Disclaimer: This story is a fanfiction inspired by two of the great works of the brilliant Stephenie Meyer. All characters from the novels The Host or Twilight belong to their author and she has full rights over them. The rest is my own invention.
Translation's Note: This fanfiction has been translated from Spanish with the help of Google's tool. If you want to read more chapters, click on the original fic in Spanish and use the English translation function of the web browser.
Cultural Disclaimer: This story borrows from the legends of the Native American Quileute (in a different way than in Stephenie Meyer's work, I have delved deeper into other aspects of their history and mythology) and the Ojibwa (who live in both Canada and the United States). They serve only as a narrative reference within this fiction and as a plot twist. Therefore I must emphasize that their faithfulness is clearly at odds with the cultural reality of their beliefs. If you want to know more about the rich and fascinating past of the First Nations, do your own research.
Clarifying (and priority!) note from the Author: This story is not technically a crossover between the Twilight and The Host fandoms (which is why I have decided to publish it strictly as a fanfic of the first), but rather a reimagining of Bella Swan's story, which begins with her self-imposed exile in Forks, WITHIN the "Meyerverse" of the aliens from The Host .
That is, instead of pale vampires thirsting for their blood, packs of horny, shirtless werewolves and Volturi with a lust for power and more power, there are peaceful souls, seekers on the lookout for threats, secret government agencies, sightings of alien spacecraft, conspiracy theorists and an alien invasion that is silently advancing, changing every inhabitant of the planet, until it reaches that little corner of watery Washington state we've read so much about.
Twilight 's main cast of characters (the Cullen family of vegetarian vampires, the nomad coven and other assorted bloodsuckers) cannot exist as such within the plot, since its members belonged to very different periods in their respective lives, but their contemporary reincarnations will be introduced into the story with another very disturbing key role.
Likewise, the Stryder family (Melanie, Jamie, Sharon, Jeb, Maggie and Trevor), Jared Howe, the O'Shea siblings and the rest of the inhabitants of the Picacho Peak shelter will not appear in this story, as all the events described in The Host will take place later. To give you an idea of the time frame, the entire Twilight saga covers, according to the official illustrated guide, from January 17, 2005, to December 31, 2006; While The Host has no chronology and I placed it ad hoc between August 18, 2012 and November 18, 2013. Initially only two characters, who were introduced in the epilogue (Continued), will appear: the soul who going native, Burns Living Flowers and the (future) leader of one of the rebel cells of humans, Abigail "Gail" Rouse.
Many of the characters who appeared as mere drivers of the plot or background actors (such as Billy Black, the students and teachers of Forks High School and the other residents of La Push and Forks) will have a more involved role in the story because the argumentative component that always kept them in the background has been excluded.
Most of the events and locations described in the Twilight book will be reflected in an analogous way in Aurora, others will be completely altered or parodied, a few will be necessarily eliminated, and new ones simply have no correlation at all because they never had a chance to exist, due to Stephenie Meyer's use of so many ellipses to cover arbitrary periods of time.
Several scenes and conversations will be patched together within the story for reasons that will be obvious to the reader, but which I prefer to clarify from the beginning in this note: the dynamic between the characters of Bella and Gail is much closer to psychological terror, the amateur police thriller and the student sitcom , than the romantic, tragic and supernatural drama that ensues between Bella and Edward.
The titles of all chapters will follow the same archetype as in the novel (in English) The Host , that is, they will be made up of words in the past participle.
Second explanatory note (which you can ignore) from the Author: Unlike many die-hard Stephenie Meyer fans (I have read everything and bought almost all the books in physical format, including "The Second Life of Bree Tanner" and the long-awaited "Midnight Sun", as well as the "The Chemistry" novella, which I loved. And I will definitely sign up for anything else she writes in the near or distant future that is published in Spanish) I started off just the opposite way from the rest:
I first saw the movie "The Host" in 2013 due to a mistake in the title of another Korean film and was hooked by the brilliant actress Saoirse Ronan, who I had already seen in "Hanna" and "City of Ember". Then I read the novel "The Host" and was fascinated by both the romantic quadrilateral and the whole science fiction framework (more modest and simple, but strangely coherent and innovative) and the shared minds. Then I read the entire Twilight saga out of curiosity, despite many people telling me it was crap, but I was not disappointed and it really took the Meyer bug out of me. However, it wasn't until more than a decade later (November 2024) that I saw the films because everyone said they were awful (I only agree with that opinion about the first one, which was embarrassing, not the rest in which they made a progressively more successful adaptation, up to a worthy final climax... I'm not going to give any spoilers!), so the mental image I've always had of the characters in the novels was not contaminated by the acting of some of the actors.
In this story I want to give a twist to the character of Bella Swan (who has often been described as a "mediocre damsel in distress") in a very different world: Where human beings, like her, are the most dangerous creatures that exist.
Synopsis
When Bella moves to Forks, a small town in Washington State where it never stops raining, she thinks it's the most boring thing that could ever happen to her. But her life turns upside down when she begins to unravel a dark mystery behind a series of strange events that seem to revolve around a young girl named Gail.
Bleed
Stop bleeding said the knife
I would if I could said the cut.
Stop bleeding you make me messy with the blood.
I'm sorry said the cut.
Stop or I will sink in farther said the knife.
Don't said the cut.
The knife did not say it couldn't help it but
it sank in farther.
If only you didn't bleed said the knife I wouldn't
have to do this.
I know said the cut I bleed too easily I hate
that I can't help it I wish I were a knife like
you and didn't have to bleed.
Well meanwhile stop bleeding will you said the knife.
Yes you are a mess and sinking in deeper said the cut I
will have to stop.
Have you stopped by now said the knife.
I've almost stopped I think.
Why must you bleed in the first place said the knife.
