Chapter 38: Transformation
Edward sprang into action, lifting Elle's limp body, brushing her hair out of the way, tilting her head so her neck was exposed…then he paused as one last wave of doubt lapped at him, trying to erode his determination. What if he couldn't stop once her blood touched his tongue? She didn't smell like food, and she probably wouldn't taste any better than she smelled, but this would be the first time he tasted human blood since his period of experimentation with the traditional vampire diet.
Then Elle's heartbeat faltered, and he realized that the time for hesitation and second-guessing himself was past. She was slipping away; if he waited any longer she could be gone for good, and he wanted her to survive more than anything. Even more than he wanted blood. He put his mouth to her neck, right over her jugular vein…and bit down. His sharp teeth tore through her skin like it was paper and pierced the thick vein deeply, injecting her with his venom.
Her blood flooded his mouth, but feeding had never been further from his mind; it was shockingly easy to remove his teeth from Elle's neck once he'd completed his task and turn his attention to the next one: ensuring that enough blood remained inside her body to complete the transformation. He laid her on the floor again, pushed the edges of her wound together, and licked it. His venom sealed the gash, preventing further blood loss, and soaked into her tissues, which would accelerate her change.
Edward held off on biting her again; while he wanted her to change quickly so she wouldn't have to endure the burning pain any longer than necessary, he also realized he needed time to get her away - far away - before the process was finished. A newborn vampire could wreak a great deal of havoc in a densely populated area like New York City, even if they'd been the most normal, mild-mannered person on the planet in their previous life. If Elle, with her powers and emotional instability, was set loose on the city as a newborn, there might not be a single survivor left in any of the five boroughs.
###
Noah was still parked across the street, watching via the bugs Elle had planted during her first visit to Gabriel Gray's apartment as its occupant was carried out by paramedics. Trevor had escaped with his powers and his life - in short, the mission had gone completely sideways thanks to Elle's nosy vampire, who had absconded with her after screwing everything up. Noah knew he'd have to go looking for her soon - Bob would be furious if Noah lost his daughter - yet he wasn't sure where to start. Where would Edward take her? Wherever the vampire had taken up residence was the obvious answer, but maybe it was too obvious.
Everything depended, Noah decided, on Edward's motive for running off with Elle. If he had kidnapped her, then she was likely to be very well hidden. If, however, he was only being his usual overprotective self and removing her from a dangerous situation, he would probably bring her back sooner or later. Noah hoped it would be sooner, before the rest of the Company heard about this whole debacle.
His musings were interrupted by someone noisily breaking into the van - literally breaking in - and a nanosecond later Edward joined him in front of the monitors.
"Nice jacket," he said sardonically.
Edward pushed back his hood and shed the jacket with an impatient little growl. "I need to borrow your van."
"Tell me where Elle is and I might consider lending it to you."
"She's right there."
Noah looked where Edward pointed and saw Elle's unconscious body slumped against the van's rear door - at least he hoped she was only unconscious. There was an alarmingly large amount of blood staining the front of her blouse. "What happened to her?"
"The unstable killer you sent her to provoke into murdering another innocent man attacked her," Edward replied with barely controlled fury. "She received a wound that would have been fatal, so I took the necessary measures to save her life."
"What did you do?" Noah asked apprehensively.
"I bit her. As we speak, she's in the process of becoming a vampire, which is why I need the van - it's imperative that I get her out of the city before her transformation is complete."
"Why?"
"There isn't time to explain; all you need to know is that if I don't take her away, there is a very good chance that countless people will die. Now, are you going to let me do what I need to do, or would you like to waste more time with pointless questions?"
"I do have one more question, actually. What am I going to say when people ask why she didn't come back from this mission?"
"I really could not care less what you tell your superiors. If her father bothers to ask about her, tell him she'll be well taken care of."
"Okay." Noah took one last look at Elle as he got out of the van; he didn't think he'd be seeing her again, which was probably for the best. He hoped she would fare better in her new life as a vampire than she had as a human.
###
As soon as they were out of New York City, Edward pulled over and checked on Elle. Her heartbeat was stronger now, though she showed no sign of regaining consciousness. Just to be safe, he raided the bag-and-tag supplies Noah had left in the van and dosed her with the most potent sedative available. Then he took out his phone and called home. Alice would have seen him biting Elle and told the others, so he thought he should assure them that he had the situation in hand and give them a chance to chastise him if they wished to. It also wouldn't hurt to ask Alice if Elle's transformation would go smoothly and see if Carlisle had any advice on handling newborns. Edward had been there when Esme, Rosalie, and Emmett were changed, but he'd never had to deal with a new vampire on his own.
Alice answered the phone almost before it had time to ring, but it was Rosalie who spoke first. "You bit Elle? What were you thinking!" she shrieked.
"To tell you the truth, I wasn't thinking, not really. She was dying, and I've known for some time that I could never let that happen unless it was what she wanted. It wasn't."
"Did she want you to bite her?"
Edward hesitated before replying. Elle had agreed, but it wouldn't hold up under the legal requirements for informed consent. "She didn't want to die - she wanted to stay with me." He could say that much with complete honesty. "She said she loved me."
That ended Rosalie's objections. As much as she disapproved of his decision to inflict their condition on someone else… Her gaze drifted to Emmett. He was a complete stranger to her when she saved him from a bear and asked Carlisle to change him. How much more impossible would it have been for her to walk away and let nature take its course if her feelings for him had been what they were now? She could never have done it; of course Edward couldn't let the love of his life go when he found himself in the same situation.
Seeing that Rosalie had nothing further to say, Alice took the phone back from her. "You'll want to wrap Elle in some sort of insulation in case the pain gets so bad that she loses control - I saw her blowing up the van if that happens. There are body bags under the floor mat in back that should do; they're made of heavy-duty plastic with a rubber component."
