A/N - Huge thanks to TwiliteAddict for being such a dedicated, patient beta. Gasaway Alley is my pre-reader and she always brings a super polished edge to the final edits of my pieces. I am extremely lucky to have such talented women in my corner!

Big red lippy kisses to Goldenmeadow for rec'ing Broken Doll as one of her picks for the read along planned this weekend by Indie TLC Cullen for the FanficAholics Anon - Where Obsession never sleeps blog. Her unfailing support for Broken Doll truly humbles me. Thank you!

Goldenmeadow is just about to complete her beautiful fic Youth Without Age and Life Without Death. It is truly a divine slice of Goldenmeadow's one of a kind, gorgeous storytelling. Run don't walk to read!

There is only one thing that can annihilate a vampire.

Fire.

Armed with nothing but hope burning in my hollowed dead heart, I charged through the flames of Hell's battlefield searching desperately for my Isabella. A stolen Volturi cloak, saturated with water for protection from the searing sting of flames, covered me from head to toe. I will never forget the snapping sizzle and press of heat beating brutal heavy wings against my body, whispering its doubt of ever finding my love alive amidst this infernal destruction. I promised myself I was coming out with her or not at all, choosing to perish rather than exist without her.

Finding her on the brink of death, I remember not even thinking, immediately falling upon her burnt and broken form, tearing into the blackened coal of her flesh to infuse her system with my venom. Bloodlust cast a red haze across my vision as my system reeled with the taste of her blood on my tongue -it was not just warm, but a hot blast of liquid heaven rushing down my throat. Communion. This is her body. Her blood.

Her burnt skin abraded my lips reminding me this was my love's life-force I was glutting myself upon. I detached myself before her heart stopped beating, shaking off the stupor from the thrall of her blood by looking upon her ravaged, unrecognizable form. I threw back my head and roared at the Heavens for allowing this precious life to fall, begged in the next bellow for her survival, and threatened with a curse should they fail. I could do nothing but rage and shake long after the roaring had quelled. Bereft with grief, surrounded by carnage and death, I was rocking her gently, back and forth in my arms when it all changed

In my peripheral vision, the world started to turn, accelerate, then spin around us in a blur as if Bella and I were the epicenter of a tornado. I held her lifeless form closer to me to protect her from being ripped from my arms. A sonic boom exploded in my ears, cracking across my ribs with an invisible impact, to echo within the chambers of my inert heart. A blinding flash of light popped like an old-fashioned flashbulb and I reflexively closed my eyes against the glare. When I reopened them, my arms were empty and I was running through a misty watercolor forest. Beside me was Bella. She was alive! Whole; pulsing with life as she flew swiftly through the woods with me.

Looking every inch the goddess of my heart, Bella was dressed in a snow white flowing himation. Gone were my own soot covered clothing, replaced by crisp white linen pants and shirt with nary a wrinkle. Both of us ran on bare feet, the forgiving ground giving us no cause to slow our speed. Bella's beautiful mahogany hair was unrestrained, with glossy curls bouncing against her back as she bounded ahead of me. I immediately thought we were in Heaven, but Bella seemed to think we were in some type of celestial weigh station. She called it the In Between. We ran across the edges of time and space, exploring our ever changing surroundings, but Creation's swift and tireless legs bore down on us bringing with it, the hellacious process of Bella's transformation.

Her change was unlike any I had ever witnessed. On the physical plane, her body went through excruciating biological agonies beneath a protective magical layer of ice, my own body wrapped around hers. Here, in the In Between, her soul was treated as vessel to be filled with more power than I could ever fathom. It came upon us like a vengeful storm.

An eery hush settled around us as the sky turned ominous, stealing the color and brightness from our surroundings. Sound returned in the form of a forceful screaming wind which tore me from Bella as the heavens opened above us. Thunder boomed. Lightning flashed and speared my Bella through the chest, infusing her with power.

Surge after surge of magical laden lightning struck her celestial form, bowing her towards the sky in painful torment. I was horrified yet amazed by her strength in withstanding it all with little resistance and no complaint. Isabella Marie Swan was the most courageous, indomitable being I have ever known, and I was hers...body and now soul.

When the last bolt of electricity released its terrifying grip on her, internal doubt began its slow erosion of her otherwise brave and peaceful spirit.

"What am I becoming?" her mind inquired.

Bella asked me this many times on the last day of her transformation. I truly had no idea as I had never heard of a being with Bella's mixture of supernatural blood becoming a vampire. I certainly understood her reservations about the power she was being given...mostly without a choice. I did my best to reassure her, but I struggled for answers when she asked about blood ; namely her need for it to exist. She worried over the cravings, whether or not she could control her innate need for human blood and was unable to fathom the brutality she would need to exhibit to hunt and take down an animal for nourishment. Since our minds were open to each other, there was no way to mince my words when explaining the hard truths about what it is to be a vampire. There also was no way for her to front that killing to eat did not bother her, and despite her face being deceptively devoid of emotion, I told her in great detail how difficult the blood-lust was to control during the first few years as a newborn.

