Disclaimer: Don't own it, just get a kick out of writing about it. Thanks Stephenie! And although I didn't get Edward for Christmas (insert dejected sigh here), I did get an Edward t-shirt!
A heartfelt thank you goes out to my beta, Emilie Fauve, the resounding expert on all things Carlisle!
AN: Please be aware that this chapter has earned it's "R" rating, and then some, for its graphic/violent nature. My goal for such detailed descriptions of Rosalie's attack is to convey the severity of her internal pain, and to quite honestly describe exactly what I think she would do. Hopefully, this does not offend any readers. For those of you who would prefer to skip the attack, scroll down to the last three paragraphs, as these are essential to read in order to understand Chapter 7. I promise this is the end of the violence!
Royce had fallen to the floor when the flimsy table gave way under his weight. He lay beneath her, frozen in fright as he fell under her preternatural spell. Once again, I was amazed at how quickly she had mastered the very skills that made our kind the killers that we, inescapably, were. I waited anxiously for the blood bath to begin, questioning whether I'd be capable of merely observing, or if the spilt life-force of these fiends would drive me to break my promise to Carlisle. I desperately blinked back the monster inside of me that screamed for human blood, reminding myself that this was her kill; her revenge. I was simply there to – protect our family?
Suddenly, my reasons for coming were no longer clear. Why was I here?
I was given no opportunity to contemplate these fresh thoughts. Rosalie had waited long enough – she was about to test her immortal strength.
She left Royce cowering below her as she reached for his nearest friend, still rooted to his chair. Grabbing the man's arm, she yanked effortlessly, dislocating the limb from its socket. He yelped in shock, not fully feeling the acute pain surge through his body due to his inebriated state. The subdued reaction served only to fuel her temper even more.
Reaching around to seize him by the hair, she snatched him out of his seat until his face was inches from hers.
"You will never touch another woman in your sick, pathetic life!" The last three words roared out of her mouth, the shrill pitch of her tone nearly shattering the eardrums of all five men. The man in her grasp was rigid in fear, completely unable to move a muscle, while the other four simultaneously cupped their ears in pain.
I wasn't sure if her next outburst was uttered out loud, or if I heard it only in my head.
I'll see you in hell!
Regardless, the man she was clutching let out a ghastly shriek as I watched her tear him apart, limb from limb. Any fear that I'd lose control over the bloodshed was instantaneously gone – I was as mortified as the men below, watching Rosalie exact her revenge in the most terrifying of ways. Every time one of her other victims began to inch their way towards escape, she unleashed the command within her crimson eyes, forcing their flight instinct to flee the scene without them.
She took her time, one by one, prolonging each subsequent man's death. Her thoughts had become purely animalistic; I could no longer decipher any set motives, but I assumed she was working through the men in order of the severity of the crime they had committed against her. The first man's death was the most merciful – she only let him suffer a quarter of an hour before snapping his neck in a fitful rage. The next two were left to watch one another endure hideous acts of torture, each one more wretched than the last. I gritted my teeth in anguish, forcing the men's impeding pleas for mercy from my own head. That type of misery, accompanied by the heavy scent of blood in the air, was simply too much for me to handle.
During these horrifying scenes of terror, Royce had bawled unabashedly like the true coward he was, burying his face in his hands and crying out to any god's name he could remember to come save him from his own bride. Rosalie chortled at his pleas, taking great pleasure in his distress.
The fourth man received the worst of her fury yet. I almost sprang from the hayloft and fled, myself, when she began to take small bites of flesh from each limb; but, knowing full well that to distract her at that moment would guarantee my own death, I remained a sedentarily captive in my musty prison. I could only imagine the additional pain of the venom, slowly working its way through his body as she tore him apart, piece by piece.
Eventually, Royce seemed to find his sense of self-preservation - or rather, Rosalie became so engrossed in her vengeance that she unconsciously released him from her spell. Either way, he suddenly bolted to his feet and sprinted for the main door.
