As always, thanks go out to all my readers. With a special shout-out going to those who left reviews on the last chapter.
Goldielover, kouga's older woman, catgrl, zazyl, TheBlueWilderness, Ruiniel, Guest, and nickaroos. THANK YOU!
The musical mood setter for this one is a song called "Again" by Archive.
CHAPTER 10
BEASTS IN THE NIGHT
Carlisle could see her in the rear-view mirror, dazedly staring at his back window as he drove hell-for-leather down the road.
Anguished by the fear and confusion in Bella's rounded eyes, he seized a handful of his already messy hair, and kept on driving.
Heaven help me, what have I done?
If he hadn't pushed his luck tonight, if he had left her house as soon as the sun had disappeared beyond the horizon, as he had meant to, none of this would have happened.
Only it did happen, for the reason that he had been greedy in the end. For the reason that he was a lonely and selfish man.
Putting pedal to the metal, Carlisle had to look away from Bella's dwindling reflection. Even from a distance, through a mirror she couldn't even see, Carlisle was too ashamed to meet the varying emotions on her now bloodless face.
His Mercedes accelerated under the weight of his foot. The needle on the speedometer continued to rise. In four point six seconds, the purr of the engine transitioned to an expensive growl.
"A growl…" Carlisle huffed a bitter laugh, and would have cried if he could.
You growled at her, you jackass! Worse yet, he had sniffed her neck like she was filet mignon.
Why did he do it? Why did you have to speak and take that breath? Asking if she was okay while his face was pressed to her neck!
Hand gripping the nappa leather of his steering wheel, Carlisle sped through the sleepy town without really seeing it. At 155mph, he was the fastest thing on the road. But as fast as many would deem his luxury car to be, for him it wasn't fast enough. Not even close. How could it be when there was no escaping what he had done?
Carlisle had broken his most agonizing rule tonight. When human eyes were watching, the ruse had to be maintained, no matter the personal cost.
As a doctor, his patients and peers expected him to give one hundred percent of himself, to do his best at all times. If only they knew the truth.
At the hospital, when there was a code blue, Carlisle had to waste precious time by running at a normal human pace. When he was operating on a trauma patient, laboring to repair broken veins and arteries, his fingers could work no faster than the upper limit of human skill and speed. As excellent as the other doctors gauged his work to be, Carlisle knew the appalling truth. That he could work a hundred times faster if he wished, if he could.
For a doctor, it was a heavy cross to bear. And yet, Carlisle bore it by necessity, for the safety of his coven, his family.
Cement step or not, when Isabella had tripped tonight, he should have held back, rendering aid in the aftermath, like a human doctor would have done.
Instead, he had revealed his nature by hastening to catch her in time. The ruse. His secret. In that one defining moment, none of it had mattered. All he had wanted was for her to be okay.
On either side of him, houses and businesses gradually yielded to wilderness. As he drove past the city limits, leaving the last street light behind, Carlisle continued in the misty night. His eyes seeing much farther than his high-performance headlamps, he soon spotted the end of his driveway.
Once he started up the long winding drive, Carlisle flattened the pedal once more. Because he was driving faster than he normally would, he lowered his sun visor well before he saw the house, and pressed the garage door opener the second he was in range.
Owing to his current state of mind, he misjudged the timing.
He was coming in too hot, and the garage door was only partly opened. To avoid smashing into his house, Carlisle slammed on the brakes, and turned the steering wheel.
Tires dragged on gravel. His Mercedes was swerving like the cars in Tokyo Drift.
In the end, he came to a stop just shy of his front steps, his headlamps angled toward the corner of the house.
Trapped by shame, Carlisle only sat there, while the garage door slowly opened the rest of the way.
"If you can, avoid those bear crossings," he had told Bella before leaving.
As her breathy laugh resurfaced in his mind, Carlisle remembered her cute little smile. "Will do, doc."
He'd enjoyed her company so much, he had found it hard to leave.