"Yet another reason why Denali will be a good choice for you to spend your first few months in your new form, Isabella. The compound is vast and there are very few humans about."

"There's also plenty of game for me to ...hunt?"

Thinking of Bella on a hunt stirred up a rush of dark need which churned in a lustful boil low in my belly. Over the years, I had learned a few things about our unique nature while being in the minds of my family when they paired off to hunt. Once their kills were consumed and their hunger satisfied, the life coursing through them was akin to an erotic high. I would then be inundated with a watershed of explicit images of some very primal sex. This was one of the main reasons I preferred to hunt alone. I didn't need Jasper's ability to pick up on the blatant euphoria and release accomplished by this seemingly shocking behavior and in time I came to accept it simply as part of what we are. Sex and Death have always gone hand in hand – and soon enough I began to feel the loneliness and singularity of hunting without a mate. I sighed over the image of Bella, fierce and victorious after a feeding, instinctual need glazing over her eyes like a drug, beckoning my body to hers with unabridged carnal sensuality.

She caught the fantasy from my mental movie immediately; I didn't even have time to clear my thoughts. It was not an easy transition getting used to Bella and I being in each other's heads so intimately.

"If you run anything like you do here in the In Between, I think you will be able to overtake your food just fine. Love, you won't even think about it like that. It will be a completely different mindset. Instinct will simply take over and..."

A wry grin flashed across her lips, spearing me with its intense sensuality. This woman.

"Instinct, huh?"

I brushed the backs of my knuckles over her cheek, an embarrassed smile tickling the edges of my mouth. She kissed my fingers and leaned into me with a contented sigh; hugging me tightly before her mood nosedived again becoming somber. We knelt on the ground of our Monet-inspired meadow, with the clouds dispersing, and moving on. The lightning strikes had blessedly ceased for good, yet Bella still curled into herself, attempting to withhold her thoughts from me. I struggled with her to keep her guards down. We knew the time was nigh for her to awaken, and the worry of it pressed heavily; quieting us both.

Never in a million years would I have guessed Bella would be the one to show me so much more than I already knew about the supernatural world. She ripped apart my paradigms and showed me limitless possibilities by coming into my life. Bringing me with her to the borders of the afterlife, the In Between was the most frightening and wondrous experience of my existence. Keeping one foot in the celestial plane and the other in the physical was a comforting yet invigorating mental balancing act. My ability to read minds gave us that precious connection to our loved ones who stood vigil with me, waiting for Bella to rise.

Alice's visits to the room where our physical bodies lie in state were few and far between. She could now see visions of mine and Bella's future, but they came at her fast and hard, leaving her with excruciating head pain. There were times I would get intense flashes of what was playing in her mind as the Sight accosted her. Bella and I completely understood her need to keep her distance. Just before Bella was about to awaken however, Alice refused to be anywhere else but with us despite the pain.

The moment Alice entered the room, all three of us were assaulted with thousands of scenes of potential events, flashing through Alice's mind, to mine and then Bella's at the speed of light. The razor sharp acuity of the visions were so powerful, Bella and I could not help but be unwilling spectators to the visions no matter how hard I tried to pull away from Alice's mind.

I could feel Jasper concentrating all of his emotion-manipulating efforts on trying to keep Alice from being bitten by madness due to the onslaught and tenacity of the Sight. His numbing blanket of calm managed to slow the visions down to an almost bearable level. One vision in particular kept replaying over and over, as if it's outcome could not be foiled no matter what decision we made.

I was lying on a bed, my face ashen and hollow. My body ravaged with sickness. Dying. At first, I thought it was a flashback to when I had the Spanish flu, but the bed and blankets were all wrong, they were more modern looking. Definitely not from 1918. This detail did not escape Alice and Bella's notice and that was when everything fell apart. Bella's eyes turned black. Alice's…bled venom. Her nose, and ears as well, seeped the shiny golden fluid. Jasper's face contorted in horror as he wiped it from Alice's face.

"Alice, honey, we have to leave now. Please baby girl, please." Alice wouldn't budge, sobbing and pushing him from her. Jasper's habitual calm shattered, the panic rising in his voice:

"Em, I need your help, we have to get her out of here." As Emmett ran to Jasper's aid, Rose rushed out of the room saying she was going to find Jake and Leah to help with dampening the visions. Alice fought them like a wild animal, desperate to see more to give a clue as to how and why the vision of me dying comes to be.

"No! We need to see! We need to see more!"

Bella screamed along with Alice their voices in stereo reaching me from both planes and colliding in a deafening roar. Alice passed out cold, slumping over my brothers arms as they picked her up and carried her from the room, a concerned Carlisle and Esme quickly following.

Gone as quickly as they came, the absence of the visions left a fathomless silence. Bella's eyes closed and then opened again, the pupils back to their deep brown. Looking up to the sky, she vowed under her breath she would have answers about our future, then turned on her heel and ran from me. I didn't have time to consider the vision of me dying, my only thought was going after Bella as I knew her - she was considering something drastic.

