chapter 5
Somewhere dark, Smewhere wet.
Bella woke to the sound of water.
Droplets formed; it seemed she could hear them expanding, growing to monstrous size before gravity inevitably trapped them in its hold, pulling them to the earth.
Every tiny splash an explosion, a single drop becoming many, many becoming infinite. It was as if she could hear the impact of every molecule, and for a brief moment she believed her mind might split, trying to deal with the sound.
And Then: just darkness. Just water dripping. Just her ragged breathing, the feel of cold, damp stone under her cheek. She could smell wetness and rot in the air mold from the stones, and the dim scent of sex still on her body.
She was naked, cold, disoriented. Confusion gave way to fright, fright to panic, and Bella scrambled into a sitting position, gasping.
Dim, not dark. A candle guttered somewhere to her left. She could make out the area around her in vague outlines.
As her eyes adjusted, she saw her clothes in a jumble on the floor to her right.
This was something to think about, something to take her mind off of the questions, the fear.
She crawled to the clothes, picked them up.
Panties, jeans, shirt. Feeling more human, more herself, Bella set about trying to remember how she might have arrived at this place.
Slowly the events of the previous night pieced themselves together in her mind.
The car, the restaurant, Edward. Driving fast, taking her somewhere, doing something … but that piece wouldn't come. In its place, everything was a dark red, filled with the noise of rushing water and the thud of some distant drum.
Brighter now, her eyes adjusting, able to make out details where before there were only silhouettes.
Bella saw a table, a chair, a simple bed off which she might have fallen during her sleep. A toilet in the corner, behind a screen.
A small sink with a mirror above. The walls in front, behind, to her right made of stone.
And to her left, iron bars from ceiling to floor, forming the fourth wall of the cell in which she was being held.
Bella stared at these bars, unable to gain control of her limbs, let alone make any pretence of moving.
Cold shudders of fear ran down her back.
Trapped, her mind repeated over and over, I'm trapped.
At last, with an effort of will greater, perhaps, than any she had ever made, she shoved these thoughts away.
Forced herself to look around. Tried to find something to occupy her mind. The mirror. The sink.
Bella stood on shaky legs, a newborn colt attempting to walk, steadying herself on the table.
She could feel tear tracks drying and tightening her face, though she could not remember crying.
She ran the faucet, splashed water on her face, and looked into the mirror. Terror.
Recoiling with a cry, tripping over the chair, crashing to the floor, the skin on her palms shredding on the cold stone.
The image in the mirror had been Bella, and not Bella.
Her eyes, brilliant green to begin with, now glowed with that odd luminescence.
Her pale skin had changed subtly; imperfections wiped away, bags under her eyes gone.
Her teeth as she grimaced were sharper, more pronounced, particularly the canines.
But worse, worse by far, and that which had truly caused her to recoil in horror, was the entirety of the reflection itself.
It was not what she was seeing that brought Bella to a sudden and full understanding that something was simply not right.
It was how she was seeing it – the details her eyes were able to pick out even in this dim light were somehow finer than anything that human eyes should be able to process.
She could see everything about herself, in a way that she had never seen before, and it was this evidence that something within her had been changed so substantially, in such a short time, that broke down the last remaining walls she had constructed against her rising fear.
Bella rolled back her head, let out a wail of utter horror and despair, and gave in to the panic that had been gnawing at the edges of her mind.
She called to Ben and Angela. Jessica. Edward and Mike and even to her mother and father.
No help came for Bella. No explanation, no escape. She wept, she screamed, she threw herself against the bars. It was not until she saw the tears she was crying, wiped on her hands and tinted with red, that she regained any sort of composure.
The sight was a harsh slap, stopping her in her tracks. Red tears. Bloody tears. And with that, Bella remembered it all, in minute detail.
The car, the kiss, the sex. She remembered Edward bringing her to the delicious moment before that final peak, and pressing his teeth against her neck.
Her mind replayed the event in slow motion, those teeth hard against her flesh, nanoseconds of waiting spread out forever, the moment when the body tenses, begging for release. Waiting. And then her heart had throbbed, body climaxing, vein pulsing.
Edward's teeth split her flesh asunder, and all that was left was the rushing, draining sensation, timed to the throb of her heart.
Bella let out a low, animal moan of terror and revulsion and lust as these memories flooded into her head, crowding out any concern for the present.
The recollection was horrifying, the blinding white pain remembered all too well.
