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Chapter 21

How he met her…

The girl made the cut below the nipple on her left breast and stood, beckoning.

Edward lounged on overstuffed cushions of velvet, warm from the first kill, ready for the second.

She was white cream against the red fabric. Pouting lips, full breasts, dark hair on her head, between her legs.

Edward reached out, took her hand, brought her to him. The girl swooned, falling against him, panting, as he drank from the wound she had inflicted upon herself.

Her death came with a tiny gasp, and the girl went limp in his arms. Edward shoved the body away, reclined, reflected. two of them, and still he was unsatisfied.

There could never be enough death. He could drown in a sea of human blood, and it would never be enough.

A walk, then, and perhaps another victim. In the ten years that had passed since his rebirth into darkness, Edward had learned little of his nature beyond that which was readily evident to him.

He would not take instruction from Carlisle, and the elder vampire in turn shunned his creation, leaving Edward to his own devices.

Edward knew he was strong. He knew he could read minds with a proficiency that seemed to enrage Carlisle.

He knew he could make women do terrible things to themselves, and in this last he sometimes took great pleasure.

There was no God, no devil, no heaven or hell. Lost in a sea of blackness, Edward let his base instincts run wild.

Women, always women. He would watch them, his powerful mind compelling them to perform acts of lust and passion upon themselves, upon each other.

He would watch, but never join them. For the women from whom he drank, Edward's touch meant only death.

Some went quietly, like the two tonight. Others laughed, wept, screamed, begged.

It didn't matter. How could it? How could anything matter at all when God had so clearly forsaken him?

Edward revelled in debauchery worse than that which had driven him from the church, and it just didn't matter.

Someone was watching him. He could sense it, and this presence frightened him.

Edward was unaccustomed to being noticed. His speed and uncanny ability to manipulate the minds of those around him made it an infrequent occurrence.

What concerned him most was that he could not throw off this feeling. It pursued him through streets, back alleys, parks, graveyards. He skipped the whorehouse from which he'd been planning to acquire another victim, moved onward, toward the townhouse.

Toward Carlisle. Toward safety. There was something humorous in that concept, that he might turn to Carlisle for sanctuary. The vampire elder had all but denounced him, yet blood bonded them.

Edward hated his master. Despised him. Loathed him. And yet this fear … The presence shifted, and he realized that the feeling of being watched was more than a mere tingle at the back of the neck.

It was spatial. It had depth. He felt the presence overtake him at a frightening speed.

There was a short moment of paralyzing terror, and then it moved onward, in front of him now, yet still focused on him in some way.

From the shadows there was laughter like silver bells on a sheet of glass. The woman stepped out from the doorway of a cathedral.

Black hair, pale white skin and oceanic green eyes. Edward felt himself lost and drowning in those eyes, and looked away, snarling.

"Do you fear everything you don't understand?" Her accent was French.

"I fear nothing." A lie, perhaps. His fright was replaced with the hot flush of humiliation. Edward was glad for this. Of the two, he preferred the latter.

"You fear me."

"You were trying to hypnotize me."

"I was doing nothing of the sort." Edward looked back, was pulled again into the depths of those eyes. He struggled to maintain focus, coherent thought, any semblance of composure.

She laughed again, but there was no trace of mockery in the sound. Edward's spine knotted and he shivered.

"Who are you?"

"Who I am would be a long tale indeed, my fallen priest. Your father knows me. Perhaps you could ask him."

"Your name, at least?"

"You can call me Kate. It is not the name I was born into, but the one I chose for myself later. After. It has a lovely sound to it, don't you think?"

"Kate. Madame. What do you want?" Edward had regained some composure. His thoughts were more clear, the sense of fear not gone, but faded. The girl, and Edward saw now that she was little more than such, laughed again.

"Ah, you are brave, child. But don't make assumptions based on my appearance. I've walked this earth for far longer than you can currently conceive." Edward looked again, trying to see past the facade.

The eyes told him she spoke the truth. They were ancient and ageless, like Carlisle's, yet without the malice that forever darkened his.

Kate smiled at him and took a step forward. Edward flinched, stumbled backward, immediately on the defensive. His fear seemed to leap forward, energizing his muscles. Kate paused, shaking her head.

"Child, if I wanted to kill you, you would be very dead by now. Do you not understand this?" Edward shook his head, a guarded expression on his face.

The woman before him was lithe, petite, nearly angelic in her beauty. A killer? And then she was gone, and he felt the lightest touch of lips against his ear. Her voice was a whisper, heard as much in his mind as by his body.

"That and more." Edward jerked to the side, flailing his arms for balance, losing it, falling. Then he was sitting. Sitting on a stone bench, vaguely aware of some sort of movement too fast even for his vampire senses to track.

"Dear God," his voice was thick with fear and confusion. The vampire, now sitting beside him, smiled again.

"You speak to Him who has forsaken you, Edward. Is this not the case? Or perhaps you have only forsaken Him?" Edward searched for something to hold on to in his confusion, and found his anger.

"I know not of Him. Not anymore. I know of fallen priests, and I know of their sins." Kate clapped her hands together at this, laughing, merry, unperturbed by his blasphemy.

Edward turned to her, teeth clenched, angry. She looked at him with calm eyes, and shook her head.

"I am not mocking you, my young priest. Ah, has Carlisle taught you nothing? No, of course not. Your goodness disgusts him."

"I've no goodness left in me, lady. You look upon a black hearted killer. A creature of evil." More laughter.

"I look upon nothing of the sort. I look only upon a man, and a vampire, who knows nothing of his own true nature. I look upon a man who was been led by others all his life, and knows not how to lead himself."

"I look," she said, "upon a fledgling in desperate need of answers." Edward said nothing, but turned away.

Answers? Perhaps, yes. Certainly Carlisle had provided him with little in the way of understanding.

He felt movement: Kate leaning in closer. This time he did not shy away. He was instead suddenly, acutely aware of the woman next to him.

She smelled of lilacs and blood, and he felt a wave of desire wash over him. When she laughed this time, it did not bother him so much.

"You must learn to guard your thoughts, my child. Such impure images from a man of the cloth …"

"I beg your pardon, Madame." He could think of no other response. Kate moved her lips to his neck, held them above the vein.

"Is that all you beg for?" Her breath set the tiny hairs below her lips standing on edge.

"Milady …" Edward felt out of breath. No mortal woman had ever had this effect on him as a vampire, not even the victims he made perform for him.

Before that, as a virgin for all of his twenty-three years, he had steadfastly disallowed any such thoughts. Now, they swamped him, overwhelmed him, swept him up.

Half-focused images, potent, carnal, flashed through his mind. Her open bodice beckoned the white breasts luminescent in the moonlight. Skin like porcelain. Hair like ebony. Lips like blood.

He sensed, or thought he sensed, some dull fire from between her legs. Edward moaned slightly. Her lips never touched his skin, yet they burned there like hot iron.

"Alive below the waist," she commented in a whisper. "How curious. Your father is possessed of no such blessing."

She touched him there, ever so gently, and Edward made some sound, some choked sob.

He began to turn toward her, desire overwhelming him. As suddenly as it had begun, it was over.

Kate sat up, and the feeling, which had been like a building explosion, drained suddenly away. Edward drew in a shuddery breath. Kate laughed.

"I like you, Edward Cullen. I shall visit you again."

And she was gone.