Chapter 19 - Bella's Tale
The bell positioned at the corner of the door chimed softly as Bella exited the bookstore. Out she stepped, into scenery that could best be described at ominous. It had gotten darker much faster than the brunette had anticipated and she was slightly unnerved by how fast the weather had cooled. Her surroundings were awash in darkness, save for the line of streetlamps that illuminated a set of winding steps. But the light spiking down from the lamps was dimmed by a thin sheet of mist that threatened to obscure Bella's line of sight as it drifted lazily through the air, its thin tendrils of ghostly white, streaking in front of Bella like gnarly fingers. Though not yet dense enough to render Bella sightless, the mist was nevertheless adding to the foreboding atmosphere that had descended upon the sleepy town of Forks.
Bella swallowed a potential kernel of fear and shouldered her backpack. As she took the first steps down the stairs, the skies decided it to be an opportune time to open up and weep. The pitter-patter of raindrops, dropped lightly down from bloated curling gray-black clouds that were nearly hidden against the obsidian sky. It cut through the mist, sending it into a general disarray around Bella's lanky form as she continued down the stairs, her pace slowing as the steps grew slick with precipitation.
Cursing the rain, the cold and mist, Bella tugged up the hood of her jacket over her slightly damp hair and waved an impatient hand in front of her face as a mass of gray-white mist floated right into her face. It disintegrated under her flickering fingers, allowing Bella to regain her sight of the remaining stairs in front of her and the brunette continued downward. The brunette managed to make it about three quarters of the way down the stairs when her luck decided to run out and her booted feet happen to land on a shallow puddle that covered a spread of slippery moss. Immediately upon impact, Bella found herself slipping backward and one hand shot out to grab at the wet railings that lined the stairs. However, the veil of rain had made the metal railings so slick with water that Bella's fingers only managed to grapple desperately at it before they slithered off, resulting in the brunette landing unceremoniously on her behind. She hit the ground with an undignified thump, the back of her jeans immediately soaked through by the pooling water on the steps.
"I hate the rain!" Bella muttered, barely resisting the urge to reign in a litany of expletives that would have made a sailor blush. Reaching up, and only after ensuring that she had a firm grip on the rails, did the girl haul herself back up. She winced as her tailbone protested the movement; no doubt her fall had caused her to jar the bone in question roughly against the concrete steps. "Well that's just great," she continued, spitting each word out sarcastically. She deliberately ignored the slow creeping ache that was spreading from her tailbone out to her lower back or the wetness that was now distinctly felt against her underwear as she charily made her way down the last flight of stairs.
Bella blew out a breath of stark relief when she made it to the bottom without further incident. Hoisting her backpack further up her left shoulder, she followed the beams of light from the streetlamps that would lead her back to the main road. She kept smartly under the pools of orange-yellow light; the side road she was currently on was quiet and otherwise dark and she did not intend to invite unnecessary trouble. The brunette faltered slightly when she realized the last three streetlamps had fizzed out, leaving an abyss of pitch for Bella to walk into. Dismissing her growing imagination, and unfortunately her instinct to turn back, she took one cautious step into the dark when something stepped in front of her.
Not something. Someone. With eyes that glowed like twin red coals. Reflexively, Bella stepped back, that kernel of fear blossoming into a knot of undeniable terror. It twisted around her walls of her stomach, winding up to her lungs, which seem to constrict under the pressure and Bella suddenly found it hard to breathe.
The girl stopped breathing at all when the person stepped into the ray of light, revealing their identity.
"Mama?" Bella's voice was a mere whisper, heavy and choked with a myriad of emotions that all wrestled for control of the girl's motor skills. Her hands began to shake and she took another step backward as her mother took one more forward…
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"What in the hell were you doing in a dark alley at night?" Alice's tone was harsh with accusation and disapproval as her voice cut off Bella's speech. She glared at Bella, honeyed eyes flashing fire.
