Raum

A Good Liar

Chapter 10: "Nihil Interit"

I'd never given much thought to how I would die

– though I'd had reason enough in the last few months —

but even if I had, I would not have imagined it like this. […]

Surely it was a good way to die, in the place of someone else, someone I loved. Noble, even.

That ought to count for something.

(Twilight, "Preface")

Vampires were supposed to be able to speak at unbelievable speed. It proved to be a lie when Alice began to tell Edward what she'd seen. The words rolled out bitterly and heavily from her mouth, seeming too slow, as she described a hospital corridor: the paramedics pushing Bella's stretcher as fast as they could, their voices frantic as they listed her vitals.

Edward felt as if the world were collapsing on him while, through Alice's account, he imagined Bella covered in blood, her face a mask of pain, her voice an almost intelligible mumble.

"Save the child," Bella cried in the vision. "Claire!"

Alice shuddered as her foresight forced her to withstand her human sister's agony. She sobbed as she reported what else she had seen.

Bella's death.

There was only one way to make the vision remain an unrealized future.

"Run!" Alice begged. "Run, Edward! Save her!"

-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Edward left tracks on the ground as he rushed over bushes, broken branches, and fallen logs. He didn't falter over the slippery rocks of a stream as he cut through it, but stomped his feet so hard, pushing against the current, that one rock cracked. He didn't even acknowledge the moment when he crossed the treaty line and dashed through the Quileute lands.

By the time he approached La Push, he was nothing but a numb clot of pain – a wounded creature, hunched over in his muddy clothes.

The smell of blood slapped him in the face.

Then he picked the only sound which could guide him – the only, tiny hope that he wouldn't be driven mad by his desperation.

Bella's heartbeat.

He leaped toward the hill, and four people entered his visual field.

Beside a shattered motorcycle, a boy lay down. He was dead, but the warmth hadn't left his body yet; the scent of his blood was mingled with the stench of alcohol. He wasn't wearing a helmet, and the signs on the ground showed how he had found his death. Chances were that, upon the impact, the boy had reflexively grabbed hard on the the handlebars, causing the bike to accelerate; his own jerking movements had veered the motorcycle in a way that had thrown him into a tree.

A few meters away from Bella, a small child was weeping, her knees scratched.

Facedown in the ground, with her arms stretched forward and her legs splayed at an odd angle, Bella was unconscious.

Edward's howl of pain stayed trapped in his throat. He took a breath, and when he spoke it was to address the only unwounded human on the scene.

Jacob Black.

Jake was running toward Bella and the child, but Edward was faster than him. When Jake saw the vampire descending on him, he rushed to gather the child in his arms.

"What happened?" Edward growled.

Shaking in his sobs, Jacob tried to choke out his answer, but Edward almost didn't listen to him, focusing on his thoughts to know what Bella had just suffered.

He saw how she had been impotent and frail in front of the drunken rider when his motorcycle had headed toward her and the child. Bella had only managed to push the toddler out of the motorcycle's way. Her desperate bolt had saved the little girl's life, but had cost Bella hers.

The cacophony of thoughts coming from the people who were at the bonfire increased as some of the guys headed toward the scene of the accident.

Oh my god, a crash!

Claire! Where's Claire? Claire!

Over there, on the hill!

Edward tugged at his hair, as if he could push away the frantic screams doubled by the people's minds. He crouched beside Bella, his movements heavy like lead as he tried to process what had occurred and what was he going to do.

A shiver ran down his back as he registered that Jacob was shaking. Not now, he silently pleaded. If he phases now... Edward didn't dare to imagine what he would have to do if Jake had turned into a wolf right then. He straightened himself and bored his eyes into him.

"Jacob," he called, struggling to overcome his own shock in order to calm him down. "I need to take Bella away." He had to force himself to say the next words aloud. "She's dying."

Jake flinched at his words, but didn't reply.

"I'm not taking her to a hospital. There's nothing that can be done," Edward went on, his own words tearing him apart.

Faster than the others, a couple of guys were already climbing up the hill. Edward didn't have but a few seconds left.

Claire sobbed in Jake's arms, burying her face in his t-shirt. "Mommy," she whined. The fragments of images Edward managed to see in her mind showed him how frightened and confused she was. Jake hugged her, and his thoughts matched Edward's: the child was so young that what she had just gone through would stay in her memory only as a blurred nightmare.

"I beg you," Edward told Jake. "Let me take Bella away. Tell everyone that the impact of the motorcycle pushed her into the sea. She saved the child's life. Please, Jacob. Do it for her."

Jake's eyes widened. Edward felt his stunned gaze on his back as he reached out to gather Bella in his arms. He turned toward him, waiting for his answer.

Tears were brimming in Jake's eyes. He had been sure that he would always protect Bella. Instead, she had been harmed by one of his tribe. Derek had a passion for motocross, and the other guys had already reprimanded him for recklessly riding drunk—and it happened often. Derek's family would be devastated now...just like Bella's. Jake pondered what Edward had asked him. The treaty, the border line – what sense did it make if respecting them would mean losing Bella anyway?

Edward scanned Jake's thoughts and tried to discover his intentions. He loves her, Edward acknowledged. But then he also saw how Jake wanted her to have her chance to be happy...even if she wouldn't be with him.

Jake replied to him with a curt nod. Don't let her die, he told him in his mind, accepting the inevitable.

