Author's Notes (November 15, 2010): Long chapter, but a lot happens. Hope you'll like it. Special thanks to the ladies who poke and prod and make me think: duskwatcher, Aleeab4u and GreatChemistry.
Chapter pic: bit(dot)ly/sotpm14-pic
Chapter music: Tumblr's down right now, so check out the following… Roberto Cacciapaglia – Atlantico; Suzanne Vega – Penitent; Laura Marling - Alpha Shallows; Digital Daggers – Surrender.
"SINS OF THE PIANO MAN"
CHAPTER 14: CAPTURED BY CHAOS
Struggling so hard to see,
My fist against eternity.
And will you break my will?
"Penitent" by Suzanne Vega
EDWARD MASEN
Carlisle and I stared at each other. For a time, I think we both listened to Esme and Alice as they spoke to Bella in a guestroom on the third floor, but after a while, we seemed to return to the room we occupied, to contemplate one another. Now that we were alone, I had a million questions for him, and Carlisle seemed to know this; he waited patiently, expectantly. I wasn't sure where I should begin. It was difficult to sort through my thoughts, when his were going through a medical textbook, word for word.
That seemed as good a place to start as any, I decided.
"Why are you all trying to block your thoughts from me?" I asked. "I can…accept that you want privacy, but I feel like you're hiding something."
He looked sympathetic. "I'm truly sorry about that, least of all because it takes great effort to stay focused." He smiled. "Alice has requested we reveal only certain things about ourselves, as the time is right."
As the time is right. I could guess whose watch they were going by.
"Surely she's not afraid of me. I'm no threat." Not to a coven this size.
"Esme and I don't pretend to fully understand Alice's reasoning," Carlisle said with a laugh.
"Yet you listen to her—follow her." The Cullen coven clearly did not operate under any typical hierarchy.
"You come to trust someone after fifty years of living together. If it makes you feel any better, though, Esme and I are somewhat in the dark as well. Alice won't tell us the half of it."
"I'm not sure that does make me feel better."
We both laughed then.
"What happened?" Carlisle asked a moment later.
"To me?"
He nodded. "Last time I saw you, you were a human boy. I never expected to see you alive, ninety years later."
"I'm not alive."
"And yet here you are. You move, you speak, you think. I'd call that alive."
"Semantics," I said with a roll of my eyes. "To answer your question, a nomad turned me." I looked away from him, ashamed of my final moments as a human. "I was lying in an alley—so drunk I couldn't stand. I was an easy kill. Something must have happened, because he left me before…finishing." I shrugged, not wanting to dwell on the anger that so often consumed me when I thought of the vampire who'd made me.
"Have you been alone all this time?"
He sounded pitying, and I didn't like it.
"Mostly," I hedged. "I've met others, but being bombarded with their thoughts all the time isn't that peaceful. I've never stayed with anyone for long because of that." There were other reasons, too, but I wasn't about to venture into those with Carlisle.
"But you can't hear Bella's thoughts, can you?"
"Did Alice tell you that?"
Carlisle smiled. "No. I'm not sure what Alice does or doesn't know, to tell you the truth, but you behave differently with Bella. You ask her more questions. I assumed."
"You're right. She's the only one I've encountered whose thoughts are closed off to me. Charlie's are very quiet, too, but they're there."
"Fascinating."
"Frustrating is more like it." I sighed and tried to find courage in the silence that stretched between us. There was one question I needed the answer to more than others, though I wasn't sure I would be pleased with the answer I received. That part of me that worried over the what ifs of my existence demanded I understand my human history with Carlisle. "I've been wondering…"
"Yes?" he prompted.
I tapped my fingers on the arm of the chair. "Why didn't you change me?"
Carlisle's blonde brows lifted high on his forehead. "I considered it. I thought you were going to die, and I was very much alone in those days, searching for a companion to make this life more…enjoyable. But then, against all odds, you seemed to find your strength a few days after your mother passed. I couldn't do this to you if you had the option of living a human life. It seemed you did." He looked apologetic.
So that was it then. No big mystery.
"You only change those who are dying?"
"In the past, that was part of my criteria, but I have no intention of changing others now or in the future. I've learned that not everyone wishes to be subjected to this life." He looked sad and regretful, but I couldn't break past his highly controlled thoughts to understand why. "Most would consider this to be an unnatural state, after all."
I sat still with my thoughts, considering his words. When the opportunity had presented itself, he'd sacrificed his chance for companionship to give me a human life. He'd done what he'd truly believed was right—for me. The thought sickened me, and I was supremely aware that I was the lesser man in the room. I'd squandered the life that Carlisle had spared. Then when fate had placed me in this form I was in now, I had ruthlessly murdered, while Carlisle had gone on to save lives.
"You changed Esme the same year I was turned," I said a moment later, trying to rid myself of my melancholy, but I still felt it there, beneath the surface. "I picked that up from her thoughts earlier."
"So you're physically twenty."
"Yes."
"You do look older than when you were in the hospital." He nodded. "How did you come to drink from animals?"
I gave a sideways smile. "I doubt you'd believe me, even if I told you."
"Ah, you never know. You'll have to share the story with me sometime."
"Perhaps."
We spoke then about how the Cullens had come to Forks in 2003, at—rather unsurprisingly—Alice's request; how they carried out humanlike lives or jobs in the small communities they dared live in. I couldn't decide if their elaborate façade was brilliant or utterly pointless.
"Haven't people noticed your lack of aging?" I asked.
"They have," Carlisle said with a frown, "but Alice assures us we have time yet."
"Time enough for Charlie."
