A/N: Well I tried posting this yesterday for close to twelve hours, sadly the document manager was down. Well Blurred Lines is officially done; all that remains is to be edited so expect updates more frequently.
Chapter 18
The rest of the day passed just like that. Every hour or so she would pause and write down a room number. But the majority of time was spent just the two of us holding each other, not wanting to move. Not saying a word. The candles around us burnt out hours ago leaving us in near darkness. I don't know how to describe what it felt like, being with her. I was so sure that I would never feel love again, or at least love like this. In any other circumstance; I would be uncomfortable; but with Alice, it just seemed right. That's a terribly cliché way to describe it, but true none the less.
Seems that the longer I stay with Alice the more cliché and cheesy I become.
By three o'clock six room numbers were scrawled on the notebook paper in Alice's own personal calligraphy; the cipher to find this mystery person. I remember trying to be business like this morning. That ranks in the top three mistakes I've made since I showed up. I shivered at the thought of having to go back to using my cover tomorrow, that meant having to go to school and pretending to be English again.
"Cold?" Alice murmured into my neck, her cool breath on my neck sent a ripple of goose bumps down my spine.
"No, just dreading that I have to go to school again." I whispered into her ear.
"Are you telling me you're not cold, even a little bit?" She asked placing her icy hands on either side of my face. They were cold, but I've known colder.
"Silly vampire, my only real girlfriend was a Winter Fae. You're warm compared to her." I murmured into her hair.
She shifted from her resting spot, "okay, two questions." She said staring into my eyes, "first, how am I warmer than anything?" she said pressing the back of her hand against my neck. I suppressed a shiver. "Second what do you mean by real girlfriend?"
"You're cold, granted; but you're just cold. Winter faeries are not only cold but they absorb heat." I shivered at the thought, "maybe that's why I like the cold, it reminds me of her." I ran my hands through her spiky hair. "That came out wrong." I said scrambling to find the right words. "I mean that I like the cold; that they're are nothing but good memories attached to it." I finished leaning in placing a light kiss on her forehead.
"Good save," she said softly, her sweet breath drifted into my nose. "What about my second question? What do you mean by real?"
I took a long ragged breath. Alice knew exactly how to kill a perfect day. "If I tell you this story it's the last one I'll tell you for while. If I tell you all my stories now what will I tell you later?" She nodded frantically and urged me to go on. "Here goes nothing. Let me start by saying that everything I said to you is true, I really love you." She nodded and took my hand. "It was about six months after Katherine died and I tried to kill Harry. I was just starting to move on, but the hole in my chest hadn't really begun to heal yet. I was bouncing around from place to place doing what I could for the war. I was in Arizona at the time. Phoenix to be exact…but I digress"
"There were a lot of reported vampire sightings there, even more attacks. I'll never understand why there are vampires who like sunny climes, but that's not really the point. At the time I was rather…umm…ambivalent on whether or I lived. The vampire attacks were the work of the Black Court. The stereotypical kind of vampires; ya know wooden stakes, holy water, coffins." I added realizing that Alice didn't know the difference in vampire species. "It wasn't a proud time for me I was living out of this fleabag motel so bad it makes Motel 6 look like The Plaza. I would go out at night with stakes, holy water, blasting rod. Everything I needed to dust some vampires. I had patrol routes worked out. I would get two or three every night." I loved the way she wrapped herself in my stories. The look on her face was almost childlike, but more beautiful, more angelic.
"Here's where the real story starts. About three weeks into my stay it must have been a Monday, because I was going through a high school. I heard a fight in the distance, it sounded like the standard vampire attack, screams, scrambling, dying. I ran at full speed towards it. I was ready for a fight, I wanted a fight, I was going on pure bloodlust." The memories of my lack of humanity had a real way of making me feel empty.
"I rounded blind corner near the gym, or the library or something, and there she was. Dressed in a tight black tank top, and even tighter jeans, she was fighting with two leeches. From what it looked like she had already killed one; there was an empty crossbow at her feet. She was doing better than holding her own, she was actually winning." I paused blinking away a few tears. "Do you really want to hear this story, I'm not proud of it, and I really wish it never happened."
"You can't start a story like this and not finish it. I promise, no matter what happened it won't change the way I feel about you." She pulled me into a very tight embrace, "no matter what." She whispered in my ear; instantly I felt a wave of calm wash over me.
