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C H A P T E R S E V E N — C H A N G E S
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They did a big memorial assembly for Colin at school. And everyone had to watch another presentation about curfews and the buddy system and how to deal with grief.
But nobody seemed to care anymore. Sorrow was last week's emotion.
Sure, everyone hoped this would be the last funeral, but I knew better. I'd spent my weekend digging through the rubble of that used to be the Cullen house searching, through the use of my amazing nose, for the remains of Tanya and Chastity. I'd spread their ashes into the ocean from the La Push cliffs. I'd seen Jacob cliff diving with some of his friends.
He must've known about the fire at the Cullen home. It was on the news.
The police had investigated, ruled no one had been in the fire, and then voila case closed. Murder trumped arson any day.
Charlie had put one man on the investigation. It didn't last very long. No one on the force liked the Cullen's, not after what they'd done to me. No one minded that the investigation didn't yield any findings. No one minded that there wasn't really a formal investigation at all.
Jacob Black, he surely must have known. Billy might not have had a flat screen, but he did have a TV. Jacob Black, he knew, but he seemed to give less of a damn than me. He didn't shout at me, he didn't wave. I don't think he even glanced twice. We'd never been besties, not like Angela and I, and I don't know what I expected him to do, but his lack of a reaction was certainly not what I'd imagined.
I might not have been going to the school portion of school, but that didn't mean that I hadn't been hanging around and spying on the humans who did. Namely Angela 'Needy' Webber. She'd taken to looking up information about me when she didn't think I was looking. What she didn't realize was that I was always looking.
She had articles stuffed underneath her bed skirt about 'offering a virgin to Satan.'
Passages that warned what would happen 'If the Sacrifice is Impure-.' Excerpts that talked about 'Human and Demonic Relations.' These articles and photocopied pages of old books, they don't worry me in the least. It's the one entitled simply 'Destroying a Demon' that causes fear to bloom within me.
If nothing else, however, the pages are enlightening. Angela has done in 24 hours something that never occurred to me during the months that passed after I became what I am. Research. ''Demons are weakest when hungry, but a blade to the heart is the surest way to kill the beast," proclaims the excerpt pages from 'Destroying a Demon.'
Angela and I haven't spoken since our encounter in her room.
Actually, I hadn't really spoken to anyone. And neither had she for that matter.
Even though I had stopped going to school I had blackmailed the principal into restoring, and maintaining, my attendance record. It's funny how much more time you have when you don't have to waste six hours participating in menial tasks like schoolwork and teenage drama.
Colin's death and my absence from school gave the Lauren the access and opportunity she needed to overthrow me and regain her position as school royalty.
The funny thing was how little I seemed to care anymore. When Roman was alive, when we were together, I'd made getting to the top of the social ladder, and staying there, my top priority. In a town as small as Forks, when you're as clumsy as I was, there wasn't much in the means of extracurricular activities.
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I spent my lunch hour sipping on A neg and watching Angela and her boyfriend.
"Hey. Just bought our formal tickets. Did you make reservations at the Cheesecake Factory?" Ben joins Angela, a bright hopeful look on his face. I know he's about to be crushed. Angela "Needy" Webber she's a bitch in sheep's clothing.
"Ben, I can't go to the dance with you." Needy told him and I watched the smirk fall off of his face.
"What? Why?"
"Look, just trust me. You shouldn't go at all."
"What are you talking about?"
"Not here." She says, glancing around suspiciously at anything and everything in the vicinity. She's right to be cautious, but she's stupid if she thinks she's better at me than hunting. My nights in Port Angeles have paid off. I am stealth personified.
"What's going on?" He questioned her, his face confused. "You're breaking up with me?" He wondered incredulous.
"Please, Ben!" She pleads. "I just need to show you something."
"Is this about Bella?" Probably, I think. What isn't about me these days when it concerns Angela's thought processes.
"Yes! But I promise you this is the last thing—"
"Needy, I care about you. A lot. As a person, not just some girl I made love to for four minutes the other night. And I'm scared of what's happening to you. You're acting really fucked up."
"Please just let me show you."
Ben exhales slowly before relenting with a muttered, "Okay."
"Bella's evil." She tells him, her face serious.
"I know." He says, because he thinks she's referring to how big of a bitch I am.
"No, I mean, she's actually evil. Not high-school evil. I've been through the occult section at the library five times."
"Our library has an occult section?"
"Yeah, it's um— it's really small. Uh, you have to read this."
''Demoni—" When he realizes what he's reading he stops and looks up at her, completely confused.
"'Demonic transference.'" She finishes for him. "It's something that happens when you try to sacrifice a virgin to Satan... without using an actual virgin. The guys in the band tried to sacrifice her in the woods. But what they didn't know is that she hasn't been a virgin since junior year."
"It all makes sense now." He jokes.
"Read this." She tells him and thrusts an aging book into his face.
"'If the human sacrifice is impure, the result may still be attained, but the demon will forever reside in the soul of the victim. She must forever feed on flesh to sustain the demon.'" He read the words aloud, clearly bemused by her actions. "Okay." He draws the word out.
