A/N – TwiliteAddict, Thank you so much, dear friend, for everything you contribute (and clean up!) in this story.
We pick up where we left off with Bella being introduced to Carmen. Thanks for sticking with us. Chapter 20 is going to be posted in a few days. I don't want to leave y'all hanging for too long. Things are heating up!
"Isabella, I'd like you to meet Carmen Morales, Eleazar's wife."
My husband's introduction of his extended family member hung in the air, and yet I simply stood there staring at this woman, dressed all in black for a white winter wedding, grinning at me like a predator. How dare she ask me how I felt about all our our family and friends subjugating themselves to me? Simply because I was more powerful than them?! The very thought made my skin crawl, and the fact that she would condone using power to rule made me furious. I didn't care whose wife she was, she was crossing a line.
Edward looked at me expectantly, yet I still struggled to find a civilized answer to Carmen's question. Since he didn't seem to give any indication there was anything wrong with Carmen's demeanor. I decided the best course of action was to dismissively ignore Carmen's question, despite the heebees and the jeebees this woman gave off like a deadly radiation leak. But what confused me most was that I would have such a negative physical reaction to the woman who was the chosen mate of Xandru's beloved sire.
"What a pleasure to meet you, Carmen. Thank you so much for coming."
And the Oscar goes to... I offered my hand, but she waved it away leaning in to kiss me on either side of the cheek instead. I fought the seemingly instinctual revulsion and mashed my lips together.
Edward took notice of my discomfort and raised an eyebrow while Carmen prattled on.
"We are family, dear one. I wouldn't miss it! Since defeating the almighty Volturi, you are, after all the talk of the supernatural world! What is it they call you? Ahh yes, the Golden Eyed Queen. Quite the title and accolades for one so young and new to our race."
There it was again! A syrupy sweet tone and dazzling smile attempting to cloak barbed commentary. My instincts bristled, but my rationality clung tenaciously to the fact that she was a valued member of Edward's family as well as Eleazar's wife. Surely, there must be something redeemable to mine from this woman. Perhaps her impetuousness was just a cultural thing? Maybe Catalonians were more direct, preferring to get straight to the razor sharp point?
Harry had taught me that the body knows things before the mind has time to reason with the heart, and my guts were telling me Carmen Morales didn't seem to care who she bled with that blade - a telltale weapon of an unhealthy soul.
So I let go; listened to my instincts and decided to look at her soul through her aura. Casually letting my normal vision slide, I set about secretly scanning her aura for intent.
Never had I encountered a corporeal energy field like this one. Her aura was devoid of bright colors and her entire auric field seemed crudely photo-shopped, cut out and pasted magically over something...else. Something very dark was lurking beneath the makeshift aura, casting a shadow behind the fake colors making them appear dingy and sick.
My mind whirred, attempting to make sense of what I was seeing. In that moment she leaned in to deliver a kiss on Edward's cheek when the fake aura split open and an inky mass of dark energy reached out for my husband.
"Get away from him," I hissed in warning. Carmen's golden eyes flashed a brilliant blue and the blackness retreated within her chest. Whatever was in there heard my threat, yet decided to continue the ruse and maintain her cover to those in attendance.. But the battle lines were drawn and whatever this thing was, it was NOT Carmen. This Bitch definitely came to play.
Her lips curled into a smile. "Ahhh, Edward, I see you have a jealous bride. This will make for an interesting wedding night, I am sure." As she purred her catty comment and moved closer to my husband, the dark energy re-emerged, snaking out of her body. It continued to thicken and curl around Edward's throat like a viper about to strike.
Our eyes locked. The corner of her mouth twitched. And I screamed.
It was no use.
The dark energy speared into Edward's solar plexus, jerking him off the ground as it coursed through his body, then slammed him back down in a violent finish. In that silent, shocking, horrifying slice of time before his body hit the ground, I shoved Carmen away from him with hurricane force winds. I was Air, blowing her backwards and away from harming my soulmate anymore than she already had.
Chaos erupted around me. I heard Jasper shout orders like the general he was, screams from our less brave guests were punctuated by fits of Carmen's maniacal laughter. I, however, focused on one thing only - Edward. Dropping to the ground beside him, I pulled his limp body towards me. Cradling him in my arms, he felt like a rag doll, fragile and incredibly light. His eyes fluttered open. Unfocused, they rolled back in his head. When they returned and fixed on me, they had changed from gold to washed-out jade.
