Back with another installment of WWFI. I really hate re-writing chapters from someone else's point of view because I feel as though the story doesn't get a chance to progress, but I felt that it was necessary for this part.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Previously...
"We'll take her in as one of our own." Esme became the mediator as more and more outsiders gave our strange group quizzical stares. "We'll help her take control of her thirst. There will be no more deaths. I swear of it. "
"And if there is, know that we will be the first ones at your door." Sam was making a promise. Emmett and Jasper were near them, snarling back making another promise of their own. They would be looking for one hell of a fight. "Jake. Paul. There is nothing more to discuss here. The Cullens know we'll be watching them. Let's go."
Paul-wolf broke off into a run across the lot and past the trees. I could soon hear the soft thudding of paws against the earth. The tallest wolf boy was still staring at Isabella with remorse written across his dark face. This was not the girl he once knew, nor would she ever be the same. Though, unable to flip through his mind, I knew he was trying to say goodbye.
"Jacob," Sam said again, pulling the boy wolf out of his reverie. He turned on his heels as if being taken over by a gravitational pull. He and Sam took off in a run just like the other wolf. Alice, who still held Isabella by the waist, turned around first.
"C'mon, Isabella," Alice gripped her tighter, telling all of us she wouldn't let go. "Let's get you cleaned up."
Isabella | s t r a n g e r .
I didn't know why I had returned to their house because it wasn't as though I was entirely welcomed there after what I had done. I knew nothing about myself other than my name, and even that I seemed to be unsure of. I remember being in excruciating pain for what seemed like forever, praying for death to take me. When it didn't, I cried until no more tears would come. I was extremely hot all over like a scorching fever was tingling from the roots of my hair to the soles of my feet. I lay in the grass through three sunsets, and on the last morning, the pain was the most intense…
The sky lit up with lightening so bright it, looked like flashes of daybreak. A violent storm was coming, but the pain wouldn't release me. Even my straining heart hurt with every thump against my aching bones. I was in too much pain to crawl to some sort of shelter; my throat was too dry to scream for help. When the rain finally came, it was so very cold, but it felt truly amazing against my burning skin. Darkness enveloped me. I didn't dream nor did I think about anything in this silence. I just was.
It was the flapping of a bird's wings that woke me. It was so loud in my ears that I wondered if one had built a nest in my hair, but when I opened my eyes, I saw the blackbird soaring high above me. So high, but I could hear the wind pass through every dark feather on its body. This was the blackest bird I had ever seen. At least, I believed it to be.
And still…its black body appeared to be tinged with violet as it flew into the sun. I became aware of the vibrant colors around me. The bluest sky, the greenest leaves, the brownest bark, and the sun felt so warm. Even the earth under me was alive with crawling things. I could hear them weaving their way through the dirt and passing one another with their hard shells. The sun touched everything in the forest including my skin-
My skin…sparkled in the sunlight! I wanted to capture all the light reflecting off my skin. Crushed glass dusted over marble. How had I stayed in the sun so long, yet my skin was so pale and smooth? Was all of it a dream? Had a blow to the head given me delusions about my suffering?
I felt my head for any lumps and bruises, but there were none. In fact, I felt truly fantastic.
Off in the distance, I heard water streaming.
Ronnie, I'm gonna go get the nets from the truck. You need anything? The male's voice carried in the wind along with the most amazing scent. The burn in my throat came back full force, telling me that it needed to be placated. An instinct took over just then. I was a bundle of impulses, rising to my feet with incredible speed.
I took off running towards the smells, kicking up mud and twigs along the way. Trees blurred past me like wet paint smeared along a canvas. The scents were so strong now; moisture pooled inside of my mouth.
I saw the stream of water before I saw him. He was holding a bucket while wearing the most ridiculously decorated hat.
"Lady, you okay?" he asked, giving me the onceover. He examined my body with worry etching his face. His mouth fell open, startled at something in my eyes. His heartbeat quickened like a drum in my ear. I could suddenly hear every thump louder and louder until it became the only sound. Something guttural came from my fiery throat. Before he could even think about running, I was on top of him with my lips slowly pulling away from my teeth. He was screaming from under me for someone to help him.
