"The lamp in the corner unlit
In vain
Abraham Lincoln
In vain
The Aztec empire
In vain
The writing hand:
In vain…"
In Vain
Jack Kerouac
"Aro, I have…tasted that particular entrée and it was not to my liking." Her words seared into me, even Carlisle and Emmett turned to me in concern. Aro looked at her and seeing the sincerity in her face, shrugged his shoulders and walked back to his seat. He sat back down and took her hand in his and stroked it affectionately.
"Very well, Dear. I think only of keeping you amused." She smiled at him and then, for the first time, met my eyes.
Nothing. I could sense nothing in them. No sentimentality, no affection, no recognition. I meant nothing to her.
If I believed that God listened to the prayers of creatures like me I would wish to feel the same way. I would give anything to feel indifferent to her.
Nick closed the dark leather journal with a sigh. He rubbed the back of his neck where it had been craned over the rickety desk reading these bizarre, tragic journal entries.
"What a fucking tragedy," he said out loud to the empty cabin. He thought of the pale, serious adolescent creature who wrote these entries. "Poor bastard." He reflected on Isabella. She had told him that she was the "bad guy," that she was a monster but she never gave him any evidence of it. It was a bizarre story, yes, but there had been no evidence of her malfeasance in it.
But reading Edward's words, hearing of how she seemingly seduced and left him, reading about her cruel treatment of him, Nick began to see why she would describe herself that way.
He shook his head, embarrassed. Of course she described herself as a monster, she was a vampire. But wasn't he staying with a house full of monsters? Hadn't he been enjoying their hospitality?
The bizarreness of the situation was beginning to catch up with him. He was staying with a family of vampires. Compassionate vampires. He had been interviewing a vampire who might have chosen to kill him at any moment. He shook his head again in disbelief.
They thought he had an ability. He knew that people had always told him things, had always opened up to him. It was part of what made him a good journalist; that, and an extremely open mind. The Cullens thought it was a gift, like Edward's ability to read minds. They also said he was in danger, a fact that he had been trying to avoid thinking about. He had buried himself in these journals instead, ignoring the fact that there was now a powerful group of vampires who wanted him dead because she had exposed their secret to him.
But why? Why had she told him? The story didn't have the feel of something she felt compelled to tell him because of his alleged ability. It felt planned, premeditated. Her telling had been smooth, like something she had practiced, thought about for a long time. And why him?
"That's what I've been trying to figure out." Nick jumped as a voice came from the doorway of the tiny cabin. He turned to see Edward standing there. The man, no, the vampire held his hands up apologetically. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you. Esme wanted me to ask you to come back to the house for lunch."
"It's fine," Nick said, getting up from the desk where he had been examining this terribly angry, sad and lonely creature's internal life. He was embarrassed to be speaking to him now, it was like seeing another man cry. Edward dipped his head at Nick's thoughts.
"I apologize for the discomfort. I…thought you should know what you had been dragged into. You may be giving up your life for this game of hers. I just thought you should know what you were dying for." Edward paused for a moment. Nick could tell there was more. "I guess there's a part of me that wanted someone to know."
At this Edward, looking embarrassed turned and gestured for him to follow. They walked back to the main house quietly and were greeted by Carlisle and Esme in the kitchen.
"It's beautiful out here," Nick said, eager to lighten the mood
"We don't tend notice the weather. It's getting colder. Are you warm enough in the cabin? Edward could build a fire," Esme offered. Nick could see Carlisle looking at Edward with concern.
"I like the cold. I was born in Detroit but we moved to Florida when I was young. It's nice to be back up North."
"Why Florida?" Esme asked.
"I don't know, actually. My grandma was the one who was pushing us to move. She was…superstitious, I guess? She said Greeks needed to live someplace sunny. She was almost fanatical on the subject. She hated that Grandpa moved them to Detroit when they first came here. I remember applying for colleges up here and her being inconsolable. My parents convinced me to stay in Florida to keep her happy." Nick smiled, thinking fondly of his grandma's eccentricity.
"What is it, Carlisle?" Edward was looking at his father. Nick's eyes followed his gaze. Carlisle had frozen, looking at Nick as if he had just realized he was there.
