CAN VAMPIRES DROWN?
Alice and Jasper had taken our usual seats in the Latin classroom when I arrived, both watching the door for me with avid expectation. Their interest only grew as I sat beside them. Jasper broke the silence first.
"You look…" He cocked his head and considered. "Better?"
"Did I look like shit before, or something?"
"Yes."
Cool, cool. He was probably even being polite about it.
"Well," Alice piped up from Jasper's other side. "It's nice to see you take a break from glowering at everyone. I think you really scared some people. Giants are bad enough, you know. Angry giants are just intolerable."
"Thank you, Alice."
"You're welcome!" She sang. "Do I get to talk to La, now?"
"I don't know why you would?"
"Well, if you get to-"
"I haven't decided anything yet," I interrupted her.
"Of course you have," she huffed.
"Have I?" I asked harshly. "Then what's the point of getting to know her if I'm just going to kill her?"
"There's still a chance she might survive the murder," Alice shot back. Jasper coughed to disguise a laugh.
I glared at him until he straightened his face.
"No," I told Alice.
"Not fair!"
"Hasn't anyone ever told-"
"Yeah, yeah whatever." She stuck her tongue out at me and remained silent for the rest of the class. The car ride home was equally devoid of conversation. Edward either had no thoughts on the recent change of events or didn't care to share them. Considering I was in no mood to discuss it myself, I was glad for the silence.
When the car was parked in the garage I leaped out, and headed for the woods surrounding the house.
"Wrestle later?" Jasper called as I breached the first row of trees.
"Nah," I called back. "I'm going hunting. See you in the morning."
"We're going hunting Friday," he said.
"I know," I said and left my siblings behind.
The others were going on a trip that would range further out into the mountains where there was more big game and a higher density of predators. Now that I'd broken the seal and spoken to the girl I knew I wouldn't be able to go back. Pandora's Box was open, as it were. Allowing my thirst to grow would only put everyone I cared about in danger, so I would need to over hunt as much as possible.
Unfortunately, there wasn't much hunting available near the Cullen home, but I was able to find a herd of elk, and by some miracle - a recently woken black bear. This allowed me the removal of some frustration as the irritable bear put up quite a fight. At the end of this feast, though, I was woefully uncomfortable. The blood sloshed in my stomach as I ran back toward Forks.
It wasn't until I was standing outside La's house that I realized this had been my plan all along. The morning's brief and halted conversation wasn't enough, I needed to see her again. I reasoned with myself that I only wanted to see that she was okay, that I hadn't left her with any lingering uneasiness. I told myself that this was a reasonable thing to do, as we had to be sure the family was safe.
It was a thin excuse. I was well aware I was stalking her for my own inexcusable desires.
When I arrived at the little cottage it was well after midnight. The house was entirely dark save for a dim light in the upstairs hallway and one in the kitchen downstairs. Her Fiat was parked neatly in the curving drive out front. All the outside lights were off.
I considered the house. The front door was most likely locked, but there probably weren't any locks on the upstairs windows. In an older house like this locks would have to be installed, and few would bother doing so.
There was a well-situated window at the back of the house that was covered with shadow from surrounding trees. None of the light from the streetlamps made it so far back, and there was a handy eave I could hang from to peer in.
Scaling the house was even easier than it looked. In seconds I was hanging from the eave I had chosen, staring into a quaint lofted bedroom filled with comfortable furniture arranged over a dense woven rug.
By the luck of whatever deity might hold the undead in their hand, I had chosen the window into La's bedroom. She was asleep in a squashy four poster bed with the covers tucked up to her chin. As I watched she kicked the duvet off and flounced onto her stomach, tucking her arms into her chest underneath her body.
A few twitches later she kicked the sheet off as well and curled into a fetal position on her side. She was sleeping… violently. I listened closely to the sound of her deep even breathing for a few minutes, as she continued to toss and turn.
After another few seconds, I had to acknowledge how weird it was for me to be watching her sleep like this. This was the kind of thing perverts did… or serial killers.
While I could accept the serial killer thing, as technically…. I could not accept the pervert thing. I needed to nip this while - well, I wasn't exactly ahead, but at least nip it before it got really weird.
Just as I was about to let go of the ledge over her window, she flipped angrily to her other side and said, "Go away."
I froze thinking she'd somehow seen me in the darkness outside her window. I listened hard, but there was nothing save for the faint sounds of air rushing through her lungs.
La talked in her sleep.
Suddenly all thoughts of weirdness and perversion left my head and I was carefully pushing her window open. It squeaked minutely from long disuse and I cringed with every sound. At one particularly loud groan, she kicked her sheets back up over her shoulders and huddled beneath them. I thought I was caught, but a moment later she mumbled something about "fucking mice," and her deep breathing continued.
