Disclaimer: rights to Twilight are SM's. This plot is mine.
And in the spring I shed my skin
And it blows away with the changing wind
The waters turn from blue to red
As towards the sky I offer it
-Rabbit Heart, Florence + The Machine
She follows the scent, her nose twitching like a wolf's. Her body feels more alive now than it has ever before in her half life. The venom in her veins rushes as if it were blood. She wants to howl with happiness but she knows not to give away her location… or her agenda.
Which is to kill.
She moves stealthily, silently although her body is buzzing. She follows him for miles, into one of the many forests around the area. Then she stops.
There are others.
She smells them, other scents, tangled in with his own. He is part of a coven, there is no doubt. There are six others, a particularly large coven. This slows her down quite a bit but she is not to be deterred. How can she approach them? Should she?
Lure him into the open. Set the trap. Kill.
She smiles; she has never looked more like a monster.
She takes the idea and nurtures it, feeds it, forms it. She will capture him, but she needs to lure him away first.
His greatest weakness is that he's a male. They are easily manipulated. She lets herself imagine the scenario: her hips sashaying, her teeth glinting in the moonlight as he approaches her in a trance. She reaches him, wraps her body around him. He will mistake it for desire. She will trap him, whisper in his ear her name, and bite into his neck. He will try to escape but she will be stronger, she'd been waiting for almost a century. Waiting for this moment. She will not lose.
She feels herself panting as the image in her mind gets clearer.
He will be ripped apart, little fragments catching the breeze as she pulls out her lighter. She will watch as he burns, dance around the fire. See his red eyes be consumed by the flames…
For some reason, the thought not only enthralls her but disturbs her. She shakes off the uneasy feeling. Why wouldn't she want him dead? Why wouldn't she want to punish him for what he did to her?
Why wouldn't she want to kill her Vampyre?
She does not know why. All she knows is that the thought of his beauty being reduced to ashes bothers her. She chastises herself. Silly, she thinks, girlish weaknesses. What is outward beauty when he is empty inside?
He must be empty. He must.
Because if I have no soul, how can he?
And he cannot have a soul. It is impossible. None with a soul would take her from her life and leave her dazed and confused in a colder, more imperfect reality. None with a soul would change her warm innocent flesh that so easily blushed to something hard and unfeeling. She had not blushed since 1912, and it was his entire fault.
No. He has no soul. Of that she could be sure.
Her eyes opened blearily, the world before her blurring in and out of view like a haze of heat on a summer's day.
But it was too cold to be a summer's day.
She sat up, groaning. Her body felt battered and bruised; like she'd just been shot out of a cannon. She flinched as the memories bombarded her. She wasn't shot from a cannon, she was dealt even worse.
She remembered what felt like her skin disintegrating and melting slowly, like acid eating away at her flesh. She felt along her arm for holes, but all she found was a smooth and rock hard surface, like that of marble.
Her vision cleared. Cleared phenomenally; she'd never seen so much of the world before. She watched as a bird lifted its wings from the nest and shook away the cold air. The bird was at least three hundred yards away and yet she could see the icicles gripping lovingly to its blood-red feathers. It was a Cardinal, and the color disturbed her deeply. The deep, dark red of blood and teeth sinking into her skin…
Suddenly, she was standing. Her ears listened as the forest around her woke and rustled in the wind. Where was she? Not in her garden.
And she didn't see him either, whoever he was.
She screwed her eyes shut, trying to remember. The blurry images shot faster and faster beneath her eyelids, too quickly for her to get anything more than an idea of awe and fear. Fear, she was afraid. She recognized the emotion, faintly, like approaching a familiar and unwelcome face. Her mind was fearful, her conscience afraid of this unknown. But her pulse didn't pick up, blood didn't rush in her ears, her heart didn't try to pound like it was supposed to..
She felt no heartbeat at all.
She began to panic and still it didn't twitch. She frantically scratched at her chest and found only stone-hard flesh. There was no give, no pain, no beat. No heart. None, whatsoever. She stuck one finger against her wrist. No beat; her neck, no beat. Her hand clutched again above her breast, over where the familiar pump used to quicken and again, no beat.