"She's eating boys! They, like, make her really pretty and glowy and her hair looks amazing. And then when she's hungry, she's weak and cranky and ugly. I mean, like, ugly for her. Don't you get it? The dance. It'll be like an all-you-can-eat buffet."
"Needy, I think you need help."
"Oh, my God. You don't believe me." She seems surprised. Without the presence of proof, I can understand his skepticism. It is vastly amusing.
"It's not that I don't believe you. I just don't believe this."
"God! This is a nightmare!"
"Well, what about the dance?" He wonders.
"Who cares about the goddanged dance, Ben?"
"I do. I ordered your corsage. It's an orchid. It was, like, $12."
"I'll be at the dance. I just need to keep an eye on Bella. Promise me you're not gonna go."
"Needy, I—I'm not your guy anymore?"
"Ben, it's not safe for us to be together right now."
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I was in my room clutching a wad of hair between my hands. A neg was not a good conditioning treatment. I hadn't had freshly squeezed human blood in a week. It was like trying to maintain a balanced meal plan but only being able to eat Lean Cuisine.
After Angela had lit a fire underneath Tanya and Chastity's asses, I hadn't had much of an appetite for anything fresh. The fire, the articles, they were all saying the same thing. You are not immortal. You are not special. You only think you are.
There was something about watching their body's burn up into ashes, at the hands of my best friend, that had me counting down the seconds. Something that let me know my time was borrowed. If Tanya and Chastity had been slaughtered so quickly after revealing themselves to me, then how much longer would I have before Angela lit the match?
Having smooth hair, without having fed recently directly for the source, meant brushing it. Brushing it meant having globs of hair fall out.
I'm using enough moisturizer to turn deserts into tropical rain forests.
It's strange, after months of not having to do anything at all to look pretty, to have to spend more time than when you were human to make yourself look presentable.
I travel over to my closet, shoving aside old clothes in favor of a small refrigerator that I'd bought with the money my victims had on their person. Opposite the fridge is a safe. The safe has all the photos and wallets. The children they weren't allowed to see, the badges proclaiming the number of months sober. The stuff that's really fucking depressing to look at before going to a high school dance.
The fridge, it's packed to the brim with blood. Mostly A, pos and neg, and O neg which happen to be my favorite flavors of human. I'm not sure what flavor I'll be drinking tonight. My hands and my eyes stray to where the thermos Tanya had given me before she'd become the human torch rests in the fridge untouched.
I pick up a packet of O neg instead. I'm not interested in anything new or exciting tonight. Tonight will prove to change enough already without the contents of the thermos involved.
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All over Devil's Kettle, kids were getting ready for the dance, blissfully ignorant that some poor chump was on his way to being Satan Chow.
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I've been stalking Ben all night, trying to determine his sincerity in proclaiming his disbelief at Angela's truths. Trying to make sure that he knows they're lies.
Because honestly, I'm not sure if Succubae have a demonic presence similar to what the Volturi represent for the vampire's, but I don't want to find out.
"Didn't you hear me calling your name?" I ask Ben. This is, for the most part, rhetorical. I hadn't muttered his name once, but with my voice as raspy and sickly sounding as it was, it didn't seem implausible. I also appeared out of nowhere, something that I've gotten rather good at lately. Even despite the unbalanced meal plan I'd been working with.
"You weren't calling my name." He tells me and I give him a blank look in response.
"Yes I was." I tell him, slightly angered that he answered.
"I-I couldn't hear it." He stutters slightly, clearly scared. Is that a can of pepper spray in your pocket or are you just happy to see me.
"Listen, I need to talk to you about you-know-who. Our little Needy." I make a big deal out of sighing audibly. "I'm really stressed about her.
"She's been acting a little off lately."
"Look, I think I know what's wrong with her." I tell him with a dash of reluctance and a hint of knowledge.
"What? What is it?"
I am playing the part of concerned best friend excellently. And with jugular veins like that, I'm seriously tempted to let him play the part of my dim sum.
"You know how Needy has been really upset since Eric died?"
"Mm-hmm."
"Well, it's not just because he was, like, brutally murdered and stuff." I trail off at the end. Hesitance is the key to acting excellence. "I don't wanna say this!" I whine, frustrated and playful at the same time.
"Say it."
"Needy and Eric were intimate. And by that I mean they were porking on a semi-regular basis."
"No." I can almost hear the sound of his heart breaking.
"She and Eric were doing things that you have never even heard of. Okay? Total varsity moves. I just can't believe that she would mess with your head like this. I care about you so much, Ben. More than I've ever had the guts to admit." My hand grasped tightly around his arm, I tell him, "Needy didn't deserve a boy like you."
I lean in closely to kiss him. My eyes trained on the veins in his throat. My head focused on how easy it would be to just take a bite…
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Kinda evil cliff hanger there. More should be up soon. This story will probably actually only be another two chapters, one of which is already written, so there shouldn't be a long delay in posting it, and an epilogue, which is a quarter written. I'm not sure how much I like this chapter, but I thought two weeks was a long time to go without an update. Thanks to everyone who reads and reviews, I love you all. :D