For the same reason maybe that you must do what you
must do said the cut.
I can't stand bleeding said the knife and sank in farther.
I hate it too said the cut I know it isn't you it's
me you're lucky to be a knife you ought to be glad about that.
Too many cuts around said the knife they're
messy I don't know how they stand themselves.
They don't said the cut.
You're bleeding again.
No I've stopped said the cut see you are coming out now the
blood is drying it will rub off you'll be shiny again and clean.
If only cuts wouldn't bleed so much said the knife coming
out a little.
But then knives might become dull said the cut.
Aren't you still bleeding a little said the knife.
I hope not said the cut.
I feel you are just a little.
Maybe just a little but I can stop now.
I feel a little wetness still said the knife sinking in a
little but then coming out a little.
Just a little maybe just enough said the cut.
That's enough now stop now do you feel better now said the knife.
I feel I have to bleed to feel I think said the cut.
I don't I don't have to feel said the knife drying now
becoming shiny.
MAY SWENSON
PROLOGUE:
Unwanted
The human girl's name was Abigail Rouse, and like everything else in her life since she had arrived in the rainiest town in the United States, almost three years ago, it was a half-lie. A necessary lie that had provided her with security, but that worried her every hour, every day, every week, making her feel sometimes like an alien on what was still her own planet.
This irony often brought a disdainful smile that no one could decipher.
The various facets of her particular kaleidoscope of deceit and lies (her fake birth certificate with the wrong name, date, and age, her hacked Social Security number, her legal foster care papers from Burns, her criminal record sealed by a corrupt judge and duly removed from where she was supposed to have stayed, and even her application to enroll in high school, among many other minor details that had already been sorted out) could be summed up in a single sentence:
Abigail had settled in Forks to have a long life and a bright future ahead of her.
A phrase that was a lie from beginning to end.
At first, Burns' plan to hide her in this little town in to the boonies had seemed crazy. But she had to grudgingly admit that it had worked; she hadn't met another soul (except for him, of course) in Forks or the surrounding towns. It was as if the slow invasion that was taking place had passed right by this little corner of land located in the foothills of Olympic National Park.
Abigail had analyzed this inconsistency from a strategic point of view, or at least from the strategic point of view of souls. Forks was what could be considered a hard target compared to other cities that were being occupied. It was a very small community, barely 3,120 inhabitants according to the last census she had been able to get her hands on, and its entire population was much more concentrated and interconnected than usual. Anyone would immediately notice an anomalous behavior from their neighbors, relatives or friends, apart from the fact that gossip almost traveled at a speed that exceeded that of light.
She also assumed that it was not worth the risks of a large-scale infiltration, since Forks was not a key location. It was far from the confluence of major highways and interstate borders. The only attraction that could be attributed to it was as a tourist enclave for two opposing niches: naturalists who came to enjoy the rich diversity of animal and plant species, including a route for observing whale migration. And those who, on the contrary, came from all over Washington to the regulated reserves to rejoice in the big game during the high season. There were also a few who visited Forks to meet secretly in the discreet motels, but the gloomy climate rarely accompanied such moods.
Forks was, therefore, one of the most boring and dull towns in America.
Even for alien visitors Abigail mused, still lying on her bed, moments before sitting up with a yawn to face the new day at school.
Anyone glancing around his room wouldn't suspect anything at first glance. Sci-fi movie posters papered one corner, and a pile of novels were haphazardly crammed into a huge wooden cabinet (a gift from Burns) that took up the entire northern wall and was thoughtfully nailed down to keep it from toppling over. Various papers and hand-drawn sketches surrounded a PowerBook laptop on the desk. If anyone lingered over them, they looked like simple notes and ideas for an adventure novel or a script to send to George Lucas or Steven Spielberg. A household telescope, not too fancy but advanced enough to be considered functional, was pointed at the stars from the window nearest the bed, keeping a passing eye on the skies of Forks and anything that might fly overhead.
To make her cover even more confusing and realistic, there were a multitude of puzzles, half-finished models and typical tourist items (such as buttons, pennants and postcards), which she and Burns bought on their trips to dispel doubts about their intentions, arranged randomly as if it were a typical American teenager's bedroom.
Only a much more thorough inspection would reveal in a corner, beneath the loose carpet and several boxes stacked without any apparent purpose, a false bottom secured with half a dozen Allen screws that concealed a Barrett M82 rifle and enough Raufoss to turn a bulletproof armored car into Swiss cheese.
It was just for an emergency.
One of many plans she and Burns had drawn up as possible contingencies.
Although Abigail kept the weapon in good working order, oiling it every month and making sure it was properly assembled, she didn't like it. She only did it in case of emergencies. Burns had taught her how to hunt for survival in the woods with the aid of a rifle, but she wasn't as good at aiming or as well-practiced with long-range weapons as he was.
She preferred short distances.
If lies were an inherent part of her stay in Forks, the other side of the coin, the truths, also made her uneasy. Although she did not want to admit it, Abigail had become very accustomed to that boring town, its oppressive forests and its harmless and nosy (and completely human in their defects) inhabitants and even her immature and ridiculous high school classmates, after so much time living established...
I was going to miss him when she had to leave.
His short life had been, ever since she had run away from Canada at the age of nine, like a steam train going full speed, its boiler ready to burst and derailed if it took the wrong route. And now she felt that this stop for cool downing was only the prelude to a much longer and more winding journey.
Because Abigail Rouse kept a lot of secrets, and some of them were extremely dangerous. Others weren't so dangerous, like the special ingredient Burns used for his barbecue sauce (sesame seeds and mustard crushed in a mortar), but she kept them to herself anyway. She was willing to kill for most of her secrets, and had done so before, burying them six feet under so they could be laid to rest in anonymity and oblivion.