Bella glared back. "I lost track of time," she replied irritably. "And it wasn't that late. I just forgot that the wettest part of the continental US got dark early."
Alice shook her head in exasperation, sending spikes of sable hair stabbing in all messy directions. "Why were you in a bookstore in Forks, anyway?" She pinned Bella with a look. "I thought you said you lived in Seattle."
"I do. Did." Bella had to correct herself. "I was doing a paper on local legends for one of my college entrance essays. The Quileutes tribe seemed interesting and after initial research I found that this bookstore in Forks had the perfect books for my paper." Bella missed the dark look that shadowed Alice's face as she studied her hands. "Who knew the legends of The Cold Ones would end up being real?" She barked out a sarcastic laugh as she finally looked up at the petite vampire. "Are you going to tell me that the werewolf stories are real too?"
When Alice failed to answer, Bella rocked back on her heels. "Are you kidding me?" Alice only bestowed her with a blank look and the brunette felt her jaw sag. "You…they…" Her arms flailed around violently as her brain fought to process this new shocking information. "It's ALL real?" Her voice was a startled squeak, colored with astonishment.
"I am a vampire." Alice gestured to herself with a grand sweep of a hand. "If I'm standing in front of you, in flesh and blood so to speak, why can't you believe werewolves exist?"
Bella sunk both hands into either side of her head, feeling as if her brain might explode from this unexpected discovery. "This is too much," she murmured. "I don't know how much more of this I can take."
Alice sighed and knelt in front of Bella. Gently caressing a knee that peeked out of the mess of blankets, she looked into Bella's eyes. "We'll talk more about them later," she promised. "Tell me what happened next." The girl hunched on the bed met her with a confused stare. "In your story," she prodded gently.
"Oh," Bella sighed. She winced as the memory seared at her nerves and internally cringed as Alice's shoulders tightened and a cold mask dropped onto her face.
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Bella woke up with a pounding in the back of her head, that was insistent as it was annoying. It knocked against the base of her skull with a persistent beat that refused to relent. She automatically lifted a hand to relieve some of the ache only to find her hands bound behind her back.
"Ah, she awakens." A voice called out cheerfully.
Bella whipped her head toward the sound. A figure stood by the side of the fireplace where a small fire crackled merrily, its warm orange tongues of flames throwing long shadows into the otherwise dark room. She gasped as the figure moved into the light.
"No." Fear, primordial in its nature, hit Bella with palpable force. She struggled to scuttle away from the figure only to find that she could not move. Taking stock of herself, she finally realized that she was tied to a wooden beam, arms pulled behind her and around the beam and legs propped up to her chest, ankles bound by thickset ropes that wound its way multiple times around her legs.
"It's been a while, Bella. How are you?" The figure now standing in front of the small fire was Bella's father. He too, had ruby red eyes that glinted with malevolence. However, it was not the color of his eyes that sent stabs of terror through Bella. It was the way he looked at her.
"Please," she said, struggling helplessly against her bonds. "Let me go." She hissed as the ropes burned the skin on her wrists but continued to struggle in vain.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Charlie stated calmly. "I'm hungry enough as it is."
Bella's mind was awhirl in confusion. Looking up at her father, she realized that there was something distinctly different about him. The eyes were the first clue, but it was his posture, his body language. He fairly screamed primal and the expression of wanton lust for something painted across his face triggered every alarm in Bella's body.
"What do you want?" How did you find me?"
Charlie chuckled. "I'm a police officer, Bella. It's not hard to pull up your social worker's records when you have contacts. You should know that," he chastised.
"I see we're getting reacquainted," another voice piped up from behind Bella. Renée stepped into view when she positioned herself next to Charlie. "Hello, baby girl. Long time." Her voice was sickly sweet though her expression mirrored that of Charlie's.
