Chapter 24 – Revelation (EPOV)
Carlisle was waiting for me when I arrived in the main room. The rest of the family was gathered as well, obviously waiting for Carlisle to start this meeting. My father smiled at me when I entered the room and I gave him a nod in return. I got a few curious looks from the others as well and I was bombarded by questions in their minds. I didn't have a chance to answer them before Carlisle spoke up.
"How is the girl?" He asked, smiling at me again. His thoughts were fairly confident that she was fine, but he wanted my confirmation on the fact. I also sensed that he was looking for a safe place to start this discussion.
That right there should have piqued my interest on the newest subject to be brought to hand. But I couldn't help the smile that spread on my face when I thought of my girl. "She's fine," I told him, relieved, "She was awake for a little while and she was fully cognisant, but she was still tired. She's asleep again now." Everyone in my family relaxed at that and I realised that they had been worried for her as well. They could all tell that I was the most pleased about my angel's recovery, though.
Carlisle nodded. "I'm sure she'll be tired for a while, especially considering how weak she already was," he said seriously. I knew that too. It was a miracle that my little angel had survived such a fever in the state she was in. It made me glad more than anything that she was still hanging on.
"What did you want to call this meeting for, Carlisle?" Jasper asked curiously. He could feel Carlisle's apprehension and wanted to know what was going on. I turned expectantly to him as well. I knew this had something to do with my angel and whatever he had been keeping from me and I needed to know what was going on now.
My father figure sighed and bowed his head. I shifted nervously in my seat. Obviously, whatever was going on was important and he must be worried about telling us for him to be like this. I was suddenly anxious, torn between needing to know to help my angel and wanting to hide from what he was afraid to tell us. Surely it must be bad, I thought, not wanting to believe it.
Finally, he sighed and lifted his head to survey all of us gathered before him wearing expressions of varying concern and worry. "I don't think that this girl is human," he announced.
I froze, my body going numb as my mind reeled in shock at his abrupt statement. Wasn't human? I thought. What did he mean? That couldn't be true. My angel was too pure, too innocent to be anything supernatural. I was aware of the buzzing thoughts of my family, echoing my own shock. They were all surprised by what Carlisle had suddenly pronounced.
"What do you mean?" I asked carefully through stiff lips. I didn't want to believe what he was telling me.
"I mean, I don't think that she's human," he repeated cautiously, eyes narrowed on me. I nearly growled at him with the frustration I was feeling. I heard what he said and now I wanted him to explain what he was talking about. Jasper shot me a quick glance, feeling my annoyance and my desperation.
"What does that mean, Carlisle?" Jasper asked him, his face severe. He was going into his soldier mode and I could sense his mind tune attentively to whatever Carlisle was going to say.
Carlisle sighed and rubbed a hand over his face in a very human gesture of tiredness or exhaustion. "I think, in order for me to explain this properly, I'm going to have to tell you a story from my past. From long before I met you, Edward, back to when I was staying with the Volturi," his voice was full of weariness. I knew he didn't really like recalling his time with our so called leaders, due to the differences in opinion he and Aro had over the value of human life.
Aro, much like most other vampire in our world, thought of humans only as a source of food. But Carlisle valued the human life highly and sought to find ways to help preserve life and help heal others. This difference in opinion, once he saw that Aro could not be persuaded, eventually led to him leaving Italy and pursuing his career as a doctor in the New World.
"It was towards the end of my stay in Italy," he began his story, "I had stayed with Aro for many years already and I was beginning to think about moving on and continuing my search for others like myself. The members of the guard scout the city, looking out for any vampires wandering into their territory. When you go to visit the Volturi, they find you, not the other way around." He chuckled humourlessly.
"It was on their regular patrol that they found something. They found a man with a strange scent in one of the few abandoned buildings within the city. He behaved like a feral vampire, they said. Not knowing what to think about him, he was taken back to their castle and presented before Aro. Aro was fascinated by this man and even more so when he touched his skin and found he could not read his thoughts...
I stood beside Aro as the man was dragged forth and dropped unceremoniously to the floor at Aro's feet. Aro barely spared him a glance before he turned questioningly to the two members of his guard that brought him in. "We found him in one of the old buildings on the outskirts of the city, Master," Felix's deep voice explained, "He has a strange scent, not human, and he fought us like a vampire."
