!-- page size: 8.5in 11in; margin: 0.79in P margin-bottom: 0.08in --
Chapter Thirteen
She was too quiet. She'd only screamed twice, once soon after Carlisle bit her, and then again two days later. I would have been proud of her if every cry of agony, every plea for death that echoed through her mind hadn't echoed through mine too.
Carlisle sat with her, holding her hand, apologizing with almost every breath, promising her it would all be over soon. But still she begged silently for death, even as he tried to comfort her. And he worried for her until her pain echoed through all of us.
He had wondered what had happened, but I'd refused to tell him. I knew if I told him, he would guess my plan immediately and try to talk me out of it. But the man who had done this and the woman who had allowed this deserved the darkest circle of hell and deserved to know exactly why.
My parents had always claimed I had the tendency to be overly dramatic, and perhaps that was why I dressed all in black that night, exactly three nights after Carlisle changed my sister. I wanted my victims to see exactly what I was, and I wanted to be the last thing they feared just as they had been the last thing my sister's feared.
I strode past Carlisle, who was sitting with Emily in the rear parlor, towards the front door. He took in my grim expression in an instant and questioned, his voice unusually hard, "Edward, where are you going?" He didn't need my answer. He knew immediately and thought instantly, you kill those humans, and we'll have to leave Chicago within the week.
But I was too hardheaded to give the idea much thought. "We'd have to leave soon anyway, Carlisle," I reminded him icily. "And I'm not letting them getting away with this. Death is the least they deserve after what they did to my sister."
I didn't bring you to this life so you can destroy your human enemies, Edward, Carlisle thought stonily as I turned to walk out the door. I wheeled quickly to face him; he was now on his feet, still holding Emily's hand in his own.
"No, you didn't," I commented lightly, "but it certainly is an advantage." I threw on the long black coat Carlisle wore to the hospital only as a prop and assured him, "If it makes you feel better, I won't spill a drop." He glared balefully at me; I chuckled and slipped out the door.
Aunt Sophia's house was quiet and dark when I reached it. The window to Emily's room was still broken from when I had burst through it in my hurry to get Emily to Carlisle. I smiled tensely to myself. It would make breaking in all the easier. I paused on the street below to check for any curious eyes or minds, and finding none, one sinuous leap found me crouched on the empty windowsill.
I moved silently into the room, away from the window in case anyone might see me there. In separate sections of the house, Aunt Sophia and her boarder Silas were both gloating over what they'd done. That silent, moping girl's finally gone, Aunt Sophia was thinking gleefully, and I'll have Silas to myself like I should have all along!
This Silas, however, was not thinking along the same lines. …shame Sophia wanted to fake the girl's suicide. If I'd ravaged her a few more times, she might have done it herself.
My fingers clenched; they were already imagining snapping every bone in his neck, closing in a death grip around his throat.
But even as much as I agreed, I wanted to do this dramatically. I was the hunter, and they were my prey. I wanted to hear the fear in their minds and to tell them exactly why they would die.
So I drifted silently across the room, barely pausing to break the lock on the door, which Silas must have locked behind him as he left my sister for dead. These dark rooms and halls were unfamiliar to me because I had only been here once, but I moved like a ghost through the shadows across the walls and worn carpet.
I, despite that single visit so long ago, did remember that Aunt Sophia's piano sat in the sitting room. And I did remember how my father had explained quietly that Aunt Sophia had never learned to play, so it sat silently and alone in her house.
After taking a few minutes to tune the old piano, I laid Carlisle's black coat on the piano bench, sat down beside it, and began to play. I had made it through several measures before Aunt Sophia and Silas's thoughts reached me.
That old thing hasn't played in years…I didn't even know Silas could play…
What the hell is with the piano concert in the middle of the night? Sophia said she didn't even know how to play.
Above the music, I heard their doors creak open and their footsteps meet in the hall. They whispered together for a moment, theirs words as confused as their thoughts, and then their footsteps shuffled softly across the carpet.
The swinging door to the sitting room opened slowly, cautiously behind me. Sophia and Silas were hoping to surprise a musically-talented burglar, but all they found was an unusually pale young man dressed entirely in black so all they saw of him in the dark was his face and hands.
Aunt Sophia's eyes landed on my face, and she recognized me in a moment. Edward? She was too shocked to utter the words aloud. But…but…you're dead.