She started clawing frantically, pulling and tearing and inflicting unimaginable pain. The marble began to soften as the outer layer gave way. She threw chunks of her flesh to the ground, then bone. And yet there was no blood. Still no beat.
Horrified, she reached into her chest and wrapped her iron fist around something cold and dull. She pulled it too, grit her teeth against the almighty pain, and ripped it out.
In her hand was her heart. Her dead, unbeating heart. It was in her hand, not her chest. And she was still alive.
She screamed.
Her hand slowly caresses the now healed spot. She feels her dry eyes twitch, as if searching for moisture with which to pour the misery. She thinks of how she hasn't shed tears, real saltwater tears, in quite a long time. She misses tears. She misses laughter too.
She grips the vial above her heart and hopes that someday she'll be able to do both.
The memory of that first horrific day always shakes her up emotionally. The sight of her dead heart lying limp and unimportant in her cold, changed hand haunts her waking nightmares. She has much idle time and when she is drifting she often drifts to the past. She listens again to the forest, hears a twig snap but thirty feet away. Spinning, she comes face to face with a frozen doe. She smiles at the innocent creature, but it bounds away, its scent plowing across the Vampyre's and masking it. She is hit like a bolt of lightning with an idea.
She pounces at the doe and kills it quickly, not wanting to prolong the pain. Guiltily, she slices open the animal and watches as its blood pours out. Beyond disgust and revulsion at the level to which she has sunk, she lifts the blood to her body and wipes all along her body. Soon her skin is slick with red, her hair and face dripping in it. She shuts off her shame and waits for the soaked blood to dry. She sniffs at her skin and can't find her scent; it is completely masked by the doe's.
A sacrifice.
One that she had to make.
The one thing free from blood is the vial, lying beneath her shirt. Within is his scent, and if she gets her way, soon his ashes will join it.
She chases the scent now, warily sniffing as the stream shifts and swerves with the others' scents. It is so strong now that it absolutely fills her nose; tangerines and vanilla, musk and roses, cinnamon pepper and another strangely familiar scent- metallic honey. The Vampyre is not the only one she knows in the coven, she's sure of it. But before she can pinpoint the scent, she is seeing through the thinning trees and gazing at a large white mansion.
This is their home.
There is no doubt that she is in the right place. She hears their voices inside. A light tinkling, a deep rumble, a seductive symphony, a low baritone; a honeyed, kind voice and a warm, comforting one. And then she hears him, the velvety undertones and the silken words leaving his lips forlornly as though they wished to touch his mouth again. A beautiful voice for a beautiful demon.
She scampers away before they can sense her. She knows where they are and she must leave now; formulate her plan. She bounds off into the forest, finds a spring in which to wash herself and her clothes. Then damp and delighted, she sets herself near the water and begins to meditate, waiting for ideas to come. She hums and the vial sways slightly against her skin. She closes her eyes and instead of the future, she sees the past.
She was on the ground, staring forlornly up at the sky as her shredded memories came back to her with the force of a train.
The man, red eyes, so beautiful with his bronze hair- biting her, blood dripping, sucking and tugging; the sense of being in a trance, then in a sedated calm. Then a groan that rumbled in her bones, a flash of green and red, and pain. So much pain, fire licking through her veins. Poison seeping slowly up her spine; animals tearing at her skin and running away in a whimper at the hard, cold surface.
She'd ripped at her flesh too, like an animal. And now it was crawling back to her. She turned her head and watched, numbly, as the heart she'd extracted rolled toward her. She shivered in revulsion as it limped slowly over her breast, like a sac of goo and gore. She whimpered as it thumped into her body, painfully reconnecting itself to the lifeless aortic arch and vena cava. The chunks of bone and muscle she'd ripped at tumbled to her, too, and pieced themselves together like a puzzle; a patchwork over her useless, damnable heart. When every piece was reconnected, it laid like a slab of stone on her chest. Heavy and suffocating, pushing down her lungs. She stopped breathing, and waited for the lack of oxygen to pain her insides. She felt mild discomfort. But it never got worse than that. She counted, waited, until ten minutes later she still wasn't breathing and was still fine.