"And Bella."
We watched each other closely as I said, "Bella told me that she got to know you because of her injury after a car accident." That could hardly explain all the personal time the Cullens spent with the Swans now.
"Ah, yes. And did she tell you everything?"
I felt a knot of dread in my stomach, the same knot I'd felt when Bella had told me the story. "She told me about what she thought she saw…"
"And you want to know if she actually saw it, if that's why we're involved."
I nodded. "I want to know if she saw what I think she did."
Vampire. He sighed. "Yes, I'm afraid so."
Bella had said once that she'd had a stroke of bad luck after moving to Forks—car accidents, cuts and bruises, even broken bones that required casts and surgeries. I'd not expected her luck to be bad enough for vampires, however. "One of your coven?" I asked, almost hoping that it was. The Cullens didn't feel as threatening as the nomads I'd met in the past—compared to who I was in the past.
Carlisle shook his head, which continued to be filled with foreign languages. He was almost as good at keeping me out as Alice was, but even the flashes of other thought that so rarely slipped through were worthless to me. "Nomads," he said. "They passed through shortly after Bella came to Forks."
"Was the nomad after her? Was she planning to harm Bella?"
"No. No, as you might guess, if any of it had been on purpose, Bella likely wouldn't be with us now."
What a small comfort.
"What actually happened?"
"It might surprise you."
"Try me," I said wryly. Then again, after learning of my entwined past with Bella and her mother, anything was fucking possible.
"Well, then," Carlisle began, "I believe it's time you know that this area is somewhat of an anomaly when it comes to the supernatural."
"What do you mean?" Don't tell me there are other covens.
"Vampires aren't the only supernatural creature in the region," he answered. "There are werewolves, too."
I'd not been expecting that one. There was a small pause before I burst out laughing. "Werewolves?" I said between chuckles. "We're quite far north, you know. Are Santa and his elves afoot, too?"
Though the corners of his eyes crinkled in amusement, Carlisle didn't laugh with me.
My own laughter died down. Damn.
"You're being serious. There are werewolves?"
Why did I get the feeling that, despite being a century old, I knew absolutely nothing?
"Believe it or not, Edward, we don't have a monopoly on the supernatural."
I stared at the golden lines of the Oriental rug my chair was on, my head spinning with the possibilities. "I never thought… It's strange enough that we exist." We were abominations. I looked back at him. "Don't you think?"
"Strange, perhaps, and yet clearly not impossible." He smiled in a patient, understanding sort of way that almost got under my skin.
"And the werewolves… They're here, in this town?" In a place named after a utensil, for crying out loud.
"Something related to werewolves," he answered. "Some of the natives of the nearby Quileute reservation have what I suppose could be called a wolf gene that's activated when vampires are in the area. They're more shape-shifters than werewolves. They mostly control their shifting, which begins at puberty, and the 'phasing'—as they call it—is not dependent on lunar cycles."
He cocked his head to the side. "I wonder…" Relaxing his mind of what I thought was a translation of the Hippocratic Oath, I was suddenly treated to a clear memory of an abnormally tall, brown-skinned man jumping into midair. The man's body seemed to stretch and crack, burst and reform until it had tripled in size. By the time he landed on the ground and ran into the woods, he was on all fours and covered in black fur.
A wolf.
"Were you able to see that?" Carlisle asked, sounding a little excited. Your mind reading is an amazing gift. Then, annoyingly, he returned to foreign languages.
"Yes," I replied, glaring at him. It was going to take time for me to accept that other vampires knew of my ability.
"That was Sam Uley," he said, ignoring my disgruntlement. "He was the first of his generation to shape-shift when we came to Forks, and he was chasing the vampire that led to Bella's accident. At that point, the nomad hadn't done anything in the area to warrant the chase, but I believe it was purely instinctual for him. When he made it to the 101, the vampire was far ahead, and Bella's truck was turned over in the ditch. He left the chase to get her help."
"He was chasing the nomad?" I almost laughed. What a dumb mutt.
Carlisle nodded. "Oh, yes. Don't underestimate them. The Quileutes consider themselves protectors of their tribe against the Cold Ones, and they're not mistaken, either. Maybe you're unaware of the legends, but the jaws of a werewolf are one of the few things that can quite easily tear us apart."
"I thought those were just stories." It seemed fair of nature to give us a natural enemy, but I'd always assumed we were at the very top of the food chain. Maybe we shared the throne with these wolves.
"Most would think we're but stories," he said with a faint smile.
Touché.
"How does your coven survive, living so near to them?" I'd not driven that close to the reservation, but I'd seen it on the map. The Cullens essentially had enemies for neighbors. Maybe the mutts weren't the only idiotic ones.
"We have a treaty with them."
"A treaty?" With wolves. Fantastic.
He explained, "They protect their lands in La Push, we protect our property, and we can come and go from Forks, so long as we adhere to one rule."
"Which is?"
"No biting into human flesh." He eyed me closely. "You clearly share our dietary choice at the moment, but can we trust that you will adhere to it? It's important that you do so, if we're to avoid nothing short of a war with the wolves—and they do outnumber us."
"I haven't fed from humans directly in twenty-one years." Because of the girl upstairs, I thought, but didn't mention. "I…took donor blood until I figured out we could drink animal blood a few years ago." He nodded thoughtfully, and I went back to the subject of werewolves. "Seems like a lot of trouble, staying here."
"It can be, but living by the wolves gives us further reason to commit to our lifestyle. Some members of my family struggle more with the bloodlust than others."
I raised a brow at this. "Which ones?"