She paid him no mind at first, continuing her slow dismemberment of Royce's last friend. The man was screaming in agony at each bite, begging like the others for forgiveness and mercy, but each request was met only with an angry snarl.
Finally, the broken man took his last breath. Rosalie spat the chunk of flesh she had just ripped from his body on the ground, repeating the action until none of the fiend's blood remained in her mouth. I was fascinated by this behavior – she seemed completely oblivious to the bloodbath surrounding her. Not once had she even partially drained her victim; it was as if she was immune to their fowl essence. How strange.
Four grotesquely mauled bodies now lay on the barn floor, growing colder by the minute. She kicked a cloud of dust onto them before marching defiantly out the side door, presumably to finish off Royce. I followed, even though I had had my fill of horror for the night. For some odd reason, I felt compelled to watch the act through it's final moments.
Royce had fled to a small shed across the property. I said a silent prayer of thankfulness that he had not gone to the house – innocent women and children were sleeping inside, and I could not discern if Rosalie had the power to grant them clemency in her current animalistic state. She was truly the most dangerous creature on the planet at that moment.
Two of the Kings' henchmen were guarding the shed where Royce hid. They were highly paid servants of the family, compensated well enough to not ask questions and to obey any request of their master, no matter how bizarre. As Rosalie approached them in her blood-stained wedding dress, their thoughts remained predominantly focused on Royce's safety. Human instinct was apparently dismissible if the price was right.
Thankfully she was merciful on these two men, who had nothing to do with her death. Rushing to them at inhuman speed, she simply cracked their skulls together, ending their life in one motion. Astonishingly, the blood that seeped from their wounds held no interest to her. I had to hold my breath to keep from exposing myself and draining every last drop from their broken bodies.
She had finally reached her ultimate goal – Royce. I hid in the shadows, still downwind in case her mind wandered beyond the prey that lay before her and she happened to catch my scent.
"Come out, dear love," she taunted. "Can't I have one last kiss?"
"You're dead! You can't be here! Leave me in peace!" He was nearly out of his mind from fear, barely making sense with his ramblings. "You're not her - not Rose! Go away…help!"
Rosalie tore the door off the shed with one hand before tossing it aside like a tissue.
"I'm not dead, Royce. I'm here for one last kiss…" she waltzed into the pitch-black shed, holding out her arms as if to welcome him.
He fell silent, frozen once again by her penetrating stare. She slowly embraced him, hugging his quivering body and brushing her lips against his cheek.
"Tell me you still love me."
Royce began to stutter. "Yyy…..eess."
"Tell me you're sorry for what you did."
"Please, don't kill me!"
Rosalie hissed. "Tell me you're sorry!"
Her tone caused his vocal chords to lock up. Royce struggled to give her the answers she sought, but his mind was rapidly deteriorating to the point of incomprehension. I could no longer pick one single, rational thought out of him.
"Tell me!" she roared before losing control. Lunging towards his face, teeth bared, she attacked him like a hungry lion, only instead of going for the easy kill and plunging into his jugular, she mauled his nose and cheek. I gagged, forced to turn away from the atrocious act playing out in the shed. She screeched again, answered by Royce's agonizing cries for help. No one came to save him. No one heard him but me.
She toyed with him like the hungry cat she mimicked - letting him think he had opportunities to escape, allowing him to reach the doorway several times before dragging him slowly back inside for another brutal round of bites. She was careful at first to just barely break the skin, letting the venom trickle gradually into the open wound and start the slow burn through his veins. I heard her rip chunks of his hair and skin from his skull before screaming obscenities into his bleeding ears. Her assault was ruthless, unforgiving and cruel - and it was exactly what he deserved.
After nearly an hour of toying with him, his heart began to slow. He had passed out numerous times from both pain and fright, but Rosalie forced him back into consciousness each and every time for more of the same. Finally, she realized he was on the brink of death.
