CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Bright daylight?
Even with closed eyes, I know it's daytime. Jeepers, I must've overslept. The pigs will be going berserk by now. Hang on though, this bed doesn't feel right. My pillow doesn't smell of roses. The weight of my quilt feels different … and … and … I'm not wearing … ouch! Where am I … ah ah … oh oh oh! I can't move … "Edward!"
"Hey."
The bed moves. His cool hand strokes the back of my head and then continues down my bare back. Half my face is buried in the pillow. He's behind me so I can't see him.
"I can't roll over, Edward," I mumble. "Can you help me?"
"With pleasure," he replies and gently turns me so I'm staring at the ceiling where there's another glass contraption dangling directly above.
"Have I slept for long … is it morning?"
An attempt to sit up fails - exhaustion knocks me backward. This is no surprise when the memory of what we got up to starts to return. Edward leans over and kisses me on the forehead.
"It's afternoon, Bella. You've only been sleeping for about five hours."
He's smirking, no doubt because of the reason why I've slept for so long. If he were human, he would've blacked out too after this morning's exertions. My body feels pummelled, the same as after we bring the harvest in, but also very tender in other places. Ouch! Much as I'd like to do that again, I don't think I could take another session. The way Edward's looking at me though, he's definitely up for more.
"You're uncomfortable, I can tell," he says then kisses me on the lips this time. "You stay in bed while I run you a bath. I'll pour some soothing products in which should make you feel better. Okay?"
"Perfect," I reply and close my eyes. I could sleep all day but my long list of questions needs answers before we leave. Jeepers, what a day.
Edward has to shake me awake this time. "The bath's ready, Bella. I'll leave you to sort yourself out. There's a robe hanging on the door that you can use if you don't want to get dressed immediately. When you come down, I'll make you something to eat. You must be hungry after …"
"Starving," I interrupt before he takes the opportunity to describe what we did. "Thanks," I add. Edward goes to leave the room but turns back at the door.
"You've no comprehension of how long I've waited for you, Bella. You're my only reason to live now."
After this jaw-dropping statement, he leaves the room and goes downstairs, leaving me to wonder what I've done to deserve this.
That sentiment is doubled, trebled even, a few seconds after I've lowered myself through a cloud of bubbles into hot, scented water which quickly soothes my aching muscles and more intimate areas. I could stay here all day, but I won't. There's too much to learn, say and do. While I wallow in absolute bliss, I recall what happened in the bedroom. Thankfully, I knew what was about to happen, in other words, I knew which bit went where, but I was clueless about the heights of ecstasy that could be achieved not just for the man, but for the woman as well. Mom never schooled me on that when we had our talk. Neither did the kids in fifth grade either.
Edward helped me undress slowly, garment by garment. I thought I'd be embarrassed, but Edward telling me how beautiful I am and how much he wanted me to relax and trust him washed all that away. He didn't keep me hanging the first time because I'd made it clear I didn't want him to. I needed this just as much as he did.
I remember his eyes and the intensity of his expression. I can't read minds like he allegedly can, but I'm one hundred percent certain he was mentally storing every second of the experience so he could relive it for eternity. Making his first time with me perfect became my goal, and any inhibitions I had were forgotten. We were one together, maybe not for eternity in my case, but I wanted this to be the best experience of his long life.
Thighs wrapped around icy hips were a constant reminder that I was not making love with a man, but a potentially dangerous Vampire whose predecessors lived off the blood of humans. I haven't yet got my head around that troubling issue. There are many questions I need answering, like is this habit the reason Vampires have long lives? And why is his skin soft but his body hard, apart from his mouth and … his intimate parts? Those questions can wait. All I know and will remember to my dying day is that I was the lucky recipient of his expertise. How could that ever be topped?
After my first experience, he gave me a few minutes to recover before going again – this time spending more time building me up to receive him. He touched, caressed, kissed, and licked parts of my body that I had not realized could arouse me. By the time he entered me again, I was on the point of exploding. Using his fingers and while he was thrusting into me, he stroked my most intimate area between my legs and that's when I understood what he meant by not wanting our first time together to be in earshot of my parents. Mom definitely didn't warn me about this. Edward climaxed immediately after and collapsed on top of me. I was too high to notice the weight of his body or general icyness.