If he had left at dusk, if he hadn't lingered by his car, would Bella have tripped? He squeezed the bridge of his nose. Too many scenarios. Too many "what ifs".
What's done is done. Now for the consequences.
By her reaction, Carlisle could tell that Bella knew. That she had seen and felt his otherness tonight.
Barely a year into their new life, he and Rosalie might have to pack up and leave, fleeing before word of his strangeness started spreading about the town.
But would she do it? Would Bella say anything? For now, he couldn't be sure, and the uncertainty was chewing a hole in him.
His thoughts turning to his companion, Carlisle shuddered to think of her reaction. There was not a shred of doubt in his mind; Rosalie was going to be furious when she learned of this, of the selfish risks he had been taking, risks that threatened her, too.
The lights were on, but she didn't seem to be home. If she was, she would have exited the house by now, to see what was going on—why he was sitting alone out here, and why he had nearly crashed through the entryway just now.
Suddenly grateful for her absence, Carlisle looked to the garage. Her empty parking space confirmed that she had taken her red BMW out for a spin.
"Ca… Carlisle?" The fear in Bella's lowered voice echoed with perfect clarity in his head, hauling him back to those dreadful moments when he had nuzzled her neck and growled. Just the look on her face when he had finally snapped out of it…
Carlisle had never been one to use foul language, but he did so now. "Shit. Shit, shit, shit."
His fingers nervously tapping the steering wheel, he shut his eyes, and breathed in hopes that it would calm his frazzled nerves. It didn't. His anxiety crested. Now he beat his forehead against the wheel's twelve o'clock position. Forgetting his strength, he expressed his mounting frustration without thinking.
The side of his fist collided with the center of the steering wheel. Bits of metal, leather, and plastic flew in every direction.
His mouth hanging open, Carlisle loosened his fist and stared through the hovering dust. This one careless act had not only destroyed his speedometer and steering wheel, it had also wrecked the entire steering column. Given the radiating force of the impact, he knew there would be deeper damage, too.
His broken radio sparked and sizzled, then the engine sputtered and died. With the smell of burning plastic assailing his nostrils, Carlisle surveyed the shattered interior, and knew there'd be no saving it. He had destroyed his car.
With trembling hands, he pulled on the door handle, and numbly exited the vehicle. His thoughts shooting back to Bella, he forgot all about his ruined Mercedes. As he turned in the direction where Charlie's house would be, he wondered what he was going to do now. To be sure, he had made a colossal mess of things.
Recalling Bella's tormenting scent, Carlisle brought a hand to his windpipe, the burning in his throat so incredibly painful, he knew he had to feed.
And so he took off at a run, flying through the woods like a hound of hell.
Ferns and saplings broke as he ran through them. As the sickle moon appeared through a gap in the clouds, he followed his nose, deeper and deeper into the night-clad forest. Wisps of fog snaked around the trees, and the soggy ground rose and fell beneath his feet. With a specific prey in mind, Carlisle breezed right past a mountain lion, then straight through a stunned herd of deer.
There was a small fire up ahead, a remote camp site off a nearly forgotten trail. Judging by the small chorus of heartbeats, there were three campers in that camp. One in a tent, the other two sitting in the light of their fire.
Knowing that the campers wouldn't see him, that he'd be nothing but a blur to their eyes, Carlisle didn't veer to the side like he normally would. He ran in a straight line.
"Whoa, did you feel that?" One of the campers said as he sped by.
"Yeah. What the hell?" the second camper replied, hand rising to smooth her wind-ruffled hair. "That gust came out of nowhere."
Driven by purpose, Carlisle left the humans, and made toward a remote section of Olympic National Park. His pale skin swathed in dim moonlight, he sniffed the air and finally located the prey he wanted, the prey he craved tonight.
The grizzly was lumbering in a secluded meadow tucked in the shadow of Mount Skokomish. A male by the looks of it, it must have weighed six hundred pounds.
