A/N – In the spirit of Halloween, I am raising things once thought dead...muuaaaha ha ha...IT'S ALIVE!
Thanks to some desperate necromancy, and the super speedy, ever ready editing talents of Twiliteaddict and Gasaway Alley, I have a chapter for you in EPOV and a promise that finishing this story is my National Novel Writing Month goal. I am finishing From the Ashes so I can start 2012 with a clean slate to devote to a new and exciting writing project.
Happy Halloween everyone. Thanks for reading!
I have spent most of my existence tempering the base, carnal designs of the beast I chained and locked up inside myself. The brief reprieve I gave it when I left Carlisle and Esme to glut myself on blood and amorality left an indelible stain on my soul, one I sought to scrub and scour away in the reclaiming of my "civility". Converting back to animal blood had not been easy, but I managed to conquer the constant crave for decades. Then came my Bella. Acclimating myself to the powerful siren scent of my singer, was a sweet, torturous, misery, I gladly endured to be in her presence.
Yet, those desperate desires paled in comparison to the one I had for Bella on our way to our room in the Eagle's Nest. The teasing glances we shared, the touches offered and taken along the way, stoked the building fire inside of me. I could not stifle the insistent urge to claim her, take her beneath me, and know without a doubt she was here, whole. Wholly mine.
I needed to connect with my mate on a physical, emotional, cellular... hell, possibly sub-atomic level if you take into consideration the sheer quantum physics of travelling between the planes of life and afterlife. Now that we both made it back, I could accept nothing less than my body becoming one with hers.
Resembling a goddess upon a woodland altar, her burnished mahogany hair fanned around her head before winding around her body like a living, shining thing. Such was the irony of our change – the moonlight and ashes of our complexion and the silence of our once beating hearts seemed to be the only evidence that life was extinguished from our bodies. Being labelled as dead things was unfair when we were, in reality, immortal and full of godly vitality. Seeing Bella in all of her magnificence, I could not bring myself to think of her as dead or anything less than what she had been before. I had been a fool to think otherwise. A fool for believing she would become a monster. There was nothing monstrous about her! I realized with great humility my mistake of projecting my own damaged self-worth upon her, how wrong it was to use it as an excuse to push her away. She never saw me as the beast I believed myself to be, and I never understood why until now. It took her death and resurrection for me to realize becoming a vampire may stop a heart, but it never changes one. No matter what form she took, she was still my soulmate. I stood before her, shaking and positively crazed with unchecked lust and the need to possess, she met my predatory stare head-on.
Her lack of fear and inhibition undid me.
Released me.
Bella's golden eyes burned with an intensity that left no doubt she needed me as much as I needed her. The moonlight caressed her skin, coaxing the surface to shine like mother of pearl, making my knees tremble. Soft moans filled my ears as she writhed beneath me, unleashing the most wild parts of me, which rutted, sniffed, and pawed for more- demanding it and giving it in return- more skin, more heat, more orgasms than either of us could count.
I swear I grew horns, and like a lustful satyr, I devoured her body as the hours stretched and dwindled. We loved savagely, then slowly. Savouring every slip of skin on skin, our most intimate sounds echoed off the walls in an unending loop. Sighing, crying, dying in the throes of release, constant as waves upon the ocean we drowned in our passion for each other. The room was awash with a rose light as Bella's blue and silver energy wove throughout the room, winking like stars and lightning strikes across every surface each time I brought her to release. I had the pleasure of seeing the splendour of the northern lights many times over the years visiting Alaska, and I could honestly say even mother nature's most infamous light show could not compete with ours. Magic and sex perfumed the air, a heady exotic incense which purged our inhibitions, igniting our sexual fury into a fire that burned steadily throughout the night.
Morning light crept in around us, reminding us gently the world still spun, and in the break of dawn, Bella finally told me about her visit with the mysterious god. I considered carefully everything she had told me, and she allowed me my silent pondering, waiting patiently as I sorted through it all.
I kept coming back to the boat. There had to be something we had overlooked to indicate who he was.
"Tell me again, Bella darling, what the boat was like?"
"Well, it was more a yacht, very modern – yet the landscape around us seemed timeless. The houses were modest earthen structures, like something you would see in a dry, desert climate. The river was quite large." Her brows furrowed as she dug deeper, trying to recall more.
A look of triumph flashed across her face and she blurted, "There was a name on one of the life preservers – Mandjet!"
"Man jet? Why would he call a fancy yacht a "man jet"?" I scoffed.
"No," Bella laughed, "Man-d-jet, with a "d". Hmmm, maybe the d isn't silent...," she pondered.
"And you say this god looked exotic? Perhaps East Indian?"
Bella shook her head back and forth.
"No, he was more, middle eastern... maybe Egyptian?" she offered hopefully.
The pieces snapped into place, the surroundings, the mighty river, a "retired" Egyptian deity on a boat named Mandjet. Recalling with perfect clarity my decades worth of studies on ancient pantheons, I knew I was right.
"Of course! Egyptian! I don't know why I couldn't see the connections before..."
"Well? Who was it?"
"Bella, I believe you were sailing the ancient Nile with the sun god, Ra."
Bella's eyes held shining hope I was in fact right, but her lips held the pucker of doubt, which I would have kissed away had our conversation not taken such an exciting turn.
"How can you be sure? Maybe it's someone else? Like Osiris? Or Anubis? There are quite a few male Egyptian deities to choose from. With so little to go on, we can't afford any mistakes."
