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Fading

Edward's Point of View

Chapter Thirteen

"I have to go and find Bella."

"What?" Jasper stared at me. "No! You promised Alice you wouldn't!"

"Well she's not here now, is she?" I said acidly. Alice had slipped out the house an hour or so earlier, keen to escape my glare. Remembering this, Jasper's face darkened.

"A promise is a promise, Edward."

I shook my head in disbelief. "She promised me that she's look after Bella! Remember that, Jasper? Stop being so bloody bias and try to this about this rationally!"

"Rationally?" Jasper repeated. "You think rationally. Alice has a vision that Bella is walking off down a dark alleyway, and you immediately have to go running off after her?"

"Pretty much, yeah." I said, standing up and turning away to stare without seeing out the window. The garden was wide and beautiful, Esme's pride and beauty. The house was nicer than the one in Forks had been, too. Everyone thought so…apart from me. I thought back to the vision I had seen in Alice's mind again, and my breathing quickened. Bella had looked so little and helpless, her arms locked around herself as she'd tripped her way down the cobbled path. It was dark, and she was alone. What the hell was she playing at?

"Stupid Alice." I cursed under my breath again, and felt Jasper stiffen behind me. I sighed and, with great effort, turned around.

"I'm sorry, Jasper." I apologised. "I'll say the same to Alice as soon as she gets back. It wasn't fair of me to blame her."

Jasper kept his back to me.

"I…" I continued swallowed. "I just can't stand it, Jaz. I can't stand another second of it. Of being away from her. Of having to live through hours, days, months, years without her." My voice broke, and I saw the tension in Jasper's shoulders lessen a little.

"When I first burst into that room to save her from Victoria, when she first met my eyes- there was something there."

Jasper turned slowly, and I looked desperately at him. "Don't you see? I have to know what that was. What if…what if she could forgive me? I can't let her go, and then live the rest of all eternity wondering what that look was. Please understand. You have to."

Jasper sighed and rubbed a hand across his face, his fingers tracing the thin scars on his jaw absentmindedly.

"What are you going to do, though Edward?" He asked. "Search the world for her?"

If I needed to, I thought, but shook my head at Jasper. "I know where she is, remember?"

"Phoenix is a big place." He reminded me.

I stared at Jasper until he met my eyes. "If it was Alice- would you go after her?"

Jasper glared at me. "That's different."

"How? How is it different at all?"

"I didn't leave my mate!" Jasper exploded, clenching his fists. A second later, remorse washed off him.

Edward- I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. He thought, ashamed.

"Yes you did." I said quietly, steeling myself to look at him. "And you're right. I did leave her. I ruined everything. She was the one good thing in my life, and I left her. I won't make that same mistake twice."

Jasper opened his mouth to reply, but before he could, we both froze as the sound of Alice sprinting back towards the house met our keen ears.

She pushed open the front door, and was in my bedroom, beside us, before the door clicked shut a floor below.

"Alice? What is it? Are you okay?" Jasper demanded at once, but she wasn't looking at him.

"Edward. I had another vision." She said. I couldn't read the expression in her face. Her eyes were too bright, her breath coming quicker than usual.

Impatiently, I delved into her mind, and saw her vision. It was blurry and unclear, but I could still make it out as Bella. In her arms, she carried a small bundle which she clutched almost desperately to her chest. I pushed the vision out, looking around at her surroundings. I recognised them with surprise.

I turned on my heel- and broke straight into a sprint.

Bella's Point of View

I knew when it was beginning to end.

The pain started to fade from my fingers and toes first. Just a tiny bit, right in the tips, but I still noticed it. At the same time though, the pain seemed to move from there to my throat. Before, it had only been the same ache there as anywhere else, but now it was three times worse than anything else. I was parched, so, so thirsty.

The pain in the rest of my body started to shrink back, heading for my heart and throat, which burned all the more fiercely in response.

For a few more agonising minuets, I screamed out as my heart rate started to speed up, racing faster and faster towards its final beat. And then, just as the pain was becoming unbearable- it stopped.

For a moment, the sudden absence of pain was all I could think about- and then my mind stared to wander further. My sub conscious noted the fact that my heart no longer beat, and it awed at the feel of being alive, but having no steady heart beat. When I was human, I had never noticed it, but now it was gone, I almost missed it. Something in me also took in the fact that I could hear everything. Everything. I could hear the sound of mouse tail twitching in the foundations of the building, a meter under me. I could hear the constant hum of a bee's wings as it fluttered against a glass window three storeys up in the house next to me. I could hear right in to the city, even though I knew I was nowhere near it. I could hear each individual noise- the slamming of a door, the jangle of keys as somebody cut the engine on their car, the crinkle of a chocolate bar being unwrapped.

And then I opened my eyes.

I only had three thirds of a second to take in the sudden fresh new sight, the way my improved eyes took in every tiny detail, from the individual grain of concrete on the floor beside me, to the glittering dust motes in the air- before them smell hit me.