"None that are here now," he answered vaguely, his eyes not leaving mine.
I opened my mouth to question him further, but he continued, deftly bowling over the subject. "My family and I lived in this region once before, during the thirties. At the time, we made a treaty with Ephraim Black, the tribal chief and a shape-shifter. His grandson, Jacob, is in the wolf pack, but he's not the leader. Sam has assumed that role, perhaps since he was the first to shift." Carlisle folded his hands before him. "It's Sam who has very graciously added you to our treaty, as per our request."
"I'm protected by your treaty?"
He nodded. "We negotiated this with the pack on your behalf after Alice told us you were the one to purchase the house from Esme."
I was stunned that the Cullens would bother, but I didn't go so far as to thank him. "Why?"
"Because they might hunt you otherwise, as Sam went after the nomad, and because Alice insists you're important to our family. She says you won't betray us or this diet, that you have good intentions."
"And everyone trusts Alice," I said, a bitter edge in my voice.
He didn't hesitate with his reply. "We do, yes, and I'm certainly hoping she's not wrong in her assessment of you."
"You have my word. I won't bite a human." I ignored the red-eyed Bella that flitted through my thoughts. Selfish, so selfish.
"Good. That would be greatly appreciated by all, I should think."
I contemplated this before something else Carlisle had said punched me in the gut. I leaned forward in my chair. "Wait a moment. Did you say Jacob Black?" My mind immediately connected the dots, and I didn't like the finished image at all. In his thoughts, Charlie had called the tan-skinned boy from Bella's past Jacob.
"Has Bella mentioned him?"
"No, but Charlie's thought about him." About that child's big, dopey grin as he clung onto Bella.
"They had a brief relationship, from my understanding," Carlisle stated carefully, as if he thought I was about have the first-ever case of vampire apoplexy.
There was a chance he was right.
"In other words, Bella dated a werewolf."
"It was before he shifted."
"Oh, well, that just makes all the difference, doesn't it?" I growled.
"It does, actually," Carlisle said, his voice calm. "He was just a human boy when they were together. The wolves have a mechanism not unlike our own that mates them for life. They know it as imprinting. Bella has never spoken to any of us about her relationship with Jacob, but I assume that he imprinted after shifting, and thus their relationship ended rather abruptly."
"He left her—just like that?" Filthy mutt. Still, I was glad he was out of the way, and this new information explained some of Bella's insecurities.
"They can't control it, no more than you or I." Carlisle smiled somewhat sadly.
I looked at him in confusion, and he lifted a brow.
"What—" I stopped when I realized what he was implying—that Bella was my mate. That I felt love for her was not in question, but to be mated to a human? Was that even possible?
My shock must have been evident on my face, because Carlisle openly laughed at my expense. "Alice told us as much, but I would have known after tonight. It hadn't occurred to you that she might be your mate?"
"I— No." I didn't know why it hadn't, but it hadn't.
Mating. If there was little I knew about my species at large, there was even less I knew about the finer, more nebulous details such as this. I knew we mated as some birds did—for life, forever. Our bond was intense, uncontrollable, wild and…irreversible. Could a human understand or experience such a bond? I knew humans were occasionally changed for the sake of mating, but surely most of the bond took place after equality had been attained. After newborn bloodlust had worn off.
"Bella's…human," I stated somewhat dully, as if Carlisle were unaware.
He shrugged one shoulder. "It happens. I knew with Esme before I ever changed her. I first met her when she was sixteen—she'd fallen out of tree, had broken her leg. I knew even then, though I of course didn't act on it. She was lovely—is, too." He smiled.
"Actually, Edward," he said, his tone losing all dreaminess as he turned decidedly academic, "it seems to me that most vampires find human mates, not vampire mates. This usually drives us to turn them. There are exceptions to this, of course, but I believe it to be our form of reproduction, the way our species continues itself, despite our inability to breed in the more traditional sense."
He went on, going into great detail about what he'd observed in our kind over the centuries—he'd apparently been turned in the 1600s and knew a thing or two. Normally, I'd find the discussion interesting, but I wasn't listening now, despite my nods and words of encouragement, such as "oh, really, is that so?"
Part of my brain catalogued every word he said, but my attention was elsewhere.
I'd known he was right as soon as he'd said it. I was mated to Bella, and the tragedy of that was palpable. While she might not come stamped with an expiration date, she certainly had one, just as her dying father did. I could never change her, subject her to this eternity of burning hunger… Could I?
Surely not.
Should I even want to, I was apparently now in the one place I readily knew I couldn't bite a human, unless I wanted to break treaties and wrestle with oversized canines who apparently could make quick work of me. To top it all off, the werewolves had a personal history with Bella, in particular. Wonderful. At least that made the decision simple, and yet, at the same time, it was upsetting to have the choice stolen from me before I'd had time to consider it.
Not that there was much to consider. I could never tell Bella the truth of what I was, let alone change her. I'd always been selfish, giving into pleasure when I shouldn't—a sinner at heart. I was selfish now, interfering with Bella's life when I knew our relationship couldn't last. I loved her, though—deeply—and that could perhaps make me less selfish than usual. I wouldn't subject her to this existence. I was late in making selfless decisions, but I would do for Bella as Carlisle had done for me. I would leave her human.
She deserved better than I could give, and one day, I'd have to step aside as a better man took my place.
When I went to the third floor to check on Bella, I found her in a guestroom, tucked between the sheets of a massive bed. A puffy, golden comforter covered her. At some point, she'd curled into a tight ball and fisted her hands under her chin. She slept this way sometimes—when anxious, I thought. The pillowcase beneath her head had a large wet spot from tears, and I could smell their salt, along with her own unique scent. Venom trickled, and I swallowed until my mouth was clear of the excess.