He gave me more time to recover before starting again. This time he pulled me on top so I could sit astride him. Instinctively I knew what to do. Even though tiredness was creeping up on me, I went for it big time until he took over. I guess this is why I'm aching so much. Schoolyard jokes about 'banging' have more relevance now.
I would love to have cuddled him afterward but he was too cold and I was exhausted. I remember Edward rolling me under the quilt and nothing else until I woke. 'Three times lucky,' is a saying in Lympi. I'll never hear those words again without thinking about Edward.
Chocolate or sex – which came out on top? I'll have to tell Edward that I'll have to keep sampling both until I can make my mind up. Not really though, sex is so much better.
While I'm drying myself with the fluffy towels Edward left for me, I overhear him talking downstairs. I can't make out what's being said as the door to the living room is closed. Maybe a member of his family has turned up unexpectedly which sends me into a panic. After a while, it becomes obvious Edward is conversing with himself because there's no evidence of another person answering him. He speaks, and then there's silence before he speaks again. Weird.
Wrapped in a full-length white robe made from a similar but much thicker material than the towels, I have to take care on my way downstairs because my legs are still shaky. Edward is on the sofa again and thankfully on his own. He pats the seat indicating where he would like me to sit. I eagerly oblige.
"Better?" he asks.
"Thanks, yes. The bath was wonderful. I don't think I've ever felt so clean or so relaxed in my life. Was there someone here? I could hear you talking."
Edward picks up a shiny black object from the low table in front of the sofa. It pops open but I still can't make out what it is.
"This is a communication device, Bella. They were invented in the 20th Century to allow people to see and talk to each other wherever they were in the world. This is the newest version – it has voice recognition messaging and other facilities, but it's still nowhere near as versatile as the ones we had back then. The new satellites we've only recently sent into space are unsophisticated compared to a thousand years ago. We've lost so much technology since the catastrophe because the world had other, more pressing priorities, to deal with."
"You're talking with words I've never heard again," I complain. "What is a satellite?" Edward hands me the device. It's lighter than I expected.
"It's a chunk of specialized equipment blasted into space that now sits above the Earth. Don't ask me how, but it allows me to talk to Alice in New Seattle. She was shouting at me. She knows you're here and she's furious."
"Why?"
"I'll tell you why shortly. You want to know Lympi's history first though, don't you?"
"Yes, but do you have anything I could eat or drink now? Exercise makes me hungry."
Smirking, Edward springs from the sofa. "Stay there; I'll bring you another hot chocolate to drink with some really amazing cookies."
While Edward is in the kitchen I wander over to the far end of the living room where there's a huge, misshapen piece of black furniture taking up the width of the tall windows that overlook the far side of the meadow. At the furniture's widest point, there's a long lid which I tentatively open to reveal a row of shiny black and white oblongs set in an unusual pattern. The temptation to touch one is overwhelming so I choose the nearest black one which depresses under the slightest pressure. The sound it generates takes me by surprise and I drop the lid with a bang. Edward laughs from the kitchen. I run back to the sofa.
"It's a musical instrument called a piano, Bella," he says when he returns. "If we have time I'll play something for you." He sits opposite me this time then opens a colorful tin he's brought from the kitchen before passing it to me. Inside are about twelve golden brown cookies that smell of oats and honey. My memory is tweaked. The aroma reminds me of Gran. She made cookies like these when I was a kid. I want to cry when I take the first bite.
"From the beginning?" Edward asks as he settles back in his chair.
I nod my head as I can't talk with my mouth full.
"Okay, but this is a shortened version. We would be here for a month if I told you everything. Are you happy with that?"
Another nod.
"I've said before that I was born in 1901 and became a Vampire not long after the war that involved nearly the whole world ended. We all thought that would be the war to end all wars but another one kicked off in the late 1930's. That ended in 1945 and we all hoped we'd witnessed the end of global conflicts."
"What were the wars about?" I ask, genuinely fascinated.
"Territory, empires, conflicting ways countries are governed. You name it. To simplify, this country believed then and still believes now in democracy, which is where ordinary people have a big say in how they are governed. Other countries back then had dictators, which meant people were ruled by a government who didn't tolerate being opposed."
"Like the Elders I guess."
