-Chapter 14: Getting The Invisible Woman to Trust You-
Perceptions change and shift over time, I've learned, even for a vampire. What you want today may not be what you want tomorrow. I was learning that lesson right now.
As a meta-human, I had nearly foamed at the mouth to get my hands on a new ability. The suspense – the build up – to cracking open the poor bastard's skull and flaying their brain was intoxicating and all-consuming. The sensation was actually remarkably similar to the thirst a vampire has for blood, except for the physical thirsting part.
Don't get me wrong, I was still an unforgiving killer. I still enjoyed the sounds of snapping bones and the cretin's pleading and begging for their lives. But, much like a newborn vampire learns to restrain themselves, I learned to ignore the call of my seductive ability.
Too little, too late.
The phrase I keep what I steal is a bit more literal in my case, at least in terms of acquiring abilities. Once I discovered how a power worked – either by slicing their foreheads open or using Carlisle's little trick – it was mine. No take backs, no second guesses. It was as real and as permanent to me as it was to the original owner. If it was always on for them, it was always on for me.
And Alice's fortune telling did not shut off.
One would think it would be Edward's ability I would regret the most, but they would be wrong. Edward's ability just seemed to jive with me in a way that Alice's didn't. Sure, at first it was a bit distracting, but after I learned to ignore the constant stream of voices it was no different than being in a cafeteria or gymnasium. A constant stream of thoughts that were just there if I needed to focus in.
Edward's ability was predictable in a way that Alice's wasn't.
I couldn't really force a vision to happen. I could coax it, and maybe it would come to me; or maybe not. Sometimes the visions weren't even relevant, and sometimes they changed so fast it was difficult to keep track of all the different threads and timelines. This was added to the fact that sometimes visions just happened out of the blue. True, most of those were important, but they were very distracting.
I suppose the best parallel I could draw would be a normal person trying to listen to a story their friend is telling them while getting a constant stream of text messages and Facebook notifications. The phone dings and you look down to check the message, drawing your attention away from real life for a few moments. It's exhausting.
My internal monologue and pity party was broken up by the sight of all the vampire parts I didn't see scattered around the forest. Well, that wasn't true, the scent of Felix and Santiago was still in the air and I followed it to the extremely small specks of vampire dust. There was also one newborn that was in pieces, but that was it.
No hybrids. No second newborn.
The hybrid's scent was nonexistent, for some reason, but I could make out the newborn's. I followed the trail of the second newborn, which had apparently put itself back together. It headed west and I cursed myself for being so lazy about burning the pieces after I shredded them. I abruptly stopped my pursuit as I heard the crashing of ocean waves. They had gone to sea, erasing their trail and making them nearly impossible to track.
It was early in the morning by the time I got back to Henry's house, and I could tell that both he and Angela were fast asleep. I leaped the fence and flitted to the house quickly enough that a camera couldn't catch me, and reached for the doorknob. It was locked.
I hesitated for a moment before placing my hand on the doorknob again, preparing to break the handle and snap the locking mechanism, when another damn vision caught me. It showed alarms going off and waking up both Angela and Henry. I removed my hand and stepped off the porch and onto the lawn, angling my head up so I could look at the second story windows. I could easily jump up there and enter through a window, but that could also trigger an alarm, not to mention reveal me leaping inhuman distances to a video camera.
I sighed and crossed my arms, preparing to wait out the early morning darkness until Henry woke up and unlocked the door. Angela needed to rest and recover, after all.
It was only a couple short hours before I heard the oppressive sound of Henry's alarm sounding from inside his bedroom. I cringed at the shrill, repeating beeping of the electronic alarm. Even though I didn't sleep anymore, I still loathed the sound and had always used my phone to wake me up with a song from my playlist. I flitted to the door and knocked quietly as soon as Henry had shuffled down the stairs, heading to the kitchen.
"It's Emily," I called against the sturdy frame of the door. The lock clicked and the door opened, revealing a half-dead-looking Henry with drooping eyes. After he glanced at me, his heart rate jumped and his eyes widened slightly – which was strange, since he had opened the door, knowing I was on the other side. His thoughts, though, revealed the reason for his delayed reaction.