Bella's every instinct told her that she needed to get out of this place. Her flight or fight response was working overtime and the surge of adrenaline pumping through her veins was so overwhelming, she was actually getting lightheaded. Through her increasing panic, she noted that both her parents' postures were radiating that predatory vibe that spoke of bad things to come. She also noted that their skin was a snowy white, a color normally seen on corpses rather than the living.
"What are you?" Bella finally blurted out. Something was off, she could feel it.
Charlie actually chuckled, something Bella had never heard coming from her father. "Well now, darlin'. That's an interesting story." He tossed his wife a sidelong glance. "You want to tell it, or should I?"
Renée shrugged. "Give her the Cliff notes version. I'm hungry." She shot Bella that look again, and every hair on the back of Bella's neck stood straight up in response.
"Why do you both keep saying that?" Bella felt goose bumps prickle out all over her forearms. Her imagination was going rampant and she fought hard against the urge to start screaming and yelling for help. She got the sense that wherever they were; they were far away from civilization. She could smell pine and musk; they were probably in some cabin the woods.
"All in due time," Charlie replied. He tapped in chin in mock thought. "Where to begin?" Blood-red eyes snapped onto Bella and he delighted in her flinch. "There was this couple with funny colored eyes," the former police officer began, his voice intoning that of a dramatic storyteller. "Your mama and I were jumped in a back alley by these two. I shot the male but the bullet bounced off him like his skin was made of Kevlar."
"Oh Jesus, stop with the dramatics!" Renée's voice was nothing short of a growl. "Victoria and James," she said, taking over the story. "That was their names. They gave us new life, said they saw something in us that was similar to them. They made us vampires." She paused and looked at Bella, looking forward to her daughter's reaction.
Bella blinked stupidly. 'Vampires? They're both crazy,' she decided. Her hands worked furiously against her bindings, uncaring of how the rough ropes were gnawing into her skin, causing droplets of blood to erupt to the surface. "You're insane!" she finally shouted. She needed to release the pent up energy that was steadily building up inside her. "Just because you have on colored contact lenses doesn't made you a vampire!" She blatantly ignored the other signs; the deathly pallor of their skin, the way they looked at her like she was the last three-course meal on this planet, the growls reverberating out of Renée's throat. "You let me go!"
Renée's patience and willpower had finally snapped. She smelled the blood, smearing itself on Bella's wrists and the ropes and felt the venom pool in her mouth. "I don't think so." Pouncing forward, she blurred toward Bella and latched her mouth onto the girl's forearm. Rock hard teeth tore back the sleeve covering the girl's skin before sinking into sinew and muscle. Bella cried out in pain, pain that exploded from the vicious wound that opened up on her arm near her elbow. She felt her skin tearing open like paper, felt blood starburst through the gaping hole and gasped in renewed pain as Renée began sucking on the wound…
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"Stop."
Bella halted in her story and looked up into molten gold eyes that had solidified into steely anger. She gulped and unconsciously pressed further back into the headboard, instantly regretting her actions as a bolt of hurt sped across Alice's face. "I'm sorry," the girl apologized sincerely. She reached forward and grasped the pixie vampire's hand, pulling it up to her lips and pressing a soft to her knuckles without conscious thought. When she realized her actions, she blushed, the pink stain spreading across her cheeks visibly.
Alice responded by simply caressing the heated cheek. Then with her other hand, she scrubbed at her face, hoping to erase some of the feral-ness that had scared Bella so. Sighing, she shifted slightly away from the edge of the bed, closer to Bella. Tugging at the girl's arm, she hauled Bella into her embrace, wrapping loose arms around the brunette's middle from behind her.
Bella sank into Alice's arms with vivid relief. She allowed the scent of vanilla to wrap around her like a soft warm blanket, allowing the intoxicating aroma to smoothen out her frazzled nerves. She nuzzled her cheek against the cool skin on the side of Alice's neck. "I don't want to go into anymore details, Al," she said finally, her voice soft and hesitant. 'I don't want to hurt you anymore that I have,' she mentally finished.