Esme came up beside me. "She'll be all right, dear. Let her rest for now."
"I wish I knew what to do." I felt so ill-equipped to be so old. All the years of hunting humans, reading thoughts and body language—none of it had prepared me for this woman.
Esme stared at me, calculating. "What you can do first is hunt. That will help you think—clear your head a bit."
I stared longingly at Bella, wanting to join her, even if I couldn't sleep. The bed would be warm and smell of her… "I—"
"Don't worry, Carlisle and I will be here while you're gone. Alice can keep you company. It's time she hunted as well." Esme reached forward and closed the bedroom door, blocking off my view of Bella.
"But I—"
Esme was quite the force to be reckoned with. "No buts. Your eyes are too dark. If you were to harm one hair on that poor girl's head, I would come after you, I'll have you know." She was petite, only a little taller than Bella, but when she poked a finger into my chest, I felt it.
"I would sooner harm myself," I said honestly.
"Even so, go hunt."
With Esme's hand all but shoving me down three flights of stairs, I made it to the front door, where Alice was waiting with a big, unnerving grin on her face. "Come on," she said, and it came out a lot like a whine. Then she was out the door, dashing into the darkness.
I paused at the doorway. Was I really about to leave Bella in the protection of these vampires? I looked back at Esme to find that Carlisle had joined her in the living room. It seemed they were about to settle down and watch television. There were Law & Order DVDs on the coffee table.
Sighing, I reminded myself once more of how many times Bella had been left in their company and care. I realized, in fact, that I owed them for watching over her and Charlie. With nomads afoot, and Bella's scent being nothing short of mouth-watering, I maybe even owed the fucking wolves that I'd only just discovered existed.
I stepped out onto the porch and closed the door behind me.
"You're catching on," Alice said sometime later as we walked through the woods at an unhurried pace. "'No man is an island' and all that jazz." A map of Brazil and a pristine island beach flashed through her thoughts. I wasn't sure if she was trying to relate the imagery with what was being said, be humorous or confuse me. She was probably trying to do all three.
I was exhausted mentally. "Alice, what is it you want with me? You've clearly got your whole cov—family up to something."
Her reply was odd.
"I had my first vision of you in the thirties," she said.
I stopped, and she stopped beside me. What was I to make of that declaration? "What do you mean? I didn't think your ability worked that way."
"If you think I understand half of what goes on in my head, you're wrong," she said with a tinkling laugh, as if essentially pronouncing oneself insane were normal.
"Could you at least try to explain it?" I asked.
"I really bug you, don't I?" She smirked, immensely pleased by this.
"A bit." The teasing edge to my voice surprised me.
"A lot."
A grin tugged at my mouth. "Less than before."
"Aren't you sweetest thing?" she teased back in a distinct southern accent that I'd not heard in years. She unexpectedly linked her arm with mine. With our extreme differences in height, it made walking awkward, but neither of us made to pull away. It usually felt strange to be touched, particularly by another vampire, but somehow I didn't mind it this time.
"Decisions are funny things," Alice said after a while, and her voice was more somber than I'd ever heard it—or ever had expected to hear it. "Most of the time, people make a decision, and really only one thing clearly results from it. Say you decide to drive to Vancouver to go shopping. The direct result of that might be that you'll need to stop for gas along the way. Not much mystery there. That's ninety-nine percent of what's in my head. My visions are mostly simple things—stuff that I think anyone could figure out if they gave it a bit of thought."
That sounded almost as boring as the mental drivel I had to suffer through. Almost.
I nodded wordlessly, too surprised that she was revealing intimate details of her ability to say anything. I didn't know how the Cullens did things, but sharing information about an ability, if you had one, could be a death wish in the nomadic world. For Alice to share information took a considerable amount of trust…in me.
"There are more complicated visions," she continued. "I can only actively look into the futures of people I've met, but sometimes—at random—I'm shown things beyond my control. I don't know why. That's just the way of it. Maybe they affect me or someone I know. Like when someone decides to write a book, I may see a resulting war. Details may change over a long course of time, but the end result has a high probability of staying the same when I have a vision like that. You wouldn't think two things that different could be well linked, but they can be. Like when Hitler read Martin Luther's Von den Juden and ihren Lügen." She saw my uncertainty and translated. "On the Jews and Their Lies. Not one of humanity's finer moments, I've got to say."
"Are you suggesting that one book caused—"
"Pretty much, and that book was written even before Carlisle's time, but it affected humans' of the modern era."
"That's…" I didn't really know how to process it.
"Beyond our control? Chaotic?" she said with a Cheshire cat grin.
"Well, yes."
She nodded. "It is, I guess. My head makes sense of it, though. Mostly." She looked up at the stars that freckled the blue-black sky. Damp from an endless mist, her short hair fell back in clumps and strands. "I was crazy as a human—or so I guess my family thought I was. Maybe I had visions even back then. My human brain probably couldn't handle all the chaos that this one can. I was in an asylum."
"Is that where Carlisle changed you?"
She looked back at me. "No—Carlisle didn't change me—but I don't really know anything. I have no human memory." She laughed. "There's probably no room for it, even in this better brain."
"How old are you?" I asked.
"I was turned in 1920. Carlisle thinks I'm physically nineteen, but I don't know. I don't think I look a day over sixteen, do you?" She smirked and batted her lashes jokingly.
"So you were around for World War II, then." She nodded, and I considered this for a time.
