Short and sweet today, here comes the cavalry!

Chapter 23: The Angel

Even in the depths of the darkness, sound still somehow reached me. Or perhaps my mind was just creating the sounds it knew I wanted to hear, protecting my poor tormented mind from the reality of what was happening to me. The noise itself probably wouldn't be comforting to anyone else; another voice letting out a deep roar, ringing with absolute primal fury. It was horrifying, terrifying – and the most beautiful sound I had ever heard. I knew who that snarl belonged to and even knowing he wasn't really here, I felt happier at once.

And then I was sure that I had died.

Because I heard, as if through deep water across a great distance, the sound of my name being called by an angel, calling me towards the only thing I could ever consider to be Heaven.

"Bella!" the angel cried, anguish thick his voice. "No, no, Bella, no!"

Beyond the voice, a counterpoint to it, was something far more horrific and far less welcome – a chaotic mess of sounds colliding with each other in a nightmarish cacophony. There was growling, snarling and snapping teeth, cracking and ripping noises, and a high keening like the whimper of a wounded animal, which broke off abruptly with one of the louder crunches.

I didn't like that sound. I tried to block it out by focusing on the angel.

"Bella, please, listen to me! Stay with me, Bella, please, please, Bella, please!"

I wanted to reassure him, to tell him I would do anything. Of course I would stay, of course. I would do anything he wanted. But I had no control of my body; my lips were somewhere far away, back in the land if the living. Could the angel understand my thoughts? It seemed like the sort of thing an angel should be able to do. Yes, yes, I'm here. I'm not going anywhere.

But I didn't think it was working because he just kept on pleading with me. He broke his litany of repetition to yell, "Carine!" before returning to the begging, crying now, the words barely coming out between sobs. "Bella, Bella, please, no, no, please!"

Something was wrong. Angels shouldn't weep. Sadness that deep shouldn't exist in Heaven. I tried again to find some way to reach him, but that deep water was pressing down on me once more, holding me frozen and far away from him. I couldn't even catch my breath, let alone try to comfort him the way I wanted to.

Through the pressure of the water, I felt a sharper, stabbing pressure against my head. Pain... that was pain. And as I recognised that pain, I began to feel all of the other pains again – my ribs, my leg, my hand. Like I was landing from a great height, I suddenly slammed back into my body. I yelped in agony, gasping in a desperate lungful of air that was at once a relief and not even close to enough.

"Bella!" the angel cried, something like hope creeping into his voice.

"There's a lot of blood loss, but this wound on her head isn't too deep," a calm female voice explained, in perfect contrast to the angel's agony. "Careful not to move her leg, it's broken. A rib or two as well, I think."

The angel let out an enraged howl, but I could barely focus on that through the many layers of pain. There was a sharp stab in my side, and I was getting more and more certain that this wasn't Heaven – it hurt too much. Now the strongest pain was in my hand, and it was different from the others. Not sharp, not a knife, but a slow, crackling burn. Something was on fire... my hand was burning, but I couldn't understand why. Couldn't he see the flames? Why was he letting them go unchecked?

"Edward," I tried to say; apparently I wasn't fully back in control of my body, because though I heard my voice, I couldn't even understand myself.

But it was enough for his sensitive ears to catch. "Bella, can you hear me? I love you. You're going to be alright. Just stay with me, please."

I tried again; he had to know about the fire, so he could make it stop. "Edward..." That was better, still slurred but I could at least hear all the letters of his name this time.

"Yes, Bella, I'm here. I'm here, love."

"It hurts," I whimpered. I tested my hand, trying to bend and flex the fingers, to clench them into a fist, but it was hard to tell whether anything was actually happening. The burning consumed all other sensation from that part of my body.

"I know, Bella, I'm sorry, I know." He turned away from me, a mix of anguish and irritation in his tone as he asked someone, "Isn't there anything you can do for her?"

The other voice from before spoke, and now that I was a little closer to reality, it resolved into Carine's calm, controlled tones. "Hand me my bag, please… Try holding your breath, Alice, it will make it easier."

"Alice?" I groaned, wrestling with my eyelids now – if I could just see them…

"She's here, she helped us find you. Thank God you gave her the address." He was almost rambling now, and I needed him to focus. Which would be much easier if I could manage to get my own body to behave itself.

"My hand hurts," I forced out, trying to get some urgency into my tone but hearing even through the fog that it wasn't enough. I was dimly aware of something pulling at my scalp, but it was getting lost in the burning.

"I know it hurts, Bella, Carine will give you something in a minute. The pain will get better, love, I promise."

He still didn't understand, and the fire was only getting hotter. It was creeping up my wrist, perhaps having turned my fingers into charcoal already and moving on to the next flammable flesh it could find. I had to get control, to show them clearly what was wrong. I pushed against the wall of darkness, and with a final desperate surge, I finally broke through, my eyes flying open but still clouded by a dark red film.

"My hand is on fire!" I shrieked, my ears popping from the force of my own voice.

"Bella?" He sounded scared now, still confused.

"Put it out!" I screamed, begged, my voice breaking in a desperate sob. "Please, put it out, someone stop the fire!"

"Carine, her hand!"

"He bit her." The calm was gone, disgust and horror in its place.

Edward sucked in a sharp breath. I wanted to be relieved that he finally understood, but the fire held all my attention. I tried to shift, to move away from it; someone held me still with a firm grip around my head, only my body free to writhe, and when I shifted my arm, the fire followed. There was no escaping it.