While most of his human memories had faded over time, Carlisle retained enough to remember parts of his childhood. His father had been a very strict man, and there had been many rules in his house, one of which had been not to play with his food. It was a rule Carlisle lived by to this day. When he hunted, he always went for an immediate kill, or near to it.
Not tonight, though.
While he was careful not to injure the bear, Carlisle startled it by ruffling its fur. This immediately enraged the animal.
As the grizzly growled and rose on its hind legs, Carlisle adopted an aggressive pose. Panting through gritted teeth, he provoked the animal just by staring at it. "Come on," he encouraged with a devious grin. Lunge, bite, swipe your paw at me. You can do it.
The grizzly obliged.
In a reversal of predatory roles, Carlisle offered no resistance. Hands fisting into the bear's fur, he yielded as the grizzly tackled him to the ground, biting into his cardigan and shoulder with vicious jerks and pulls.
But Carlisle felt no pain—not in the physical sense. His skin was much too tough for that, his bones unbreakable.
"His name's Evan Miller." When Bella had opened up about her cheating ex, Carlisle had been hit by such a sense of wonder. Of course, he had been saddened by the muted hurt on her face, by how difficult this must be for her. But the level of trust she had placed in him had surprised and delighted his lonely soul.
No sooner had the memory come and gone than Carlisle lamented the emptiness to come. Given what had happened in Charlie's driveway, it seemed safe to assume that there would be no more talks on the sofa.
Every once in a while, when it seemed the grizzly was about to give up, Carlisle would escape its grip to frustrate the animal even more. It was a supernatural freak show, a sad wrestling match between beast and stronger beast. Only the first opponent had no idea it was the weaker one. If anyone were to see him now—a town doctor grappling with a trophy-sized grizzly bear as a way to purge his pain—they would think themselves in a messed-up version of Bizarro World.
Carlisle's back collided with the ground again. As the bear dragged him over the grass like a rag doll, he saw its incoming paw, the claws that dragged across his face, from his left temple to the right side of his mouth. If Carlisle had been human, he wouldn't have had a face right now. As it was, his undamaged features were aimed toward the inky sky.
Even as he held to the bear, his fingers embedded in the underfur, a feeling of lethargy settled onto him, his mind plagued with what had happened earlier in the night.
The sound of ripping fabric underscored his musings. With closing eyes, Carlisle willingly endured the grizzly's violence.
Regret. He was drowning in it. Regret stemming not from his decision to stop Isabella's fall, but from what had transpired afterward.
Sniffing along her jugular and growling against her neck… Clutching her body to his chest like she had been his! Dear God...
Carlisle shook his head, his mouth twisting in self-loathing. Oh, the things that must be going through her head. Surely, Isabella would be quite shaken. Frightened.
His vision obscured by a viscous layer of venom tears, Carlisle loosed a breath that might have been a sob. If only he could cry.
The idea that she might see him as a monster wounded him like teeth never could.
Carlisle might be a beast in fair form, but he wasn't an animal. He wouldn't have hurt her. Never. But the desire to have and claim her? Oh, he had most certainly felt those things. And he'd shocked and scared the hell out of her in the process—this kind and fascinating human. A woman blessed with warm flesh and literal life.
Unlike him, Isabella dwelt in a world of friendship and sunlight, where she was free to exist without having to hide.
His shirt and cardigan were shredded at this point. He had even lost his tie. As the grizzly tried to bite into his neck—how fitting, he thought—Carlisle stared up at the sky and started laughing. It was a bitter, agonized laugh, one that echoed over the foothills like a despairing prayer to God.
The burn in his throat intensified. His laughter tapering into silence, Carlisle sobered and looked to the bear once more. No longer willing to torment his prey, he tightened his hold on the animal. In a blinding motion, he twisted and broke its neck.
Alone in the miserable night, he fed.
Well, I've gone and done it; I killed Carlisle's Mercedes. Technically, he did it, but I'll take the blame. After all, I'm the puppet master of this drawn-out plot bunny of mine.
For those who are still reading this, thank you for embarking on this crazy journey with me.
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