"What?" Nick asked, a little innerved by his stare. Carlisle gave him a slight nod, still staring at him, his mind clearly someplace else.
"I can't believe I didn't think of it sooner. I don't think she picked you randomly, Nick. I…need to get something out of my office. I'll be right back." Carlisle got up and moved at slightly faster than human speed from the kitchen while Nick looked back at Edward. ""Did you see what he thought of?" Edward shook his head slightly and frowned.
"It was too fragmented. Please, eat your lunch. Esme is dying to hear if she makes good soup." Edward exited the same door as Carlisle and Nick looked to Esme with a smile before starting to eat.
He had eaten no more than half of his sandwich and a few bites of soup (it was a little salty) before Carlisle came back into the kitchen with an old book. Edward followed him, looking preoccupied.
"It's because you changed the spelling," Carlisle said to Nick. Nick looked at him blankly. Carlisle laughed.
"Your last name. You spell it with a "c" instead of an "s". I think that's why I missed it." Edward coughed lightly. Carlisle looked at his son and nodded, laughing.
"Of course, I am getting ahead of myself. It's not often I talk to someone about this and they don't have context." Carlisle sat down and Edward followed suit.
"I didn't mention that I lived among the Volturi for several decades. It was several centuries ago. They were the first of my kind I had encountered who lived in a way that wasn't purely feral and I was drawn to how civilized they were. I was lonely and wanted to be a part of a community. That was the only society available to me at the time." Carlisle glanced around the kitchen at his wife and son, clearly grateful.
"I thought that I could convince even a few of them to adopt my lifestyle but in the end we were incompatible and I left. In the time I was there, however, I was constantly asking for information about our kind and listening to their stories. The brothers claimed to have been around for at least two thousand years and they had seen many things. Their ranks had changed somewhat as well. We are immortal but when members of the court displeased the brothers they are destroyed. A very few have been allowed to leave. I was among them. Another was a good family friend of ours named Eleazar. He has since adopted our diet and has a family much like this."
"There was another that Aro had never spoke of but his brother Marcus had told me about. They called him either "the Greek" or "Gerasimos." Do you know the meaning of your last name?"
"'The old one.'' Nick stared at Carlisle. Carlisle nodded. "I don't think it's a coincidence. I think that you are connected to him somehow. I remember some of the members of the guard saying that he was a sort of…keeper of their stories. That he functioned as a sort of archive for them. Is it possible that this gift of yours, this ability you have to inspire people to tell you things, that it's hereditary? That perhaps he was a distant ancestor?"
Nick looked at him in wonder. This story was becoming more and more bizarre.
"That was hundreds of years ago, Carlisle," Edward interjected. "How could we trace him back? How could we possibly find him?" Carlisle looked thoughtful.
"I don't know why he left the Volturi. I got the feeling from Aro that it wasn't amicable but others spoke of him warmly. Perhaps I can ask Eleazar. In the meantime, if we can find out where in Greece your family came from."
"I don't want to involve my family in this." Suddenly this all became very real for Nick when he thought about vampires hurting his family. Not these vampires, really. Just the kind that Isabella and the Volturi represented. He reflected on how odd it was that he wasn't scared for himself.
"I was thinking more along the lines of having Emmett and Rosalie poke around immigration records and such. Don't worry, Nick. We will do everything we can to keep your family out of this." Carlisle placed a comforting hand on his arm.
Nick nodded as Carlisle got up. Edward looked down at the remains of Nick's lunch and then at his face. He gave him a nod. "You ready to get back?" He looked embarrassed after the words left his mouth. Nick chuckled. "You mean, to your cheery journal entries?" Edward's face froze for a second and then he gave him a wry smile. Nick could see the teenage boy buried beneath the years of this life.
Edward shrugged. 'I guess it's not very pleasant reading." Nick placed a hand on his shoulder and the boy flinched. "Sorry."
Edward turned to him and shook his head. 'No, it's ok. I'm just not used to people touching me. I should apologize for the intimate nature of my journals. I feel like you deserve to know what she's like and I…want to tell you my side of the story."