I straddled his waist, and with one hand I covered his mouth to muffle his cries. He was squirming weakly, losing the strength to fight. I threw off his hat with my other hand then grabbed him by the hair to expose his throbbing skin. I lowered my head into the crook of his neck. With ease, my teeth broke his skin; the warm liquid was quickly easing the burn in my throat with a pleasure I had never known.
"R-Ronnie?" My head rose up, seeing the other man. All the color drained from his face when he saw the rabid look in my face and the blood dripping from my mouth. The man turned on his heels before scampering away like a rodent. The anger within me strengthened. I focused all my attention on him until he froze in his spot, screaming bloody murder. He dropped to the ground and I instantly fell with him. I felt so weak that I could barely stand, but I was still hungry. I crawled to the man, who had still not found the strength to get up. He was sputtering and coughing up blood as he tried to crawl the closer I got.
When I was in arm's reach, I dragged him towards me and flipped him over onto his back. He was trying to say something, but I couldn't understand a word of the gibberish. I lowered my mouth onto his chin and slowly licked the blood away. This man soon shared the same fate as his friend.
It was like I was under some sort of spell and when it was over I was surrounded by blood and gore. The two men lay like marionette dolls with their limbs bent at odd angles. I sat by the water with my knees pulled up to my body. My chest heaved violently as if I was crying, but no tears came. Slowly, I crawled to the water and the reflection seemed so foreign to me. It had been as if I were staring at the devil: eyes a bright red with blood drying on my face. I was so scared of myself and what I had done. I was a murderer who had just taken two men away from their families. Away from their children and wives and friends.
But there was no way that I could stop. I was fighting against this monster inside me, who looked through me with red eyes.
The burn in my throat was gone and I felt repulsively satisfied. There was no way that I could do that again. I wouldn't allow myself to. It was then that I escaped the gruesome scene at my feet. I needed to be as far away from those men as possible and away from others that might get in the way. I found a small cavern in a rock wall where I decided to make camp for the night. I would fight this burn as long as I needed to. The night sky hung over my head, but instead of growing tired, I pulsed with life.
They were being much nicer than I expected after all that I'd done to them. After all that I was. I closed my eyes as the fair-haired man took me through their large house, up the stairs, and to a room. From the way he spoke, he seemed to be the father of this family, but he only seemed a few years older than everyone else. They all shared the same honey eyes. They were like me. I'd seen that the moment I saw what their skin did in the sunlight.
My whole body felt so very weak, like I had just been struggling to break through restraints. The petite girl was standing weakly on the other side of the room, to my left. She was asking me to stop hurting her, but I hadn't been doing anything. Twice, she and the boy with the brown hair passed glances at each other. He caught me staring as the older man spoke about my thirst.
Just the thought of it made my throat ache. I remembered how wonderful it felt to have that ache pacified. I stayed inside of the cavern for days without ever tiring. The more I kept myself there, the hungrier I became so I ran to the only thing that I knew. But now the thirst felt worse than when I woke up on the floor of the forest. My body remembered how very wonderful it felt to have blood soothe the raw feel of my throat.
"She's very worried about the thirst, Carlisle. It's coming on stronger," the brown-haired boy said.
How could he have possibly known that? My fingers clenched; I could hear the sheets on the bed tearing apart as I slowly gripped them between my fingers. "What is he doing?"
"Edward- like you -has a special ability," the woman told me. "Three of the members of our family do. Edward happens to be telepathic-"
"You've been reading my thoughts?" I found myself rising from the bed when the realization hit. My every thought was naked and exposed as my privacy had been breached. Had this been the game they were playing at all along? I focused on him, raising my hand. His body slammed against the wall. In the next moment, I was slammed to the floor, away from the boy. I needed to get to him, but the grip on my arms was unyielding. I let out a scream so loud that it racked my own body with fear. It took every bit of energy I had left to rise up from the floor, breaking free from the grasp. I found the boy again who was still on his back.
Without thinking twice, I bit down hard on his chest. My teeth broke through his shirt and his skin with an audible tearing sound. A wild snarl escaped his mouth and he pushed me back on my butt. I didn't have to look up when I heard them coming towards me. I could feel their impending touch, but before contact, I lifted myself off the ground and ran again. I needed to soothe this ache or I would go insane.