"Okay. So I was watching her fight these two Black Court leeches, and getting really turned on," She pulled back and gave me an evil glare, "You wanted the real story," I shot back. Alice nodded and went back to resting her head on my shoulder. I continued on, absently running my fingers through her soft hair. "Maybe it was the way she was dressed, or the way she moved when she fought. I stopped and watched her for a minute, before I joined the fight. I started off throwing a bottle of holy water and the one closest to me. It broke right between her shoulder blades, the vampire not the girl. She let out an ear piercing hiss and lunged at me. She was fast, I was faster. I brought up my shield and watched as she slammed into it. I leveled my blasting rod and hit her with a bolt of lightning right in her chest. It didn't stop her for long, but long enough for me to put a stake through her heart, and watch her turn to dust."
"This girl was pinned to the ground when I looked up. I tightened my grip on the blasting rod before I let out a column of fire. I hit the second one square in the face. It tumbled off of her with a stake through its heart. The older a Black Court vampire is the longer it takes to die. I walked up to this girl in black." I was beginning to relive this story instead of just telling it.
She was maybe five six, with ivory skin pale enough and flawless enough to pass for a vampire. Her hair was also dark, and done in a single braid. There were two features that really stood out. The first was a scar that ran diagonal from just below her right eye and ended somewhere on her jaw. The second and by far the feature that stood out the most were her eyes. It was her eyes that let me know she was human. Her eyes were the clearest blue I've ever seen. I wanted to stare at them, but didn't want a soulgaze.
She walked right up to me and without one word grabbed me by the collar and kissed me. There was nothing but bloodlust behind it. The complete opposite of anything I ever had with Katherine. She held me there, our tongues danced, or rather wrestled for control, and by god she was never going to let me have it. She forced me to the nearest wall and held me there. Damn this girl is either really strong, or I'm really desperate.
Eventually she broke the kiss and let go of me. She walked away as if nothing happened. She bent down, picked up her crossbow and disappeared in the darkness.
"That's it! That's the big story." Alice exclaimed, bringing me completely out of the story.
"Yes." I lied, "that's the whole story; there are a few more details, none of which are important." I forced a smile.
"C'mon, were done here." I said trying to stand. Alice, apparently, had another plan.
"Na-uh," she said shaking her head, "not yet, there's no place we need to be." She curled up even tighter in my arms. If I didn't know better I would have thought she fell asleep in my arms.
Soon I was drifting off to sleep. The first sleep I'd had in over twenty four hours. To say I was exhausted would be the understatement of the week. The stone wall was actually starting to feel comfortable like it was softening. I didn't care; soon I was in a peaceful and dreamless sleep.
~*~*~
I woke up sometime later, not sure how much, or where. The cold hard stone wall was replaced with something much softer. I squeezed my eyes open. I don't know where I was, but I wasn't in the lighthouse, that much I knew. The room was dark, but I could make out shelves, filled with books, CD's, movies.
"Where the hell am I?" I asked to the room around me. It may have come out more like, "mhrrmm mhmrm hmm I."
"My house, well my room." I heard the voice, I listened to the voice, and I could name the voice. But I couldn't find the voice.
"That was a bad idea, wizard plus electronics equal boom." I said slowly recovering from my lack of sleep hangover. My eyes were focusing. I slowly scanned the room, but I still couldn't find her.
"Silly wizard, I already thought of that." She said idly, "I took all of it out of here and brought you in through my window."
Bolting upright I said, "So help me god if you carried me bridal style again I'm…"
"You're going to what?" She said cutting me off.
"Okay you called my bluff." I admitted, "Just don't do it again, please." She stepped out of the darkness towards me.
"Deal. I won't do it…again." She sighed, sitting next to me, "on the condition that you tell me who this Lindsay is." I froze. She tensed.
"I said no more stories remember." I said looking down into her golden eyes. There was no way in hell I was going to tell Alice about her, "Besides it's a boring story." I wrapped my arm around her shoulders as I spoke. "My turn; why did you bring me back here?"
"Clearly to take advantage of you in your tired and weakened state." She laughed that sweet melodic laugh.
