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Chapter 24

Hunger

There was no need to find a criminal this time. Bella was ravenous, and beyond caring.

"I'm fucking starving. Whatever's close. I'll hate myself in the morning, but right now I don't care if it's a virgin girl about to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Force of nature, right?" Edward had nodded, and headed for the city, the Ferrari roaring beneath them.

There was little said during the drive. Both were occupied with their own thoughts, reflecting on the recent events at the mansion. Was there any way to avoid the coming storm? Eventually Bella sighed, closing her eyes and leaning her head back against the seat. Edward took her hand momentarily, squeezed it.

"This is going to drive me crazy, Edward."

"I'd rather you not let it. We have a surplus in that area already." Bella let herself smile a little.

"I don't think Alice's actually that nuts. She's just … stripped raw. I'm also not sure she's as unaware of what's going on as you guys think. That bit with the blood was pretty impressive." Edward shrugged.

"It is possible. Tonight is the longest she's ever allowed me to be close to her."

Bella fed on an older woman returning from a late night at work. There was little ceremony, this time. She simply followed the woman into her building, attacked her in the stairwell, and she and Edward pulled the body up and into the woman's apartment, where they left it.

Edward fed from a neighbour, a woman in her mid-twenties whose cats were petrified of him, left her lying flushed and feverish in her bed, and they departed.

"Why did we come so far, if it was that easy?" Bella asked.

"You will need to be careful with your eating habits for some time, Bella. Most vampires do not stop killing out of some misguided sense of morality, but for personal protection. Sixty thousand people die every year in the city and the surrounding area. It makes for good cover. But even a small portion of vampires, killing a victim per night, would rapidly raise suspicion. Fortunately, like I said, those of our strain are the only vampires that need so much blood for so long. There are not many of us."

"Why not?"

"We breed differently. Unfortunately, I do not know all of the specifics. There is very much that Carlisle never bothered to teach me, and that Kate did not have time to. I believe she may actually have withheld a great deal from me, in order to protect me until I had grown stronger."

"Kate." Edward sighed, and nodded.

"Kate. Yes. I never did finish that story. There are nearly forty years I could talk about, but most of that is empty details. A lot of hunting. A lot of sex. Fond memories, but I wish we'd done more with the time."

"I think just about everyone does, Edward."

"Yes, I think so, too. Where did I leave off?"

"She left you that first night, and you went home."

"Ah. Home. Home to sleep. Home to wait. For night … for Kate."

Edward made his way back to the dwelling where he spent most of his time. Though he had started his life as a vampire living in tombs, this was simply meant to be a lesson from Carlisle.

After a week or two of sleeping on cold slabs, Carlisle had brought Edward to his home, a large estate on the outskirts of the city.

Edward thought perhaps the lesson was that Carlisle could provide better than what Edward could manage on his own.

Edward, already falling into the anger and hatred that would consume him for the next ten years, took from his sire only the knowledge that he did not need to live in the graveyard.

Within six months he had left Carlisle and acquired his own apartment in the city. Carlisle was apoplectic. Edward didn't care.

"Kill me then," he had told the elder vampire. "Do what I now wish you had done that first night. I am damned now, so what does it matter?" Carlisle had not killed him, had let him go.

"You will return, Edward. Wait and see. Fledgling vampires need their masters more than they realize."

Thus far, Carlisle had been wrong. Edward saw him only occasionally, when he needed vampire blood. Carlisle gave it, to Edward's surprise, although not without complaint.

He would insist that Edward was being foolish, putting himself in needless danger. Edward would simply listen in silence, waiting for the blood, and Carlisle would eventually grow tired of sermonizing.

Edward saw no reason for this to change. After the initial surprise and fear of this chance encounter with the vampire named Kate, he had been unsure whether to continue on his path toward Carlisle's home, or to turn back toward his own.

Eventually he realized the truth of her words; if she had wanted Edward dead, he would be dead by now. With that realization, he found himself no longer concerned for his safety.

He turned and moved back the way he had come, mulling over the events of the evening.

Kate's refusal to believe his claims of evil and darkness, the sudden awakening of his sexual appetite. Lost in a sea of thought, Edward wandered. Contemplated.

Kate was the polar opposite of the only other vampire he had known. Was it possible that there could be more to the afterlife than the pursuit of darkness? Was this why he resisted Carlisle's tutelage? Was it his horror at his own, lost soul that made him lash out so at humanity?

It seemed he could smell her on the wind, but her presence was gone from his mind. Kate. Her accent was French. Edward smiled a small smile, and looked up at the stars.

The next night saw no sign of her. Edward fed lightly, a single girl. No performance, no sexuality. He found the girl in a darkened alley, took her before she was even aware of his presence, moved on.

He wandered, waiting for Kate, but Kate did not come. Two days. Three. His frustration mounted.

Edward began to wonder if he had simply hallucinated the entire event. It seemed unreal to him now, this visit from a creature of such power and beauty.

Four days. Five. The anger began to rise again within him. The hate cried out to him. Let go. Give up.