Though I'd been a war-hungry boy myself, human wars seemed distant now, unimportant when millennia stretched out beneath my feet. I viewed it as one would a war film—actors on fields with toy guns and fake, unappetizing blood—but then most humans viewed the world wars that way now; time did that to humanity. What was very real and bloody and painful for one generation was merely a paragraph of text in a history book for another. Humanity paid dearly for its short-term memory.
"I saw a lot of things I didn't want to see back then," Alice whispered, her voice was hollow. "My gift isn't always fun." She sighed, but then she perked herself up and squeezed my arm. "The point I'm making with all this is that the most obscure things can sometimes be connected quite clearly in the universal scheme of things if everything's lined up just so. Sometimes I get visions that are a result of that—something that the Chaos understands that I don't yet, but will. Even if I don't understand what I see at first. But I always trust my visions."
I thought of how Bella's indecision at the card games made Alice's visions inaccurate, but I didn't voice my skepticism. I knew she was right most of the time, at least in the little things I'd witnessed thus far. I wouldn't bet against her, and I'd certainly been a gambling man over the years to know a thing or two about betting.
"So a random decision I or someone else made led you to see me in the thirties?" I finally asked.
"Yes." Images flashed so rapidly through her mind that I couldn't hold onto them.
"Have you been keeping tabs on me?" I questioned. "Have you known everything I was doing—was going to do?" What exactly had she seen over the years, the decades?
"No," she said, soothing me somewhat, "but I knew we needed to meet. But our meeting had to come at the right time—a safe time." She let go of my arm and stared straight ahead as we jumped over a rotten cedar tree that had fallen to the forest floor. "I've been trying to get to you for years—I came really close to finding a right time in the seventies—but until Bella came into the equation, the times and places were never completely right—too dangerous."
"I don't understand," I admitted, my frustration evident.
A small smile crept up on her face. "Maybe you're not meant to understand everything yet. Even if that drives you crazy."
"So you're going to withhold information from me—about me?" I frowned at her.
"If I have to," she said.
"I can accept your ability, but not the way you attempt to control the future—particularly mine. I'd appreciate it if you'd stop that now."
"Please." She snorted. "I may not sleep, but I don't have time to control anyone's future—not really. I've never tried to control yours. I've just…worked around it. For the good of everyone."
Round and round we went in a threaded mess of riddles. "And what does that mean?"
Her eyes glazed over, and I knew she was seeing something—perhaps evaluating what would be best to say to me—but somehow she buried the vision beneath everything else in her mind. I realized then that she would have had decades to practice this if she'd wanted, to prepare for me and my mind reading. It was no wonder she was good at it.
She answered me when her eyes regained focus. There was a fire in them. "It means you need to trust me."
"I hardly know you," I scoffed.
"You know me better now," she replied, and then, just as it was the first time we'd spoken in the woods by Charlie's house, she seemed to independently decide our conversation was over. Her head snapped toward the east. "Carnivores" was the last thing she said before darting away. It was such an abrupt change that it took me a moment to register her words and actions.
I'd never hunted animals with another vampire—I couldn't say the same for hunting humans—but there was something oddly satisfying in knowing I wouldn't be alone tonight. I took off after Alice. She was laughing ahead of me, weaving between trees like a will-o'-the-wisp.
Beneath my feet, mud, moss and leaves whirled up, coating my shoes and jeans. Scents of the forest—green death and green life—filled my senses. Soon, I heard it.
Lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub.
Two separate beats, the gushing blood of two animals.
Alice was directly in front of me now, and I reached out, grabbing hold of her side. I shoved her to the left—not too roughly, but to get her out of my path—and she went flying through the air with a growl that easily morphed into a laugh. She landed on the balls of her feet in a crouch, only stopping long enough to regain her balance before she ran back at me. Our play felt somehow natural.
She shoved at my side. I laughed as her fingers grasped at air as I narrowly dodged her advance. I jumped past her, vaulted off of a low-hanging tree branch and landed in a clearing with a creek bed. Then I smelled them—bobcats.
I stilled on all fours as I saw the felines at the far end of the clearing. They were magnificent, prowling creatures, but I could only envision them as food at that point. I was thirsty and tired of denying my nature. My muscles twitched beneath my skin, eager for the kill.
Alice crouched beside me. "You can have the one at right," she whispered, and I noted how her thoughts had coalesced into one concern: the hunt.
The two bobcats were broad-shouldered beasts, though the one at left, a female, was smaller. It was mating season, and they were a pair. Their individual coats of black-spotted silver and black-spotted gold shone under the moonlight. Yellow eyes turned toward us leisurely, confidently, and I focused on the cat at the right. The forest stilled and narrowed until it was just this cat and I—beast to beast, predator to prey. Sensing that something was going awry, he let out a low hiss. I smiled, baring all teeth, as that part of me—the part I so often tried to conceal—surfaced. The madness consumed all else, as it always did. It possessed me ruthlessly.
Each fluttering heartbeat sang to me, and with my senses fully open, I could almost taste blood on the air. I hungered for the life within.
I couldn't be sure who leapt first, but in the space of a breath, paws landed on my chest. With morbid pleasure, I grappled against fur and knotted muscle. He snarled by my ear as we fell to the ground in a braided tangle of spotted gray and porcelain white. The muddy earth was soft beneath my back.
Though there was truly no fight to be had between us, I wrestled with the creature for a time, enjoyed the sensation of his claws as they scraped ineffectually across my skin. When I'd had enough, I felt for vertebrae beneath my fingertips. I pressed in, clamped down until I heard a satisfying, meaty snap—a clitch! sound. A broken spine. The cat fell limply onto my chest, and I shoved his head to one side so I could bury my teeth into his twitching jugular.