Alice gritted her teeth, forcibly making her muscles relax despite the tension that was threatening to turn her already granite hard body into a diamond hard statue. Then she recalled something, a spark of a distant memory that zipped unbidden into the forefront of her mind. "Before I ran off, I had a vision of you running through the forest," Alice began. "You hit your head against a rock." She twisted her head so she could look up into chocolate eyes. "How did you escape?"
Bella looked startled. "I thought you only got visions of the future."
Alice simply cocked her head, unable to respond to that. She had long learned that when it came to Bella, some things were simply unexplainable and there was no point in opening up a can of worms that would result in more harm than good.
Bella's face scrunched. She fumbled through her mind, searching through the sea of memories. Then it hit her and she shivered. Alice's arms automatically tightened, securing her. She reveled in the unconscious gesture of comfort. "They liked to nurture me back to an almost healthy state. It wasn't hard given my rapid ability to heal. They even had medical equipment." Bella paused, wondering just how her deceased parents came to acquire the materials. "Between the morphine, my healing ability and them actually giving me three square meals a day, I was like the gift that kept on giving." The laugh that followed was abrasive, dipped in dark humor. "What you saw was them releasing me so they could "hunt"." She spat the last word out like an expletive. "I was so hopped up on the morphine that I was actually delusional enough to believe that they were letting me go."
Alice dropped a kiss on the crown of Bella's head, letting her lips linger on the silky soft strands as she stamped down on the tidal wave of anger rising up from the pit of her stomach. She half wished for Renée and Charlie to be alive again so that she could kill them. Slowly. And ten times more painfully and torturously than what they had done to Bella. Then a thought struck her. "Where's this cabin?"
Bella shrugged. "Somewhere in the forest. It was always quite cold, so I assume it's somewhere up in the mountainous area." She gazed into toffee colored eyes, noting the beginnings of the black rimming the edges. "Why?"
"Why didn't we smell you? The smell of your blood would have been carried down by the wind at some point." Alice was trying to piece together a puzzle that did not seem to fit. And it was frustrating her.
Bella could only move her shoulders up and down in a shrug. "I don't know, Alice. There are still a lot of things I don't know and don't quite understand but some of these questions will never be answered." 'Like where are James and Victoria. Do they know who I am? Are they going to come after me?' The last thought was enough to send her spiraling into a dizzy panic and she grabbed at Alice's arms with both hands, fingernails digging into the vampire's skin.
Alice nuzzled the side of Bella's head. "Shh," she soothed. "Nothing more is going to happen to you," she swore. "I won't let it. I'd die first."
"NO!" Bella blurted. She twisted around in the confines of Alice's arms until she was straddling the vampire's thighs. She reached up and clutched either side of the vampire's face. "Don't go after them. Don't. Please!" The ring of desperation in her voice was tangible and Bella was near hyperventilating.
Alice's hands circled Bella's wrist. "I'm not going after anybody." Then her eyes widened. "You mean this James and Victoria are still alive?" The last word grinded its way out of her throat and turned into a guttural growl.
Bella shook her head helplessly. "I don't know! All I remember is Charlie saying something about them moving around a lot and that they taught him and mom the ropes."
"Stop calling them that," Alice snarled. "They are NOT your parents. They have no right to be anybody's mom or dad, let alone yours." She blew out an aggravated breath. "So they might be out there, they might know about you. Fan-fuckin-tastic." She gently extracted herself from behind Bella, leapt off the bed, and began pacing across the room, her posture that of an agitated caged animal.
Bella watched as Alice muttered under her breath, intermittently flung up her arms, snarled and continued to wear a hole in the carpet. When she abruptly stopped and whirled around, Bella nearly tumbled out of bed in wake of the intense gaze that settled onto her face.
