CHAPTER NINE

The pain stopped. One instant it had been pulsing in huge beats permeating my entire being and the next it just…stopped. My eyes flew open at the realization, and I jerked back in shock at all the sensory input that filled the wide, gaping holes left by the pain. I wasn't scared, not overwhelmed—not exactly. Just delighted at the sudden cessation of agony, blinded by the rapturous replacement of color, scent, taste, touch, and feel. Beauty. And scary red eyes peering at me from across the room.

"Who are you?" I asked curiously, glancing around at the unfamiliar space. I sat up slowly, not alarmed, just…amazed.

I was a vampire. It had worked. I knew it.

"Do you know who you are?" The young woman moved toward me cautiously, small and slight with short dark hair framing a cute, sprightly face.

"Of course. I'm Dr. Isabella Swan."

"Your friends call you Bella. May I? We're going to be friends."

"Okay." I regarded her with interest. "What should I call you?"

"Alice. I'm Alice."

Alice. Memories slammed back into my head, and I shook it to make them all fall into place. Alice. Edward had mentioned Alice. His sister.

"Yeah." She kept her deep red eyes on mine. "That Alice. I'll explain in a bit, but I imagine you're hungry just now."

At the mention, my throat caught fire. My lips parted as I stared at her neck, where there should have been a pulse but wasn't. Alice grinned and walked over to a bin to pull out familiar bags filled with red liquid.

"It's not animal," she explained as I snatched them from her as soon as she was within reach.

I barely heard her as I sank my teeth through the flimsy barrier and drank and drank and drank. She handed me one bag after another until I felt somewhat sated, although the familiar, if banked, flames scratched at my throat, tingled in my chest and belly. I hated those damn flames. I'd had my fill.

"Someone was all for starting you off with a real human," she said with a glance behind her. "But this is the best alternative we have at the moment."

I froze, not daring to follow the path of her gaze.

"He's alive then?" I asked, trying to put the least amount of curiosity and hope in my voice. "Or not eliminated, at least?"

"Edward? Oh, yes. He's still with us." She stepped aside, and merciless ruddy eyes caught me, swirling with all the colors of a damned sunset.

I took in a gulp of air that ended up sounding like a hiss, a snarl, a warning. All the hairs on my body prickled and stood up in alarm. A smile twitched at his lying lips as he stood. I shrunk back and, with a yelp, realized I was naked. The sheet tangling around my legs was a poor shield, but I yanked it up to my chin anyway. Better than nothing.

"You're not dead."

The hint of a smile became a true one, and he opened his arms to sweep them down his tall, lithe body. Clad in faded blue jeans and a white button-up shirt, he looked so very different, and yet my heart leapt in gladness, as eager as always to be in his presence. My dead, not beating, vampire heart.

"Disappointed?" He cocked a brow, and I scowled, clutching the sheet closer.

"I could ask you the same."

"That hasn't changed."

"What?"

"Questions, questions, all the time." His smile mocked. "You and your pathetic little pokes into my psyche, as if you could hope to understand a vampire's mind. Our motivations and desires."

"I can now, thanks to you."

"Go ahead."

I repeated, "What?"

"Thank me."

"Are you serious?" I goggled at him. "Thank you? Thank you for what, you lying bastard?"

He appeared in front of me, in a blink of even my enhanced eye. I flailed backward before gripping the mattress on which I sat, my fingers tearing through the foam material.

"For giving you your heart's desire. For granting every wish, every dream you've had since you knew what to dream about. For giving you the existence you wanted, though I swore I never would—"

"Would what?" I demanded. My voice might have been shaky, but I lifted my chin in defiance.

"I swore I never would."

I stared into his red-gold eyes, fighting the instinctive reaction to his nearness, a conflicting mix of emotion. Excitement I was used to. Fear, too. The hot, molten flare of desire was something new—a flame I welcomed, damn him. "I'll never believe another word that comes out of your mouth."

"I didn't lie to you. Well, not much, anyway. You believed what you wanted to believe in your superiority, your conceit and consuming self-importance."

"I hate you."

"I know. You tried to have me eliminated."

"You tried to eat me."

He disappeared, and I almost fell forward out of the bed. Frantic glances around the room showed him standing near the open door, his hand on the lever. He tipped his head as he met my gaze.

"We both know where we stand, then."

I glared, and with another grim smile, he left.

I turned my narrowed gaze on Alice, who held her hands up with a grin. "Hey, I'm here to help."

"Where is here, exactly?" I took a deep, reflexive breath to calm myself and peered out the floor-to-ceiling windows lining the entire back wall of the room.