"Your journals are fascinating. Sad but fascinating. Thank you for sharing them." Edward nodded and they walked back out to the cabin together again in silence.
Journal of Edward Masen
October 20, 1968
I am in San Francisco during what the humans are calling "The Summer of Love." I would beg to differ but that may be because of the nature of my mission. I am here to see Isabella at Alice's prompting.
I was torn when I received the letter from Alice stating that Isabella would be in San Francisco on Volturi business. I wanted to tell her that I didn't care but there was no return address, no phone number, no place to rebut her offer.
I tore the letter to shreds but the date and location are burned into my head. I don't care to see her. I don't need to see her.
Then I told myself that I needed to come here to ensure the safety of my family. I reminded myself that she is our enemy; she has betrayed my family and who knows what she has told her new masters about us?
I tell myself that I am protecting my family.
I consider sending Emmett or Carlisle. But my gift puts me in a unique position to assess the danger. I convince myself that I am protecting my family.
The city has been overtaken by young people. They congregate in the parks and street corners of the city. They sleep twenty to a house in the shabby Victorians of the Haight-Ashbury and then move on to a new house the next night.
They sing and dance, take hallucinogenic drugs, talk about art and music and religion. They cast off the expectations of their families and try to achieve what they think of as freedom. They try to be as children; naïve, trusting and happy.
But there are others among them who are not so innocent. There are those who would take from these children. There are those here who wear the clothes and talk the talk but their thoughts are exploitative. They would take advantage of the youth and beauty spread out on the streets here. I hear them moving among the dancing, moving breathing throngs, their dark thoughts standing out like blood on a white bandage.
Blood. There are some of my kind here as well. They take advantage of the unusually transient nature of the city, the way they did during the Great Depression and again during the war. I would wager that Isabella is here to deal with one of them.
San Francisco is a good city to be a vampire in because it is overcast a great deal of the time. Nevertheless, I wait until the evening falls before I make my way to the address Alice had given me.
It is two weeks until Christmas and Union Square is lit up with lights and trees. There are conservative couples drinking in the bar at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel when I go downstairs but there are "flower children" begging in the cold outside the hotel.
They ignore me, my hair is too short and my clothes too conservative. I didn't put enough thought into this excursion, I am going to a concert and I will stick out like a sore thumb. I duck into Macy's and locate a pair of artfully scruffy jeans in the young men's department. I offer a young man on Market Street twenty dollars for his wretched smelling t-shirt and army jacket. He seems less than pleased with my tailored shirt and blazer but he needs the money and it's too cold for him to go shirtless.
I walk down Market Street to the Fillmore West. I am struck by the amount of young people and confusion around me as I approach the building.
I pay my cover and enter the club. Already I can hear the sound of a slow, distorted guitar accompanied by a man singing…nonsense. Psychedelic rock. I'm not sure that I can get used to it. But it doesn't matter. I'm here to see Bella.
I hear his thoughts before I see him. "Edward Cullen, what a surprise to see you."
I look to the doorway to my right and see one of my kind. I have seen his face. He's a member of the guard, I saw him in passing in Italy. I pause and then walk over to him. Is he here with her or instead of her? I stretch out my hand, a habit from living among humans. He smirks at me before stretching out a hand. He is a few inches shorter than me and has a sharp, fox-like face and blond hair.
"Demetri," he says to me. I can see from his thoughts that he is genuinely surprised to see me here. But he doesn't see me as a threat. He knows about my family's diet and feels that it makes us weaker, less likely to be aggressive or territorial.
We turn together to take in the scene in the concert hall. It's cloudy with smoke from cigarettes and marijuana. The concertgoers dance and sway and talk and sing. The minds around me are mostly disoriented. It's so strange for me to read the minds of people who are so altered.
Even with my enhanced vision I am having a hard time finding Bella. The smells of the room likewise confuse my senses.
"What are you doing here?" Demetri asks me. I consider him carefully. He really doesn't seem to have a clue about Bella and I.
Of course he doesn't, I remind myself. There is no Bella and I. He witnessed the scene in Aro's court and heard her reject me. He knows that there is nothing there. Better than I do, as a matter of fact.