Yet below, a dark fire awoke a need she could not imagine existing in this time and place.
Bella glanced at her hands. The skin had already healed cuts and scrapes from the fall just a few moments ago already turned to new, white flesh.
Intricate spider webs of veins stood out on those hands, more pronounced against the pale skin.
Bella understood now what she was, or was becoming. Her mind attempted to shove the thought aside, fill with rationality, and fill with excuses.
But what excuse could there be? What possible rational explanation existed for this?
When the hunger awoke inside of her, sometime later, she knew instinctively that no ordinary food would cure it.
In the summer of her seventeenth year, Bella and Ben had taken a trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Bella had never been, and it had been several years since the last time Ben had been to the galleries.
At his insistence she had gone along, not expecting to find anything of interest.
To her surprise, Bella had found herself absolutely captivated by nearly everything they had seen.
Here, laid out before her, was a visual history of the world. Her rapture with this idea came from Bella nearly conflicting angles.
On the one hand, all of this work lead up to her own creation. On the other, all of this came from beyond her, outside of her, cared not whether she ever existed, would go on existing long after her own life had ceased.
She was everything. She was insignificant. Bella had not been more profoundly impacted by anything in her life, save perhaps her decision to leave home.
Ben had finally been forced to drag her from the building, promising to return with her. She hadn't read everything on the Egyptians.
She'd missed the entire Roman wing. They took the train home in near silence; Ben astounded and deeply pleased with Bella's appreciation of the museum.
He did not ask her to explain, knowing that if she could, she most certainly would. Bella had struggled with it for some time, attempting to put her feelings into words, attempting to express to Ben how she'd felt, how delicious the merger of those Bella viewpoints had been.
Bella was neither stupid nor unlettered – a love for books had served her, in truth, far better in this area than a city school education probably could have – yet there was no word she knew, and perhaps no word at all, for how she felt.
Bella had made many trips to the museum that year, with Ben and alone, absorbing all she could see. Trips to The Museum of Modern Art followed galleries of new work in Greenwich Village, street artists in SoHo.
Never any desire to attempt to create the work herself, only to immerse herself in others' creations, to learn and experience what she could through them.
To absorb some alternate view, as meaningful and inconsequential as her own. Art had brought Bella a deep, abiding love for the complexity and magnificence of human life.
Even in utter disgrace, trapped in horror, she had still found some grim beauty in the structure of it all. As the blood tears dried on her cheeks, her preternatural eyes staring out through darkness no human could have penetrated, Bella felt truly and completely alone for the first time since Ben had first brought her to the museum.
That precious connection with the rest of humanity had been torn from her, and she had become something outside of the scope of those eons of art.
Against her will she had been made an interloper, no longer welcome in the human world. It seemed as if those ties that she had found within the art had been severed.
Sitting on the stone floor in the darkness, listening to the drip of water, Bella wondered when she might see Edward again.
Clearly, she had been put here to ensure that she would not run away in his absence. There was no reason for him to continue holding her in a cell once he returned.
She had not protested, had not attempted any type of escape. This, more than anything else, calmed her.
If Edward had intended simply to kill her, she would be dead. The altered physiology, the translucency in the mirror, the blood tears …
These things suggested some further plan, and one in which she joined him among the ranks of the undead.
He would not leave her here to rot. She would see him again. But not that night.
Bella rose from sleep in a manner entirely unfamiliar to her. Before, it had always been fuzzy, a gradual awakening.
Now, she went from the deepest blackness to instant, total comprehension. It was startling.
She sat up, looked around more from habit than from any need to clear her head.
She was still in the cell, of course. Nothing had changed. Almost nothing. Before her was a bottle of water, and a note.
Bella took it, read it, crumpled it up and threw it out through the bars.
Bella, please accept my apologies for my absence, and for the appalling conditions of this cell. It is the only place in which I can be assured you will neither flee, nor come to any harm while I am away. I will see you later this evening. If you are thirsty, it should still be within your capacity to drink water for now. – Edward
No apologies for the bite, though. No apologies for the lack of warning. No apologies for whatever he had done that had begun this process without her permission. No apologies for taking away her connection with humanity, for making her some sort of monster.
Bella felt a crawling, tightening sensation in her spine, followed by sharp cramp in her abdomen and the muscles behind her shoulder blades.
Her mouth felt dry, her skin hot, and a wave of panic flooded through her.