"You have to do it, Edward," Alice said from somewhere near my right ear. I felt the brush of cool fingers across my cheek, sweeping away the wetness from my eyes.

"NO!" he yelled, shocking me with the volume and the force of his defiance. I jumped and whimpered when the movement made the fire flare.

"Alice…" I moaned, her name coming out garbled. "Please, help me."

"There is something we could try," Carine said.

"What is it?" Edward was practically begging.

"See if you can suck the venom back out. The bite hasn't torn at the edges, it should heal cleanly. If it hasn't spread too far, there's a chance it could be stopped before the transformation takes hold." That pressure was back on my head, tiny poking and pulling sensations as if my hair were being brushed with a steel comb. I could barely feel the pain past the burn of the flames in my hand.

Alice sounded strained as she asked, "Are you sure that will work?"

"I don't know, you would be the one to tell me," Carine replied with a sigh. "But if we're going to try it, it will have to be soon."

"Carine…" Edward was hesitant, a pained uncertainty in his tone. "I'm not sure if I have the strength…"

"I'm sorry, darling, I can't help you. If you are going to be pulling from her hand, I have to get this cut stitched or she'll bleed out completely. You need to decide either way, and soon."

I kept wriggling against the tight hold on my head, unable to keep still as the blazing pain ran through me. Somehow, the way the movement wrenched my leg broke into my awareness, making me feel like I was going to throw up as the pain flared.

"Edward, please!" I screamed. At some point, my eyes had closed again, and I forced them back open. The red film was gone this time, only a dark shadow around the edge of my vision as I stared up at the ceiling. My eyes whirled, touching briefly on Alice, on the shattered mirror and then… there he was. The face I had been certain I would never see again, but horribly twisted by sadness, pain, and the weight of a decision he was struggling to make.

"Alice, we need something to brace that leg!" Carine ordered, still bent over my head. "Edward, whatever you are going to do, do it now. It will be too late to stop it soon."

For a moment, he looked more tired than I had ever seen him. I wanted to reach out and cradle his face, to tell him everything would be okay, to beg him to make the fire stop in any way he could. As I watched, indecision morphed into resolve, his jaw setting into the same determined expression I had pictured on his face when we were talking on the phone, when he had promised to make me safe. He took hold of my hand – I was a little surprised to see it was still there – and the cold of his fingers barely cut through the burning. He held me firmly, other cold hands pressing down on my legs and torso, then bent to put his mouth over the red slash across the heel of my hand.

I felt the pull as he began drawing my blood out and screamed louder still. This pain was worse than before; the fire was fighting against him, desperately clawing its way up my forearm. I wrestled with the hands holding me down, hearing but not understanding Alice as she tried to keep me calm. Carine still had my head held still, and there was something on my leg, weighing it down to the floor.

Then, I began to feel the fire retreat, shrinking to a smaller and smaller point in my hand. I could feel my arm starting to go numb, my body falling still as my strength waned with every draw. The blackness that ringed my vision was growing steadily thicker, and I fought to stay awake, to keep my eyes on him. Dully, I felt a small, sharp prick in my other wrist.

"Edward," I called out weakly, barely able to hear my own voice.

"He's here, Bella, you're alright," Alice soothed.

"Stay," I breathed, my mind going back to the night I had asked the same of him, back in my little room in Forks. "Edward… stay with me…"

"I will," he finally gasped, tight but somehow triumphant. "You stay with me too, okay?" I could vaguely feel the firm grip he kept on my hand.

I hummed what I hoped he would take as an agreement, feeling myself drifting again. The fire had gone out, and the other pains were all fading away in the wake of a feeling of clouded sleepiness; already I couldn't feel my legs, and my focus was gradually narrowing.

"Is it all out?" Carine sounded very far away, and I couldn't see her anymore; my eyes had slipped closed again, and now I didn't want to open them. My lids were far too heavy, and I was so comfortable.

"Yes, I could taste the morphine, there's nothing else there." Edward was quiet but certain.

"Bella?" Carine called to me, a small squeeze of my shoulder trying to jostle me awake.

"Mmmm?" was all I could manage in answer.

"Has the fire gone out now?"

I smiled. "Yes, it's gone. Thank you, Edward."

"I love you," was his reply.

"I know," I breathed sleepily.

My own sense of triumph ran through me as I heard him laugh softly, only slightly spoiled by the way it was tinged with relief.

Carine wasn't done. "Bella, sweetheart?"

"What?" I asked, grumpy now. Why couldn't I just sleep?

"Where is your mother?"

I sighed. "Still in Florida. He tricked me, Edward. He stole our home videos." I wanted to sound more angry than I did, but I was just too tired. And yet the mention of videos reminded me of that horrible 'little film' and the potentially very important information it contained.

"Alice," I said, trying to put some urgency into my tired voice and pushing on my eyelids again. "Alice, there's a video… he was talking about you, he knew you, where you came from, before." I knew I wasn't making much sense, but I hoped enough was getting through for her to at least spot the camera. A sharp smell hit my nose, breaking through the foggy mush that my brain was turning into. "Why do I smell gasoline?"

"Time to go," Carine said.

"I want to sleep," I griped.

"You sleep, love, I've got you," Edward murmured soothingly. "You're safe now."

And then I was in his arms, and there was no more pain, no more fear, just the solid wall of his chest, the soft brush of his cold breath against my forehead, the gentle touch of his lips.

"Sleep now, Bella," he whispered, and I could only obey, slipping into warm darkness.