She had also been preparing himself thoroughly every day to confront his personal monsters that had been haunting him since his dark past.
But there was one secret she would die for, one so dangerous that neither she nor Burns ever hinted at it in conversation. For even the briefest suspicion would have been enough to have Forks bombed into a radioactive wasteland:
Abigail was able to distinguish alien souls from authentic human beings.
And vice versa.
She had done so since she was conscious and recognized the faces of her relatives and neighbors, but it was not until that fateful day, when social services took her away from her home, that she realized its true importance.
She couldn't explain it, but she sensed it.
Abigail didn't believe in any of that esoteric stuff about palm reading, auras, chakras, and reincarnation (even though she knew that, in some ironic way, souls did), but to her humans and souls were as easy to tell apart as apples and oranges are to everyone else. Long before she'd discovered those vertical marks on their necks or even seen the silvery glow of unmasked eyes for the first time, she could point them out without fear of being wrong. It was so instinctive and automatic that she could hardly describe it to Burns Living Flowers, her only confidant:
"It's a lot of little things at once, Burns," she said, trying to ease his bewilderment at what he had revealed to her. "The voice, for example. The voice of humans sounds to me like a drum, a percussion instrument, and that of souls like a saxophone, a wind instrument. But I also distinguish you by the way you express yourselves, by the way you use words and the subtext behind them. And by the way you move, by the way you look at others…"
"The way we move?" he repeated incredulously, trying to stand up straighter.
At that moment Abigail let out a discreet giggle, noticing his childish annoyance.
"Yes, you do it as if following a different rhythm... No" she corrected himself "as if you were listening to notes from different songs, we a polka and you a reggae."
"I've never danced reggae," he replied with a frown.
"You must have danced a bit, right?"
"The Macarena," Burns exclaimed, without a shred of shame, shrugging his shoulders.
"That one's no good, everyone's been dancing to it," Abigail commented with a half smile, rolling her eyes at the geeky alien who, by the work of Fate, the Universe, God, the Devil or whatever, had collided into her life.
Abigail Rouse, like anyone in her situation, tried for a long time to find a possible explanation for her strange condition. Something to blame. But it wasn't until she started communicating on the darknet forums with others who were aware of the soul invasion that she was able to come up with the outline of a theory:
The uncanny valley.
A psychological phenomenon, hackneyed and neglected in the annals of 20th century psychology, which came to the fore after the resounding failure of the box office of the film Final Fantasy. Anything that was too similar to a human being but did not seem so for a moment provoked an excessive reaction of rejection from the psyche. The term was applied to computer-generated images and ultra-realistic androids, but was also extended to anything that partially imitated the human, such as zombies, vampires, the replicants of Blade Runner, etc.
Abigail had come to the conclusion that most humans only saw the uncanny valley in souls for a few hundredths of a second before their minds subconsciously assimilated a very simple truth: They were not aggressive.
Since souls did not arouse the primary instinct of "Fight" or "Flight", they were rarely seen unmasked. And when they were, it was always attributed to other, harmless causes; their belonging to humanity and their innocence were never questioned.
They were like the inevitable falsely accused butler in mystery movies.
Few humans had collected any real evidence about the real aliens invading the planet. There were so many different stories, so many hoaxes, hallucinations, scams, cover-ups, abductions and fictions, that no one took their version seriously.
What's more, those who had often seen through the deception of souls had often become hopelessly deranged. They became paranoid and began to experience the uncanny valley aversion to real humans, because they could not properly distinguish them and their distrustful nature urged them to reject them. Most of the delirious stories Abigail had read about such experiences (she laughed whenever she read about grays and little green men) were nothing more than misguided apophenias and previous disorders that had found a way to escape from reality.
Abigail speculated that, due to some possible defect in her cerebral cortex, she did not suppress the discrepancy consciously, but she did pick up on the absolute lack of hostility, and her mind had developed healthily and in accordance with her particular way of seeing the world.
Which made her potentially the most dangerous person on planet Earth at that stage of the occupation. An independent piece, who did not follow the rules of the game and who could unbalance the game.
Although, on that cold January morning, the girl's priorities were more mundane:
"Smokin' you, Burns!" she muttered, tapping the maple syrup bottle insistently without releasing a single drop of its delicious contents onto the waffle.
Burns Living Flowers always forgot to put it upside down in a glass when it was low. She also didn't remember to put the toilet lid down after using it, or put fabric softener in the washing machine when doing laundry… She was fed up with her panties and bras being as rough as medium-grit sandpaper.
It's becoming a bad humanization she concluded grumpily, with the sleep still stuck to her eyes and a lack of glucose in her blood.
She felt… bad. No, more than bad… she felt bloated and irritable all over.
"Shit!" she said, glancing at number 18 on the calendar and doing his calculations.
If not today, then tomorrow at the latest she reasoned dryly that her period was coming.
It was not a good day for a Canadian to run out of maple syrup.
After showering and cleaning up in the bathroom, she dressed in the most comfortable clothes she could find in her wardrobe and tied her hair back with a rubber band. The house, Torchwood Manor, was completely quiet when she entered Burns' study. Not even the typical morning drizzle was hitting behind the windows. The silence was only broken by her steps on the wooden floor until she reached the soft white carpet.
Abigail groped around in the dark on the desk to leave him a post-it note, when she accidentally knocked over something that sounded like liquid and had to turn on the lamp to examine the mess. Burns's little dropper had rolled over, but luckily it hadn't spilled or broken when it fell onto the thick carpet of the bear that had almost eaten them beyond the Arctic Circle.