"When Emmett found you, you were broken and bleeding." She erected a series of mental walls to block out the images of Bella's destroyed body. "Did you manage to escape then or was this another one of their games? Releasing you only to hunt you back down?"
A tense silence filled the room; it was so thick that Bella felt her throat close up, as if there was a noose looped and tightened around her neck. She thought hard, so hard that she was giving herself a headache. "I don't remember," she admitted softly.
Alice carded shaking fingers through her short hair, creating an even messier look. In fact, her entire body was shaking. She was so drugged up on anger, pure rage born from the deepest part of her soul that it nearly vibrated out of her skin in shockwaves. "I need to do something," Alice said finally. Her fingers clenched and unclenched themselves, her body already unconsciously going into a predatory crouch. Her voice was flat and emotionless; the combination of anger and spikes of adrenaline were making it hard for her not to let every word out of her mouth sound like a thunderous growl.
"You're going to find that cabin." It was not a question. Bella flicked pleading eyes onto Alice's face, smacking straight into an unyielding mask that would not be deterred from what Alice was about to do. "Don't," Bella begged.
Alice clenched her teeth so hard that the muscle in her jaw bunched out starkly. "I need to," she rasped out. She took a step toward the window, not trusting herself around Bella right now. Her beast was roaring loudly, so loudly that she could barely hear anything above the primitive sounds. It thirsted for blood and revenge and she was barely restraining herself from going out on another deer rampage. She felt her control slipping through her fingers like slips of silk. "Please understand," she implored Bella.
Bella looked at Alice, looked at the way the vampire seemed so undone, so lost and yet so filled with fury that she could taste it from where she was. She knew Alice was asking her permission and would stay if Bella denied it but if it helped the Alice…
"Ok," she conceded. Bella made a weak gesture toward the window. "If it's so important to you, go." Tears shimmered in her eyes, blurring her vision and stinging her irises. "But you're taking me with you."
Alice stumbled back as though Bella's words were multiple punches to her stomach. She braced herself against the wall, breathing labored. "You can't be serious." Alice fumbled blindly for a deterrent, a way to make the brunette see sense. "I don't want you to see the place where you were tortured!"
"So you get to have closure but I don't?" Bella shot back. She sprang off the bed and approached Alice with a decidedly determined look. "If you're going, then so am I. I have a right to see where I was abducted and tortured for days on end!"
"Don't do this to me," Alice pleaded. Her own tears curtained her eyes and for the millionth time she cursed their inability to fall and streak down her face. "Haven't you suffered enough? Haven't you made me suffer enough?" The last question was a low blow and she knew it but the thought of Bella visiting that cabin was making her sick to her stomach.
Bella's heart constricted at the agonized look on Alice's face. She took the last steps forward and cupped Alice's cheek. "This is something I need to do," she said. "We can move forward after this." Her eyes fixated itself upon dimmed honeyed eyes. "Please," she whispered.
Alice pulled away. "No, we won't." Her legs wobbled and she gave into gravity, sinking down onto the floor in a heap of tangled limbs. The vision she received days ago came back to haunt her with startling clarity.
Bella was stupid with confusion. "I don't understand." This time it was she who knelt down in front of Alice. She placed a hand on the shock of messy sable hair. "What aren't you telling me?"
Alice continued to sit on the floor, head buried in her hands as she contemplated the daunting request dangling in front of her like a death sentence. She ran through scenario after scenario in her head, finding no plausible happy conclusion. The future was set. There was nothing she could do.
Bella felt a subtle shift in Alice's demeanor but before she could question it, the vampire straightened up. A resigned look resided in the depths of her eyes, but she pulled herself to her feet, bringing Bella up with her. "Ok." Her voice came out bruised and broken. She sounded like a defeated soldier, who knew death was approaching and was ready to accept her fate.
Bella started at the look on Alice's face but was more disturbed by the tone of her voice. "Ok, what?" she asked carefully.
"Get dressed," was Alice's reply. "We're going to find that cabin."
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