I chased her across the In Between through an empty field of knee-high yellow grass. Finally catching up with her, I grabbed her shoulder and spun her to face me. Her tenacious glare was heated, determination set her features like stone, fear completely absent. Her plan flowed through my mind like water: she was going to summon a god.

"Bella, you can't do this."

"I can, and I will. I want answers, now. An existence without you isn't a option, and I have to find a way for that not to happen. I didn't risk everything only to lose you again."

"How do you know for sure it's an image from the future?"

A frown creased her brow, she regarded me as if I had two heads.

"Because Alice sees the future?"

"Yes, but you can see the past. Perhaps your abilities are intermingling and amping up Alice's. We have no idea how your power affects those around you yet. Maybe what you saw was a combination of scenes from the present AND the past. Perhaps that scene was when I was dying from Spanish flu...before Carlisle changed me. Besides, Bella, I'm immortal. I can't get sick. My body doesn't change."

Doubt swirled in the dark cauldron of her eyes. Her eyelashes fluttered closed, eyelids crinkling in distress as her beautiful mouth tightened into a hard line. She shook her head lightly in negation before she reopened them, dead calm settling into her face. I knew this look. This was the look that told me there was no room for negotiation.

"Edward…the bed, the blankets. You know it's not a vision from the past."

She was right, there was no way I could refute the modern look to the blankets and bed I was in, yet I had been desperate enough to try. Her eyes filled with sadness when she noticed I finally acknowledged the truth of the vision. I sighed, reaching out to take her hand in mine.

"Are you sure this is the only way?"

"I won't lose you again, Edward. I will pull down heaven itself to find a way to keep you from ever being taken from me. I need to know for sure what our future holds and I will have answers. "

"Answers from who? How do you know who to...summon?" I asked warily.

"I don't know, Edward, but someone up there - a higher power, or an overseer – someone is listening, making sure things go as they should. Look at the grand scope of your path being intertwined with mine, the imprinting, the bond we have, the obvious importance of transforming me into who I am destined to be. Besides, what better place to summon a god than on a celestial plane?"

I was completely flummoxed. There was a time I thought I had been forsaken by the higher powers – I was left so long to languish in loneliness and torturous guilt over my nature. When Bella came into my life, she restored my faith in my own worth. I began to believe again I was worth of a heavenly reward, for she was just that. It could have only been through the grace of the gods that she came to love me, and we had walked through literal and figurative fires of hell to remain with each other. She made me believe anything was possible, yet what she was planning seemed so bold and beyond my experience level. Conversing with gods? I couldn't argue with her logic – the location was prime for summoning a higher power.

"Then let's see who is listening." A cold pit of dread still sat stubbornly in the bottom of my stomach, despite my complete trust in Bella's abilities. Her smile warmed me, chasing away the weighted worry.

Bella took a deep, measured breath and closed her eyes as her features slackened. Holding her arms aloft, she made a sweeping motion with her hands. Wind stole across the empty field where we stood - ribbons of invisible movement rippling across the tall grass to pull and tug at the billowing material of Bella's dress. A pulsing orange light was building beneath her skin, becoming brighter as her face tightened in concentration. She began to rise, levitating into the air. Her eyes snapped open as I gaped in awe at the sight of them blazing with gold fire. In the middle of her forehead, an ankh symbol appeared, outlined in bright white light. She looked like an avenging angel. I could have sworn I saw a ghostly outline of fiery wings spring from her back, but it was her voice that stunned me. It was beyond powerful, causing me to flinch even though I knew this was my Bella and no harm would come to me by her hand. The air thickened with magic as she spoke. Though I worried about her brashness of using her power so forcefully, I had also watched her suffer as she absorbed each supernal strike of lightning into herself. As far as I was concerned she could wield it as she wished as she had paid for her power with a pound of flesh.

"Hear me now, Guardians of this world and the next. I summon the One who has the answers to my questions."

Stillness gripped the In Between. I did not move a muscle, my eyes riveted to Bella and her frightening resolve to be answered.

"I am Isabella Marie Swan. Descendant of Striga Aesa and Adrastea. I am the Three that become One. I implore the heavens to listen as I seek counsel."

Anger flickered across her face and though I knew it was a futile gesture, a plea for her to stop escaped my lips, falling on deaf ears.

"Isabella..."

The orange glow of magic that had gathered under her skin darkened to red hues. Fiery wings, thought seen in but a ghostly glimpse, strengthened and solidified, beating a cooling breeze across my face. My dread went from a cold weight to a freezing depth of fear for the repercussions of this bold display of power in summoning a god. I knew it would be not long before we found out what those repercussions would be as thunder rolled in response to Bella's call.

Lightning flashed so brilliantly it blinded me momentarily, and when I could see again, I felt as if a part of my soul had been ripped away.

My connection to Bella was severed, the loss bringing me to my knees in agony.

She was gone.

Bella had vanished into thin air.

I promise to not leave you all hanging for long. Where do you think she went? Hit that review button and hazard a guess!