She raised his left eyebrow, which had a tiny scar that was barely visible, as she noticed the out-of-place detail. That small glass bottle looked like nothing more than a harmless isotonic serum to treat dry eyes, conjunctivitis or allergies (any excuse they could come up with in the event of an inspection) and in fact, in a normal human, it would have the same effect on the eyeball as any conventional physiological solution. But it also contained a simple active ingredient (so easy to make that it did not require great knowledge of chemistry and Abigail had often provided it to him) that had an astonishing effect on the outer membrane of souls:
It made them dull, without that sparkling glow that looked like a mirror ball from the 1970s mixed with a lava lamp. So no flashes could be seen through his eyes, due to the connection they made with the optic nerve, when they joined with their host body. The effect of this remedy was temporary, about three or four weeks at most, but Burns usually applied the drops every so often so as not to take unnecessary risks.
"One of these days he's going to lose his mind" she sighed, picking up the dropper from the floor, since it was usually in his room. Abigail had only seen his eyes shine once, on the shores of Lake Garry, at the spring equinox, and it had been a somewhat thorny experience for both of them. The doubts, shame and remorse that gnawed at him could not compare with the deep relief he felt when he realized that she did not look at him differently after he showed himself as he really was:
"Don't smile so much, Burns, you're still a six-foot-eight-inch-tall, red-haired, freckled geek who farts when eat canned beans, which is a bad thing" she replied jokingly, with the best smile she could muster at thirty degrees below zero.
Nowhere on the mahogany table could she find the items she needed to leave the shopping list, so Abigail began to rummage through the drawers, more out of laziness to return to her room, which was on the third floor, than for any other reason.
Until she came across a locked one.
It was the compartment where Burns kept his checkbook, but also his envelopes and quality stationery, as well as probably his top-secret stash of Post-it notes. But he rarely locked it because, being the kind of soul that he was, he was very trusting of Abigail.
Besides, it wasn't cash, they hid that much better.
She took the dried flowers out of the fine Chinese porcelain vase that was on the table closest to the window and searched the bottom with the lamp, where they kept the key she had never used before.
Empty.
All the thoughts that were flying around in her mind were erased in a flash: No post-it notes, no tampons, no maple syrup, no fabric softener, no going to school today to see...
There was only one question:
Since when does Burns keep things from me?!
And then another, even more urgent, shouted its way out:
AND HOW THE HELL COULD I HAVE DONE THAT?!
Abigail wasn't questioning his intention, she never would, but his procedure.
Like all other souls, Burns Living Flowers was very bad at lying. Terrible, actually. It didn't matter how many times they practiced his face playing poker (by this time she owed him something like three million dollars) or that he watched actors in movies and used self-taught dramatic acting techniques: He couldn't hold a candle to even a ten-year-old when it came to making up lies.
It was astonishing that a peaceful alien species that was not very good at subterfuge could remain undetected and survive for thousands of years under the influence of human civilization. Only the traqueurs, the armed wing of the invasion, so to speak, had learned to lie efficiently and to defend themselves against violence.
She crossed the studio and turned on all the lights until she reached the restoration workshop. She had no time for consideration or to move like a cat in the moonlight.
Next to the last piece Burns had been working on, she found several steel forks and tools, which she used to clean the lichen-covered stone, but which were the closest thing to lockpicks that could be found in the house.
"Let's see what you're hiding from me, you little ragworm," she exclaimed irritatedly when she returned.
She hadn't picked a lock for a long time, not since she'd moved to Forks, but this one was too simple, barely ornamental, and the pins bounced out of position one after another as the harder hook held the lateral tension.
The checkbook and the post-it notes danced before her eyes instantly, but she paid them no attention.
Her hands immediately felt the walls of the box and she noticed that the base had a different texture, although it was lacquered with the same paint, it was not elm wood but pine. A detail that she would never have been able to detect, if she had not spent hours and hours working with Burns.
With her fingertip she probed the bottom and noticed a ridge, beveled with a router.
"You're a few life terms away from being able to surpass me," she thought wryly before opening it. If Burns had not erred in his caution and left the drawer unlocked as usual, Abigail would never have bothered with such a concise examination.
There was only a thin cardboard folder of a nondescript beige color with several sheets inside that... The world fell apart as soon as she read them carefully.
A small black and white photograph focused her gaze for a long minute.
It was him, much heavier, with more beard and more years, but it was him.
It was like going back four years suddenly to that dark hole in Cordova.
With a blink she came back to the present and pursed her lips in disappointment.
Burns had hired a private detective from Portland to track him down. Abigail immediately regretted having given him the name after having extracted it (along with several entrails) from the other guy she managed to catch in the Alberta forest.
The redhead had made many rookie mistakes:
To begin with, the investigator was a retired police officer, perhaps he had been fired for corruption or he just thought he would earn more by playing Dick Tracy. He had not investigated him properly and had only done a very superficial search of his work history. Who knows if he was capable of leaking information to the police, selling that information to bounty hunters or informing on the criminal himself, in exchange for money.
"How the hell did you find it?" she muttered, searching through the notes.
Apparently Burns had come across him by chance and he had not recognized him, of course. The only time they had met eyes, the big redhead had been aiming at him from two hundred meters away through the scope of his rifle. It was his blessed goodness that had stopped him at that moment, but he had not forgotten his face.
It wasn't that she blamed him for letting him escape alive, they both had to bear the weight of their actions. But because of what they did, what they hid underground, no one else knew how deep and dark the pit of evil of that undesirable was.
He had run away far south, near Wichita Falls, fleeing the carnage like the low, miserable creature he had always been. But it wasn't long before he felt safe again and was back on track. He was apparently a person of interest (a euphemism for "suspect without evidence") in nine murder investigations of young women in two different states. From what Abigail could recall, of all the atrocities that had happened and should never have happened, his cases fit perfectly into his modus operandi:
Hitchhikers, beggars, prostitutes and/or lost and lonely teenagers.
Easy victims who were alienated from the society that should provide them with security.