I groaned as blood gushed into my mouth in a thick, warm stream. Some trickled past my lips and rolled down my neck as I sucked long after the body was drawn and empty.
There were no beating hearts left in the clearing as I rose to my feet with a sigh and wiped my mouth on the back of my hand. My wrist came away bloody.
Alice stood several feet away, picking at her nails. Other than her wilted hair from the humidity, she didn't look at all out of sorts—no specks of blood or wrinkled clothes to suggest she'd just taken down a wildcat over half her size. She glanced up at me, her eyes shifting up and down my whole, disheveled appearance. "You kind of suck at this—no pun intended."
I looked down at myself. My jeans were wet and muddy up to the knee, which only served to match my torn and bloodstained shirt. I sighed. All in all, it was a normal hunting trip for me. I rubbed the back of my neck. "Uh, you don't happen to have a change of—"
"Waiting for you in the guest bathroom."
There were advantages to knowing someone who could see into the future.
Two flavorless deer later, we turned back toward the Cullen mansion. When we were nearly there, Alice's steps slowed, and her eyes took on that hazy gloss again. We stopped in the woods, and I rested a hand on her shoulder. "Everything all right?" It seemed appropriate to ask, given she might be witnessing anything from someone purchasing gas to the events of World War III.
She returned to the present. "Bella's going to have a nightmare. If we hurry, you can help her through it, and she won't wake."
We ran to the house. I wanted to rush to the third floor, so I could be there when Bella's nightmare began, but Esme was adamant that I remove my soiled shoes and roll up my pant legs. That done with a considerable amount of admittedly unreasonable complaining on my part, I sped up the stairway.
As I reached the third floor, I heard Bella's heart rate change. A frightening stutter preceded a rush of blood and a frantic drumbeat.
Edward! Alice called to me in her mind.
But it was too late. I'd snatched the bedroom door open—too quickly, too loudly. I might be silent, but doors weren't unless one took particular care with opening them. Bella bolted upright in bed, and I stood frozen—dirt and blood covering me.
Bella blinked in the darkness as her heart steadied. "Edward, is that you?"
"I'm here," I whispered, wide-eyed and petrified of moving. "Go back to sleep."
"Why aren't you in bed?" She reached for a bedside lamp.
"Don't!" I softened my voice. "No need to wake. I don't need the light. Just…one moment."
As quickly as I could under her bleary gaze, I rushed into the connecting bathroom. The door shut with a click, and I leaned against it, panting. What if she'd seen me? I couldn't be so careless, not if I expected to spend the next couple of months with her—longer, if I was able.
There were clothes on the bathroom vanity: underclothes, a white shirt, a pair of jeans and shorts of a soft material that I assumed Alice thought I'd "sleep" in.
Well. She just thought of everything, didn't she?
"Thank you, Alice," I called softly, at a frequency only our kind would hear.
No problem! she thought in reply, far too comfortable with silent conversation.
After removing twigs and leaves from my hair, and rinsing off in the shower, I changed into the shorts; and not wanting to risk Bella seeing my ghastly clothes, stuffed them in a cabinet. Esme probably wouldn't be too pleased to find them. Hopefully I would have an opportunity to remove them myself before Bella and I left for Port Angeles in the morning.
Bella was still awake when I climbed into bed. As always, she curled up to me, even though my solid form and coldness should deter her. I made sure her head was on my shoulder, away from my unnaturally silent heart. "Are you all right?" I asked, brushing tangles from her hair. "You seemed frightened when I came in."
She sighed. "I think I was beginning to have another nightmare. I'll be fine, though." She paused, seemingly to gather her thoughts. "I'm sorry about earlier tonight…"
"No need to apologize." I pulled her closer. "I'm sorry about your father."
"I know," she whispered. "Thank you. I'm—I'm glad you're with me."
We were quiet as we lay together, each of us lost in our thoughts, our hands gentle on one another. A slender leg hooked over one of mine after a time; toes stretched against my calf muscle, making it twitch.
"Oh," Bella said with a small, groggy chuckle. "You don't have pants on."
I closed my eyes and held back a laugh as her cheek grew warm against my shoulder. "Well, there are shorts," I said. They were doing nothing to hide my growing predicament, either. Soft material, indeed.
"Yeah, I meant shorts."
Bella snuggled closer and ran her toes up and down the inside of my right leg. Her every move was sensual to me, a living mystery I wanted to unravel, but this… Her touch was almost too much, directly after hunting. I was left staring at the ceiling, counting every third prime number backward from ten thousand as I resisted urges I had no right to have. Not if she's to survive, I reminded myself, as countless women paraded in my memory—countless women whose blood I'd taken. Sobering thoughts.
"I like how cold you are," Bella said against my neck, sounding more alert.
I shook my head. "You shouldn't, you know." I didn't understand why she did.
She shrugged. "Doesn't stop me." Her fingers trailed through the hair on my chest. "Is it weird having circulation problems? Do you even like that I'm warm?" she asked. Her finger brushed over my nipple, and it took me several seconds to process what she'd said.
I took a deep, grounding breath. "Bella, I love everything about you." Her heart spluttered a bit, and I wondered if I'd said too much.
She tilted her head up. "Kiss me?" she whispered, her voice sweet and enticing.
I turned into her, our bodies pressed close. But I tilted my hips back, even as I imagined her hands on my cock, as I imagined making love to her… Our mouths met, and I groaned into the deepening kiss. So warm.