She halted her actions, letting him continue to bleed slowly from countless wounds and feel the ever-present blaze of the venom. She squatted down in front of him.
"Do you feel that, dear lover?" she hissed. Royce uttered a single moan. "That horrendous burn that's getting more and more intense within your body - do you feel it?"
He swallowed stiffly, his muscles already beginning to convulse. I doubted he would have been able to manage even a nod in answer.
"That's what you did to me. That's exactly how I felt for days. Only I had different sorts of wounds that were much worse than anything I could ever inflict on you. Wounds that decimated me as a woman, made worse by the fact that it was the man I had sworn to give my life to who gave them to me, who stole my mortality - callously took away my one chance to live my dream. And if that wasn't enough, I wasn't permitted to die."
Her hand shook as she reached out to squeeze his bloody jaw, forcing him to turn his glazed eyes towards her and see what his actions that night had created.
"I suppose I could sentence you to this same sort of purgatory. But then I'd have to live for eternity, always wondering where you were, what you were doing." Slowly, Rosalie stood, releasing him from her grasp and rising above the broken man like a sphinx from the sand. "I'd rather send you straight to the brimstone of hell."
She lifted one leg above his head and slammed her heel down across the bridge of his nose. A sick, cracking sound resonated throughout the shed as Royce slumped over, unconscious yet again, but not dead. I shook my head, trying to rid myself of the disturbing images I had just witnessed, amplified a hundredfold by Rosalie's mingling thoughts. Thankfully, Royce's mind had shut down minutes before, relieving me of that last bit of suffering.
Rosalie's shoulders slumped forward. For all the might she had displayed while avenging her own death, she was now as broken as the man that lay before her. She sobbed quietly and tearlessly, clutching her stomach as she bent over and released the last of the hatred that had consumed her. The beautiful, white angel that had waltzed into the barn hours before was now no more.
I debated whether to go to her, comfort her. The grief was flowing from her mind at an alarming rate. I began to worry that if she stayed beside her dying fiancé much longer, she'd never be right – rather, lost in a state of anguish as wretchedly dismal as the fate she had bestowed on her attackers.
But once again, she completely surprised me. Just as I was rising from my hiding place to sequester her away, she stood and squared her shoulders in an act of resolve.
He's not dead yet. I will not let him become what I am.
I feared she'd resume her brutalities, but instead, she stepped over his body, disappearing deeper into the shed. I was at such an angle that I could no longer see her – but my ears detected her plan. The metal handle of a lantern clanked against its glass encasing. A solitary match slid across the base, igniting instantly as she lit the kerosene wick.
Let him burn for all eternity.
She was going to burn the body, and the shed.
I would have sighed in relief at her foresight to erase all evidence, but she then made a fatal error. Ceremoniously, she pitched the burning lantern down on his body, spraying kerosene on both Royce and the dry, wooden wall that he rested against. The flames ignited the flammable liquid immediately, causing trails of blue to race up the sides of the shed and onto the roof. Within seconds, the shed was nearly engulfed, the only exit blocked by Royce's burning body.
Carlisle had forgotten to share one last secret of our lives with her, our one frailty - fire. She was totally unaware that this was our nemesis. Did he not tell her because he knew she'd quite possibly commit suicide with that knowledge?
The sudden irony fell to the wayside as I made a split-second decision. Save her. It wasn't even really a decision; rather, it was the only choice left for me. All of my earlier, devious thoughts of how to extract her from my life no longer existed. The last few hours spent walking in her shoes - via her thoughts - had shown me that she was worth saving. A moment of clarity unlike any I could ever remember was upon me. I honestly understood her.
Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays everyone! Sorry that the most brutal chapter happened to get finished on such a day, but I promise the next chapter will more then make up for it! I'll do my best to get it posted ASAP!
Also, go check out my beta's new story, "In My Power", an awesome in-canon account of Carlisle's experiences creating each of the Cullens. It's linked in my favorite stories.