Edward didn't breathe as he held Bella close to his chest. With every drop of her blood soaking his shirt and wetting his skin, he felt her life slipping away. Her faint heartbeat was all he focused on, and it was the only force that made him summon the strength to run back home.

He broke straight through the trees, before people could see him and Bella disappearing in the night. The treaty line came in sight soon. Home, he thought when he passed over that boundary. We're not far, we're not far.

"Edward," she mumbled.

"I love you," he whispered to her. He didn't know if and how long she would be able to hear him. If they were the only words he could tell her, he wanted her to know she was surrounded by his love.

"The child," she murmured. "Claire..."

"You saved her," he told her softly, suppressing a sob. "You saved her," he repeated as he saw her features slightly relax at his reassurance.

When he entered his family's house, he ran directly to his room and lowered Bella on the bed. The second her warmth left his skin, his knees threatened to buckle. His fingers trembled as he searched for her pulse.

He felt as if his head were caught in an iron vise when he checked her and compared what he was registering with what his medical studies had taught him. Not even Carlisle, with his centuries of experience as a doctor, could have done anything to save her at that point.

"Isabella," he tried to call.

Nothing.

"Bella," he tried again, his voice broken by a sob as he realized that his Bella, his human Bella, would never answer him again.

Since he had fallen in love with her, Edward had pushed away the thought that her human life was inevitably running toward its end.

I'm dying anyway. Every minute, I get closer...she had told him at the prom, when he had vowed that he wouldn't end her life and change her into a vampire. On that distant night her words had burned him, to the point that he'd had to stop her mid-sentence.

Even in the last few months, when he had resolved to leave up to her the final decision about her change and had accepted that he would someday have to turn her, Edward had been sure that they would have enough time to prepare themselves. He had imagined that Carlisle was going to be at his side, helping him to keep his control and, more than anything else, helping her to suffer as little as possible.

Kneeling beside her, watching her dying on the bed where they had made love, Edward felt utterly alone, more than he had ever been in over a century.

He rested his lips on her pulse and kissed her skin.

Then he bit.

With reverence, he swallowed the tiny amount of Bella's blood that trespassed on his lips. A part of her went inside him while his venom began to spread through her body.

Mere seconds passed before her gasp told him that the change had started.

"Come back to me," he pleaded.

x-x-x-x-x-x

Edward, Alice called to her brother through her thoughts. May I come in?

She stopped at the front door. With its soft light, dawn embraced the house that had been her home in Forks. Alice focused on the sounds she could pick out around her and let out a sigh of relief as she heard Bella's heartbeat.

"Yes." Edward's voice was filled with the pain that was crushing him.

Alice stepped in slowly, bracing herself for what she knew she would see. She'll be fine, she told herself, hoping that her thoughts could bring a small consolation to her brother, too. When she entered Edward's room, she shut her eyes out of instinct – she couldn't bear to see him so defeated, overwhelmed by Bella's agony, and her best friend tortured by the flames of the change. She sought comfort in her visions, clinging to the one where she had seen Bella as a vampire – glorious in her perfection – and Edward at her side, without any sign of sorrow marring his features.

"Let me take care of her," she told him gently.

Edward hesitated.

Alice leaned a hand on his shoulder. "It'll help her and you."

With the tenderness of a mother she tended to Bella. Where the venom had already completed healing Bella's wounds, she caressed her new skin and cleaned her of any trace of blood.

With her melodious voice, Alice tried to soothe her human friend. With her thoughts, she spoke to his brother and informed him that Carlisle and Esme were coming back from London on the first flight available. A new wave of pain crashed on Edward as he recalled the reason why his parents had gone there: Esme was remodeling their apartment in London, as a surprise for Bella for the year she was going to spend there studying. A year that wouldn't come.

Jasper, Emmett and Rose were around Forks, ready to help should have been any problem with the Quileute. Alice gave Edward a scanty report of what she and her siblings had been able to learn when they had arrived: people believed Bella had been thrown off the cliff on impact with the motorcycle. Charlie and all the people he had been able to summon were trying to find her body, searching in the places where currents sometimes washed up things lost at sea. Edward acknowledged her sister's words with a nod, relieved that Jacob had helped him.

Like grains of sand in a hourglass, the minutes passed and another day went by.

When Carlisle and Esme arrived, Bella's change was nearly completed.

"She's strong, son," Carlisle reassured Edward, never leaving his side in the final moments of her agony. "It will be all right."

Edward tightened his hold on Bella's hands. Minute by minute, he felt her skin becoming more similar to his, and he caressed her features with his gaze while they assumed the supernatural perfection of the vampiric nature.

When Bella's heart came to its last beat, he held his breath, drowning in the sudden silence as if he had gone underwater.

The first thing she looked upon as she left her human life behind and entered in her new existence was Edward's loving gaze. She had been separated from her family and friends, but when she met Edward's eyes, she was certain that, with him, she would never lose hope.

Thanks for reading!

Am I forgiven after the evil "cliffie on a cliff" of the previous chapter?

"Nihil Interit" means "Nothing perishes" in Latin.

An Epilogue will be posted in a few days. And then...I've a new multichapter story ready for you. It will be short, and with vampires. If you put me on author alert, you'll get a message when the first chapter is posted.

Thank you! to my wonderful friends Camilla10, Miaokuancha, Marlena580, and Jmolly.

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A Good Liar's extras are posted on: h.t.t.p : / / myreadinglounge. blogspot. com/