The days following the burning had been a whirlwind of terror, shock, revulsion, disbelief, anger, depression, fury, and every other sort of negative emotion, but turned up to overdrive. Bella knew she had never felt emotions so violently before. Overwhelming all others, however, was the immense grief she felt for her mother.
She was still coming to terms with the rest.
Vampire.
The word sat heavy in her thoughts. She wanted to reject it, laugh at it, anything other than accept it. But it was harder to do when her unbearable thirst turned her into a blood-drinking monster. It was harder to deny what she had become when her front was covered in fresh blood, the body of her latest victim at her feet, drained and lifeless.
It turned out it had been an unhappy accident that Renee and Bella had stumbled into the hunting grounds of the Bayou coven. The gas station attendant had been their only intended target, but the two women's blood had smelled so lush, they could not have been ignored. When this part of the tale had been told to her, she had lunged into another attack with a feral growl, and had been subdued once again.
Bloodlust, an uncontrollable temper, and feelings a thousand times as acute as when she had been a human.
A month passed in a perfectly clear haze. Blood and fighting and anger and thwarted runaway attempts and staggering sadness. The longest month of her life, if she was even alive anymore.
After that month, she regained a small sense of herself. She was told more stories, both unbelievable yet undeniable.
The men had names. The handsome one was Jamie, leader of the coven, even though he looked to be no older than twenty. The younger boy was Xavi, second-in-command. Xavi seemed to dislike her immensely, but Jamie paid her more attention than she cared for.
There was a third member. Leanne. Pale blonde, stoic, and with the appearance of a thirty-something year old. Because none of them aged anymore, appearances couldn't be trusted. Bella had been more focused on the crisscrossing of scars across the woman's skin, a clear warning sign that told Bella one thing: flee.
But Leanne had looked bored and didn't even need help in subduing Bella's aggressive response to her scars. She took only a cursory interest in Bella, but did her part in controlling their "newborn", as they called her. Because she needed controlling, if she wasn't going to expose them by attacking the streets or sparkling in the sunshine.
"Let me know when she's ready," Leanne had said.
Ready for what? Bella had wondered anxiously.
Then came the stories of war. Armies of newborns. Flammable venom and hunting grounds. Territorial vampires. Defectors facing horrific punishment. New vampires with expiration dates they were unaware of. An eternity of night and war and blood.
An eternity of hell.
Because apparently something was special about her. Something that had saved her in that gas station parking lot. Something that removed her expiration date.
Shield.
"The most remarkable find since Xavi in 1848," Jamie had explained.
Bella wished she were unremarkable. She wished she had perished that night with her mother.
Something else had helped save her that night, as well. Something that had kept Xavi from draining her in the small convenience mart.
Jamie told her about someone named Anne, someone long deceased. Someone who had dark hair and fair skin and a heart-shaped face. Someone Jamie had loved, she assumed, from the way he spoke. Someone he had been intimate with, she concluded from the way he looked at her and touched her.
The first time he had taken her into his room in the small cabin, she had bitten him and tried to rip his arm off. He had bitten her back.
It had startled her enough that he used the half second of her hesitation to grab both of her wrists and whisper, "Bloodlust and grief are not the only things you feel more strongly now."
And, against her better instincts, she had given in to the promise of feeling something, anything, other than bloodlust and grief.
And it had worked, somewhat. Not completely, but enough that she didn't fight him. Bella had even initiated once. She still didn't know her own strength, even in times of intimacy, but the violence seemed to make Jamie enjoy it more. It was twisted and fucked up that she was willing to sleep with the monster that had killed her mother and brought her to this non-existence.
But fear and some other unexplainable instinct kept her tethered to the three vampires. One who openly disliked her, one that ignored her when possible, and one who lusted after her because she resembled his dead mate. And they occasionally bit each other and tried to rip each other's throats out. But she was promised that deserting them and running into an opposing coven meant certain torture and death.
So Bella stayed. And hunted. And mourned.
She stayed, because they promised it could get worse.
And she didn't even want to imagine what could be worse.