"Yes, but on a much bigger scale. Anyhow, as the years went on, smaller more localized wars started for similar reasons but one additional reason reared its head again."
"What was that?"
"Religion. Religion is an ideology based on spiritual beliefs, but I'll explain more about what spiritual means later. Religious wars weren't new - when Carlisle was born for instance they were raging all over Europe which is a group of countries on the other side of the world. In the 20th and 21st centuries, the world had become more divided, the governments and people more suspicious of one another, and less tolerant of people with other beliefs. This led to countries ganging up on religious lines because they believed their way of life was superior to others and that Right was always on their side."
"Was this country like that?"
"No, it was part of America's Constitution to be secular. That meant religion and state should never mix. But there was unrest happening in other parts of the world which started to affect those living in the developed world like this country. Mass movement of people due to politics and war, religious differences, climate issues, and economic factors began to affect the whole planet, which led to social unrest. The world was obliged to become more diverse but this had become a real issue in the countries with the most wealth and whose people were used to stability - in other words, they didn't want their way of life to change. Before things came to a head though, the meteorite hit."
"So what happened then?"
"I'm not going to trouble you with all the horrors that happened to the human population that initially survived the impacts other than over time, the world lost about ninety percent of its people. From the ashes, new governments appeared, and thankfully old issues were put aside, mainly because so much land mass had disappeared which meant the old borders had become irrelevant. Fairly quickly, a new world government was formed to manage the disaster, but not long after that, it became clear that what was left of the population was facing an even bigger threat than what had come from the sky, and that was from nuclear waste."
"Nuclear waste?"
"Yes, it became evident quite quickly that countries that had used nuclear power or had nuclear weapons had not maintained or stored their products effectively enough to withstand zero maintenance due to the catastrophe, which meant several nuclear disasters were imminent. Some waste had been buried underwater and was now leaking into the sea. Most of the waste though was kept in underground bunkers on land and became too dangerous to approach. Also, power stations that had been abandoned were now in a dangerous state. No one left alive had the skills to deal with the situation and the world government had to face the fact that it was only a matter of time before radioactivity poisoned what was left of the land, air, and sea. Even more worrying, if the Earth's freshwater supply became contaminated, life on Earth would be virtually over. An urgent appeal went out for anyone with any ideas or knowledge on how to stop this happening, and that's when the Vampire community answered the call."
"Wow!"
"I won't go into details, Bella, but Vampires aren't affected by radiation which is the lethal by-product of nuclear power and its waste. When we offered our assistance there was disbelief at first that we existed. Until then, Vampires were just a myth - a fanciful story nobody took seriously. It didn't take us long to convince the government we could help, but we asked in return that Vampires would be accepted into society as equals in the future, and not classified as dangerous predators."
"So you helped them sort out the nuclear waste problem then?"
"Yes, but only after some intensive training. We went into the nuclear reactors and made them safe. We also helped engineers to encase the waste so it wouldn't leak for thousands of years. It took us nearly a century to cover all the known sites. It was self-preservation for us as well. We wouldn't want to live in a world bereft of humans."
"And then they accepted you?"
"Yes and no. Unfortunately, some of our kind refused to agree to live on animal blood alone and rejected the restrictive demands of the world government. My father was furious. I felt cheated. After long negotiations, some Vampires were given limited freedoms with the promise that restrictions would be reviewed for each family group every fifty years which the world government has honored. And then in the year 2490, the Lympi proposition landed in our laps."
"What do you mean?"
"The first we heard was that discussions had been going on for a while about setting up communities like Lympi scattered all over the globe. Once the community had been established, they would be cut off from the rest of society …"
"Why?" I interrupt.
"To end an argument and prove a point."
"What point?"
"So … I've mentioned religion before which is what caused wars in parts of the world before the catastrophe. The majority of the world's population had been brought up to believe that when you die, you don't actually die, but your spirit, which is what makes you human, ascends to a place called Heaven, where God, the creator of the world, lives."
"Really? Did people believe that? Do you believe that?"
"What I believe isn't relevant, Bella. The issue is that some members of the world government wanted religion banned forever because of the anguish it had caused the Old World. Some members wanted freedom of choice, and some wanted only one religion to be taught everywhere. You can see the problem can't you?"
"Sort of."