The smell of blood.

It was over powering, impossible to ignore. It filled the room, and whenever I breathed in, the smell rushed down my throat, enflaming the burn there.

I had the have the blood. I needed the blood. It was no longer a choice.

Something buried deep inside my complicated mind hesitated, but that voice was easy to ignore when so many others urged me on.

In one fluid movement, I sprang from lying back down on the hard floor, to sitting in a crouch on the other side of the room. I didn't even marvel at how easy it was to move as a vampire, before my eyes locked in on the only other person in the room.

It was easy to see that my old eyes had never done her justice. I had looked at her then, my baby, my daughter, and called her beautiful- but, really, I'd had no idea what I was on about. The word 'beautiful' implied she was pretty- and she was so, so much more than that. Her hair was short, just reaching by her chin, and it glimmered in the light coming in from the window. The skin on her face ran smoothly, so flawlessly over her pink lips and button nose. I left her eyes for last, because I knew they would be best. They had always been amazing, but now they were heart stopping. Jake calling her 'Silver' had never been an exaggeration, and I could no longer see why I had refused it so many times. Her pupils were a shimmering silver, spiralling softly inwards to a soft black centre, and her eyes were rimmed with long black eyelashes.

My daughter. My baby.

I saw all this in one fraction of a second. For another, I just marvelled- and by the third, my eyes had zeroed in one the blood dripping slowly out the long cut on her arm.

My vampire instincts took over, and I dove towards her at once, my eyes hungry, but mid leap, I realised what I was doing, and twisted away from her, horrified.

I landed on my feet, back pushed up against the wall, on the opposite side of the room. My hand covered my mouth, and eyes wide, I desperately sucked in one last breath as I realised what I had been about to do.

I'd nearly attacked Lyra. Jacob's Silver. Our baby! Horror washed through me, strong and insistent, claming my attention.

I was a monster.

My movement had attracted Lyra's attention, and she twisted towards me.

"Mama!" She moaned, and tears filled in her eyes as she stretched her arm, reopening the cut. When I didn't move, the tears started to fall over, dripping down her cheeks. I had never ignored her before, and I couldn't stand to do it now.

I wouldn't hurt her, I wouldn't hurt her, I wouldn't hurt her… I repeated my mantra to myself over and over again as I slowly lowered my hand, and sucked in a hesitant breath. Her blood hit me, just as strong as before, and for a moment it carried me, and I took an involuntary step forward, but then I shook myself, and was in control again. I could do this. I would resist her.

I took a deep breath, feeling the blood burn my throat, but this time, I stayed in control. I knew this wasn't normal. I knew that even for the Cullen's, and Jasper most of all, refusing human blood was difficult, and, in some cases- impossible. So how was it possible that I could be stood here now, a new born vampire of not even a full two minuets, already breathing in human blood that was being spilled right in front of me- and being able to refuse?

I wondered suddenly what would have happened if it hadn't been my daughter there. If it had just been some random person, who I had never met before. Would I have been able to refuse their blood then?

My truthful answer send a shiver down my spine.

No.

"Shush, Silver, shush." I murmured, and she turned towards my voice, her good arm stretching out to me. Moving slowly as not to scare her, I reached down, and picked her up.

She had always been light, but now she felt weightless in my arms. I realised with a jolt just how very breakable she was. I handled her carefully, holding her a little away from my stone cold form, but she snuggled nearer, resting her head on my chest, seeming not affected by the cold.

I held my breath, and reached down to touch my lips to the top of her head, my eyes closing.

What the hell was going on here?

I was a vampire. I was sure of that much. That, and the fact that Victoria had changed me. My human memories were weak and blurred, but deadly accurate.

So far, I'd been carefully avoiding any contact with Silver's cut, but then I raised her arm, my hard fingers barely touching her, and looked at it. The stitches had been ripped out, slitting the skin back open just as it was starting to heal, in a nearly identical cut. It was obvious that Victoria had harmed my child for the second time.

I felt a sudden burst of anger for the psycho vampire, and slammed my fist into the wall, leaving a dent in the concrete.

"Damn." I muttered, looking at it, but my eyes strayed back to Silver quickly. What was I going to do? I couldn't take her to a hospital. All that blood…I swallowed against the longing in my throat, and continued down my line of thought. I couldn't go back to Renee's. How would I explain first mine, then Silver's disappearance, and, of course, my sudden blood red eyes, white skin and cold touch? But Silver's cut needed seeing to. I couldn't do it myself. If I got too close, who knew what could happen? I could kill her!

"Shit." I swore, and the word sounded odd in my velvet tone. Thiswas a serious example of my bad luck.

I knew what I had to do. It would have taken my human mind ages to think it up, but my vampire one was moving at three times the pace.

I was a newborn vampire with a bleeding baby. I needed help from other vampires. Advice. Someone to look at Silver's cut for me. I only knew of two vampire clans. The Cullen's and I shuddered at their mere name- or the Denali's.

Tanya's family.

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