She curled her tongue around mine. "You taste salty," she said, pulling away.
I froze for the second time this night. Blood.
Bracing her foot against my leg, she scooted closer until our hips were almost touching. "It's good," she said, and licked her lips.
Fuck.
I stared at her, perversely intrigued. She had no idea that she was tasting blood. She shouldn't like it, but she stared at my mouth like she wanted more—of me, of it, I didn't know—and thoughts flew through my mind. Thoughts of sharing this part of my existence with her, thoughts of her lean and hard and cold and savagely bloodthirsty.
Mine forever.
An impossibility. As it should be.
I swallowed hard, thinking that it might very well take werewolves to keep me in line at this point, and forced myself to pull back as she leaned in. I wanted to rip her clothes off. I wanted to possess and fuck her. My body ached with it, ached with denying too many instincts at once. Surely I wouldn't survive this slow burn.
She stilled. "Am I…overwhelming you again?"
I breathed out a laugh. "You could say that."
"But you do want me?"
How was it she needed to ask? "God, yes."
Even in the darkness, her eyes seemed to take on a new light, a determined fire. "Then have me."
Downstairs, the Cullens quietly slipped out of their house. They were giving us privacy; they had far too much faith in me after just one hunt. I didn't know if that was good or bad. The flush on Bella's cheeks, which traveled down her neck and disappeared beneath the line of her shirt made it difficult for me to think logically—or at least with the part of my body I should be thinking with.
I pressed my forehead to hers and squeezed my eyes shut. "Bella, we can't do this," I said, my voice catching on my agony. I gave her as much of the truth as possible. "I'm not good enough for you." I'll hurt you, as I've hurt all the others.
All the women of the past…their bodies had been too closely tied to blood. I had set a precedent, formed a habit when it came to human women, one that might end Bella's life in the heat of the moment. There had always been a safety before: harming them hadn't mattered, because they would die by my hand, anyway. This—Bella—was different. I couldn't possibly risk her, simply to get my rocks off.
"You're ridiculous," she replied.
I opened my eyes, needing to see her expression. A curious smile played on her lips. "The night seems to make you bold," I said, unable to contain a smile of my own.
She half-shrugged as she leaned in and trailed kisses along my face, to my ear. "I've never felt like this…so strongly. I care about you," she whispered. "It's not wrong for me to want to show that. Is it?"
I puzzled over her words, trying to decipher all possible meanings. With Bella, I'd learned there was a great deal of editing by the time she actually opened her mouth to speak. Reading between the lines was essential.
I've never felt like this. I care about you.
My heart clenched. Did she love me? It wasn't right for her to, but then her lips met mine, and I gave into her with a sigh; began to give into a frail, but growing hope that she might share some of the feelings I could barely hold.
Bella reached between us and began unbuttoning her shirt. I opened my eyes into our kiss and groaned before pulling away. "What are you doing?" I said, knowing perfectly well as I stared at the fleshy curve of her partially exposed breast.
What would I do to her if she was naked before me? Everything, surely. Would I be able to stop? Would I take her life?
"I want to feel good with you." She sucked her lip beneath her teeth and tilted her hips toward mine. And suddenly there we were—her overheated lower body to my cool one. The shorts hid nothing. My cock was obviously wedged between us.
Before I could even process what was happening, we both moaned and pushed closer. Bella's fingers traveled up my neck, into my hair, where she gripped the strands. I'd never before been thankful for the unkempt hair I'd had before I was changed, but she put an interesting spin on things. Pull harder, I wanted to say, but somehow managed to swallow the request.
"I want to feel alive," she whispered, a hint of wild desperation in her voice, her eyes suddenly glassy.
I cupped a hand to her cheek. "Bella?"
"Please."
How one word could so thoroughly cripple me, I didn't know. But what I did know was that she hadn't asked anything of me when she'd grieved and wept, but this…this she wanted.
She wanted me. She wanted to feel alive with me. I had to give her—us—something.
Our hips shifted back and forth without an immediate destination in mind, rustling the sheets above and between us. I grabbed her rear and pulled her closer, angled her toward me. A delicious, painful friction accompanied our erratic breathing and Bella's pounding pulse. And I smelled a heavenly scent—sweet and hormone-laden and altogether hers. It was in the air, on my tongue. She wanted me, as I wanted her.
Sliding my hand from her bottom, along curves of hip and waist, I cupped her left breast, rested my fingers on the throbbing flesh above her heart. I was shaking, afraid I'd hurt her, afraid she'd reject me…
We stared at each other as I pulled in an unnecessary breath. "I love you," I whispered on the exhale, because I couldn't contain it, even if what we had could only ever be temporary.
The words hung.
Bella tensed, and I tensed with her.
No.
I drew my hand from her breast and placed it over my own, as if to contain myself from spilling over. I was breaking beneath the saccade of intense, brown eyes. Don't reject me, I thought, even as I knew she should do that very thing. It would be right for her to reject me. It would be superb, cosmic justice.
But then, as Bella so often did, she surprised me. Breaking into a brilliant smile, she threw herself against me, hooking her leg over my hip in an effort to get closer. She hugged her arms around my neck with a shocking force for such a relatively small human, and the sweetest music played in my ear. "I think I love you, too," she said. Her breath was uneven. "I know I do."
She loves me. A mate. A partner.
My eyes burned with tears I couldn't shed, joining in with pain caused by her blood and body. "How?" I asked, because I truly did not understand.