Looking at the man cowering before us, I couldn't see him being able to fight anyone off, least of all a vampire. "Hmm," Aro hummed as he surveyed the curious man with his milky, unfocused eyes. He crouched at the man's side and placed his hand on his exposed arm. After a moment had passed, he stood up and a small, delighted smile spread onto his face. I recognised that look of fascination that he held. It was the same one he had when he found out about me and the diet that I lived by.
"Interesting," he murmured, "So very interesting."
"Aro knew that I was training to be a doctor, so he put the man into my care," Carlisle spoke, bringing me out of the memories in his mind, "He, like the others, could tell that this man was different and wanted to know more about him and what he was." I snorted mentally. Of course I knew what Aro would have been thinking then. It would have been about how this man could serve to his purposes, what use he could be in his precious guard. Ever the collector he was.
"He was very weak, could not even stand by himself," he continued, "I carried him to one of the small storage rooms and Aro had a cot set up for him. I examined him, but I could find no injuries or symptoms to explain his weakness. He was underweight, but not nearly enough to put him in such a condition. I tried to feed him, fought with him whenever he refused, but the small amounts I managed to get into him were never there long. He could not seem to keep any form of food or fluid inside."
He looked to me and in his mind, I could see the scene of my precious girl after our first attempt at feeding her, compared with his memories of this man he met in Italy. I didn't like what he was implying, but surely if he found a way to help this man, then he would know what to do to help my angel? I truly hoped so, for I could not bear it if this story did not have a happy ending.
"He refused to eat and so I ceased my attempts at feeding him. I believed it was doing him more harm than good with the way he struggled against me time after time. I was out of ideas and I still didn't know what was wrong with him. After days of him not eating and being under my constant monitoring, I came to realise that his condition, while it did not improve, it never deteriorated either. I put this down to part of his strangeness, part of what made him different," he shook his head, "He never spoke a word except to tell me to leave him to die and that he wasn't worth saving. But it is against my nature to allow someone to die if I could help save them.
"I didn't know what to do and medicines at that time were limited. I feared that I would be forced to watch this man waste away and be unable to do anything to prevent it. Aro was sorrowful that there seemed to be nothing I could do for the man, but I knew the only thing that interested him was the secrets the man held. We were waiting for the inevitable when something unexpected happened."
Carlisle paused in his story again. I sensed that this next part was the most relevant. This was what he had been hiding from me that pertained to the girl. I needed to know what he was going to say. The others were listening intently, their minds silent for once as they absorbed the story Carlisle was relaying to us.
"A young woman visited me in the room while I was examining the man again. Aro wanted a message brought to me and thought nothing of having one of the human servants, deliver it to me. I didn't realise in time what was happening and it happened so fast that I had no chance to stop it. The man, who had previously lain unmoving on the bed, suddenly sprung to life. He was on the woman before I could stop him and within seconds she was drained of her blood."
I felt the intense regret that he felt at not being able to save the helpless, young woman, but I couldn't concentrate on that. The man wasn't human at all, I gathered that. But he drank blood? He wasn't a vampire, surely, or else they would have known. Unless it was an ability he had that was unique to him, but how would that pertain to my angel? What was he saying? I thought furiously.
"Carlisle, what are you saying?" Esme voiced in confusion, as if she had been privy to my thoughts.
"It is my belief that the girl is half human and half vampire," Carlisle sighed externally and internally, grateful to have this weight lifted from his shoulders. He glanced at me nervously in hopes of assessing my reaction to this shocking and what seemed like near impossible news to us all.
Could it be that my angel was exactly what my father thought her to be? A half breed of human and vampire, what did that mean? Part of me wished it to be so. My feelings towards the girl could be more justified. But the other half of me was reeling with shock and horror and anger that quickly turned to rage.
"How long have you suspected?" I growled at him fiercely, taking myself and my family by surprise, I had never spoken to my father in such a way before, especially not in front of my mother or any other female presence. I was nearly taken aback when I hadn't realized I had pushed myself to my feet and currently towered over my father's now tense sitting form. "You let her suffer for days on end! I had to watch my angel suffer for days. How could you?" I demanded in a half growl, half sob. My heart ached with immeasurable sadness and pain for the girl that I so desperately cared for. "How could you do this to her Carlisle? Has she not suffered enough?" I demanded hotly, willing the urge to physically hurt my own father, to dissipate and never resurface.