"When you want to give me the real reason I'm sitting right here, and I'm not going anywhere." I said bringing her closer to me.
"That was my reason. But if you want to get technical I had a vision. Charlie called Bella from the station. Apparently there is a serial killer on the loose in Port Angeles and they're afraid that he might be coming down around here, so they called in all the locals. He didn't trust you and Bella alone so she suggested you two stay here."
"Great." I said with fake enthusiasm I get to sleep in a house full of insomniac vampires.
"Wait here, we made dinner for our two human guests." She said getting up and moving with human speed to the door. "I'll bring it up, five minutes tops." She said skipping out of the room. I haven't seen anyone skip in a long time.
Five minutes to snoop around. I know I shouldn't but I want to see if there's something here that might shed some light on the whole crazed Jasper scenario. I flicked on the light and was assaulted by sheer girlyness. I'm going to leave it at that. I don't need to mention the closet that was bigger than my old apartment filled with Italian or French sounding names, but nothing of real interest.
I found my way to the giant bookshelf pressed against one of the walls. I skimmed through the first couple of shelves, nothing out of the ordinary. A bunch of first editions of the classics: Romantic, Victorian, Elizabethan, Jacobean pretty much stopping at the beginning of the twentieth century; back when a first edition actually meant something. Further down the bookshelf was contemporary fiction, followed by nonfiction and text books. The bookshelf was perfectly organized, no doubt the product of one to many nights with nothing better to do, (or five free minutes.) They were perfectly sorted alphabetically by subject and arranged tallest to shortest. I still didn't see anything suspicious until…
I found Advanced Newtonian Physics book sitting right next to Cultural History of the Roman Republic. One of these was definitely out of place. I pulled the first one out and thumbed through it. Lots of equations and Greek letters. Confusing, yes. Helpful, no. On to the next book in any event. The first thing I noticed was the book jacket was too small for the book, part of the blurb on the inside cover was showing. Now my interest is peaked. I opened it up and immediately recognized it.
I tore off the jacket confirming my suspicions. It was a copy of Vampyre.Older than mine by at least a century and it wasn't in English either, this was a French translation. The original was in Latin, if that makes a difference. I dove straight to the dhampir prophecy. I may not be able to read French, but I sure as hell could tell when part of a page is torn out from a six hundred year old book.
As if on cue Alice waltzed in carrying a tray of something that looked Italian. I closed the book keeping my finger in it to save my place. "Is this yours?" I asked it came out a little more accusatory than I intended.
"Is what mine?" She asked setting the tray down on an end table before coming over to me.
"This," I said showing her the book, "have you seen it before?"
"No I haven't. 'Vampyre' what's that mean." She asked running her fingers over the gold lettering on the cover.
"It's the old spelling of 'vampire,'" I said softly putting my hand on hers, "There's a piece missing." I opened it to the missing page, "It's a prophecy."
"What kind of prophecy?" She asked wide eyed.
"It's about something called a 'dhampir' and I think it concerns some friends of ours. If it was Jasper's it could explain a lot."
"Whoa, whoa wait a sec. Who are you talking about and what's a 'dam-pire?'" She sounded scared. She had good reason.
"I don't know exactly what a dhampir is but according to the prophecy it's a human vampire hybrid. Do we know two people one human, and vampire who are…let's just say 'romantically attached?'" A wave of horror washed over her angelic features, the realization was sinking in.
"Bella. Edward." She mouthed breathlessly, "Why? What was Jasper going to do before you killed him? All I saw was you killing him, there was no other option." Seeing someone as composed and poised as Alice babbling was more than slightly disturbing.
"If I guessed I would say that the dhampir is something that is destined to rid the world of vampires. It's normally how hybrids work. He knew Bella was the easier of the two targets and he knew it was a suicide mission." I tried to be reassuring, but I was failing miserably. I set the book down on the couch thing and pulled her close to me. She started to sob uncontrollably into my shirt, "Shh, shh, it's going to be alright. I don't think he did this by himself."
"What do you mean?" She said pulling away from my chest to look me in the eye.
"This book is nearly six hundred years old. It's not something that you stumble across at a yard sale, and it's not something that's just hanging around an old bookstore. Someone gives you a book like this, or you find one when someone dies." I said as I continued to try the reassuring approach.
"Why?" She asked in desperation, "Why would he do it?"