"No, no! Edward?"
Those eyes stared at me with such deep sadness, I had to close mine for the pain of it. Instinctually, together we placed our hands over his chest. Beneath our palms was the faint, uneven beat of his heart.
He was human again.
I began to sob. He smiled weakly and reached for my cheek in an effort to comfort me. I grasped for grace; it was I who should be comforting him. I buried my face into his chest.
"It beats only for you, my love." he whispered raggedly into my hair.
"As mine beat for you." I choked, squeezing him carefully before kissing his lips. Words of reassurance felt pointless in the midst of our grim reality. Edward's entire body burned with fever. His once luminous, diamond skin had become grey and drenched with salty sweat. My love looked exactly as he had in that infernal vision Alice and I had shared. I had failed to protect him.
Edward frowned with the realization of what was happening and began to apologize. "I'm sorry, I didn't know Carmen was... that she was really..."
"Sulpicia." I finished for him, the name tasting like vile poison on my tongue. The Forsaken. Sekhmet. Whatever her goddamned names were, I would wipe them from the walls of history should Edward die.
His eyes widened in panic and then resignation. He knew I was about to square off in a do-or-die battle against a formidable foe and there was nothing he could do but try and survive it. Squeezing my hand, he whispered, "Be safe."
"Always." I answered, trying desperately to pull it together. I couldn't leave him until I knew he was safe, to give him something - anything - to try and combat the damage Sulpicia's evil magic had caused.
My intuition reminded me of the notion I had of all the positive energy and blessings from our wedding guests imprinting into the crystalline beads of my dress. Grasping this idea, I began visualizing this energy as a vibrant, blue mass which I funnelled out of the crystals and into my heart chakra. The power gathered with a buzzing warmth at my chest then made its way to my lips.
I leaned over my lover and gently kissed him. Easing his mouth open, I poured as much healing energy as I dared into him, knowing I had to leave enough for myself and the battle I would have ahead. The fever that warmed his body and muddied his gaze loosened its grip, but not enough to banish the dark energy that was still crawling through his body like a loosed demon.
Rage rose out of my grief and rode the gates of my concentration and control with wicked thoughts about how I would make Sulpicia pay. And pay dearly. Knowing I could not give this negative energy to Edward, as the darkness that threatened to consume him would in turn suck it up like oxygen, Instead, I pushed the negativity of all my desires for vengeance into the crystals on my dress. The fiery red beads blackened like coal with shadowy thoughts of my darker self, turning my once white wedding gown into the color of ashes. I looked more like a grieving widow than a glowing bride.
Widow? I don't think so. Not today.
Not ever.
When I had given him all that I could of the positive, and held back and stored all that I should of the negative, I pulled back from Edward. I called for Carlisle, who had actually been at my side all along, respectfully and fretfully waiting until I gave him permission to come to his son's aid. I was humbled by his restraint and locked eyes with him and begged him silently to please...tell me it isn't what I think it is...
We were suspended in a type of crazy hell - this wedding warzone erupting around us, and yet Carlisle responded quickly and calmly. He examined Edward so carefully, touching his forehead and wiping the sweat away with the pristine handkerchief from his breast pocket. I wanted to weep, to give in to my fear, but knew I had no time for it.
I could barely speak the words, believing if I did they would be all the more true. "Carlisle, is it the Spanish flu?"
I did not need him to answer me with words. His body language said it all. His facade of the healer slipped, and his face crumpled with anguish as he watched Edward once more suffer from sickness. Carlisle's reaction was too much for me to process along with my own riotous emotions. I had to look away from Carlisle and usie my auric vision to scan Edward's body. Despite the incredible blessing of all the positivity from our wedding flowing through his chakras, the darkness kept the light within him hostage.
I looked away, and assessed my surroundings for the first time since he fell, seeking my enemy. Our once peaceful grove wedding had turned into a burning battlefield. My entire family and a few of the guests were doing their best to contain the torrent of terror that was disguised as Carmen Morales. She stood in the center of a ring of fire which rose the moment a brave soul attempted to attack the ex-goddess. For her added amusement, she would occasionally whip fireballs left or right. She was playing with them and burning everything in her wake. Her rage echoed within the roaring wall of fire, reaching out across the grove to ferret out my family. No one could get near.
