Chapter Two
Bella awoke to the sensation of movement, as her eyes opened she could see why. She was being carried by someone, someone with very strong, solid cold arms. She lifted her head and looked up, it was the guy with the bronze hair from before, he looked at her and smiled slightly.
"Don't worry I won't bite you", and then he chuckled continuing to walk in a direction she didn't recognise. The others, she could see, were walking ahead at a much faster pace than the guy carrying her. They reached a couple black shiny sleek cars and halted.
"Can you stand", the guy carrying her asked, softly gazing into her eyes with an intensity that made her blush.
"Y…yes" she stammered and he placed her down gently.
"Where are we going?" she asked no one in particular.
They all turned and looked at her, Carlisle smiled at her warmly and reassuringly.
"We're taking you somewhere safe, away from here; it's not safe for you now."
Bella felt confused, too confused to even speak. They all started to get into the cars. She was gently guided into the back of one of the cars containing Carlisle; the guy who'd carried her got into the front.
He turned to her once the door was closed, "I'm Edward by the way, I didn't have a chance to introduce myself before and this is Carlisle."
"Hi", was all she could manage.
"You'll want explanations I suppose, I'm sure you have lots of questions to ask", Carlisle stated simply as he started the car and began to drive down the road. "You're probably confused."
"Yes…you could say that" she said, Edward laughed.
***
She didn't know how long they'd been driving for but it felt like an eternity. There was silence in the car except for the low hum of the engine; Bella's mind however was not so silent. Thoughts were turning over and over in her head bouncing off her skull, making it ache. Edward suddenly spoke breaking through her thoughts.
"We are nearly there now; you will be safe, are you ok?" He turned round to look at her and looked at her, concerned.
Bella smiled and nodded. "I'm fine, thanks to you, I am really grateful; I don't know what that man would have done."
"You wouldn't want to know, but I'm sure you can guess the outcome. That was not a man to mess with."
"Yes Victor is a very angry man" Carlisle said simply.
"Or was" Edward said humorously and grinned at Bella; whom he was still looking at.
"Yes, indeed, we are well rid of him, it's just a shame that it has to be like this" Carlisle said in a sober voice. Edward turned back round in his seat and looked towards the front again.
"I'm just so confused…I don't know even know or understand why he had to attack me, and how did he know me. Of all the people in the world, why me?" Bella was half talking to herself and half to the other two.
"We will explain as best we can when we reach the safe place, you deserve to know what is happening to you." Carlisle said reassuringly.
Bella looked out of the window at the world whizzing past and sighed to herself. Why was her life always complicated? Suddenly the car started to slow; they had turned into a thin winding road that seemed to drag on endlessly. Then gradually Bella could make out the shape of a house coming nearer and finally they pulled up. The house was very modern in appearance yet there was something very old about its feel. Bella looked up in wonder and felt a wave of emotion she did not understand. She felt safe and that this place could possibly be her home. Bella smiled to herself as she opened the car door and stepped outside. She noticed that the others were already there, standing by the doorway, waiting for them. She also noticed that her stuff was there too; she had completely forgotten she had her bag before and was grateful that they had picked it up.
Edward and Carlisle appeared at her side and they walked her up to the steps to join the others. They all then went through the doors and just as Bella was wandering what the place was a women entered the hallway. She was beaming at Bella and the others.
"Welcome to our home Bella" she said warmly, "I'm Esme."
"Pleased to meet you, I didn't realise this was your home" Bella said and turned to look at the others. And suddenly they were all introducing themselves, taking her hand; their touch icy on her skin. The beautiful blonde woman was Rosalie, the large short black haired guy was Emmett, the small black haired girl Alice and the blonde guy was Jasper. She had already been introduced to Carlisle and Edward yet they shook her hand all the same, Edwards hand lingering longer than the others.
She was then guided gently into a room by Edward. The room was a magnificent dining room with a table made completely of glass at its centre. They all began to take seats at the table and Bella too sat down in a place offered to her. Bella felt all eyes on her and then Carlisle cleared his throat.
"Well I'm sure you will want answers Bella, most of all I expect you are wandering what exactly we are?"
"What do you mean?" Bella was genuinely confused; of course she knew they were different, slightly unusual maybe.
Emmett suddenly gave a great guffaw "ha so we rip a guy to bits in front of you and you don't even question what we are, a normal human could not do that!" he exclaimed.
"Yes, well of course not, I had sort of tried to block that from my mind. It wasn't very nice."Bella explained.
"Well to put it simply" Emmett started to explain, "We are not normal humans, in fact we aren't human at all! What do you say to that Bella?"
Carlisle suddenly interjected before Bella could even make a sound. "Thank you Emmett" and he shot a look at him. "Yes Bella we are not human, in fact we are vampires. Though you needn't be afraid we are completely harmless to you. You see we are a different 'breed' of vampire, we only ever feed on animal blood."
Bella's mind was reeling from this new information; her brain working overtime to process it into something that made sense.
"Are you ok Bella?" more than one sympathetic voice asked.
"Vampires exist?" she asked.
"Well yes and that man Victor was one too, yet he wasn't a good vampire. Victor is a vampire that feeds on human blood and therefore dangerous." Edward explained to her.
"So what did he want with me? Why did he want to kill me?"
"We are getting to that part, although it will take some explaining" Carlisle said gently. "I will start with the basics and work from there."
"As I've explained to you already there are two types of vampire; those that feed on human blood and those that feed on animals like us. Vampires have existed for hundreds of years, now just a myth, but we weren't always so elusive. For years Vampires were only known to feed on human blood and then through experimentation in the 1800's, or perhaps by accident it was found that Vampires could also survive on animal blood. For those Vampires that hated what they were it gave them a freedom to be almost normal."
Carlisle paused briefly before carrying on.
As the years passed two groups of vampires formed; those that drink from animals and those that drink from humans. The two groups began to interact less and less. "It is popular belief that humans and vampires cannot mate, however this I untrue, in fact human-vampire offspring can be produced although they tend to be more human with only slight vampire characteristics. Well anyway somehow it was found that when a vampire, who drank from animal blood, produced offspring with a human, the child was found to have blood that somehow took away a vampires immortality. Like a cure or antidote. God knows how they found this out possibly through human experimentation, in those days people were desperate for vampires to be eliminated, there were so many killings.
And then of course the vampire-human children went on to produce their own children, all carrying the antidote in their blood. And then the humans began using the blood against the vampires, using it to mortalise them. The children and people carrying the blood were named Mortalisers, cleverly named for the ability of their blood to mortalise vampires."
Bella had heard the word Mortaliser before. Victor had said it in reference to her.
"It wasn't long before the Vampires realised what they were doing and began killing those that carried the blood. It wasn't easy for them, the vampires that only fed on the animal blood; vegetarian vampires" Carlisle smiled at this the carried on, "began rebelling against the normal vampires as they wanted to be human again. It got messy and eventually there was only a handful of Mortalisers left, one family in particular, the Swan family."
Bella sat there shocked at this piece of information.
"Yes your family Bella" Edward said.
Carlisle began to speak again when Bella nodded at him to carry on.
"The Swan family became the normal vampires enemies. The Swan family were strong an clever and were able to elude the vampires. However gradually one by one they were picked off and now you're the last one Bella. The last known person to be carrying the cure."