What the hell did I know about sanity at this point, though?
My nose picked up a wonderful trail of aromas the farther away I ran from their home. My body pushed harder to run faster, anticipating the great satisfaction I was sure to feel. It wasn't long before I heard them. There were wonderful heartbeats, fluttering like wings on a bird, and if I could just get one between my palms, I could stop this maddening burn. Bark and wood crumbled at my fingertips as I squeezed the tree that I had been leaning on.
In the sea of voices, one boy's stood out to me the most. "Leah, it's gonna close soon. Can you come get me?"
The voice came from a boy, standing near the side of a log cabin, directly in my path. I could feel myself moving slowly closer to him, and I couldn't break free from this inexplicable pull. This voice was important to me, but I didn't know why. All I knew was that I had heard it before, yet I couldn't remember when. It was like trying to remember a dream that slipped farther out of my mind the more I tried to grasp onto it. When he caught sight of me, he stood frozen in place. I just needed to touch him- see if he was real or if he would disappear like everything else.
Just as my fingertips were about to graze his skin, I felt myself being pulled backwards and I allowed it. The boy was looking at me with great fear in his eyes. He was looking into mine, and I wanted to tell him that they scared me as well. I could see his hands trembling, as he kept looking at my fixed gaze. At my side was the petite girl again. Her family stood behind me, staring ahead. The young boy, Seth, had his own family joining him now. They were all incredibly tall with dark hair. Their skin reminded me of shined copper in the light- such beautiful creatures, I was surrounded by.
"Get behind me, Seth," the only woman from their group said, pulling Seth by his collar. The boy hovered behind her now, slightly peeking between her body and her arm.
"Leah, take Seth home," the leader of the group said firmly and when I looked up, he was staring at me fixedly. They all had been. Something told me that I needed to remember them, but they were nothing to me now. The girl pointed at me, spitting harsh words that I had not been paying much attention to at that moment. I was surveying this small crowd, and when I saw him, the memory almost knocked me off my feet. He was the tallest of them, yet his sad expression made him look even younger than the little kids playing games in the shops.
I had been lying on the ground with the fever igniting my whole body. He was looking down at me with tears falling down his face. They fell to my skin like tiny drops of liquid fire and I screamed for him to help me. His hands reached to touch my face, but it only made the fire burn brighter. Again, I screamed for him to help me in some way. There had to be a way to take the pain away. I shut my eyes tight as his touch retreated, but when I opened them, he was gone.
"You left me to die," I said with my eyes trained on him. The frown lines in his face only increased more. How could he just leave me like that when he knew that I was in so much agony? He was the reason I was like this. He was the reason why I now craved blood more than my own life. Not truly a life, though. He was the reason for this half life.
I wanted nothing more than to feel my hands wrap around his neck and hear the snapping sounds of his bones as I twisted his head around. He should have taken the places of those fishermen. Their deaths were on his hands as much as they were on my own. I needed him to suffer the way I had been. The two sides kept arguing about a girl, but the burn in my throat was keeping me distracted. Hunger had not been on my mind, though. Fury fueled this fire now and was controlling my every movement. My knees slightly bent, ready to spring, and I clenched my hands tightly.
"We'll take her in as one of our own. We'll help her take control of her thirst. There will be no more deaths. I swear of it." Foolish woman, I thought. She had stepped from behind me with her kind, beautiful face to tell them these lies. There couldn't be any way to control this bloodlust that drove me. She was so very sure of her promise, though, that I almost believed her. I wanted to believe that it could be true.
By the time I realized arms were around me, the group had cleared off and I was looking up into big brown orbs. They were full of sorrow- no, not sorrow. It was remorse for what he had done to me. Someone beckoned for him to follow and again he was gone. The petite girl, who had not taken her hands from around my waist, gave me a light squeeze.
"C'mon, Isabella, let's get you cleaned up." She lightly took my hand, and we ran back in the direction of their home. I couldn't tell if she was holding me to lead or if she was afraid that I would run off to cause more trouble. I could not blame her. As the feeling of hunger within me started to gain some control, I clutched onto her.