There were surely many more that they hadn't even been able to investigate. It didn't matter, the fool, fearing the justice of civilization, had gone back north; whatever his intentions were, he had gotten too close to their territory (Abigail realized that she was barely an hour away by motorcycle!) and now she would have to face his more than savage and bloodthirsty thirst for revenge.
I would slowly skin him until he begged to die and then continue, more, more and more...
Her mind was almost about to fall back into the spiral she knew so well.
One question helped her focus on the person she was now:
Why did Burns keep this from me? she cocked his head, still not understanding.
Although he was a soul, a species that by its evolution was kind, friendly and merciful, he was also the most geeky soul in the universe: A being that had previously killed and enjoyed devouring the lives of other sentient beings in a primitive way. It had happened far away, in his previous world, his home planet full of fire, sulfur and other things that would give Stephen King nightmares. The Fire World, from which he had emigrated because he did not share the same vision of what it meant to inhabit a host, and he considered the way souls proceeded to be hypocritical.
No, Burns, of all people on this hunk of rock floating meaninglessly through the universe, would have understood. Even if it cost Abigail her life in her quest for vengeance, he knew there were some things worth dying for— or never living again.
She looked again with different eyes, at the names and photographs of the girls he had allegedly (let's not kid ourselves! He was clearly guilty!) raped and killed since he had been in his sights. She knew the way souls thought, even better than they did themselves, and above all she knew Burns Living Flowers. She knew immediately what he planned to do and clenched her jaw in fury when she realized that she was going to end up on her own, which should never have continued.
But Burns could not... no, he must not break his oath, once again.
It was a strictly human matter and Abigail, as a human being, would be the executor.
She took her cell phone out of his pocket and hesitated for a second before deciding to leave him a text:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
When were you going to tell me?
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
It was a simple message that could have many possible interpretations for any of the government agencies spying on them, but not for Burns. Communicating across multiple layers (in a very different way than when Abigail used Tor to access the network) had become a habit between the two of them.
It wasn't paranoia.
She thought better of it and sent another text, typing more furiously with his thumbs:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Buy maple syrup!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Let's see what Homeland Security could do with that! Did they will think it was some kind of code word? She opened the back cover of the phone and quickly removed its battery before Burns could think to answer. She was in such a bad mood now that she was going to bite him.
She left the desk drawer open and shoved the folder into her backpack before returning the tools to the workshop. Her mind was so clouded and the rage that overwhelmed her was so overwhelming that she almost walked past the old sundial without noticing the progress of its restoration, but her eyes read the inscription faster than her conscious mind would have chosen to ignore.
Ultima necat. The last one, kill, translated from Vulgar Latin.
She stopped dead in his tracks and stared at the two words Burns had managed to bring to light from that piece of marble covered by hundreds of years of grime and pollution.
That clock had no meaning whatsoever in Forks, where nothing seemed to cast a shadow for long, but the owner was a Silicon Valley billionaire who had paid a fortune on the black market and couldn't take it to a restorer listed in the yellow pages before placing it as an ornament in the garden of his sunny mansion.
If that piece, more than twenty centuries old, had not weighed almost a ton, Abigail would probably have taken her anger out by smashing it to pieces. She did not care in the least that this piece of rock had witnessed the fall of the Roman Empire, the Muslim conquest and the Christian reconquest, the Napoleonic battles or even been almost destroyed by the bombs of a civil war.
Although those words, a sort of epitaph, managed to stir something very dark from the depths of his soul. The last one... what last? The last day? Her last act of vengeance? The last bullet, which she always left in the chamber to avoid capture?
What was that expression the Yankees used? She wondered as she felt an ominous chill. It seemed as if someone had walked over his grave. But who?
The fog she encountered as she left Torchwood Manor tempered his hostility like a bucket of cold water would a piece of red-hot steel. For once she was grateful for the uncomfortable feeling of drowning in the excessive humidity that permeated the forest and headed to the garage to get his motorcycle without stamping furiously on the cobbled ground.
After putting on her helmet and heading out onto the road, she took one last look at the turnoff to the north, heading toward Port Angeles. She clicked her tongue, realizing that starting the hunt today wasn't an option, and headed south toward Forks and her high school.
She arrived too early, or at least much earlier than the students usually arrived, but was surprised to notice that there was an unknown vehicle parked next to the main office, where the bus normally parked.
Don't bullshit me! Her eyes widened as she recognized that the faded red pickup was a genuine Chevy 3100, a beauty that had to be a whopping fifty years old. It was the kind of car that would delight the soul, durable and easy to use, without the need for over-the-top performance. As far as Abigail was concerned, as long as it was maintained, it could easily go another fifty years. Few things made today could outlast the human lifespan.
Abigail pulled up alongside to examine it more closely and marvel at its bygone elegance. The only real fault she could find with it was that the hulk of steel must have been a gas guzzler. Plus, it looked very, very beat up. Like it had just come from the set of one of the Mad Max movies and had taken the brunt of the scenes.
"Where have you been hiding all this time, my precious?" she exclaimed in wonder, gently feeling the sinuous curves of the hood and fenders. It made no sense, she knew the vehicles of the faculty and all the students...
Then she remembered why today was a day she couldn't skip school:
Forks High School had a new addition.
Isabella Swan, "Bella" as her father, the local police chief, called her.
She had been hearing that name all last week, as she scanned the station's news feed: No serious crimes, just a few neighbors fighting with each other and throwing trash where they shouldn't.
Boring to the bone.
But the new student had caught Abigail's attention ever since she heard the first rumors and whispers in the girls' bathroom. All her alarms went off when she heard the rambling story of how she had stopped coming to Forks due to an unknown issue regarding her custody (Chief Swan, "Charlie" as he insisted Abigail call him, never spoke of his ex-wife and everything that was said about her was just baseless rumors) and how, unexpectedly and without explanation, the wayward daughter had decided to return to the land where she had been born and which, apparently, she detested with all her being.