"Casa de Cullen."

"Cullen?" I swung my gaze back to hers.

She shrugged. "We're all Cullens of one kind or another here."

"Okay." I ignored the cryptic comments and moved on to more pressing matters. "But where, exactly, is Casa de Cullen located?"

"Oh." Alice glanced back at the door Lying Bastard had used, but he had disappeared. "It's in Washington State."

I stared at her, eyes wide. "That's a hell of a long way from the Appalachian mountains. How did I get here?"

"Oh. Well. Um." Another quick glance behind her. "Edward brought you."

"Edward brought me?" My voice sounded alarmingly shrill. "What? Explain. Now."

"I don't know all the details. He just showed up here the other day with you screaming and thrashing. He brought you up here until you stopped. He didn't leave your side, not for a second. Not until you started coming out of it."

"How long was I…in it?"

"I'm not sure. Two days since he brought you. I have no idea before that."

"Is that typical? I mean, how long does it usually take?"

"It depends," Alice replied quietly.

"On?"

"How much venom, where you were bitten, your state of mind, the vampire's state of mind." He gaze focused on my throat and then, weirdly, tracked to my wrists. I glanced down and gasped air into my still lungs.

Clear, precise bite wounds circled my wrists—human bite wounds. Or, what had once been human. I dropped the sheet to examine the length of my arms and saw matching scars on the inside of each bicep. My hands flew to my neck, searching and finding more raised edges, and I flung the sheet away to frantically examine my legs. Yes, at each ankle, behind my knees…between my legs. Inches from my labia—one deep, clean, huge, perfect bite mark on each of my otherwise smooth inner thighs.

"What the hell?" I asked in a high, clear voice.

Alice lifted wide eyes to mine before blanking her features. "I—I don't know."

"Yes, you do. Alice, what are these? What the hell happened to me?"

"I'm sorry, Bella. You're going to have to ask Edward. I don't know what happened before he brought you here."

For some reason, she lied to me, too. But she couldn't know what happened when I was across the country, at Edward's mercy, unconscious and unaware… Could she? I shuddered. What the hell had he done to me? I couldn't begin to imagine, not with the level of contempt and hatred he had shown to that point.

I stared between my splayed legs before realizing my pose and snapped my knees together, clutching the sheet I'd dropped in shock at seeing the bite wounds. The vampire bite wounds. In my vampire flesh.

"Where are my clothes?" I asked. Sitting naked in a strange bed in a strange house amid, well, strangers was not comfortable.

I glanced up when Alice didn't respond. "Alice?"

"I don't know," she repeated.

"Wait. You don't know? Didn't you undress me? Who else is here?" Something she'd said earlier—a couple of somethings—occurred to me. "You said 'we're all Cullens.' Who is 'we'?"

"I'll explain everything to you in a bit, I promise. Right now—"

"I think I need explanations right now. You said Edward didn't leave. Ever? Not even when you—or whoever—undressed me? And by 'whoever,' I mean another woman. It better have been a woman."

"Well, no. It was Edward. Edward undressed you, cleaned you up, helped—He wouldn't let anyone else near. It was Edward."

I lost the tenuous hold I exerted over my newly raw and intense emotions. When I gained control again, the sheets were shredded, the mattress in pieces, the frame broken, and the nightstand and dresser smashed through the middle. Alice threw another three bags of blood at me, which I sucked down in greedy haste, and then collapsed on the floor.

"I'm sorry." I curled up into a ball, shivering with the urge to cry. Laugh. Scream in frustration and jump with joy. Never move from this spot and run to the ends of the earth all at the same time.

Alice approached and dropped into a cross-legged position next to me as she reached out slowly to stroke the hair off my face. "It's okay. It's the change. Everyone reacts differently. You've done amazingly well. You haven't tried to kill any of us or destroy the house."

I glanced around the room pointedly, but she just laughed.

"This is nothing. Easily fixed. Edward does have that effect on people, doesn't he?"

I bared my teeth in reaction to his name and the image that flashed through my head of him lounging on the bed in his cell, speaking to me earnestly, gently, enticingly, spilling lies and manipulations with every mesmerizing parting of his lips.

"Yeah, that reaction, too." Alice smiled as I panted in a vain attempt to bring my burgeoning anger under control.

"Alice, please. Tell me what's happening."

"Edward brought you home, to his family. This particular house is in a fairly remote location in the Olympic National forest. The others wanted to be closer to him and the Institute in case something went wrong or he needed us, but I saw… I knew we needed to be here. This is where he would need to be after."