She knew this feeling, and a small part of her brain was surprised that it had taken so long to come around.
Her body had been without her drug for at least 24 hours now, and these pains she was feeling now were only a minor precursor to those on the horizon.
"Oh, God …" Bella fought against the panic, knowing it would only worsen the symptoms, and was able to push it back for the time being.
The gnawing desire still sat in the back of her brain, and her muscles ached like she had the flu, but she was not yet in the horrible pain that she knew was the next stage.
She uncapped the water, drank, and felt it run down the length of her chest. It seemed as if her senses were amplified at times, and yet this occurred without warning or pattern.
If she could control it, she had not yet learned how.
Steps above her, the opening of some heavy door, and then Edward was there. He looked paler still than he had the night before, and there were heavy bags under his eyes, but otherwise he was the same: The short dark hair and light brown eyes, the lanky body, the unnatural sense of stillness.
She thought she could see the ghost of a smile at his lips.
"Hello Bella." He stared in through the bars at her.
Bella, with a strength belying the shakiness inside her, replied,
"Nice place you've got here, Edward. Love The decor." Edward grinned, reached out with a key, and unlocked the door to her cell.
Iron grating on iron. Squeal of rusty hinges. He stepped backward, gestured with his hand.
"You'd probably like a shower. Some new clothes?" Bella looked at him, eyebrows raised.
"You turned me into some kind of monster, Edward."
"Did I?"
"I can see in the dark. I was crying earlier, and my tears were pink. I scraped my hands, and they healed in a couple of minutes. What the fuck did you do to me?" Bella could feel anger replacing fear, and welcomed it.
"Something for which you will one day thank me. Bella, you have to trust me."
"I don't have to do anything! You bought my time for a night, Edward, not my life."
"I've given you a gift."
"Take it back!" Bella shouted. "I didn't ask for your gift."
"You wanted to be with me, yes?" Bella was quiet. Edward continued. "You did, and not because I made you, either. No drugs, no magic. I gave you a taste of freedom, that's all. A look at what it might be like to be with me. And now you can be. Forever." A shiver ran down Bella's spine. She continued her silence, holding on to her anger. "I've given you immortality, Bella … or at least the path to it. I've given you a way to be free of your addictions, free of your life on the streets, free of that pimp selling you every night."
"If you were offering that, I wouldn't feel like there are shards of glass in my spine. I need to go, Edward. Now. I need that pimp. I need my fix. I never asked for any of this."
"You asked with your eyes. You asked with your body."
"I asked for your love. Not your … your …"
"Blood?"
"Blood! I don't want this, Edward. I don't."
"You don't know what this is." Edward gestured at her, Then at himself. "At least let me show you." Bella considered, shivering.
Was this a fair request? Was this man, so little the monster she'd seen portrayed in movies, read about in books, honestly giving her the chance to make her own decisions?
She had perhaps another 12 hours before the withdrawal became unbearable.
"If you trust me, Bella, I will show you a way to break from the world in which you are trapped. I will give you escape." Bella shook her head. She couldn't see it. Edward sighed, lifted his finger to his lips and without hesitation bit down.
Blood immediately welled, and Bella felt a sudden surge of adrenaline and terrible hunger. She took an involuntary step forward, before catching herself. Edward held his finger out. Bella took another step, stopped herself.
"I don't want it!"
"Yes you do, and not only because of your new nature. Bella, I'm sorry for this …" Edward moved suddenly, so fast that Bella could not even react to it.
Before she could even take in a breath to scream, he had grasped her, pressed his finger against her lips, and released her. Bella licked them instinctively, and the blood was like fiery liquor on her tongue, hot and sweet. Ambrosia. It left her breathless.
She sat down on the small bed, dazed.
"Jesus," she said. Edward smiled.
"No, Bella. Jesus has nothing to do with this." Bella looked up at him. The aches in her joints, the chills, the craving for the drug; all had faded far into the background. Bella or three drops of Edward's blood had pushed the symptoms of withdrawal away almost completely.
"Let me show you what can be. Will you trust me?" Bella stood, stretched, marvelling at the sudden strength in her limbs. She looked again at Edward, and saw in his eyes the same man for whom she had felt such strong feelings the previous night. Bella made her decision.
"No, Edward, I don't trust you. Not yet …" Edward looked crestfallen. He opened his mouth to protest, and Bella held up her hand, smiling slightly. "But I'll let you show me."