That was abnormal conduct.
The kind of strange behavior that was a possible sign of alien infiltration.
She had a stomach cramp and Abigail knew that the red waterfall would soon overflow that very day. She rushed to the nearest bathroom, after putting the chain on the bike (leaving it parked in front of the office), to put on a pad before the trigonometry class began.
"How was the 3-days weekend, Ontario?" Mike Newton greeted her with a smile as he sat down next to her.
"Not as long as I would have liked, California," Abigail snorted, but gave a half smile. They were always calling each other by their hometowns when they greeted each other every morning, as if it were a reminder of the place they had left behind.
"You still owe me a date for standing us up on Friday, Rouse," he muttered, apparently displeased. "We waited for you for a whole hour at Sunset Lanes."
Abigail was in no mood for his persistent flirting. After nearly three years the boy should have gotten the message that she wasn't his type. But some people were persistent beyond exhaustion or prudence.
"I had something to do out of town," Abigail said, not going into details. Their date had actually been out of the country, in British Columbia, albeit a short ride on the MV Coho ferry. She couldn't even begin to explain to Mike why she would rather spend three days building snowmen than bowling or going back to Forks. It was too personal, too private, too painful.
"Without you we got beaten up!"
"I'm not that good either," the girl argued. She was much better at darts, anything that involved making a conventional parabolic shot, throwing darts, throwing knives or hitting a target with a shuriken. But bowling was difficult for her, she put too much effort into it and complicated carom shots were not her strong point.
"Well, we were playing against some kids from Hoquiam who came to town," Mike commented, getting her to calm down and pay more attention.
Their eyes met for a moment and Abigail noticed that the Californian was examining her with a calculating expression, as if he had just shocked a guinea pig in a maze and was waiting to see how it would react to the experiment.
Am I that evident? The Canadian girl wondered unexpectedly. It was obvious that Mike had noticed some of her repeated habits, she always listened more when talking about people from outside Forks. He might have thought it was because she was bored by the townspeople, when in reality she was looking for souls.
"I'm sorry I missed it," she added diplomatically, putting on a poker face. The math teacher had just entered the classroom and she thought he would cut the mood short:
"Have you seen the new girl yet? Isabella Swan?" he whispered unexpectedly, causing Abigail to jump in her seat.
"No, not yet," she replied, seeing him smile slyly out of the corner of her eye.
It was almost like he was reading her mind.
Abigail had been distracted throughout Varner's hour of chatter, coming up with plans and possible ways to approach her. She had to verify for herself that the spoiled Bella Swan was really the human daughter who had returned. She said spoiled, not because she was prejudging her in a bad way, but because the rest of Forks wouldn't be able to judge her properly. She hadn't been in town for so long (since before her teens) that any discordant behavior, any lapsus in her memory, would be immediately excused. She would be welcomed back.
But she didn't have to push his luck when, as the bell rang and she left class, she saw Eric Yorkie, along with half a dozen other boys, following like lambs the figure of a stranger who was wearing the widest and most hideous anorak she had ever seen.
The simplest way to verify her identity would have been to glance at the back of her neck, though a bit of body makeup, long hair (Burns often joked about growing it into a mullet) or a high dress collar would have been enough to get around that. With most guys it was a piece of cake, but Bella Swan was more than shielded at the moment. There were too many eyes and ears around for that kind of approach.
If you can't beat them, join them, Abigail thought, sneaking up behind the group to eavesdrop on the new student's voice:
"So," Eric said, putting on a brave face, "this is a lot different than Phoenix , huh?"
The figure seemed to shrink a few inches before answering.
"Very" she exclaimed with a note of poorly concealed tension.
"It doesn't rain much there, does it?" he continued, not knowing how to talk her.
"Three or four times a year," the figure murmured, shrinking with each word, in the exact tone a museum guide would have used to introduce one of the rooms.
Was she really from Phoenix or… a galaxy far, far away? She didn't seem comfortable talking about where she'd been raised, but it could be the typical depressive phase after coming to Forks. The way she moved and her tone weren't entirely conclusive, but Abigail didn't sense that she was a soul. She just seemed like a girl with social phobia, who was being overwhelmed by a lot of strangers at once.
"Wow, what must that be like?" Eric said, emboldened by having gotten a one-word answer out of him.
"Sunny" she explained, unexpectedly much more cheerful. Abigail could almost catch a glimpse of her face.
"You don't look very tan," Eric said, his unexpected opinion, a huge mistake.
You've screwed up big time, Yorkie! that had sounded like an insult.
"My mother is part albino," she interrupted, letting her see his gaze as she turned, with a neutral tone that did not hide her mordacity at all.
She had thrown a championship-worthy jug of water on him.
Abigail felt a little pity for his classmate in Chemistry before she left the group. But Eric deserved it for his lack of tact. At least that caustic and sour cut had allowed her to clear up her doubts about Bella Swan.
Their verdict is that she was human... Or at least not a soul.
There was only one person in the whole school that had taken her a while to notice: Angela Weber, who had such a kind, sincere and pleasant way of being that she radiated emotions very similar to those of the souls at all times. Following the example of the mental fruit salad above, Angela was for Abigail an apple that rolled like an orange. While Burns was an orange that almost smelled like an apple... Hhmmmm!
Abigail was getting ravenous after her unsuccessful breakfast.
She would have to make sure that Bella Swan was human at the end of classes, when she had to return the attendance slip with the teachers' signatures to Mrs. Cope's office.
"The new girl has left you with minus ten hit points!" Abigail said to Eric as soon as he sat down next to her. "Do you need to start making Saving Throws?"