Edward didn't much like the idea of putting Elle in a body bag, but if she was going to have an electrical meltdown, he needed to contain it. He zipped her into the bag, leaving a small opening near her face so she wouldn't suffocate.
"Can they make it home like that?" Emmett asked Alice.
"He will be able to keep her under control until the change is finished," she replied, "…but he isn't bringing her home."
"What? Edward, where the hell are you going?"
"Somewhere where she won't pose a threat to anyone. Can you imagine if she got away from us and went hunting in Forks?"
"We could see that that doesn't happen," Esme protested. "If we all stayed with her when she hunts…"
"No, Esme," Carlisle said.
"Carlisle is right," Jasper agreed. "She'll be stronger than all of us, and her powers were formidable even when she was human. If the change augments her gift, we may not be able to control her."
"We also have the Quileutes to consider," Edward added. "I broke the treaty when I bit Elle. That was my choice; she is my responsibility. I won't put the rest of you in danger, from the wolves or from her."
"So where will you go?" Emmett asked again.
Alice answered for him. "He doesn't know yet."
Quebec, Canada - 3 days later
Edward crouched beside the motionless form of his mate, listening to her heart beating and waiting impatiently for it to stop. He'd found a suitably isolated place in the forests of Quebec with plenty of wildlife for her to feed on, if only she would wake up. She'd stayed unconscious throughout her change even though every trace of her wound had long since vanished. Carlisle said he had heard of rare cases where this happened if the subject lost consciousness in the early stages of their transformation, and it was fortunate for Elle that she had - there was a possibility that she wasn't aware of the pain. Still, her inactivity worried Edward. Alice had done her best to quell his anxiety with repeated assurances that Elle would wake up when her heart stopped, and Carlisle hypothesized that perhaps she had sustained damage to her organs that was taking longer to heal.
Carlisle was right, except that the internal damage had nothing to do with Gabriel Gray. In addition to his near-fatal cut, Edward's venom was also repairing the scars left on her brain by Bob's tests and the neural pathways the Haitian had severed to make her forget. As her brain healed, her erased memories came back, which was why Elle hadn't awakened - she was trapped inside her own head, reliving the most nightmarish parts of her past.
Right now she was revisiting the very first time they'd messed with her head, when she spent her ninth birthday in a glass room with an IV of lithium in her arm…only it wasn't her birthday, Angela Petrelli went to get a cake to stop her crying and birthday cake was all the bakery had, so they wiped her memory and made her think it was her birthday… Daddy had even lied about that. Less than a day later, he took her to the lab. Wiping her mind worked so well the first time that he couldn't wait to try it again, but she remembered now, she remembered the confusion and fear she'd felt as they strapped her down…
"No!" She lunged forward, ripping through the restraints and blasting her way out of the lab. Then she bolted. Fueled by fear, she ran like she'd never run before until she realized the lab was just a memory; she wasn't that powerless little girl anymore. But she didn't stop. She should be getting tired or winded, but she felt like she could run forever. Where'd all this energy come from?
She came to a sudden, perfect stop. Even at her athletic best, her reflexes had never been that good; her momentum should have sent her sprawling on the ground. Her senses were sharper too - she could pick out individual veins in leaves over fifty feet away and heard rushing water from an even greater distance.
Water. At the thought of the cool, refreshing liquid, she suddenly became aware of an almost painful dryness in her throat, alerting her that she was thirsty. More than thirsty, she was parched. Following the sound of the water to its source, she came to a wide river, dropped to her knees on its bank, and stuck her head in, so desperate to quench her burning thirst that she didn't even care about getting her jeans dirty, or what might be in the water she was gulping. It didn't help, though, and she began to panic. What's going on here? What's wrong with me?
She tried to scoop more water into her hands - maybe she just hadn't drunk enough - and caught sight of the sunlight glinting off her skin. What the…? She stretched out her arms, then twisted around in an awkward little dance, examining herself from every possible angle. There was no mistaking it; she sparkled in the light. Elle had seen this effect only once before, when Edward had shown her how his skin - vampire skin - reacted to natural light during their first date.
That was when she noticed that she couldn't hear or feel her heartbeat. Her breathing sped up as she became agitated, but there was no frantic thudding against her ribs, no pounding of blood in her ears. Feeling a little desperate, she pressed her palm to her chest...and felt nothing. Her heart was dead silent.
Glittery skin, no pulse, heightened senses… Holy crap, I must be a vampire. The only one who could have done this to her was Edward, and she thought she vaguely - very vaguely - recalled him intimating that he could heal her by changing her and asking her permission, which she must have given. Of course she had, since her last wish had been to stay alive for him, and as shocking as it was to wake up and discover that she was actually a vampire, she was grateful. He had saved her life.
He had also damaged her. Elle was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he hadn't known changing her would cause her suppressed memories to resurface, but the fact was that now she had to live with them. Knowingly or not, Edward had stripped her of any illusion she might have had that her father cared about her; he had used her, willfully harmed her, then damaged her mind further by brainwashing her. No wonder she had been unstable.
She supposed it was better to know the truth, yet she'd been happier not knowing; in her case ignorance really was bliss, and Edward had taken that from her.
That bastard! she fumed, not entirely sure who she was referring to. How could he do that to me?
So, did anyone guess that becoming a vampire would cause Elle to remember being experimented on? And now that her mental damage is gone, I guess I'll have to make her less psycho. Writing sane!Elle may just be my biggest challenge yet.
Next chapter: Edward catches up with Elle (not that he was ever far behind, he was just giving her space) and they sort out the issues relating to her restored memories. Then the story will be over, so except for the epilogue, the next chapter will be the last.