"A group of the anti-religion government officials had formed a committee to devise an experiment to prove their claim that the need to believe in a God or Gods was not part of a human's psyche. To do this, new communities like Lympi would be set up in different parts of the world, and then isolated for a thousand years …"
"A thousand years?" I can't stop myself from exclaiming. "You mean they got people to voluntarily walk away from a modern society and agree to live like we do five hundred years ago, Edward?"
"There were plenty of takers, Bella, all of them atheist zealots who believed in the Experiment, which is what they called it. They said this was the only way to prove there isn't a God or Gods or any need for religion. Before you ask, atheists are non-believers."
"So they were happy to live in a world without all this?" I wave my hand at the gadgets dotted around the living room that I still have no clue what they're for.
"Yes, so if a God hadn't appeared, or been invented, dreamed up, conceived by then, the atheists would claim we didn't need religion in our lives."
"So … if Lympi doesn't invent a God, and the atheists win, what is to stop the people still believing anyway?"
"Nothing. This is why Carlisle argued that the whole experiment was stupid. You can never take free will away from people. Okay, they could ban congregating for religious reasons or using religion in political arguments, but it could never be stamped out which is what I believe they wanted back then. So far the atheists are winning in Lympi and in all the other communities that have lasted, but the Experiment has become unfair."
"Unfair? In what way?"
"You were taught how Man evolved over hundreds of thousands of years and how plants and animals on Earth adapted to changing environments?"
"Yes."
"That wasn't allowed under the original agreement. Have you ever wondered what happens when you die?"
"No."
"Does it worry you?"
"What's the point? The lights go out – boom."
"Do you have a conscience?"
"What do you mean?"
"What stops you from doing things you shouldn't, like stealing or telling a lie?"
"Charlie. When I was a kid, he'd punish me one way or another."
Edward leans back in his chair. I take a sip of my chocolate. This is too much to take in. There's a big question that has to be answered though and now is the time.
"Okay, we're an experiment. I'm angry but I'll swallow that for the moment. I want to know how you came to be involved and why you take people away from their families."
"That's easily explained, Bella, and I hope you'll be pleasantly surprised."
"I doubt it," I grumble.
"When Carlisle found out by chance about the plans for the Lympi community – well actually that's not true – my sister Alice can sort of see the future, Carlisle, was livid. He'd been a doctor for over a thousand years by then and was determined that the people living in these communities hundreds of years in the future, who would have had no say on whether they wanted to be there or not, would still have access to modern medical assistance. He made strong representations to the government on this. Initially, most of the committee was not supportive, until he offered our services as 'extractors.' He …"
"So you do take people for medical reasons," I interrupt. "I knew it. I knew it."
"Yes, Bella, but there are strict rules we have to abide by. For a start, we don't take anyone over eighty. We don't take anyone who cannot be cured - well, except for one guy but that's another story. We don't take people with dementia and other illnesses or conditions connected with aging. We don't take people who have had accidents. Also, we need the government's approval in Seattle before we extract anyone. We provide many other services to your community which Lympians aren't aware of."
"Like what?"
"Your Aunt and Uncle make up medicines and treatments using plants grown in the local area using recipes provided by the Elders. They are worse than useless. We're able to gain access to Michael's surgery overnight where we re-fill his bottles with modern drugs made in Seattle. I'm positive Michael's been aware of what's been happening for a while. He is a very intelligent man. His son is too. Michael's had the good sense though to keep his mouth shut. Haven't you ever wondered why Lympians are so healthy and recover quickly from ailments and injuries?"
I'm too stunned to finish my hot chocolate. It had genuinely never occurred to me that our health was being looked after from behind the border as well.
Now that my suspicions have been confirmed, I have to ask the question I've held off asking since the day I first spoke with Edward on the beach, which seems like a million years ago.
"Edward, what happened to my gran? Mom told me that a few weeks before she disappeared she'd found a lump in her armpit. Did you take her, and is she still alive? I've got to know so please don't let me wait any longer."
Edward leans forward and takes my hand.
"Yes, I took her Bella, and who do you think made those cookies?"
I bet most of you guessed Gran made the cookies and you're screaming now. Poor Bella - how is she going to take this information? Maybe Edward wasn't so smart telling her this way.
Next chapter, Bella now has a dilemma. What is she going to say to Charlie and Renee when she gets home?
Joan x