"We actually have more to go on than I thought, once you offered up the yacht's name. It's definitely Ra if the boat was called Mandjet. If I remember my legends correctly, Mandjet was the name of the vessel he rode across the River Nile to bring the Sun across the sky. Legend goes, his people began doubting his power, so he unleashed the Eye of Ra upon them...but as he already told you, that didn't go so well."
"Right. The beast became consumed with bloodlust and almost destroyed all of his people."
"Ra asked for the council of Thoth, the god of knowledge, how to capture his chaotic creation – and Thoth convinced him to dump every barrel of beer he could find into the river Nile and dye it with a reddish ochre to the colour of blood, which would lure the abomination into glutting itself into a drunken sleep."
Bella's eyes narrowed. "And that worked?"
"Yes, the all-powerful, indestructible Eye of Ra got knackered on malt liquor and passed out cold, allowing Ra to get close enough to undo what he had done."
"Very clever. I like this Thoth – he works smarter, not harder. I guess it helps to know your enemies' weaknesses. Just like it's good to know their origins. Which brings me to how did Ra create it?"
"How did he make the Eye? Well, there are many variations of the legend... let's see... they both involve the deities Hathor and Sekhmet. Most legends say Hathor, upon hearing Ra's plight, was enraged by humanity – for she was the goddess of Creation and had created them. She saw their disrespect of the sun god Ra as supreme blasphemy. One legend states she was then was transformed by either her rage and volition of her own power, or that of Ra's, into the Warrior Goddess Sekhmet – also known as The Eye of Ra. Sekhmet was a lion-headed goddess whose blood thirst ravaged most of Egypt. But, after she drank Thoth's pseudo bloody brew, she became the gentle goddess Hathor again."
Bella's lips pursed as she turned over in her brain the few pieces of the puzzle before us.
"Are there any legends that talk about Hathor and Sekhmet being two separate entities? The story Ra told me made it sound like he separated the good part from the evil part. The evil, called The Forsaken, was the half he banished."
"I suppose that is possible, I mean, first and foremost, he was there, so if he says he divided them, then I don't think we should discount what information he had given us. You did mention the "good part" was a goddess of creation known as The Source, right?"
Bella nodded with an excited gleam in her eye. We were tying together the frayed threads of truth between legend and fact.
"So that jives with Hathor's role in popular legend as a goddess of Creation. Hathor must be The Source. Sekhmet is also known as the goddess of Pestilence, Disease and War... things which aren't particularly pleasant... it makes sense she would be the part that was banished."
Bella exhaled steadily, then looked at me as if she was hoping this was all a joke. She shook her head in disbelief.
"So, I'm supposed to go all Dog the Bounty Hunter on this Forsaken, who could be Sekhmet, an ancient Egyptian goddess of War?"
"I guess hunting caribou or bear doesn't sound that drastic in the scheme of things..."
My vision suddenly went dark as a pillow smacked me in the face.
"Smart ass," she growled before reaching under the sheets to pinch my behind.
"Look! Hey! Stop!" I laughed as she pinched and tickled me playfully. "Just because you can now, doesn't mean you should!"
"Oh really?" she hedged, an elegant eyebrow arching in cheeky challenge. Bella loved that my once unyielding skin was now pliant to her. Her lascivious grin held evil traces of smug satisfaction as her actions brought forth noises of pain from my lips. However, she was quick to kiss and sooth away any hurts, real or imaginary, and I was perfectly content to let her.
After a few more pinches and puppy tussling gropes beneath the beleaguered sheets, Bella cuddled into my side and huffed a huge sigh across my chest.
"What is it, love? Are you worried?"
"Well, really Edward, if I wasn't worried, I would be arrogant, and we both know how dangerous that can be."
I cleared my throat and thought briefly of Aro, a chill settling at the base of my spine. I was so wickedly thankful that monster had met his end. My fingers tightened around Bella's.
"You can do anything you set your mind to Isabella Swan, and you know you have a small vampire army at your back in my family alone. When you consider the millions you emancipated..."
"Edward Anthony Mason, for the love of all that is holy, don't start saying I should crown myself regent of the race just because..." Her eyes blazed with anger and a flicker of fear. Considering the use and invocation of my true birth name, I knew I had truly spooked her and had to clear up the misunderstanding immediately.
"No, sweetheart. I'm just saying whatever trouble comes your way, you will not be without aid."
Her body relaxed against mine, but not as much as I would have liked. It was time for a subject change.
"What do you say we get dressed and go hunt for something to eat?"
"I suppose. Though, I'd rather just stay here and nibble on you all day." She looked around the room with a grin, "I can definitely see why Em and Rosie liked to play Little Red Ride-Me-Good up in here".
"Isabella!"
"What? Em is the only one allowed the pervy jokes? You have no idea what living nine years among wolves will do to one's sense of humour." She leapt off the bed gracefully and sashayed to a dresser to look for clothing, no doubt placed there by Alice. Snatching a pair of random lacy loveliness from a drawer, she watched me, watch her slipping into them. She took her time baiting me mercilessly. I growled low in my throat to warn her not to poke the bear. Smiling broadly she cocked her hip and assessed me with a deadly gleam in her eye.
"Hunting with you is going to so... much... fun."
"Oh really?" I quipped sarcastically. Her fingers trailed up her delicious curves, winding a lazy trail around her pink areole.
Though I was twenty feet from her, I sprung and pounced with the ease of a giant cat, pressing her into my body as I lifted her up on to the dresser, her laughter low and throaty in my ear as she breathed her seductive promise;
"Really."