how to do this. Of course, he had fed on human blood before, but he had always killed his unlucky victims.
Like Edward, he believed becoming a vampire was a damning fate, and he did not wish that on his worst enemy. Not even on James.
He raced back to the hotel room at vampire speed. There were maybe seconds left. This was not the time to over-think.
Just do it, he encouraged himself.
The girl was still so motionless. Had he killed her? He took a nanosecond to listen for a pulse. Yes, it was there, faint but still ebbing and flowing.
Biting the neck was so stereotypical, and yet he couldn't think of a less painful way. Reaching in, he nicked the nape of the neck.
The desire for the blood was instantaneous and overwhelming. With every iota of self-control he had, he drew in oxygen and held it indefinitely.
He waited for the girl to start thrashing, for her to have some recognition of the pain. He vaguely remembered his own human-to-vampire transformation.
Veravaz mainly remembered the awful pain, like nothing he had ever felt before. But nothing in the girl stirred.
Meanwhile, James was waiting outside the hotel room. He'd started to scale the wall, but something had stopped him dead in his tracks.
The unmistakable smell of a human turning into a vampire.
He could still get a whiff of the girl's delicious fragrance, but it was tainted with the sweet, floral smell of vampire venom.
Cursing his bad luck, he stood, a statue, for a long time outside the window. He could smell the venom overcoming the child.
What a shame. It was too bad, really. She had smelled lovely.
Sighing, he started to run towards another part of the country. Time to continue the game elsewhere.