In his mind, he recalled preparing some soup for Angela and taking it upstairs to her. She was still asleep, so Henry placed his hand on her shoulder to wake her up. She did – and then promptly flickered out of sight, leaving the bed covers in a strange, transparent-gradient state as it folded off the bed. Henry was so shocked, he dropped the bowl to the floor and fled the room, disregarding the pieces of glass from the broken dish.
I sucked in a breath that burned all the way down from Henry's scent. There was only a trace of Angela's scent in the air. I tilted my head slightly and listened for the tell-tale heartbeat – there was only one on the property, which was obviously Henry's. I flitted around the zombified man – ignoring his shocked gasp and overworked heart – and sprinted for Angela's room, opening it forcefully and slamming the doorknob into the drywall.
A spike of fear and the small torrent of thoughts hit me from the corner of the room, and I relaxed out of my slightly crouched form and let out a breath. I shook my head. Of course she was still here; I just couldn't see or hear her. I moved slowly into the room like I did when I first found her, sitting down on the foot of the bed to seem less threatening.
"This again?" I asked to the room, taking care not to stare at the spot I knew she was curled up in. "You really scared Henry, you know."
The panic and fear leveled out to slightly-above-normal levels as she relaxed. She knew, intellectually, that I understood she was here with me. But the instinctual part of her that triggered her invisibility when threatened was appeased by my obliviousness to her exact location. She felt safer – insulated. I closed the nearly-damaged door and moved to the bed.
"I'll just talk for a while until you feel like you can trust me, then," I said, folding back the wrinkled blankets and sheets that were still saturated with Angela's scent and reclining on the bed, crossing my feet and staring at the bare-white ceiling. "I know from your thoughts that you know the people who took you were vampires. I also know that you've worked out that – despite our different eye color – the Cullens and I are also vampires."
From my thoughts? Angela's mind swam and rippled at the thought of me reading her personal thoughts and feelings directly from her head.
"Yes," I nodded my head against the back of the pillow. "I was like you – a human with a strange power. My brother had one, too; he could move things with his mind. Mine is a strange one – something I didn't understand when I was young. I still don't, if I'm being honest."
Angela didn't reply, of course, but I could feel that she was interested. She was looking at me now, instead of ducking her head under her arms.
"Intuitive Aptitude – that's what Ryan and I called it. It's not exactly an often-written-about ability, but it's very potent," I paused, trying to find a way to explain to Angela what it meant to have my ability without scaring her further. "It's like – I understand almost everything I come across. Puzzles, car engines, computer systems; anything. I also understand abilities – I can see how and why they work – and once I know it, I can use the ability as my own.
"And you would think that's a great power, right?" I asked, though we both understood it was rhetorical. "But it's so consuming! It's like ADHD and OCD to the extreme. I walk by a clock that's out of sync and I can't do anything else but think up ways to fix it and make it run right. It tries to make everything perfect and efficient, but the word is anything but." I paused, considering whether or not I wanted to continue using Angela to bounce my errant thoughts off of.
"I can help you out with your ability, you know?" I asked, sitting up on the bed and chancing a look at the corner. She was still invisible, but there was no spike of fear when she looked into my eyes. "I know you're scared – you're afraid of the vampires that took you – but I can help you with that, too. I have quite a few abilities, now, and a few vampires are no problem for me, Angela."
"Bella," Angela half-gasped, half-whispered as she came back into sight. "Is she…" Is she one of them?
"Yes," I slid off the bed and sat cross legged on the floor, facing the now-visible Angela Weber. Her mind rebelled at the thought of her friend as a blood sucking monster like the ones who had ruined her life. "The Cullens are different, Angela. They feed off of animal blood – not human – it's why they have golden eyes, instead of red."
"And you?" Angela questioned softly. "Your eyes are…silver? What do you-" Angela cut off, not able to say the words. I looked away.
"Like I said," I looked back at Angela. "My ability is consuming; it's kind of like being chained to a comet, I would imagine. I feed off of humans, Angela." She gasped and her form started to flicker as her back pressed up against the wall. So much for getting her out of her shell.
