I had woken before dawn to take the blood out from where I'd hidden it in the back of the refrigerator and pack it in a spare mini-cooler that Charlie sometimes brought fishing. It had fit snugly in my backpack together with a few essentials like my wallet. I had written a goodbye note for Jacob and dropped it in the mail, explaining nothing, wishing him the best and appreciating all the times he'd helped me. I had emailed Renee, telling her that I was leaving on a backpacking trip and wouldn't have access to my computer for a while; hopefully that would keep her from calling Charlie when she didn't hear from me. I had awkwardly hugged Charlie goodbye. And I had made the long drive and subsequent four-hour hike to my remote chosen location—all without crying once.
Could vampires cry? I didn't remember whether I'd ever asked.
The isolated section of forest where I stood now had nothing to recommend it. There were no trails. There was no destination. The nearest road was six miles away and full of potholes. There was no reason whatsoever for a human to be here.
There weren't even many animals. Perhaps I'd scared them off as I tromped through the sparse forest. Or perhaps they just didn't feel like poking their heads out into this drizzle. I could sympathize: I wasn't too happy to be out in the rain, either. I pushed my damp hair back from my face and surveyed my surroundings. A clump of pine trees stood to my left, towering over a bed of soft earth and pine needles. It was as good a place as any to sit down. Appropriate, even, since I'd soon be sticking myself with a different kind of needle.
I sat down numbly. I hated needles.
I breathed in the cool forest air and took the chance to reflect. Somehow, I had spent the last nine hours of my human life moving robotically forward, and I needed to wrestle with the consequences of what I was about to do. No, it was more like the last six months of my human life. How could I have wasted my time with Charlie like that? Though I'd said my goodbyes as well as I could today, I'd lost months of time together, and it weighed on me. We'd never been the types for heart-to-heart conversations, but I'd quietly enjoyed his company, before I'd sunk so far into the depths of misery that I'd lost the ability to enjoy anything. I would never get that time back, and he would always remember me as a shadow of myself. Would he think I'd committed suicide? Would he blame Jacob, for abandoning me when I was already so fragile that a single break would shatter me? Would Jacob blame himself?
The thought tore at me. I hated to think of the people I loved, hurting. It was for them, after all, that I'd kept myself going for all these months. But they would lose me one way or another if I didn't stop Victoria—and for that, I had to be strong.
And then, when it was over, I'd find a way to write them. I'd tell them that I was alive and had found a new life. For now, I would just concentrate on surviving.
I steeled myself for what I was about to do. Even with the painkillers, I expected the transformation to be unpleasant. But if I had one talent in life, it was enduring. I had suffered through more injuries in eighteen years than most people experienced in a lifetime. And I had survived pain far worse than the physical kind. I could endure this too.
My shaking hands filled the syringe with a strong dose of morphine. It was only a fraction of what I had packed–I knew that painkillers would wear off in a matter of hours, so I hoped I'd be capable of injecting more later. I pinched the skin together over my left quadricep and brought the point of the syringe down. But I couldn't muster up the strength to pierce my leg. Ugh. Needles.
I took several deep breaths. I was being ridiculous. In the past three days I had stared down a vampire, stolen from a hospital, and said goodbye to everyone I knew. Was breaking my skin really going to be the thing that stopped me?
With a rush of adrenaline, I stabbed myself in the thigh, wincing as I pushed the plunger down. And then, before I could lose my resolve, I refilled it with venom and stabbed my other thigh.
As I pulled the needle out for the second time, I winced in pain. Injections were never pleasant, but usually the discomfort stopped once the needle was out. This time, the puncture site throbbed. I shook my leg out, trying to clear the feeling, but it intensified. The feeling grew gradually sharper until it was burning a hole in my leg. I lay back, trying to relax my muscles, but my thigh tensed up in a futile effort to fight the pain.
The sensation was horribly familiar: I had felt the same growing flames when James' venom began to spread through me last spring. It had reached the point where it hurt far worse than my broken leg full of glass, and that was saying something. This time, he wasn't here to suck the pain out. Even if I wanted to turn back, I couldn't.
I felt a brief absurd satisfaction. I had committed. My future self could not bow out in a moment of weakness. Let the agony come for me; it would not stop me now!
It came.
Within thirty seconds, I was screaming. My only hope was that some adventurous hiker might come across me and put me out of my misery. I resented my past self for every precaution I'd taken against that. How could I have thought that anything was worth this pain?