"Wait. You saw?" A memory niggled at the back of my mind but was surprisingly difficult to bring into focus. I had a crystal clear memory of the smallest details since I had become conscious in this room, but my memories from before were murky at best. I slogged through the mental fog, and the information I sought became clear. "You're the sister. The pre-cog."

She tipped her head.

"Then… You saw. You knew what was happening…what would happen. What did happen? Ugh." I rubbed my forehead as I tried to organize my thoughts.

"Yeah, it does get a little confusing. I saw—do see—some things, but you… You're difficult to read. I mostly see you through Edward. You, you're blocking me. I've never been able to see you or your future actions clearly."

"Why? What's wrong with me?"

Alice laughed and took my hand. "Nothing. There's nothing wrong with you, Bella. There's just so much to explain, to tell you, and I don't know where to start. How to start. How much I can tell you."

"Start a the beginning, and tell me everything."

"There are seven of us in our coven—our family. Carlisle—you're going to love Carlisle. Two peas in a pod, you are. Scientists. He's a doctor—a medical doctor. You'll have lots to talk about. His mate, Esme. Rosalie and Emmett, and my Jasper. And, of course, Edward."

"Of course." My head spun. Seven other vampires. A family. A coil of jealousy unfurled within me, but I tamped it down. I'd only ever had my father and longed for a big, boisterous family. Brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins. A mother. "Why did he bring me here?"

"It's home. It's safe."

"Safe? Safe from what?"

"With seven vampires, with our abilities, safe from pretty much anything. Humans, other vampires, the Volturi."

"Abilities?"

"I can see the future. Jasper's an incredible fighter and an empath. Emmett's amazingly strong, stronger than just about any other vampire in existence, except for Edward. Especially now, after—"

"He drank my blood," I finished for her.

"Yes. There's no other creature in existence that can rival him now. It's burden that sits heavily on his shoulders, you know. None of this was easy for him."

"Let's not discuss that just yet."

A volatile rise of emotions threatened to overtake my reason at the thought of that particular vampire. Meanwhile, my newly expanded brain cataloged and stored the information she gave me, my researcher instinct marveling at the possibilities before me. An empath. A pre-cog. A family unit. So much to learn and study.

"He had to come back here, to us, to wherever we gathered. It's instinct to seek a safe place for your change, especially considering what you are to him."

"What am I, exactly?"

"Well, you're his singer, first of all. He told you about that."

"It wasn't a lie?"

"No. Everything he told you about that was true. You are his singer. He needed your blood to make him stronger, make him more, so he can defeat the Volturi. Keep them from destroying every human and therefore vampire. Second, the two of you are bound, connected. Mates."

"Wait. No. No, no, no. We don't even like each other. He tried to kill me!"

"Yeah, that wasn't his finest hour."

I pushed away from her. "You also have a skill of understatement. Not his finest hour. He's a lying, manipulative monster. I hate him."

"Maybe right now, but you feel more. You feel the connection. You have, right from the beginning."

"No, I haven't."

"Now who's lying?" she asked kindly.

"Just because I'm his singer, that means I'm his mate? I told him before I'm a fan of free will. I don't believe in not having a choice of who to be with, whom to love, that it's some sort of fated, mystical destiny, and we fall in love at first sight. I don't believe in that at all."

"It's not about not having a choice," Alice explained patiently. "Don't you believe that there is one person out there we're meant to be with? One person that complements you physically and mentally. Biologically. Why do we fall in love with one person and not another?"

"I don't know," I admitted.

"That's what vampire mating is. Humans search their entire lives for their other half, their perfect match. Sometimes they find them, sometimes they don't. With vampires, the cool thing is we know. We're able to recognize our mate right away. No guessing, no wondering, just, yep, that's him."

"So, Edward knew I was his mate right away, and he still played his evil little games, still tried to kill me?"

"It's different when it's a human and a vampire. Two different species. You can't mate with a different species. Maybe singers are vampire mates in human form, who knows? The attraction is there, but it's completely different. Anyway, once you changed, I think that's when he realized. You recognized him, too. When you woke up, you just knew."

"I didn't," I protested weakly, but recalled with shivering clarity the bolt of intense emotion and overwhelming sensation I'd wrestled when I laid eyes on him after waking from the change. And now my scientific curiosity was roused, as well, with all the talk about singers and mates, humans and vampires, but that was a subject for another time.

"He must have sensed it on some level when you were human, just like you did him. I don't know how else he could have resisted taking your blood right away, although we are talking about Edward. He's always been a bit…different. Not just what he is, but who he is, deep inside. You need to spend some time together, not as captor and captive, but just the two of you."