Several Dungeons and Dragons geeks laughed at the Canadian's girl comment. They had all seen the level 15 Elf Paladin's blunder first-hand, but none of them had yet dared to speak to Bella Swan, so the laughter was respectful.
"It wasn't an instant kill," he objected, annoyed, "it just caught me flat footed."
The rest of the classes followed without further delay, it was still the beginning of the semester and the ravages of last Christmas were taking their toll on the students' short attention spans. But the whispers about Bella Swan grew exponentially, and by the time the bell rang for fourth period Abigail had already overheard Lauren and several of her friends in the girls' bathroom making bets about how long she would last in Forks before she ran away like her mother.
Gymnastics was her favorite subject, and she was more than good at the rest, but it was the only one in which she didn't feel held back and could give her all. In biology, chemistry, and so on, she had to deliberately make mistakes on exams to avoid getting an exceptional grade that would have catapulted her to the top of the honor roll.
She must not draw too much attention to himself if she wanted to survive long enough.
She teamed up, as usual, with Lee, Samantha, Ben and Angela to play volleyball. Not that the pairs were exactly a bunch of slackers, but as soon as Coach Clapp walked away, they stopped taking the game seriously, and the ball was passed around halfheartedly from hand to hand, just to procrastinate while they chatted.
"What do you think of the new girl?" Wells commented, as she threw the ball into the opposite field with a gentle curve where Lauren caught it without problems.
"Isabella Swan?" Weber asked timidly. She wasn't usually one to get involved in gossip, but it was practically impossible to avoid the tsunami of gossip that day.
"She prefers to be called Bella," Cheney said, his eyes fixed on Angela's uniform for a split second longer than was appropriate, before adding, his face bright red. "Or at least that's what Austin heard."
They should stop fooling around and go out together once and for all was so obvious what was floating in the air. Abigail was not distracted for a single second by the possible misunderstandings between the two of them and mercilessly blocked Ashley Dowling's crude attempt at a dunk.
"She's very quiet. Nice, but quiet," Stephens said as he picked up the ball for the throw-in.
"And quite pale, not like the others," Mallory quipped from behind the net.
Everyone on the dance floor fell silent at the unexpected, abrupt comment, not knowing what was going to happen. No one at school usually mentioned Abigail's Ojibwa ancestry and the color of her skin. In that respect, Forks was a true balm of tranquility.
The only exception was, of course, Lauren Mallory.
Abigail didn't know if she was trying to force a confrontation with all her insults that she always blatantly slipped into conversations or what, but she genuinely smiled at the fact that some things never changed and the game continued without further ado. To the human girl, the conceited, spoiled, sharp-tongued blonde was like the songbird in the coal mines looking for firedamp. The day she heard a single kind word come out of her mouth, she would know that it would be the beginning of the Apocalypse.
By lunchtime she thought the day had given her a break. Her premenstrual cramps were no longer bothering her, but perhaps it was because of all the oxytocin she had secreted from the game. Her hypothetical university dream had been to study neurobiology; she often read medical articles in the specialist journals on the subject that Burns bought her to pass the time, but she was well aware that before she enrolled she would disappear from the face of the Earth. Although that morning she only had a book that she had already read several times as a companion. If she had brought a copy of The Lancet to school she would have attracted a lot of attention.
Although his body was asking for a binge of Sno balls, to compensate for the calories she had expended, she filled her tray with several very mild tacos and an apple (there were no oranges).
She shrugged her shoulders as if concentrating on the pages of the book, but ignored little Coraline dreaming of commercials and talking to cats, instead looking around at how life went on. She loves watching in rapture all those humans who didn't know how close they were to catastrophe and who continued with their priceless routine and boredom.
They have no idea how much they are left in ignorance, she thought wistfully.
Bella Swan walked through the entrance of the café surrounded by another horde of bodyguards, joined by Lauren and her friends. Now that Abigail could see her without the anorak, she realized that she looked exactly like the photos she had seen in Chief Swan's house, the times she had broken into it. The same pale and phlegmatic complexion like her father (surely capable of blushing like a baboon's behind) in the shape of a heart, with a very slight widow's peak, the same wide eyes that seemed to remind one of Munch's painting, due to the expression between scared and resigned that she always wore in the images. They were an iris color so similar to melted chocolate that it whet Abigail's appetite.
But she didn't care what her outward appearance was like.
Unlike Lauren, she didn't care about the details. Anyone who had ever skinned a rabbit with their bare hands would realize that beneath the skin, it was just the same thing, over and over again.
She studied her for a few seconds, how she handled introductions to the other girls, and came to the same conclusion as Lee Stephens, she was just very shy, just a very shy human, looking around intently like a meerkat that had just poked its head out of its burrow and was searching the skies for the silhouette of a bird of prey...
She sighed.
She could cross Isabella Swan off her long list of worries.
Out of the corner of her eyes she continued her little hobby, occasionally reading the lips of some of the conversations. It was difficult, because in English she often got the words confused and it was not as easy as in her native language. Suddenly she read Whitney McCoy saying that she was going to see the Elektra movie in Port Angeles alone that Friday, since none of her friends wanted to go with her, and her pulse quickened.
It wasn't safe!
Not with that bastard still roaming your streets!
She had to find a way to make sure she wasn't alone. Abigail scanned her surroundings discreetly, evaluating the possibilities. Mike Newton was always reliable, even when he was overwhelmed by teenage hormones, he was too shy and confused to express himself. It was quite possible that he had already seen the movie, but he would never say 'no' to a date. The best thing about Newton was that she could probably convince him to sign up more people for the plan without having to give too many explanations, plus she could get a few more Marvel geeks on board.
She smiled a little more calmly at the arrangement she could improvise and took one last bite of her apple.
Still, nothing was solved.