"I came to see the concert. I'm a musician." He accepts this readily as his attention is attracted by something.
"Isn't she spectacular?" He gestures to a gap in the crowd and I see her.
I realize that I couldn't find her because she is dressed as a Victorian gentleman. I had seen young people adopting this dress when I was in London a few months ago. I had seen children wear high collared dresses and double-breasted waistcoats. Bella wears a dark velvet suit and a floppy collared shirt. Her long dark hair flows out from underneath a top hat. She's just standing there, watching the crowd and the musicians but as I look at her she turns and sees me.
As always, when I look into her fathomless, dark eyes, I am trapped. We might have stared at each other for a few seconds and it might have been an hour. I knew it was a mistake coming here. I didn't want to walk away.
Demitri's thoughts interrupted my trance. He was thinking that they needed to leave to take care of the job they came to do. He gestured to her and she broke our stare. She nodded to him and glancing back to me, took the hand of a young girl standing near her.
I hadn't noticed the girl before. How could I, with Bella standing there? She was young; perhaps younger than Bella was when I met her. She was dressed in a long white dress with a leather vest over it. Her blonde hair hung down to her waist but it was untidy and perhaps dirty.
Bella pulled the girl's hand up to her mouth and kissed it. The girl gazed into her eyes, those eyes that had trapped me. I took a step closer and tried to tease out the girl's thoughts from the cacophony around us. I experienced a pang of concern when I realized that this was probably Bella's prey for the evening.
I managed to slip into the girl's thoughts as Bella slipped an arm around her waist. Their eyes were still locked together. Bella was dazzling the girl. Vampires could mesmerize their prey with their stares; they went without a struggle that way. Part of me was screaming to run away, to get out of the girl's head. But the stronger urge I had was, perversely, to be that close to Bella, to be in her arms the way the girl was.
Bella was the same height as the girl and she pulled her chin closer. I could see Bella coming closer through the girl's cloudy eyes. She pressed her lips to the girl's and held them there for an agonizing moment. The girl closed her eyes and her thoughts clouded further and I pulled back, frustrated, to see the two women, their lips pressed together. Then Bella pulled her lips away and gave this girl a look of smiling regret and waved her away. The girl pouted her disappointment, having no idea that she was walking away with her life.
Bella turned and made her way to where we stood.
I was filled with disgust for my actions. Would I have watched her kill that young girl just to try to experience her kiss? Could I make it through a conversation with her without breaking down?
She stood in front of us. She paused before saying, "Edward," to me, her voice vehement. I still thrilled to hear it; to hear her saying my name in any tone.
"Edward has come to see Jefferson Airplane," Demitri said, slipping his arm around her waist. I wanted to tear his arm off. Were they lovers? I tried to tell from his thoughts but he was preoccupied with someplace they needed to be.
"Well, enjoy the show," she said to me, her eyes burning into me. "We have work to do."
"There are a couple of newborns in town being a bit reckless. There's enough for everyone here if people are careful but not if they lack restraint." Demitri laughed.
Then, Demitri's thoughts turned to Bella kissing the girl. He was intrigued, aroused by it and he couldn't wait to be alone with her. I realized, to my horror, that from the tenor and detail of his thoughts, that they were intimate, that they were lovers.
Demitri had no idea what he had given away until he saw my body stiffen. He looked at me curiously.
"I'm sorry, Edward. I forget that you must be subject to all kinds of private thoughts." He smiled at me all the while thinking that surely I must be used to such things.
"We have to go," Bella said and she turned away from us and walked towards the door.
I stood there frozen with shock as she walked away. Her lover gave me a wave and followed behind, somewhat perplexed by her abruptness.
As I processed all I had seen, I considered going after her, but when I imagined the confrontation I convinced myself that the outcome would be no different than any of our other interactions.
It didn't change how hard it was to let her walk away, though.
a/n: The sublime EverlastingMuse betas this diligently and the indispensible Liz3615 pre-reads it. It's still not her fault if you're confused, though. I think I got to everyone's reviews this time; I apologize for the neglect! Thanks! JuJu