"He's different, all right. I think we've spent enough time together, and I'm not sure who was captor and who was captive, then or now."

"He's your sire, too, and that forges an unbreakable connection between the two of you. With all those things—mate, singer, sire—the two of you will always be bound in some form or another. You'll have to deal with him eventually."

"Sire?"

"He changed you. His venom is in you—your body, your veins. Usually, mating is completely separate, but in your case, yours and Edward's… Well—"

"I'm doomed," I moaned dramatically. "I don't want to be connected to him in any way."

"Maybe not right now…" Her voice faded as I scoffed. "You're going to have to work that out between you."

"Maybe in a couple hundred—no, a couple thousand—years, I'll be able to speak to him without wanting to rip his stupid head off his shoulders. But right now, I just want to figure out what happened and what I'm going to do. You can see the future, see Edward's. Did you know what he intended to do?"

"Going in, Edward had a plan in mind, but when he met you…" She shook her head and shrugged. "Edward's never rattled. Never unsure once he's made up his mind, but he wasn't expecting you, his response to you or your blood. It threw him for a loop. That would have been bad enough, but for a while there, trying to read his future was worse than riding the Tilt-A-Whirl."

"What about after? After I left the Institute? How did I get here? You said he brought me, but… How did he find me? How did he get away?"

Alice glanced at the door before turning back to me. "He'll have to tell you the full story. Like I said, you're hard for me to see. Once he found you, things got blurry."

"But up until then? Where did he find me? How?"

"He regained consciousness and strength not long after they brought him to that room."

Alice glanced at me with reproach, but I held her stare blandly. I wouldn't feel bad for sending him to the disposal unit with every intention of leaving him there. Not that I'd show, anyway.

"Edward isn't your typical vampire, as you know, and with the added benefit of your blood, his singer's blood, there isn't anything that can hold him. He made an Edward-sized hole in that cage and the outer wall of the building before anyone even knew what had happened."

"Just that easy," I mused.

"Just that easy," Alice confirmed. "He followed you, your car, and saw where you went off the road—"

"I went off the road?"

Alice nodded.

"Huh. The last thing I remember is…" I tried to make the jumbled images in my head clear. Swirling and spinning. A tinkling crash, roaring. Metal being crushed like tinfoil. After that, nothing but flames licking agony, taking over my body and mind.

"He found you, got you out of the car. You were bleeding pretty badly, and he, uh, cleaned you, sealed the cuts. Your leg was broken."

My hand went to my left thigh in reflexive memory, even though I had no conscious recollection. And I wasn't about to ask how he'd cleaned me—what that had entailed. I shuddered both in horror and a tingle of delight. And hunger. My throat began to burn again at the thought of human blood, even my own.

"My visions are pretty vague after that, and Edward showed up with you the next morning. You've been here—changing—ever since."

"Why didn't he just kill me then? Finish what he started, especially if I was bleeding so badly. How could he not?"

"I don't know the answer to that. He's the mind-reader, not me." She smiled sadly. "I suspect it's because you'd already started to change and were no longer human. You'd ceased to be simply a food source, a source of additional strength to him. Maybe he sensed you as his mate even then, that early in the process. I wouldn't think that was possible, but like I said, Edward's different. His senses are extremely powerful, more so than even a normal vampire."

"Thank you. For telling me." I'd want to know more, need the details, but I wasn't ready to have a serious conversation with him. The information Alice imparted would do until I felt up to the task. "But what happens now?"

"I'd like to introduce you to the rest of the family when you're ready. We'd like you to stay. The first few months as a newborn are going to be hard enough without the guidance and support of your sire. Especially when your sire is your mate."

"Ugh. Let's not talk about that."

"There are some things you'll need to know, to be ready for, but we can discuss that later. Let's get you dressed. I bet you're ready to eat again."

She disappeared into the closet, and I wrapped my arms around my stomach and closed my eyes. Thirst and hunger, the need to stop the awful ache, slowly drove me to a fever pitch. I wanted warm, soothing red rivers of blood. I wanted to sink my teeth into a soft, giving neck, to feed, to take what was mine by right of being the superior predator and top of the food chain. The fact I would be taking sustenance from a human didn't seem so bad. As a matter of fact, the more I thought about it, the more right it felt. Hunger snarled in my stomach and clawed its way up my throat.

"I see what he meant," I whispered.

"What?"