For once I didn't have an answer. "I don't know," was the best thing I could come up with. "But I swear to you I will find out." I said emphasizing the last four words.
"I… I… I need to get out of here." She stammered. In a flash I was standing alone, in an empty room. The dinner long forgotten; I sank down onto the sofa.
"Was it right to tell her?" I wondered out loud. I felt like crying myself, it seems like I can't not hurt the people I care about. Maybe if I'm able to find the answer. To find out why. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe there was another reason.
"Yes it was." I turned to see Edward standing in the doorway; his voice, as always, was completely smooth. Those immortal guys have all the luck. "She needed to know what happened."
"I know I would have told her eventually." I stammered, more out loud then to him.
"Then she would have seen it. You made the right decision in acting impulsively." I knew he was right.
"I just wish that I had something. I feel helpless, I want to give her answers, and all I have is a theory." I said addressing him directly for the first time. "I'm worried that she's looking to see if what's mentioned in the prophecy will happen. I don't put much stock into prophecies, there a bunch of hocus pocus written close to nine hundred years ago. I don't want to her to get hurt, and I can't allow any humans," meaning Bella, "to be harmed."
"You know I'm not particularly fond of you, but it's not for the reason I told you." He took a calm even breath before he continued, "It's true that your thoughts are muddy, but Alice's are crystal clear. I heard everything she's thought about you, for weeks, maybe even months. She thought she was hiding them, and she was, but occasionally she would let certain things slip. On the day she found out her husband was killed I heard her repeat over and over again 'I love him, I love him.' That didn't sit well with me, mainly because I knew she was talking about someone else. I don't know much about magic, or the laws you have to follow, I thought you did do something to her head, it didn't make sense to me."
"You have to know that we don't just act like were a family, when I said my brothers and sisters, my father, and my mother I meant it." I wasn't going to tell him this but he was starting to ramble. "The point is she loves you and until right now I wasn't sure you loved her. Now I see that you do."
"You know Sparkles; you're a lot smarter than you look." I said in an attempt to lighten the mood. "So this prophecy thing, I think we have two options."
"I would say we have three." He came back quickly.
"Let me guess. The first option would involve you go away for forever right? Well that's not definite enough, there's too much chance of you coming back and fulfilling the prophecy. Or you try to leave, she convinces you for one little romp in the hay, she gets pregnant and raises your child to hate vampries. The way I see it there are two options." I reiterated. "Option one, Bella lives… forever. Or option two, one of you dies."
"By 'one of you' you mean me right?" I nodded a yes to his question, "I'm not thrilled with option one either."
"Neither am I. And speaking professionally I won't allow it to happen. Speaking as one who lost his love, I don't want to see what would happen to either of you have to live without the other. Love is a rare thing; true love is something that happens once in a lifetime. Twice if you're lucky. I'm not going to take it away, from either of you." Knowing that he had a soul, I avoided eye contact the entire time by focusing on the bridge of his knows. It's a trick you learn to pretend you're making eye contact even when you're not.
"You know, you're a better man than I gave you credit for." He said with less than a half chuckle.
"So is this our new bonding thing?" I asked. "We give each other backhanded compliments?" I didn't give him a chance to answer. "Now if you excuse me I haven't slept in thirty six hours, and I have a non-warlock that I have to catch in the morning." I said stretching out on the couch thing.
"Alright," he said getting the hint, "good luck tomorrow." He left at a normal speed turning off the light as he went.
One. Two. Three. Fo… "I'm back." Alice said as she flittered into the room from the window. "Did you miss me?" She said kicking her shoes off before lying next to me on this couch.
"Of course I did." I didn't ask what I was thinking; if she wanted to tell me she would.
I pulled her closer to me breathing in her scent. The more I was around her, the more comfortable I was.
"I'm sorry I ran off like that," she whispered, her breath tickling my ear. After, she put her head into the crook of my neck, "mmmm I love listening to your pulse, so calm, so even."
"It's okay, I know how hard it is for you." I said, sleep creeping into my voice.
A/N: You know the drill by now...Your muse decennds then you review.
After one review and another two PM's I thought I would make it clear that this is NOT the end of this story. All I meant earlier is that I've finished writting it, now it needs to be proofread and edited before being posted.