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Chapter 34

His death

They made it perhaps two hundred yards through the damp woods before Bella was stopped by a low growling. She skidded in the mud, nearly falling, and came to a halt.

Eyes glittered from the darkness before her.

"Whatthefuckisthat?" Tan asked in a breathless rush.

"That's Alice. She's the other vampire. She knows me … but I think she knows what happened to her sister, too." Alice moved closer, into a patch of moonlight, and Bella saw that her face was drawn and pinched in rage.

She snarled, and charged them, howling. Bella did the only thing she could think of. She held out her hands, still tacky with Rose's blood, and implored Alice to stop.

Alice seemed somewhat taken aback by this. She slid in the mud, came to a stop and rolled back on her haunches, considering Bella.

"Alice, its Bella. I know you remember me. I know you're a lot smarter than you seem. I know you can smell Rose's blood. I know that you know she's dead. Can you understand that I didn't want it, Alice? That I'm sorry? I need you to understand."

Alice took a few steps closer, and made that questioning sound Bella had heard when they had first met: like a dog yawning. Bella held her hand out. Alice sniffed it, growled again, looking up at Bella with accusing eyes. Bella knelt, and matched Alice's gaze.

"I didn't want to kill her, Alice. I didn't. Now I have to run. You can stop me … kill me here if you want. That might not be such a bad thing. Or you can come with me. I don't know how far we'll get, but it's me or Carlisle now. You have to choose."

Alice seemed to be struggling, perhaps attempting to process the words, and perhaps only making her own decisions based on what she sensed. Bella couldn't tell.

Finally, Alice moved out of Bella's way.

"Thank you, Alice. We have to go now. You can … God, I'm so sorry. Tan, come on!" Bella took Tan's hand again, and they began running once more down the path.

After a moment, Alice caught up to them, overtook them, turned and met Bella's eyes, and then shot away on a diagonal, down a different path. Bella relied on blind instinct, as she had so many times before, and followed Alice's route.

Edward stood facing his father, trying hard to keep the rage from flooding him completely and drowning his thoughts. Carlisle's eyes glittered at him, mocking, as he spoke.

"So, After almost four hundred years, things finally get interesting." Edward's voice was low. Strained.

"You murdered her."

"I did. I did indeed. She took what was mine."

"I was never yours, Carlisle."

"No, not in your mind, but it matters not. Kate learned her lesson, and I gained my fledgling back. As is always the case, Edward, I won. And now we stand here, father and son. Soon you will attack me, and not just because I took one bride from you, but because now I threaten a second."

"You cannot have her, Carlisle."

"I don't want her. I never did. I thought she was a terrible choice for you, my son. Drugs? Prostitution? She is unclean, Edward. However did you find her?"

"I saw her standing on a corner. I saw her working, Carlisle, waiting to pick up some strange man and have sex with him, and the strength I sensed in her caught my attention. So much strength, from one in so low a place. Would you even have noticed?"

"Ah. Strength. Much like Kate, is she not? Young Bella does not like to be owned by anyone. As I said: a terrible choice for a fledgling."

"I do not look for slaves, Carlisle. I look for equals."

"I grow tired of this nonsense, Edward. It will lead nowhere. Your child, and the half-vampire, and now yet another of my daughters, are all making their escape as we speak."

"Good."

"We shall see how 'good' it is when she feels you die, Edward."

"That is how it is to be then? My life for theirs?"

"That is the bargain, Edward. You know me, and you know that I honour my bargains … though I certainly stack the odds in my favour before making them. If she flees tonight and does not return, she will not suffer at my hands. This … this will be worth the price my daughter paid."

"I will not make it easy on you, Carlisle."

"My son, you never have." They were quiet for a moment, father and son, bitter enemies.

Edward knew he faced death, but his love for Bella, his rage over Kate, left him numb. There was no fear.

Carlisle, sensing this, broke into a malicious grin. A single thought came to Edward in that moment. Whether from his mind, or Carlisle's, he could not say. Get it over with.

Edward charged.

Carlisle, alive long before the birth of Christ, had met many challenges in his day. Some were human, some vampires, all had sought only to bring about his destruction.

None had achieved that goal, and few had even come close. Now his son charged across the wet grass, roaring, eyes dark with hatred. Carlisle's amazing mind processed each instant like a still picture floating gently in time's pool.

He had ages to react. Eons. Edward, powerful as he was, held no threat. Carlisle stood and waited for his son. He waited to free himself from the chains of his progeny.

Rose, dead. Edward, dead. Alice would likely turn on Bella as soon as Edward's death stole the whore's vampirism away. Perhaps then Alice would become a rogue monster, at least until she was hunted down and destroyed by other vampires, an aberration too dangerous to let live.

Carlisle no longer cared. He stood at the dawn of a new millennium, and at the edge of the next phase of his life, a phase where he doled out the gifts of his vampirism slowly, to supplicants who would appreciate the power he delivered to them.

Carlisle had time to smile as Edward charged. Ah, it was going to be glorious.

Hitting Carlisle was like hitting a wall of solid concrete. Edward collided with his father, fingers hooked into claws, seeking to rend and tear.

The force of the initial blow alone would have shattered mortal bones. Carlisle took only a small step backward. Hands like manacles around Edward's wrists, forcing his claws away from Carlisle's face.

Edward snarled, lunged forward anyway, oblivious to the pain as his shoulders dislocated, snapping his teeth at Carlisle's neck. He tried to bite, to drink.

Perhaps if he could cut Carlisle, he might weaken his father. Carlisle twisted, and pulled Edward around by the arms. Edward felt himself flying through the air, heaved to the ground.

Carlisle landed atop him. The creature was cackling, a horrific, mad sound, happy at last for action, after so many years of dark study.

Edward screamed as he felt teeth tear through the flesh of his neck, opening his jugular vein in a warm gush.

He struggled against the weight on top of him, to no avail, as the draining sensation began. Carlisle was drinking. Laughing. Bathing in Edward's blood.

The world began to grey, and Edward felt his strength flagging. No chance, now. He could not move Carlisle.

The pulse of his heart seemed to grow distant, like a receding tide. He saw faces. Kate. Bree. Rose. Alice. Bella. He fixated on this last, on the face of this woman that he loved.

He wanted to focus. He wanted to see her eyes one last time. He wanted to tell her that he was sorry for everything, and that he would meet her in some other place, at the end of the mortal life his demise was buying her.

He would wait there for her. If only he could focus. If only he could see her eyes.

Edward was still trying to make this happen when he died.