Chapter 8

The bath was heaven on earth. Giant marble slabs, green and black and grey patterns tracing themselves out across what seemed, at first, to be miles of stone. The basin had to be twelve feet long, three feet deep.

Sitting straight up, Bella saw, the water could easily have covered her head. The faucet was enormous.

The water steamed as Rose turned it on.

"I like flowers. Do you like flowers?" Bella had no idea what Rose meant. She shrugged.

"Sure?"

"In the bath, silly."

"Oh." Bella honestly didn't know. She'd never tried it. "Why not?" Rose laughed, took a basket from the shelf above, dropped hundreds upon hundreds of blossoms into the bath water.

Their fragrance filled the room immediately, cherry blossoms, rose petals, the sweet smell of citrus.

Rose lit candles, turned off the lights, stood in front of Bella, unbuttoned her blouse. Bella shrugged it off.

Rose's blood seemed to have imbued her with a sense of great calm, and Bella found herself unconcerned about being naked in front of the vampire girl.

Rose, for her part, seemed entirely unfazed. She helped Bella out of the rest of her garments, held her arm out for balance as Bella climbed the steps to the bath and stepped in.

Bella descended into the petals, felt the warmth embrace her, and sighed. Rose sat on the step, played with the water at her fingertips, smiled at Bella.

"Good?"

"Oh, yes." Rose handed her a gigantic sponge, craggy and twisted and obviously natural, and some sort of perfumed bath lotion.

Bella cleaned herself slowly. Rose chattered, behind her and to the right, about all sorts of things.

New pop music she was enamoured with, the wonderful lights and throbbing beats of the raves she attended, the new interpretation of Shakespeare running on Broadway.

Her tastes were more varied than anyone Bella had met. She kept the conversation casual.

Eventually, Bella was as clean as she was going to get. She lingered, relaxed, the withdrawal back in some dark corner, brooding, not yet ready to return.

Rose ran water, filled a clay jug, ancient glaze cracked along its contours, and wet Bella's hair.

Bella leaned back, eyes closed, as Rose's fingers worked shampoo through her brown curls.

It was like a supernatural visit to a salon, Bella reflected, and laughed slightly. Rose seemed to catch this thought, and smiled as well.

She helped Bella from the bath, dried her, helped her choose perfumes Edward might like, helped her dress in a long, flowing gown. Green, like his eyes. It was a bit too long, but otherwise fit well.

"He'll say he prefers black, if you ask him, but he's just buying into the whole vampire thing. You look like a goddess, and he'll know it." Bella looked at herself in the mirror, amazed at the change.

White skin, green dress, brown eyes, chocolate hair. The gown was of an older style, décolleté, leaving little to the imagination, pushing her breasts upward and making them seem fuller.

She looked like a lady at court. Bella smiled, giggled like a little girl, touched her own hair as if not believing.

In her nineteen years, she had never seen herself like this. Bella had always understood that she possessed some level of beauty, and knew also that the vampirism was enhancing this even more, but still would never have believed she could look like this.

Behind her stood Rose, still in her simple jeans and blouse and yet radiating supernatural beauty as well.

Smiling, she touched Bella's neck, and Bella turned. A small, sweet kiss on the lips, and Rose peered into her eyes, beaming.

"Soon we'll be sisters! Or nearly enough. You and Edward will be together, and we can all hunt and live and see and do! Won't it be wonderful?" Bella thought it might, indeed.

"I don't care for all of this antique crap." Rose's directness, something Bella realized now was as innate to her as Edward's composure was to him, was sometimes surprising. Bella raised her eyebrows.

"No?" They were sitting on the back terrace, looking out at the woods.

The moon was huge tonight, reaching the bloated, red fullness she had seen promised not three nights ago.

It hung low over the sky. The night was still young. Bella's earlier pain had made the time seem much longer than it had actually been.

"No. It's pointless. Carlisle buys the stuff without any thought, at least that I can tell. Mostly he doesn't even do the buying. Edward does, though Edward detests a lot of it. That might be what Carlisle has him doing tonight. Or it might be that he's retrieving dinner for Carlisle. He doesn't hunt for himself anymore, you know, just relies on Edward. Doesn't even have to drink more than every once in a while. I think maybe the little blood he took from you, like you said? That might have woken up the thirst."

"How does Edward feel about bringing him victims?"

"Better than about buying him stupid furniture." Rose's eyes gleamed. She grinned.

"It doesn't bother him, then? Picking out a life to take like he was going to the grocery store?" Rose looked at Bella, shook her head, smiling.

"That's not how it is … not for Edward or even for me. We don't have to kill, anymore. We don't need that much blood. Carlisle kills because he likes to, that's all.

"But even if we still had to … you don't understand. You were asleep for the only real drink you've ever had. You don't know how it is yet. You think a couple of drops from a finger are good? Wait until you're a full vampire." Bella remembered the taste of Rose's blood, of Edward's, of her own. It had been sweet on her lips, hot and powerful. It had left her breathless.

"You have to kill at the start. You won't be able to stop yourself, but you get over it," Rose continued. "Mortals die all the time. That's what makes them so beautiful. They get all into their art and their music and their careers and everything, and then they get old and die.

"Or they die young. If we don't bring them death, something else will, some other time. We are predators among them. And most of them? In that last instant before death? Most of them love us." Bella shook her head, not in disagreement but confusion.