"Edward. He told me during one of our conversations that the monster takes over and glories in feeding. I think—some part of me still thinks—feeding from a human should be wrong, but the other part, the stronger part, doesn't agree. It just wants, and that overrides everything else."

Alice handed me a stack of clothing with a sympathetic nod. "It does. It's our nature—your nature, now."

"I don't suppose I can keep eating bagged blood, then?" I asked feebly.

"We've tried. Carlisle's made us try, to see if it would work, and I guess we'll keep trying, although I'm not sure it matters. Not if what I've seen comes to pass." Alice shook her head and then gave me an impulsive hug. "But enough of that for now. Do the clothes fit? Edward didn't take the time to stop and get any of your own. I had to guess at your size, but I have an eye for that sort of thing."

"Yes. They're perfect—both fit and style. Thank you." I pulled the shirt over my head and buttoned the jeans.

The material felt weird, every slide and scratch and touch magnified a thousand times. My vampire brain processed my heightened senses so efficiently that most things didn't even register, but every once on a while something slipped through, and all I could do was marvel.

A presence approached the door, a vampire presence. I heard the footsteps, the slide of fabric against skin, the rasp of breaths. The displacement of air brushed against my skin and a strong, unique scent tickled my nose. Not Edward. A glance at Alice showed she wasn't alarmed; in fact, she fairly glowed as a smile lit her face.

"That's my Jasper," she told me. "Is it okay if he comes in?"

I nodded, my eyes flitting back and forth between her and the doorway as I backed against the wall. The door opened, and my body went haywire, the predator in me recognizing and responding to the superior one in him with instinctive swiftness. I dropped to a defensive crouch and bared my teeth, hands tense and clawed as I faced the warrior who stood in the threshold.

He was tall, blond, and covered in battle scars. Bite wounds—vampire bite wounds. Hundreds of them. Air hissed through my teeth as fear and wonder escalated, and then I sensed another presence, one that urged me to seek refuge, safety, security, and also claw his eyes out.

Edward.

He stood in the hall, and as the blond vampire turned to cast him an amused glance over his shoulder, my fight or flight response went nuts again. The look on Edward's face was frightening to behold, the flickering in his eyes a clear warning.

"She's scared," he stated flatly, his gaze burning holes into the other male vampire.

"She's fine. Bella, this is Jasper, my husband. He won't hurt you." Alice took him by the arm and steered him into the room.

I struggled to relax, let my body uncoil and stand, but my attention switched back and forth between Edward and Jasper, not sure who presented the bigger threat. Jasper I was wary of as a warrior, an unknown entity. Edward I wanted to battle on a whole different level.

"Hello, Bella."

Jasper's voice was gentle and slow, like his smile, and I responded with one of my own. A sudden wave of peace washed over me, and I relaxed with a loud exhale. It felt so good not to be frightened, tense, worried.

"She's not scared anymore," Jasper said to Edward.

"Cut it out."

The unmistakable warning in his tone and stance made my hackles rise, and the impression of tranquility disappeared instantly. I crouched in the corner again.

"Jasper's a bit more than just an empath," Edward explained with a derisive lift of his lips. "And Bella's not a fan of having her free will taken away. But she can be convinced to give it to you."

I hissed, and he sneered, while Alice and Jasper both scowled.

"Edward—" Alice began, but he stepped into the room and held out his hand.

I stared at it like the snake I knew him to be.

"Come with me."

"I'm not going anywhere with you."

He smiled, and an ache knifed through my heart at the resultant beauty of his face. "Of course you are. Come, Bella."

"I'm not your pet."

He laughed, suddenly standing only inches away.

"Of course you are." He fixed a stern frown on his face, like he chastised a misbehaving puppy. "Bella, come."

I swung to slap him, but he caught my fist. I jerked my knee up to see if vampire balls were just as susceptible as human, but he clasped my knee. Struggling, I hopped on one foot, but he laughed again and tossed me on the wrecked bed. He pinned me underneath his longer, larger body, quelling my attempts to escape with ridiculous ease, and dipped his head to run his nose along my throat.

"This looks familiar. Will you beg me to take another bite? Repeat yourself, just like last time we were this close?"

"Get off me, you conceited cocksucker."

"Mmm. Now there's an idea."

He actually groaned in delight, and I went a little crazy, snarling and struggling, for all the good it did me. I glared and clamped my lips closed, refusing to give him any more ammunition to humiliate me. He studied my mouth with gleeful intent.

"Seems I'll be repeating myself. First, this is going to hurt."

He licked my throat, and I growled.

"Second? I really don't think I'll be able to stop."

And then he kissed me.

Ooh, bad vampire.