I didn't let her go until we passed the empty living of their house and made it up the stairs to the bathroom. My muddy feet left a trail on the white tiled floors and I stopped to wonder how far the trail led back to. She flitted from one corner of the room to another, getting a fluffy robe and a small box from under the sink. In the center of the room, was a white tub with an overhead shower.
"Would you like me to leave?" Alice moved closer to the door, but I shook my head vehemently.
"Don't go," I pleaded, reaching out to touch her arm. "I don't trust myself alone." This was true. The hunger was getting stronger now that I hadn't let myself drink and I didn't know what would happen if I was alone with my own thoughts.
She simply nodded and sat on the edge of the tub, facing away from me. "I'm Alice, by the way," she said as I quickly took off my dirty, old clothes.
I dipped into the water; it was almost unbearably warm, but I welcomed the feeling. I pulled my knees up to my chest and sat for a moment with my arms tightly wrapped around my legs. I didn't know how long I had stayed there, staring off into space, but she broke my trance. She'd given me the small, paper box over my shoulder.
"Here," she said.
Ripping it open, the smell surrounded me in the best way.
I clutched the bar of soap in my hand and closed my eyes, bringing it to my nose. Again, the feeling of dark familiarity hit me in a wave. "I've smelled this before."
"Lavender," Alice said with a hint of a smile in her voice. "Does it make you remember anything?"
I dropped the bar into the water, frustrated. I rested my chin on my folded arms above my knees. "Yes, but I don't know what. It's more of a feeling, really."
I felt Alice's hands in my head just then. She was slowly massaging my scalp and hair, loosening the tangles. Murky suds slipped down my shoulders and into the clear water. The more I tried to hold onto even an inkling of a memory, the more it slipped away.
"Am I doing it now?" I asked her, slightly turning towards her. "Am I hurting you?"
A look of realization cloaked her face. "Yes, you are, and it's very frustrating for me." Her face scrunched up, looking towards the ceiling, and she reminded me of a child. "I'm not used to not being able to see."
"See?"
"Do you remember when we told you that Edward could read minds?"
And then I bit him. Quickly averting my eyes, I turned back around to hide my shame. I managed to squeak out a mumbled, 'yes'.
Alice didn't seem angry when she recalled the situation. In fact, she let out a small laugh and then resumed massaging my head. "Some of us have gifts like you. Edward has the ability to hear and see what others are thinking. Jasper…" Her voice drifted into blissful nothingness. "He can feel and influence the emotions of others, good emotions and bad."
"And your ability?"
"Depending on a number of things, I am able to see the future."
I turned around with my eyes wide, splashing water onto the bathroom floor. "Oh, Alice! Then you can tell me when I'll figure this all out-"
She shook her head, dejectedly. "We can barely use our abilities when you're around us. I see fragments of time, but they make no sense at all to me – very jumbled. It makes my head hurt and let me tell you, I could very well be the first vampire with a migraine." Alice smiled lightly again.
"Well, then maybe my ability is to hurt people because that's all I seem to be doing. Your family and those men…" No matter how much, I try to push the scent of their blood and the last screams on their lips out of my mind, the memory never fades. "I wish that was what I didn't remember."
"But you remembered one of the wolves – Jacob was his name."
I involuntarily let a growl escape me. "He's the reason I'm like this now. I know it. He made me this way."
"Isabella, wolves can't create vampires. It takes another vampire."
Had I possibly heard her correctly? "Wolves?"
She sighed, "There are…other creatures besides our kind. I'm not the right person to tell you because I don't know much about their kind. Carlisle would probably be better at explaining it you. I do know that wolves can't create vampires."
I shrugged, "I remember feeling like I had been pushed into a flame, and I wanted him to make it go away. Then he left." For a while, Alice hadn't said anything, but I knew she was thinking. So was I. I wanted to have more of these memories so that things would start to make sense. It seemed as though I was even more lost, now that I had some knowledge. I stared at my clothes on the floor and saw the brown smudges that hauntingly decorated the white fabric. My throat could not be ignored now that I took in a deep breath.
"Alice," I whispered her name. "I'm hungry."
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