It all seemed deceptively easy. It all seemed so right, and yet here she was sitting with a young woman talking casually about the slaughter of human beings.

"You're only half. When he makes you full, Bella, these things won't concern you. Or at least, I doubt they will. Not past the first kill."

"You said we'd be sisters. Did Edward make you, then?" Rose laughed, not at Bella's ignorance, but at the idea itself, as if the very thought were absurd.

"No, my father is Carlisle. My blood is Carlisle's blood. I only meant sisters in that our bodies are of similar ages. And both of us will have been reborn into darkness, as the poets put it."

Darkness. Bella could feel darkness at the back of her mind, beginning to gnaw at her again.

The idea of a fix right now, after the nice warm bath, out on the patio with a friend, seemed dangerously appealing.

Rose cocked her head.

"You're thinking about drugs." Bella felt her face reddening, nodded.

"Yeah. Sorry."

"It's okay. I imagine it's hard not to. I wonder if it's like the thirst. If it's like when we're forced not to drink for a few days. It burns in us, Bella. It's all I can think about. Sometimes it's like that even on normal days. Sometimes I'll feed two … even three times a night."

Bella didn't know. Of the thirst she knew only a vague desire, not a desperate need. Of the heroin, she knew nothing else.

Time passed. Several times Bella was one the verge of asking Rose for more blood, but stopped herself.

She didn't want to seem that weak. She could handle it until Edward returned. Light shakes and a dry mouth.

No worse than getting the flu, really, for the moment. In the distance, in the trees, a howling.

Bella looked up, eyes widening. Rose's reaction was immediate. She stood and peered out into the forest.

"Oh, shit. I have to go, Bella." Bella felt fear flood through her, fear of being alone, of the pain returning. Bella turned to Rose with pleading eyes.

"Why? What is it?"

"I have to. And you have to go back inside." Apology implicit in her voice, but Rose offered no explanation.

Bella looked at her, mute. She wanted to ask for more blood, if Rose was going to leave her alone, but the vampire seemed agitated and nervous.

"I'll take you back up to your bedroom, if you want. Then I have to go." Bella nodded, biting her lower lip, trying to suppress the fear and depression that wanted to engulf her.

Lying in the dark. Hard to breathe, hard to think, conscious thought slipping in and out like the tide.

Sometimes there was only pain, sometimes she could hear herself sobbing. Chills, nausea, and the maddening craving for the drug. God, all she wanted was to get high.

Was it so wrong? Thoughts of Mike, Jessica, the drug, the needle. Bella wanted to leave this mansion, return to her pimp, beg for his apology and for her ration. But she couldn't walk.

She knew that soon she would try to crawl, crawl back to New York, back to Mike, on her hands and knees.

She had no choice. More howling from the outside, and then quiet. Just the wind, the rustling of leaves, the sound of grass shivering under its assault.

Bella's eyes were wide open in the dark, not seeing the room around her. Instead she saw the forest. She heard light, quiet breathing. Gasps from further away.

Was this her body? Dark brown hair at the sides of her vision, hanging in long, loose curls like hers. Yet her chest felt heavier, the breasts larger, the body lankier.

She moved across the ground in a manner completely unfamiliar to her. This was not Bella.

The pain cut through the vision. Bella gasped, moaned, lay back, and again the seeing overtook her.

No, not Bella. Not her eyes. Not her body. Someone else. Some other.

Ahead, a silhouette, something struggling its way through the forest. Something that Bella could barely see was moving in lumbering steps, gasping, weeping, praying in some nameless language to some nameless god.

The prayer of the victim. The prayer of the hunted. Bella's heart raced, adrenaline flooding her body, excitement and lust and terrible, terrible hunger.

The prey was at hand, the hunt over. Speed, now, overtaking the victim, warmth flooding through her body as dull excitement awakened between her thighs.

Was it always like this? Would she never grow used to this, never lose that throbbing heat?

She tasted the man's sweat, salty, as her teeth and tongue caressed the surface of his neck.

He lay there, caught by her powerful arms, unable to move, unable to breathe.

The attack was not a clean bite, not the civilized piercing Edward's teeth had made in her own vein, barely noticeable afterward.

Bella felt her head move forward, felt her jaws clench like powerful machines, felt bone and muscle and cartilage crush between her teeth.

A tearing sound, like wet cloth, resistance giving way as she jerked and twisted her head.

Bella screamed out loud at this sensation, in her bedroom in the mansion.

The blood sprayed, coating her face in warmth. Below her, the man was jerking, seizing, pain and pleasure overtaking him even as his death throes began.

Great draughts of blood, they seemed to never end, pumping and pumping from his ruined throat.

Bella closed her eyes, driving this vision away, descending into pain. The pain was better than this. The pain would help her forget, help her erase this memory of brutal, violent death.

Yet these things did not happen. Bella could not forget, and in the depths of pain she found she could admit to herself the truth, somehow more bearable amidst the cramps and chills ravaging her body.

Hadn't she wanted it? To rip, to tear, to feed? Had her body not peaked as those awful teeth began their assault, as it had with Edward? As it had with Carlisle? Had it not reacted to this horror with pulsing ecstasy, calling for more, calling for the blood?

Had she not loved it?

Sooooo?

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Chantinique