Sooner or later she had to deal with...
Suddenly Abigail's ears burned and she looked over at Lauren's table, Jessica Stanley was talking shit about Burns Living Flowers:
"He must be in his late twenties or early thirties, he is single and lives alone in a huge house on the outskirts of the city, with no neighbors or witnesses to what they do."
The whole town was still standing in awe of the absurd imaginary idea that she and Burns were having an affair. No one could understand that the bond that tied them to each other was of a nature that had never existed on the planet.
He's not even my type! Abigail mused, biting her lip. Looking at him objectively, he was quite a catch, and she felt a twisted maternal pride at how he was progressing in his humanization. And she was pleased to see that his Spanish teacher, Señorita Goff, was head over heels for him every time they met for academic counseling sessions.
"Maybe she likes older, interesting men," Lauren said after a giggle of hers that didn't bode well. "The gym teacher, for example, keeps praising her in class."
Jennifer responded with something that Abigail couldn't catch and only read the end:
"Clapp looks like an orc from Lord of the Rings!"
They continued with their absurd and obscene nonsense about the Canadian, while she imagined all kinds of tortures for Lauren: Skinning her, in the literal sense of the word, would have been a bit exaggerated. And so would ripping out her hair like the Apaches. But shaving off that blonde hair and leaving her bald as a light bulb was within the realm of possibility.
"Although Sigourney Weaver looked good with a shaved head in Alien 3" she briefly considered that Lauren had such symmetrical features that they couldn't make her look ugly like that.
Jessica made an overly candid and off-color comment about Burns that earned Abigail a laugh before she hid it with a cough and was met with rebuttals from her friends.
She put down the sci-fi book she was using as an excuse to not be bothered and focused on the stare Lauren was giving her from around the corner of the cafeteria. If she thought Abigail was going to back down because some vulgar high school princess had taken it into her head to bother her, she had no idea who she was dealing with.
She maintained eye contact for a long minute, letting his eyes, the window to the soul as the Yankees would say, release his most hidden and wild thoughts, all the ideas that occurred to him as she imagined her figure from top to bottom, causing Lauren to turn her face away, blushing, as she sensed where they were going.
"Coward," she hissed and rolled her eyes at the missed opportunity. She reluctantly looked around at the blonde's acolytes to see if any of them were challenging him as well, until she stumbled into the space previously occupied by Bella Swan.
Now there was something that was not human.
Goosebumps rose all over her skin and she froze as she looked at him more closely.
It was almost as if she'd put on a Bella Swan's mask and it had slipped slightly out of place. It gave her the same tooth-jarring feeling as fingernails scraping a chalkboard. Some part of her mind knew it was just an illusion, a lapse of her psyche unexpectedly confronted with the uncanny valley. But try as she might to rationalize it, she couldn't look away and regain her sense of reality.
Bella Swan frowned softly in a slightly questioning expression and suddenly everything was back to the way it was.
She was a human.
But was it really?
Abigail blinked in bewilderment and looked to her right, where a junior, David James "DJ" Garrett, was explaining to his friends how he had managed to do a backflip on his skateboard before crashing into a clump of ferns.
Human.
She stared, one by one, at everyone she knew who was in the cafeteria.
Mike Newton gasped at the sight of her so focused and out of her mind.
Human.
Toby Harris; Erica Maynard; Olivia Allen; Logan Powell; Reed Perry; Ash Everett; Madison Richards; Glenn Bruce; Jordan Brown; Noah Mason; Leonard Griffiths; Millicent «Millie» Cook; Ruth Goodman; Aiden Campbell...
They were all human!
She continued her relentless scrutiny until she reached her left (human Eric Yorkie, of course), using him to calibrate herself in the same way as the pH-meter in the lab experiments. When she managed to calm down, she dared to look again.
Bella Swan was still human in her eyes, in fact, the expression on her face was now one of clear, very human curiosity towards Abigail's behavior.
What the #$# are you? she wanted to scream at the top of his lungs, even if it would make a scene.
She had never felt such atavistic terror, not even when she had been on the verge of being caught by the traqueurs; the souls had made her afraid. All her life she had been able to face them without hesitation, but Bella Swan was a complete mystery.
It was almost as if she was a human pretending to be human... what nonsense!
Now, if it wasn't human or a soul, what other options were there? A new alien species? Could it be a soul far more humanized than Burns? A super spy far more effective than all the previous ones? Or a new kind of traqueurs ?
If so, she had to admit that the souls had made a qualitative leap in their techniques.
What are you, Bella Swan? Although that question flooded every neuron of Abigail, she stared at the aforementioned, who held her gaze with apprehension, and hardened her expression to mentally reformulate it:
What am I going to do with you, Bella Swan?
To be continued...
Mk 211 "Raufoss": .50 caliber ammunition (12.7x99mm NATO) with armor-piercing, incendiary and explosive capabilities. Its name means "Red Waterfall" in Norwegian.
Traqueurs: In the French edition of The Host, this is the equivalent of "Seeker." It could be translated as "Tracker" in English. Gail uses this term because in the United States there has not yet been an official designation for the vocation and she only uses the one she knows from her native Canada.
Tor: The acronym for "The Onion Router". It is a protocol implemented on the nodes of the Internet communications network that allows the IP address to be concealed and both the anonymity and the nature of the communications to be maintained with the help of various encryption systems.
Department of Homeland Security: An agency of the United States government responsible for protecting the United States homeland from terrorist attacks and responding to threats. The department was created on November 22, 2002, from 24 existing federal agencies in response to the 9/11 attacks.
Omnes vulnerant, ultima necat: in Latin "All (the hours) wound, the last one (hour) kills." The ancient Romans often inscribed this phrase on sundials, with which they expressed both the effects of the passage of time on human beings and the inexorability of death.