"I know there's nothing I could say to make you understand or sympathize," I said quickly, pumping out calm into the air. "Not even my own brother understands, much less Carlisle. I was a serial killer before I was ever a vampire, Angela. It's a part of who I am – who I'll always be." Her eyes were watering, now, though she wasn't quite crying yet. She ducked her head but stayed visible.
"I don't-" Angela started. "Why can't you feed off of animals like the Cullens, then?" She looked at me, hopeful that I would change my ways.
"It's not about the blood," I shook my head. "It's the release – the rush – I get from-" I cut myself off, though I knew Angela understood what I was going to say. "It's in me deep and it's not getting out, Angela, but I meant what I said. I won't hurt you."
"But you'll hurt someone else," Angela said with a monotone. Her breathing increased rapidly. "You would kill Ben…" She shook and pressed into herself, trying to get very small.
"No," I said with confidence. "I don't think I would have. I'm not exactly as gentle as the rest of the Cullens, but Carlisle's philosophy must have affected me, because since I've met them I've only really gone after the lowlifes of humanity – and a few vampires." My words appeased her to a degree, but she shook her head at me.
"They're still people," she countered, as if that should mean something to me. She would fit right in with the Cullens and their no-kill philosophy.
"Can we move on to a different topic?" I asked, hoping to keep her from freaking out and disappearing again. Angela sighed and looked back up at me, furrowing her eyebrows.
"If you-" Angela started. "How come your eyes aren't red?" She was uncomfortable asking the question, but at least she wasn't a livewire of nerves, like she was when we were discussing my murder hobby.
"It's a side effect from too much Divinium in my system when I changed into a vampire," I said simply, then prepared to explain what that meant. "I'm something of a scientist – a chemist – and after I found out about vampires I started to experiment. Divinium is an indestructible alloy that I created. I won't go into detail with you, since it's a very long story that you wouldn't understand, so all you really need to know is that I'm basically indestructible – even to vampire standards."
Angela's mind tried to process what I was saying, but she really couldn't. Divinium? Experiments? She barely knew what it meant to be a vampire, so explaining to her my immunity to fire wouldn't be impressive at all if she didn't know that regular vampires were highly flammable.
Suddenly, a light bulb went off over my head – in a metaphorical sense, anyway – and I rolled my eyes at myself for taking so long to come up with the idea. Renesmee's power – I could use it to explain everything to Angela in ways that she could hopefully understand.
"Angela," I said, making her turn her head back in my direction. "I have a gift that allows me to share thoughts and memories with others. You already know about vampires, so it wouldn't hurt anything for you to get the full story. Would you allow me to show you?" I extended my hand, palm up, in her direction and waited.
Hesitantly, she nodded her consent and started to move toward me. I shook my head and easily maneuvered to her spot in the corner, extending my hand again and waiting for her to grasp it. She hovered her palm above mine, her body heat flowing over the skin of my hand and arm, before finally placing it down gently in mine. I closed my fingers around her fragile hand – careful not to shatter her bones – and let my memories flow.
I showed her nearly everything of importance, starting with my first encounter with a vampire and ending with me finding her in that slaughterhouse. I skimmed over the numerous murders and unethical human experimentation, but everything else was left open to her. She dropped my hand and let out a long breath when the images stopped, her mind trying to process everything.
"So, these Volturi are behind everything?" Angela looked at me with damp eyes. I tilted my head and pursed my lips, before raising and dropping my shoulders.
"They're behind what happened to you," I corrected. "They have hybrids with them, so I can't see what exactly they're doing, but I recognized the two guards that I killed before finding you."
Below us, I could hear Henry's footsteps as they climbed the stairs. His thoughts cycled through both Angela's disappearing act and my impossible speed as I dashed up the stairs; he was trying to decide whether it was a good idea to enter Angela's room or not. I growled lowly at the thought of being interrupted and interrogated by an elderly man, but halted the mental checklist that started to compile in my brain, which was trying to determine a way to dispose of Henry.