On the sixth day he took two women, watched them bring each other to the heights of pleasure, cut their throats like sacrificial lambs, and hated himself for it.

Seven, eight, and the memory of laughter like bells in the night were fading rapidly. A chance encounter, if it had happened at all. He lost count, descending again into rage.

Nights of red haze, lashing out against God and his creations. Had she been so close to him? Had he felt the touch of salvation? She visited him again on a cold night in October, as he wandered through cobblestone alleys, searching for prey, seething.

Cats in the background, wailing at the night. The occasional shout, the noise of breaking glass. Drunks stumbled through the alleys around him, but they were men.

Edward did not feed on men unless desperate. He found their scent disagreeable. The presence overwhelmed Edward, his step faltered, and he came to a stop.

It was like before; the sense of being watched, so specific, as if he could pinpoint the source. Edward turned, looked up. Kate sat on a small stone bridge that arched over the alley. She was dressed in a black velvet gown. He could see the white silk of her underclothes.

"Madame." Edward's breath had vanished. His heart pounded, staccato in his chest.

"Hello, my good Mr Cullen. How are you this fine night?"

"The better for seeing you, milady." Edward had regained his composure. He did not want another display of helplessness.

"You're seeing a bit too much of me at the moment, if the blood in your cheeks is any indication," she laughed, and in one easy movement dropped to the pavement, standing in front of him. Her eyes caught the moonlight like bits of jade.

"You seek to fluster me, lady," he said.

"I seek nothing at all, Edward, except to be in your presence. You are not like most of the others. You burn with goodness. It … warms me." Edward felt anger.

How could this woman see in him anything of value? He sought to shock her.

"Lady, this night I watched as a woman writhed naked in a pool of her own blood, too caught up in sinful ecstasy even to notice." Kate raised an eyebrow, smiled, her expression amused.

She touched his arm, and Edward felt the warmth of the touch through his jacket. His anger, his fear, melted. He felt again a throb of desire for the creature standing before him.

"You could at least have invited me along." Edward felt his jaw drop, astonished at this suggestion. He tried to stop it from doing so, but could not. Kate laughed.

"Would you like to walk with me, Edward?" Edward was not at all sure he had a choice, but it wouldn't have mattered.

He took her arm, and they proceeded out of the alley, into the late evening crowds. Kate chattered at his side, seemingly happy to be out and on the arm of a young man.

"It's a lovely evening, don't you think? So many beautiful ladies. So many debonair gentlemen." She paused, as if waiting for acknowledgement.

"And yet, what are they to us, lady? They are cattle."

"That is your master speaking." Kate glanced up at him. "Or your father, perhaps. I am not yet sure that one such as yourself might ever have a master."

"Carlisle commands me."

"You defy him. You maintain your own dwellings. You do not join in his politics. His black magic. His evil."

"Milady, I do not understand how you differentiate his evil from my own."

"Your evil is a fabrication, brought about by too many years taking the word of priests as the only truth. You have been trained to see yourself as evil, even as a mortal. When you become a hunter of mortals, can that be anything but worse?

"Is the tiger evil, Edward? The shark that swims in the oceans? They take mortal life as a force of nature. They take mortal life as it suits them. Their souls are clean."

"My church … would have me believe those creatures have no soul, lady."

"Your church would also have you believe that a man and a priest tempted into making advances upon his student also has no soul, would it not? Or at least, no soul worthy of salvation." Edward grimaced.

That it would."

"You see the world, the church, Carlisle and Father Felix in black and white, Edward. There are so very many shades you do not see. You have been trained to look past them. Did Felix not do well in his life?"

Edward considered this. After some time, he nodded. The man had, indeed, performed more good deeds than Edward could possibly count.

"Is that good invalidated by his carnal desires?"

"Yes. No, I … Madam, I do not know."

"You may call me Kate, Edward."

"We've only just met …" Kate laughed again, held more tightly to his arm, looked at him with her green eyes.

"My young priest, I have been watching you for two years." Edward's mind looked back over the things he had done, or made mortals do for him, in the past few years. He tried to push these thoughts away. Kate's lips brushed his ear.

"Why fight? Accept. Understand. My dear, you're a very creative vampire! You've exposed many young ladies to the true pleasures of the flesh … something this horribly repressed society might never have allowed them. More amazing, you've done it without knowing those pleasures yourself. Is it so wrong that you've shown them these things?"

"I did it out of hate."

"Hate for them?"

"No, not for them."

"Then for whom?"

"For myself. For what I am, what I allowed myself to become."

"There is no reason to hate yourself, Edward. You must understand that." Edward shook his head, bewildered.

"Lady – Kate – everything you say flies in the face of what I have known my entire life."

"Are you listening to me?"

"Yes."

"And do you understand?"

"I am trying." Kate shrugged.

"Then all is well. Rome was not built in a day."

"That may be true. I … where are we going?"

They had moved away from the crowded streets, toward a part of the city that lay mostly in darkness. Kate guided him along the cobblestone pathways, unerring, sure of her destination.

"My home, naturally."

"Why?"

A small smile, nothing more.