Chapter 9

Lover's kisses

Bella was sitting up in her bed, pressing against the wall, knees to her chest, arms wrapped around them, shuddering.

It took several seconds for the sound of the door opening to register with her. She looked up.

Edward, standing before her, concern and love and sorrow on his face, watching her with his unearthly composure.

Bella put her head down on her arms and began to sob. He was holding her, powerful arms, gentle touch.

He lay next to her on the bed, and she wept into his chest. He whispered into her ear, calming, soothing, and his fingers touched her lips, and Bella tasted blood there. She licked it greedily.

"I am sorry, Bella. It was foolish of me to leave without giving you this. It is my fault. I'll not leave you again now. We will be together until this is done, and then forever."

The pain receded. Gone, not forever, but for the moment, and for the moment that was enough.

Bella twisted in Edward's arms, sobbing, crushed her body against his, kissed his neck, kissed his lips. Edward kissed her tears from her face.

"I am so sorry, Bella. I would never have left you if I'd know it would get that bad, that fast." She shook her head.

She didn't care. She didn't blame him. He was here, now, and the rest was unimportant.

"Has it been this way since I left?"

"No." A whisper. It was all she could manage.

Edward sat up, seemed to notice her clothes for the first time. Bella smiled sadly as he looked her over, shrugged her shoulders, looked at him in apology.

"It looked a lot better … before."

"You look radiant. How strong you must be, to look so, and in such pain." Bella lowered her eyes. Was this strength?

Edward ran his hand through her hair, seemed awed by its softness.

"Rose helped me." Edward nodded, as if expecting this.

"I thought she might show herself. She's incorrigibly curious. Good that it was Rose, and not Rosalie."

"There are two of them?" Edward sighed, shook his head.

"No."

"I don't understand."

"Someday soon, I'll tell you much more of Carlisle, and myself, and Rose … and why we are who we are. You are lucky, Bella." His smile, though, was bitter.

"Why?"

"We are unlike any other clan of vampires I have ever come across. We are as unique in our makeup as any mortal. Carlisle, myself, Rose … sweet Rose, cruel Rosalie; sometimes she is both in a single night. Carlisle was old when he made me. It gave me power beyond any of a normal fledgling. He was ancient when he chose to make Rose, yet rather than bestow power upon her as it had me, the infusion of his blood broke her mind."

Bella thought again of the howling in the woods, and Rose's immediate departure. She began to ask Edward of this, but he was looking away, lost in thought.

"Rose is my sister, and I have loved her as much as many mortal brother might. I fear for her. I fear for what may happen when I leave."

"Leave?"

"I cannot stay here much longer. Twenty years, maybe less. Carlisle and I …" He trailed off, eyes clouding again. She saw sorrow there, and anger. Finally he sighed, shrugged, looked away.

"You don't like each other, do you?" Bella's voice was soft.

"We despise each other." Edward turned to face her again.

"Why?"

"You felt his evil. You know it does not reside in me. He assumed the blood would convert me, change me as it had him. It did not. For four hundred years I have been his errand boy, slave to the whims of a depraved fiend whose lust for power and dark knowledge know no bounds. I have seen him murder dozens in a single night, solely to try, and fail, to read the future in their steaming entrails." Bella shuddered. Edward looked at her, nodded grimly.

"I am no knight in shining armour, Bella. I have killed, many times, without repentance, and I would have you do the same. You must understand this. But I am not evil in the manner that Carlisle is evil: active, conscious, focused. I am evil like a hurricane. A force of nature, nothing more."

"There's no evil in that."

"Isn't there? But it doesn't matter. I am the creature I have been for nearly half a millennium. Any moral dilemma that might once have existed has long since been washed from me. But I still hold the rest. I still hold love for human life, and I take it only when necessary. I loathe Carlisle for his inability to feel these things."

"Why haven't you left already?"

"It's the blood that bonds. It keeps me here. But the link grows weak as my powers increase. They are already well beyond what they should be for my age. This, too, is a source of frustration for Carlisle. Most Eresh fledglings are not ready to leave their masters until well past their fifth century." His eyes flashed suddenly, a look of disgust crossing his features.

"Yet it is his own fault!" Edward snarled. "He waited too long to make his children. He knew that age makes the blood unpredictable. He knew that if I was not driven mad by it, I would wield power unlike any ordinary fledgling."

"But he keeps you here anyway …"

"Out of spite, yes, and malice. Carlisle hates me, perhaps more than I hate him, but he would not be rid of me. I am his, do you understand? Or so he feels." Bella took his hand, kissed the fingertips.

"This is the world within the world, Bella." Edward's voice was gentle now. He looked again into her eyes. "This is a secret life unknown to those who walk during the daylight. Humans have their legends and rumours, movies, television, comic books … but they do not believe."

Bella was kissing his face now. Chin, cheek, lips. Edward kissed back absently, his mind still on their discussion. Bella moved her lips to his neck, felt the pulse of his blood buried beneath the flesh, and was overwhelmed with sudden desire.

She pressed her new, sharp teeth against the flesh, waited for his acknowledgement. Apprehension. Would he deny her this gift? Would her yearning go unfulfilled? She heard the smile in his voice.

Satisfaction. He understood now; she wanted what he offered.

"It is yours for the taking, Bella. It always has been." Bella, unfamiliar with the mechanics of her own body now, pressed too hard, tore instead of pierced. The blood flowed out around her lips, dripped down her chin.

Edward, his unearthly calm never leaving him, lifted his hand to her head, pressed her against him. Bella wrapped her arms about him, fastened herself securely to his neck. Drank. Swallowed.

Warmth unlike anything she had ever known. Dizziness, desire. The blood coursed over her tongue, down her throat, hot and wet and alive.

Bella moaned, her arms tightening, and here it seemed was everything she had ever wanted. Thoughts of heroin were cleared from her mind.

This was freedom. This was love. The full, rich liquid of life which Edward now gave her freely was beyond anything in the scope of her experience.

She dropped backwards, satiated in only moments. She lay on the bed, Edward next to her, gasping, reeling.

Weeping again? It seemed she had wept more in the past Bella days than ever before in her life. Joy, pain, fear, desire.

"I understand," Edward whispered into her ear. "Ah, Bella. There will be so much for us after. Soon, my love. Soon."

Soon, Bella thought. Soon and then forever. She held on to Edward, lost in the blood, lost in the ecstasy of it all. Small kisses now, lover's kisses, and the joy she felt was too real to be wrong, too powerful to be denied.

The moment it was safe for him to do so, Bella was prepared to beg for Edward to drain her, and fill her with his blood, and finish her transformation.

Immortality beckoned.

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Chantinique