So what if he knew I was a vampire and Angela was a meta-human? I was planning on causing trouble for the Volturi anyway, so why should I bow down to their rules now? I could tell Henry everything as easily as I had Angela. If he rejected me and refused to help, I could always kill him.
That's what I told myself, but another part of my incredibly fast vampire brain disagreed with my reasoning. It told me I felt bad about killing Dr. Virgil Stein and was trying to make up for it with Henry. Maybe I was. Henry finally made up his mind and turned away from the closed door, shuffling down the hall to his bedroom.
"And I'm a…meta-human?" Angela asked hesitantly, as though the thought of being different was so bad. Had she forgotten it was her differences that saved her from that vampire?
"Yes, you are," I nodded, refocusing on the timid girl. "Speaking of – have you always been able to turn invisible?"
"No," Angela shook her head and looked at the floor, remembering how it happened. "We were on fall break at Washington State and Ben wanted us to have a little vacation on our time off.
"I had some money saved and Ben had some from his job at the comic book shop," Angela wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and I moved closer to her in case she needed to hold my hand or something. I had seen these kinds of breakdowns on TV, so I had an idea of where this was going. "I had lived in Forks my whole life. I mean, I had gone to Oregon a few times and my parents took me to Disney Land when I was a kid, but this was different. It was supposed to be fun and exciting.
"Ben held my hand practically the whole time we were on the plane," Angela looked down and closed her eyes. "We had planned to go to Tampico to see the beach and play in the ocean, but we never made it past Chihuahua. Ben rented a car and we booked a hotel room for the night so we could drive through the next day." Angela wrapped her arms around her legs again and shook slightly.
"I woke up and the hotel was on fire," Angela whispered. "Ben and I ran outside an-and there were people screaming, and there were bodies everywhere. And there were these pale people – they moved so fast it was just impossible. We tried to run, but one of them caught us. And then we started moving very fast. I couldn't see Ben anywhere, but I could hear him calling out for me.
"I don't know how long they carried us, but there were others," Angela lifted her head out of her arms slightly. "They put us in that cage and left us there. I didn't know what to do – none of us did. We just sat in there screaming and crying and begging, for hours. Nobody came to help, but I could hear sounds coming from the other room. Moans and…growls.
"Ben was there, though," Angela let out a sob. "We held each other when they came for the first one and dragged him away. I could hear him screaming and begging and yelling; and then it got quiet. We never saw him again, but we knew that he was not the only one it would happen to.
"I don't know when I discovered I could…be invisible, exactly," Angela hesitated. "I just know one day Ben started screaming my name like I was taken by those-" she hesitated, not able to say the word. "But I was there with him, only a few feet away. I scared him, I think, when I popped back into his sight." She gave a slight laugh, though it fell flat.
"And then," Angela sobbed louder. "They came for Ben. I tried to get them to stop, but he told me to hide – to get away. I tried to stop them, but they came so fast and then he was just gone. I never saw his…body. He was just gone." Angela choked on her sob and buried her face in her arms again, her form flickering to translucence and back.
I placed a hand on her quaking shoulders, causing her to flinch away. I dropped my hand back into my lap and sighed, scooting so that my back was to the wall and giving Angela her space.
"I'm truly sorry for what they did to you and Ben," I said. "I want you to know that they will not get away with what they've done to you. It will take time, but the Volturi will get what's coming to them; I can promise you that."
Angela didn't say anything in return. She flipped through her memories, watching Ben from the blurry images in her head and holding onto as much as she could. I rested my head against the wall and eyed the ceiling again, allowing my mind to drift along with Angela as I sunk into my own memories.
End notes: I've written out the timeline for most of the rest of this story, and it is extremely long. I wouldn't be surprised if this story ends up over 100,000 words when I'm finished.
Because of this (and because my second story, Symbiosis, is so much shorter in comparison) I've decided to focus on Symbiosis instead of this story. I won't let this story just die, don't worry about that. But updates will be less frequent as I focus on completing my other story.
On the plus side, once Symbiosis is finished, updates for this one should come much faster!