"Edward," Carlisle tried pleading with me, urging me with his thoughts to calm down before I did something or said something that I could never take back. "I was not one hundred percent certain—and I am still not—but with this new possibility brought to light, we may very well have a way to give her sustenance."
"You mean take her hunting?" Emmett grinned, pleased with the idea of watching my tiny delicate angel taking down a full sized grizzly bear. I hissed at the picture he had brought forth in my head and I had to use every fibre of control I had to not yell at him and his preposterous idea.
"No," Carlisle said quickly, trying to diffuse the rather tense situation. "What I was meaning was that I have human blood stored away in the fridge in my medical lab. If I am wrong—which I do not think I am—it would only frighten her more, and break what trust she does have in Edward, to just take her out into the woods and tell her to hunt. The girl can't sit up on her own, let-alone hunt." Carlisle was choosing his words rather carefully. He knew if one wrong word was said that I would break my carefully composed anger and all hell would break loose.
I would not dare to let any one come near her. I would take down anyone who dared try to take her from me, or the safety of her room. That room had become my angel's safe haven. And I would fight to keep it that way. Every angel needs a little piece of heaven, and her room was her little piece. A piece she allowed me to share with her and for now only me. There was no way that I would jeopardise the level of trust my angel had in me and I certainly would not let anyone destroy my, her, our little piece of heaven.
"For now, I think that we should let the girl fully recover from her time of being ill, and then Edward will handle this situation as he sees fit. It would do none of us good to thrust a blood bag in her face. It may only frighten her more." I was a little more than mollified that my father figure was willing to put aside his inner doctor and let me decided on what steps needed to be taken regarding my angel. "Of course, I am more than willing to help in any way that I can," He spoke only looking at me now.
Part of me wanted to rage at his sudden, yet plausible conclusion. The other part of me wanted to deny every scrap of evidence and just go back to the way things were now. And the rational side of my brain knew that the girl had to eat, and soon. It made sense that she had not starved to death in the hand full of weeks we had come across her.
But she is just so perfect and beautiful, so delicate and fragile. But I also know that she was terribly frightened—frightened of her surroundings, frightened of me and my family, frightened of what ever monstrous animal had inflicted. The abuse, torture and starvation, for what ever length of time, she was held captive. The girl didn't trust easily and I was terrified that if I took one wrong move, if I said one wrong word…I could loose her—all of her.
Pulled from my internal thoughts, Alice was talking out loud, but to whom I was not sure. "I can only see fuzzy little bits and pieces of my visions. I see this as a good thing and a bad thing…" Alice hissed trailing off, trying very hard to nail down a solid vision of the girls future. "It's so dammed frustrating!" She hissed frustrated. Jasper wrapped a comforting arm around her, and Alice relaxed into his embrace, the frustration and edgy tension in the room slowly washed away, replacing it with a gentle calm.
I narrowed my eyes at him, and Jasper just shrugged, not bothering to at least look guilty at his mood manipulation.
"When can we try," Rosalie spoke softly, knowing that this subject was a dodgy subject with me thus far. I was still on the very thin line of flat out denial and full out acceptance. "I mean, if she really is half vampire, don't you think she is practically starving? If so, why has she not said anything when we tried to feed her human food?"
"I don't know," Carlisle replied thoughtfully. "We don't know if she can actually speak or if she simple does not want to speak to us…"
"Or more horrifically," Jasper cut in. "Was ordered not to speak."
A/N: So OMG I am all about evil cliffy's this time around! I know I totally suck hard when it comes to giving you guy's something to go off of. But this story is totally about 'What's Next' and 'OMG…What Just Happened?' or "Did Edward totally Just kiss Angel?' or 'Emmett Did What!'
Anyways inspiration totally hit me and you guys totally lucked out with another chapter this week!
THATA…my newest Brazilian Bestie, I do hope that you are able to read this chapter before you go on holiday's. If you are already gone…then as promised, I have the new chapter ready and waiting for you. Have a great holiday, where ever you are!
And for all my Canadian readers…Happy May Long Weekend!