Her fingers dug into the earth, her spine bent upwards as she silently screamed. Her sobbing was dry and quiet, her fists beating the ground like sinking her hand into a muddy puddle. She stood from the pulverized ground and stared down. Then something caught her eye, something made her sniff.
A tangerine scent, with a hint of vanilla. She zeroed in with her impeccable vision and found what looked like an eyelash, then a piece of cloth, then a strand of his bronze hair. She sniffed at it, knowing it was his. She held it in her fist, her torn dress offering no place for her to place it.
She swam out of her numbing fog and felt a burning feeling in her throat. She let out a surprised gasp at the sudden pain. She gripped at her slender neck, fighting the urge to reach into it like she had her chest. Flames licked up and down her throat, getting hotter as she acknowledged the pain.
She choked and gasped, thinking that maybe she was dead and this was hell. But then she smelled it.
Heaven.
She felt something drip down her chin, she lifted a finger and swiped at the substance. It glowed for a second, clear, gold, and thick, before sizzling in the cold air and disintegrating. Venom. She didn't know how she knew, but she did.
She was mildly distracted before the beautiful scent grew stronger, tantalizing and close. She was crouched on all fours, sniffing the ground like a dog, before she ran towards the center of the thing causing her throat to burn so brightly.
She ran fast, faster, everything blurring, before she was right there and pouncing and her teeth doing this weird sliding thing into something squishy.
She heard a faint cry as her eyes closed in pleasure. The liquid flowed into her mouth, she knew not what, and soothed the burn. So good, so, so good. This couldn't be hell, not with a taste like this. She suckled like a child at its mother's breast until she continued sucking and there was nothing left. With a whine, she lifted her head and opened her eyes.
And stared into a pair of dead ones.
She growls, remembering the first kill. How she'd run far away in disgust. How she'd screamed and knocked down trees in her anger. That was the day she became a monster and it was his fault. She didn't know, she couldn't have. It was his fault. For making her what she was, and then his fault for not warning her. For not being there when she woke, for not stopping her when she pounced. His fault she didn't have a soul, his fault. All his fault.
"All his fault, his fault, his fault." She chants. She centers herself and pulls herself from the memories so cruel. The vial greets the air and she unwraps his scent like a shrine. It wafts subtly around her and she immerses herself in it, memorizing it.
He will call her Death. Of that there is no doubt.
~Alice~
She is in her room, lying on the blankets and relishing their softness. Jasper is downstairs with the boys, playing one of those games on their new X-box. Times have changed, she thinks. So much.
And she of all people would know about change.
Her mind wanders and rests, the closest to sleep she can get, before she is greeted by a vision. It dances in front of her, like mist beneath a lamppost at night, and she greets it warmly.
I bear news. It seems to say. She cradles it in her arms and lets it wrap itself around her.
Hear, it whispers sweetly.
Red eyes, fiery red eyes set in a pale and beautiful face. Rosebud lips form around words that slither out and taint the air.
"Edward, Edward, must kill Edward."
A flash; the girl stands in the moonlight, a victorious goddess as Edward's body burns in a fire. She looks like the devil, a conquering Jezebel as her beloved brother is turned to ashes and placed in a small vial around her neck.
The vision shifts in a whirl of color and noise.
The girl lies naked under water. Her eyes are gold in color, her expression one of affection and gratitude as an equally nude Edward descends the depths and lies next to her.
He wraps an arm around her waist and stares at her in adoration, in love. She cups his cheek. They stare into each other's eyes for a long moment before her lips begin to move.
"I forgive you," she mouths. His eyes shine happily, burning brighter than any star. She smiles at him then leans in and kisses him.
His hand tightens on her waist and he holds her like she is the most precious thing in the world.
Alice stirs with a gasp and listens to see if her brother heard her. He is oblivious, ignoring the thoughts around him, including hers. She sighs in relief before slipping out the window and running into the dark forest.
"I'm going to make this right." She vows.
Not only for her brother but also for the girl.
Oooooohhhh... Alice, whatchya gonna do?
:) Review please!