When she saw she had my attention, she spoke directly to me. "Aro and I spent centuries choosing only the best to build the most formidable army in the world!" She paced about her inner circle of fire, gathering energy in her palms for another ball of flame. Esme and Emmett thought they could take advantage of her distraction and came out from behind a tree she had just firebombed, but she turned to track them, screaming as she searched through the smoke and fire, "I come to take vengeance for their slaughter. I will burn yours, Isabella Swan, as you did mine. I will leave you with nothing but ashes!"
Carlisle hollered to Esme to keep her distance, his prayers and curses filling my ears like a rush of blood as I came to my feet. Refusing to acknowledge the helplessness creeping into my soul as I took stock of the damage done by Sulpicia, I reached deep, deep into the core of my being for the root of strength I needed. Channelling my grief, I reached back into the past, through the generations of loss due to the machinations of this monster amongst us, and found a flood of fury and pain that Sulpicia had loosed into the ether across the eons. As it washed through me, I became emboldened by the suffering of my ancestors and proclaimed in a thousand voices,
"Sekhmet! Forsaken daughter of Ra. You have harmed the last of our line."
Sulpicia cranked her neck around unnaturally to look at me, her face morphing into the monstrous head of a lioness, roaring and hissing before returning to a human visage. She then smiled with a rueful twist of her lips as a fireball left her hand. I followed its trajectory towards Esme and Emmett who had attempted to flank her when her head was turned. I filled my own hands with blue snapping flame. Carmen's fireball came within inches of hitting Esme when Emmett shoved her out of the way. They crashed into a tree, uprooting it from the earth with a great groan and heavy thud as they landed. The dry leaves ignited and the tree caught fire, sending my mother and brother scrambling away for safety once more.
"Isabella, child, I'm just getting started." She turned towards me and chanted a few words in a strange dialect I had never heard before, laser-like purple tendrils spun out from her finger tips and off into the surrounding woods, seeking out my loved ones who had taken cover. Pulling and tugging on these purple strings, she screamed her unholy profanities until the very ground shook with the power of her voice. In stunned horror I watched as Alice, then Rose and Jasper, stumble out into the open as if they were being reeled in like puppets on a string. Directly in the middle of the forehead, where their third eye would be, they were pierced through with Sulpicia's power.
She was in their minds! Making them hers.
Alice, Jasper, and Rose dug their heels into the dirt, trying to resist her pull. But it was too much, too much and they rioted into convulsions as if possessed by spirits. They thrashed and tensed, fighting with everything they had, which was not enough. My entire family, the Denalis, our guests...one by one gold and red eyes would glaze over, as Sulpicia's energy stained the irises deep violet, marking them as servants of my enemy. In unison, their heads snapped robotic-like towards Sulpicia in obedient expectation of a command, one that would probably kill them to carry out had their minds been their own.
Her command crackled over the burning forest.
"Kill Edward. Leave the witch for me."
"NEVER!" I screamed.
I tapped into every black, dark, negative feeling stored within the crystalline beading of my dress and pushed it through my skin into my empty veins. I watched inky black spidery trails blossom and splinter beneath my pearly skin as it flowed to gather at my fingertips. The pain, the fury, the desolation of seeing my Edward struck down singed my skin as it mingled and moiled with the thousands of years of loss I had pulled forth from my ancestors' pain. The immense pressure of their emotions both blew through my hands and struck Carmen square in the chest, knocking her backwards to the ground. I flew towards her, knowing I had to strike while she was down or I would never get the chance to build up enough energy to defend myself when she got back up.
Just before I reached her prone form, I was clothes-lined by something that felt like the force of a thousand Emmetts. When I looked up from the ground, a man covered in snow and ice with dark hair, was cradling Sulpicia's unconscious form, weeping, whispering over and over,
"Carmen, my Carmen, what did they do to you?"
Eleazar.
Consumed with grief, he pulled her to him and held her tightly. Before I had a chance to scream a warning to him, her eyes opened, revealing Sulpicia's brilliant azure blue. Her arms came around him, squeezing hard enough Eleazar cried out in pain and then horror when he realized he was in the clutches of something that was not his beloved wife.
She purred like a cat with a mouse in its paws. "Ahhhh. Eleazar. So good to see you. I believe you have something of mine. I do hope you brought it with you..."