Smiling to myself and playing a bit more softly, I said politely, "Good evening, Aunt Sophia. I do not believe I've been introduced to your new renter." I made it sound like I'd surprised her with an afternoon visit.
They were speechless and confused. It made me smile. I kept playing for several minutes, basking contentedly in their bewilderment.
But as the song's final note died, I rose quickly from the piano bench. Aunt Sophia, who had stepped forward in disbelief, shrank back several steps until she bumped into Silas. The fear whispering softly on the edges of their minds made me smile again, but then another of Emily's silent screams swept through my mind, immediately wiping the smile from my face. Her thoughts forming coherently before her words, Aunt Sophia asked, "What are you doing here?"
I started to pace a path circling them and pretended to ponder my answer. "Unfortunately," I replied after a moment, "I did not come for a social visit, Aunt Sophia. I actually came to talk to you about something gravely important."
"What might that be, Edward?" Aunt Sophia queried. Her voice cracked with fear on the last syllable of my name, and my father's face flashed quickly through her mind at our shared name. Nothing like his father, she thought bitterly despite her fear.
She was right in so many ways. I had never looked like my father in my first life, and I would never look like him in this life. He had fallen in the face of death, and I would always look death in the face and laugh. He had never physically harmed another human being, and I was, even in the beginning of this new life, already a murderer.
The memory of his face burned, but my sister, her thoughts and silent screams still echoing painfully through my head, burned with a destroying fire. And the memory of her dying made me burn with hate.
So I explained, still tracing the circle around Sophia and Silas, "You see, my dear Aunt Sophia, if I remember correctly, a handsome young man rang your doorbell in the early hours on the thirteenth of September over a year ago. Perhaps you remember him because he introduced himself as Dr. Carlisle Cullen?" I paused slightly and smiled as Carlisle's unforgettable face rose in her mind. "Ah yes, who could ever forget that young man with the perfect, beautiful face of an angel?
"Well, Aunt Sophia," I continued softly, "he brought you a girl who had lost her entire family. He brought you a girl who needed you to take her in like family." I had seen that night so many times in Carlisle's mind that I knew it as if I had been there myself; it now ran so painfully behind my eyes that I almost didn't hear my sister's name flit quickly through Aunt Sophia's mind.
I hated what they had done to my sister, not only taking her life but also making her every day even more miserable. And because I hated what they'd done, I hated them. So my voice was hard as I stated, "He brought you my sister, your brother's daughter. He brought her to you because he thought you would take care of her as she needed to be taken care of. But instead what did you do? You let a no-good lowlife rape and kill her."
Aunt Sophia flinched and Silas blanched at the low snarl that had started rumbling in my chest. I stopped pacing and moved to stand at Aunt Sophia's side so I could take her arm in my hand. "My sister burns because you left her for dead," I snarled. My fingers tightened and felt the bone snap beneath them. Aunt Sophia cried out in pain, but I ignored her. "I brought her to a new life because I love her, and I will take you from this life because I love her."
A soft scream swept through the room, even though there was no time for Aunt Sophia to work up another one. Silas tried to run, but I caught him easily and brought him down quickly.
The house had fallen silent again. I picked up Carlisle's coat from the bench and put it on again; now the task at hand was to hide my trail. I ransacked the sitting room, as if I was an unsatisfied burglar. When I came across the small locked box that I guessed held most of Aunt Sophia's money, I smashed the box on the floor and took the contents without bothering to see what they were.
By the time I left, the window in the back door was smashed, the door itself left open so it creaked in the wind. The jewelry box in Aunt Sophia's room was empty, every room in the house ransacked, and the bodies in the sitting room searched. The pockets of Carlisle's black coat were heavy with stolen jewelry and money, which I discarded quickly. The jewelry I sold to a greasy young man at the counter of a pawn shop who wondered silently if my mother knew I'd raided her jewelry box; all of the money went to a bewildered homeless man digging through a dumpster in a dark alley.
But inside the inner breast pocket, just above the place where my heart should have been beating, were a stuffed bear and framed photograph. They wouldn't be discarded so quickly, at least not by me.
I returned to Carlisle and Emily, to the family I'd kill for.
A/N: I hope I didn't confuse anyone with the change in POV. I just thought the scene would be better from Edward's POV.