She backed away enough to look me in the eyes. A tear was rolling down her cheek, and I kissed it away. "Because I think you're good for me, whether you think that or not."
"Bella…" I turned her body beneath mine, gently pressed her into the mattress. At first she avoided my gaze, but then she stared back with determined, loving eyes. Our hips continued to move—push and circle—but I was careful, always cautiously, consciously aware.
She was breathless beneath me."Are we…"
"Not tonight," I said against her lips, while inwardly judging that that would never be an option for us. I'd never gone so far with a human before. I wasn't willing to test that on Bella. "But…" I leaned up on my hands and looked down at her. Her hair was fanned out along the pillow. The bed linens had fallen to the bottom of the bed, revealing the jeans she'd fallen asleep in; her legs were spread wide to accompany my hips. I stared at the seam between her thighs.
"Edward?"
I forced my gaze back to her face. "Maybe I can make you feel good," I said. If I was careful. If I didn't confuse one lust with another.
She bit her lip, poorly hiding a smile, and her heart sped up.
My fingers rested on the top button of her shirt. "You must tell me if I hurt you." The words were awkward, far from romantic, but paramount.
Bella's gaze was steady. "You won't hurt me."
"Bella…"
"You won't," she insisted with a shake of her head. "I don't even know why you think you would. I mean, I'm not…inexperienced. But I'll tell you if anything…feels, er, wrong." I nodded, somewhat mollified, even if she didn't understand my reservations.
In my state of fear and lust and excitement, removing clothing at a human pace turned out to be difficult enough that Bella had to help with buttons and zippers. But when all was said and done, we lay together in only gray boxers and purple panties that said it was Thursday, instead of Sunday. I grinned at her, feeling somehow shy, despite how many times I'd seen naked women, despite my own sexual experience—minor though it may have been. My skin tingled. Perhaps it was that for the first time in my very long and lonely existence, this mattered. She mattered.
And I could very well fuck it all up if I wasn't careful.
We spoke in quiet voices and comforting touches, both afraid, it seemed, of shattering peace, of returning to what lay outside in a world governed by death. With fearful hands, I touched her, trailed fingers down the curves of breasts and hips; marveled at skin that peaked and puckered and came alive, rather than perished, beneath my hands. Pale gray moonlight spilled into the room from the floor-to-ceiling window on the southern wall, lending an ivory quality to Bella's already light-colored skin. She looked like me, I realized, and this was such a surprisingly lovely and painful thought that I buried the feelings away as swiftly as possible.
Her hand slid downward, slipped into boxers to wrap around me, and I allowed it against my better judgment, because I seemed incapable of doing anything else. I wanted her to touch me; I was hers to touch. For all her desire to be physically closer, she was shy as she explored me, her cheeks and breasts tinged pink.
We faced each other on our sides, and I mirrored her eventually, finding my own hand caught between fevered flesh and the thin, cotton covering that did nothing to keep me away. She was slick beneath my touch, a writhing specter before my eyes.
As I touched her, I some of my fear subsided. This, at least, I could give us—right? Knowing this, I felt more powerful than ever before, though I was yet held back by my self-restraint.
"Oh, like that," I gasped and begged when her fingers tightened. Her touch was still light to my hard skin, but it was furnace warm—and it was her. It was so much better than when I did it. Than when anyone else had ever touched me.
"Yes," she moaned, lifting her hips up off the bed.
A tension set upon us as we writhed together in a tight embrace, until we were strings pulled taut. I held twitching lips to Bella's pulse as my fingers sunk into wet flesh, as her hand gripped and slid up and down. Her scent lay heavy in the room, on the sheets, on me. I could almost taste her blood. I could feel it rush beneath her paper-thin flesh, racing through her heart and lower.
And then it happened—the string broke, as all taut strings must.
She cried out and arched her back, elongated her neck as her breasts pushed against my chest. It was this touch of sweat and warmth and life that broke me. I tore my hands away from her as pleasure stole over me. This release was intense, long, a much-needed exhale after weeks of holding my breath. A wrought iron bar from the bed frame silently bent in my hand as my vision blurred for a split second—so quickly that I wondered if it happened at all.
"Are you all right?" I whispered minutes later, still not fully myself.
"Better than all right."
My body relaxed further, and I allowed myself to smile. I felt like I could almost sleep. She wasn't hurt. We'd survived. Quite well, even, judging by her moans.
Breathing somewhat unevenly, I looked at Bella. She was staring down between us, at her hand, where it rested low on my stomach. I looked with her, at the glistening venom that was on her fingers and wrist and on the sheets. It looked normal, though I knew it wasn't.
Suddenly she let out a strange laugh that caught in the middle, as if she were trying to hold it back as an afterthought. "What is it?" I asked, feeling myself laugh with her. I felt almost lightheaded.
"It's just…" She let out another half-laugh. "It's cold."
"Oh." I frowned, a little disgusted on her behalf.
Shaking her head, she leaned forward and pressed a quick kiss on my cheek. "I'm going to clean up."
It was nearly dawn when we'd both cleaned and returned to bed. We seemed more relaxed, and I hoped it remained that way—that Bella would perhaps stop pushing for more, that I would perhaps stop wanting more. "Sleep," I told her as she curled into me. "We don't have to leave for a few hours yet."
Nodding and yawning, she tucked her head into the crook of my neck. "Edward?"
"Hmm?"
"You're going to tell me the whole truth soon—whatever it is."
I didn't answer her. I only sighed and began to hum her lullaby.
Closing Notes: With moving, the holidays and a big work project, I may be a little bit slower with my updates until the New Year. Don't worry, though. I always write.