I caught the window ledge and climbed silently through the opening I had made.
Her room was rather large, with a slightly vaulted ceiling. A table next to her bed held a short stack of books, her phone, and an antique analogue clock. The rug was solid beneath my feet, and extended to reach within a foot of all the walls in the room. The wall at the foot of the bed contained a doorway to a bathroom, and to the left of the bed was an antique fainting chair that looked nearly as squashy as the bed did.
There were very few personal effects in the space. Nothing on the walls at all, most of the shelves were empty, and her closet was fairly sparse. Several pairs of shoes - mostly boots - littered the floor of the closet, but there weren't any other mementos in there, either.
The lack of anything personal in her room made me want to explore the rest of her house, but that seemed like it would be taking this whole venture just a touch too far - as though stalking her in the first place wasn't enough.
I resisted the urge and sat on the chaise to wait.
She didn't speak, but a soft snore trickled out of her nose. She was wearing an old band t-shirt and boxers that had been loved enough they were beginning to roll up at the hems.
La was a stunning woman. When I first saw her I'd found her attractive enough, but now - with her curls tangling into knots above her head, mouth partly open in sleep, I found her absolutely breathtaking.
Or I would have had I been breathing, but that seemed a little risky considering the circumstances.
As I watched her breathe I thought about the fact that my presence in her home realistically meant I had absolutely given up entirely. I wasn't sure if I was ready to handle the consequences. Things could go terribly wrong, but I had to try. Whatever I did, I needed to make sure it was for the best for her future. I had to do right by her.
What did I know about doing right by a human?
Frustration sent me tumbling in the opposite direction. This was pointless. I was a predator, she was prey, and I needed to get the fuck out of there before my brain broke. I was going to leave and not come back until this bothersome female had left. That was the end of it. No more flip-flopping, no more lamenting, or pining, no more games.
I was not behaving like myself, and I missed the calm assurance that came with being Emmett. When a problem arose, I handled it - end of story.
If La didn't end up being the death of me this constant internal debate would. I pushed myself out of the chaise and began to walk purposefully to the window.
"Emmett," her voice sighed. It was so soft it could have been the wind.
Oh no, I froze at the foot of her bed. La's eyes were still closed. I stared at her, trying to decipher if she'd momentarily woken up and seen me in her sleep-befuddled brain.
She mumbled incoherently and kicked her sheets off again. Her hands were clenched into fists above her head, but her eyes remained closed. She was definitely still asleep and dreaming.
"Emmett…" She murmured again. My feet carried me back over to the chaise and I sank into it.
She was dreaming of me.
"Stay," she whispered. "Don't go… please…"
La Davis was dreaming of me, and she wanted me to stay. Wherever she was, whatever we were doing there, she wanted me to stay.
Emotions swept through me. It felt like I had been standing under a gigantic wave that knocked me down and sucked me under. There was a barrage of new feelings - none of which I understood. It was impossible to keep track of them all. I was drowning.
When I resurfaced from the deluge, I was not the same person. I couldn't begin to understand what this meant, but I knew beyond a doubt, that I would do everything in my power to stay here with La and keep her alive.
When I had become a vampire I'd been 25 years old. Old enough that my growing had been finished and my emotional maturity was mostly stable. The transition had all but frozen me - my flesh hard and barely malleable, my likes and dislikes halted, my moods and desires fixed.
All of us vampires, the same. We were all frozen in a nearly unchanging state. For something to shift within us was momentous and permanent. The most frequent change among our kind was love. When we found it, it changed us in an eternal way that would never fade. Carlisle and Esme, Alice and Jasper, Carmen and Eleazar - all of them gazed on each other with the incredulous eyes of first love, because for them it would always be their first love.
Now, it would be that way for me. La had changed me, and that was irrevocable for the rest of my existence.
I smiled. It was almost a relief to finally come to a conclusion, to have the change come over me, to know I hadn't gone insane - if you considered falling in love with a human sanity.
"Don't go," La whispered again.
"I won't," I whispered back. She seemed to settle after that, her sleep turned more peaceful, a slight smile settled onto her features.
So, I loved her then. Wow. Nothing had changed really, not for her anyway. Being near me still had to be her choice from start to finish - whatever that finish may be, and she may not choose me at all.
I wanted her to choose me, and I would do my best to make sure that happened.
Rule number one: Don't be a dick.
I could do that. Probably.
What else? I stalled. I had no idea how to make one person fall in love with another. Giving her the chance to get to know me was probably a good start. Being honest might help. I was in murky waters here because I'd never cared enough about a lover to try before.