Within five minutes, the morphine had kicked in. It wasn't dulling the pain—whatever the venom did to my body, it didn't seem to be allowing the opioid to bind to my pain receptors—but I could tell that the huge dose was taking effect because my limbs grew heavy, and I found myself unable to move. Normally, being frozen in place would be horribly uncomfortable: I needed to fidget every so often to relieve itches and prevent my limbs from falling asleep. But all of that paled in comparison to the fire rampaging through my body. No, the worst part was that I could no longer scream. And if I couldn't make a sound, how could anyone find me to kill me?
Within half an hour, I could barely remember any time in my life when I hadn't been in pain. Nothing mattered next to this. There was only existence, and agony, and my mind trapped inside my still body. My only reference point for time passing was the patter of raindrops falling onto a leaf nearby. The drops seemed unusually far apart; the rain had been steady while I hiked, but now I waited interminably for each bead of water to fall. The space between two droplets contained a lifetime of agony. Why couldn't time have sped up instead of slowing down?
I counted raindrops, desperate to occupy my mind. Just over thirty thousand had fallen when the morphine wore off. As soon as I regained use of my voice box, I abandoned my count and resumed screaming.
No one came.
The screaming seemed to make the fire in my throat worse, so I decided to pace myself. If anyone were in range to hear me, then they would probably still hear me a minute later. I estimated the raindrops were falling twice a second. Once every hundred drops, I compromised with my throat, I would scream.
I realized that my facility for rational thought and self-control must be returning. I could feel my brain expanding in other ways, too. I could hear more distant rain falling now, and it created a soothing backdrop to my nearby beat. At another time, I might have been proud of my improved sensorium. Right now I could only regret the increased capacity for pain.
My nails dug into my palms as the fire impossibly intensified. It was like I had twice as many nerve endings as before. I could feel that the texture of my skin had changed, too: it was harder and colder. I was becoming more durable. A passing hiker would no longer be able to slit my throat. I stopped bothering to scream.
An unknown amount of time later, I realized my heart was picking up speed, racing faster in protest of its coming demise. The burning in my extremities diminished slightly as the venom focused its fire on the defiant organ. Eventually the fire receded entirely from my fingers and toes, but the pain in my chest was so all-encompassing that I could not be grateful.
The final moments of my transformation were indescribably painful. My feet and hands escaped the torture, then my calves and forearms, then finally my arms and legs and head as the venom withdrew into my torso. It assaulted my heart with an intensity that would not have been possible for a human to feel. The raindrops seemed to tick by even slower than before, drawing out my last bit of agony into an eternity. But eventually, the end did come: the fire won out over my desperately racing heart, and it stopped beating. Having consumed their own fuel, the flames died too.
I lay there for a few raindrops, appreciating every feeling that wasn't pain. I relished the ground underneath me, feeling each individual bump where a pebble lay buried under the earth, and observing each tiny prick of a needle failing to pierce my rock-hard flesh. I savored the gentle breeze playing over my wet skin. Experimentally, I drew in a breath, and a hundred rich flavors rushed in. In that small draft of air I could taste the different components of the wet earth, the crisp aroma of pine needles, and the scents of the small animals that lived nearby. But one sharp and sweet smell dominated the rest; I didn't know what it was, but it sent a jolt of adrenaline to my brain, telling me that there was a predator nearby.
My body reacted on instinct. A tenth of a second after I inhaled, I had pulled myself up into a defensive crouch, searching for the source of the dangerous scent. My eyes met those of another vampire, leaning up against an oak tree twenty feet away.
"Bella," Alice beamed at me, "I'm so thrilled you decided to join us!"
2024-09-02 A/N: A clever reviewer asked, wouldn't Alice have seen Laurent's decision to kill Bella, even if she talked him out of it later? And isn't Bella's decision to transform already basically made long before she admits it? These are great questions. My answer is: remember that werewolves are blind spots for Alice. With a pack of them nearby in the forest, Alice isn't able to see anything that happens in the meadow. And after that, Bella's future is tangled up with her attempts to contact Jacob, who struggles with himself over whether to pick up the phone and would likely be able to talk her out of the transformation if he did.
So basically, it's thanks to Jacob's offscreen wolfiness that Alice doesn't see anything until this chapter. (This is probably also Stephenie Meyer's explanation for why canon-Alice never saw Bella getting threatened by Laurent, falling off a motorcycle, etc. but does see her on her solo cliff diving expedition.) Of course, Bella doesn't know about the wolves, but she doesn't really expect Alice to be watching her; she's just saying whatever will convince Laurent. And Laurent doesn't know much about how Alice's visions work.
Thank you to everyone who reviews! I love hearing your ideas and insights.