Rule number one: Don't be a dick.
Rule number two: Be honest.
Rule number three: Don't kill her for fuck's sake.
Intentionally, I took a deep breath in through my mouth and nose letting the fire brutalize my throat. If I was going to chase her properly, I was going to need to be immune to this scent.
La said my name again and I stopped thinking. I just watched her sleep and breathed her scent until the sun rose, marveling at the newness of my existence, and just hoping that I didn't fuck it up.
By the time I got home, my siblings had already left in the VW. I ran upstairs, changed, and darted out the door as quickly as I could. Esme watched me rush about with worry plain on her features. To console her I gave her a quick kiss on the cheek then dashed out of the house. I'd have to explain everything to her later.
I arrived mere seconds after my siblings did but stayed hidden in the trees as they walked toward campus. I paced the same clearing I'd used the previous week until I heard La's Abarth rumble into the parking lot. Once she was on the correct row I snuck out of the tree cover to stand behind a large SUV.
Her eyes swept the parking lot, pausing thoughtfully on Edward's VW before she parked in her assigned place a few spaces down across the aisle.
I wondered if she'd fixed the strap that had snapped the day before or if she would need help carrying her books to class. A thrill ran through me as I realized I would be able to ask instead of just wonder.
She popped out of the Fiat and made her way to the hatch juggling a water bottle, a coffee mug, her phone, and her car key. She managed to swing the hatch open, but dropped the key and her phone as she did so. I moved silently up behind her and nabbed the key out of a deep puddle as she snatched her phone out of a shallower one.
I held the key out to her as she turned to face me, a smile already beginning at the corners of her mouth.
"How do you do that?" She asked by way of greeting.
The question was glaringly redundant, so I didn't offer an answer. Instead, I took her bag off her shoulder and discreetly inspected the strap. It was basically glued together with little bits of string sticking out at odd angles where she had tried, and failed, to sew it.
"Do what?" I asked.
"Appear out of thin air, obviously."
"It's not my fault you are exceptionally unobservant, La."
"Oh!" She exclaimed. "Are we on this again?" She made a sort of huffing noise that came out of her nose in a rush. I grinned at the sound.
"You're right," I allowed. "That's not fair." Especially considering she caught just about everything. It was impressive, really, how much she saw that others missed. I remembered my vow to be myself and to be honest from the night before.
"The truth is I don't know," I finished. Did that sound as lame to her as it did to me?
"I see," she said with a vaguely flippant air. "Are you planning on giving me any other truths?"
We were at Northeast 3 now. I leaned against the wall next to the door and handed her bag back.
"No," I told her. It wasn't that I didn't want to, I just wasn't really able to.
She did not like this answer. I remembered that I had promised her an explanation and then actively stomped on it. That was something I had to make up for, and in doing so, I wouldn't be making any more promises I couldn't keep.
"Hey wait!" I called as she turned on her heel to stalk off. She turned back to me and found that I'd moved just a touch closer. My head was bent down so I could peer more closely into her eyes. I wanted to read their every expression.
Her eyes seemed to drift out of focus for a second, and her heart was beating wildly. She seemed to lean in toward me just a little, lips parted.
"Will you join me for lunch today?" I wanted to touch her, smooth her hair behind her ear, or touch her cheek. She was so close I could see the blood pumping in her neck. Venom dripped into my mouth obtrusively. I swallowed it back as I waited for her to answer.
"…yeah…" she sort of mumbled out.
"Great!" I said before she could change her mind. "I'll see you later, then!"
I took off on her then, elated that she'd said yes. I would have done a jig, but it somehow didn't seem appropriate in a crowded walkway.
The extra time I had taken to wait on La then walk her to class had set me a bit behind schedule. I jogged up the steps of the electives building and banged through the doors that led from the stairwell to the hallway that contained my class.
Alice was waiting for me outside the door to her own classroom. She was taking some electives in clothing design, which seemed pretty silly to me. She could have taught that curriculum better than any professor, but I supposed it allowed her to work on projects while she had to be in school. She'd seen me coming of course, and was waiting to intercept me when I passed by.
"She'll be outside classroom 301 in northwest 2," Alice said without preamble. "Can I talk to her now?"
"No," I grinned at Alice's mutinous expression. "Just let me work this out organically, okay?"
"We are hardly organic creatures," Alice stated flatly.
"Don't speak so poorly of yourself, kid," I answered. "You can be anything you want to be."
I continued down the hall toward my classroom.
"Hey," Alice called. "Be careful, okay?"
"Are you more worried about her or me?"
"There isn't really a difference anymore."