Book 4: Beau

47. BURNING

The last thing I remembered was hearing Edythe saying our son's name. By then though, I was already falling again. Disappearing.

And then there was the fire.

A fire that was more than fire - a pain that was more than pain.

Before that fire though, before the endless burning, I knew there had been nothing but a cool calm. It was all light to me then for that one perfect moment: I remembered reaching out for my son, his warmth, with a shaking hand. His skin was like… silk. No – even better than that. Far superior than that.

He was so impossibly soft; so impossibly warm. And so impossibly…

"Beautiful."

I remembered touching his pink, scrunched-up little face. Edythe's knuckle. It was all I could do. She put her hand over mine, and it looked like she was crying. I'm so proud of you, Edythe. I couldn't be sure whether I'd said the words out loud to her or not, though. Not exactly.

"Welcome to the world, Charlie-Earnest Jacob Swan."

Maybe I laughed then. So, Edythe had gone with it after all. Jules was genius, it was perfect for him.

I tried holding on to that image; of Edythe holding our newborn son but soon felt myself fading away again. The light all around me was growing dim.

Then her frantic screams pierced my ears.

"Beau? Can you hear me? Please, wake up! Don't leave me… don't leave me…!"

How could I ever leave you, Edythe?

I wanted to answer her, to hold her hand, to touch her face. Anything at all to let her know that I was still here, that I was still with her. But I can't move. I can't make a sound. It was like I was paralyzed. I think I was still bleeding - too much. The world was fading. Getting darker, darker, darker…

But I kept pushing against that darkness. Resisting. I had to. The only thing I'd ever been able to do was keep going. Endure. Survive.

It had been enough up to this point. It would have to be enough today.

Because if it'd only been for myself, I wouldn't have been able to struggle very long. I was only human, with no more than human strength. I guess I'd just been trying to keep up with the supernatural for too long.

But this wasn't just about me.

If I did the easy thing now, give in, give up, lose the will to fight and let that darkness overtake me, I would hurt them all. And I couldn't let that happen.

Live. Just live.

I had to survive this. Edythe was depending on me. Jules. Archie. Carine, Renee, Charlie, Earnest…

CJ.

And then, even though I still couldn't see anything, I swear I could feel something. Like phantom limbs, I imagined I could feel my arms again. And in them, something small and soft and pink and warm. Very, very warm. A tiny being, a little spark of light, the one who all this was for.

My son.

In that vision, I held him closer to me, right over my chest. It was exactly where my heart should be.

But of course, he wasn't in my arms. He was in Edythe's. And clinging to that last memory, I longed for my turn at last. To hold him, and never let go. And for him, I knew I would be able to fight the darkness as long as I needed to.

"Change him!"

A frantic cry yanked me out an inch from those swallow-me-whole thoughts. Was that… Jules? But wait! I needed more time to grow into the father my son deserved, just a little more time…

A sharp jab of pain in my neck. Another one. Another. Another. Down the entire length of my body; my neck and my arms and my legs and back again. It dawned on me then that, at that exact particular moment, my fate was being sealed.

And then-

Back to the fire. Back to the pain. It began to build and build, and I felt it now more strongly than I ever thought I could feel any sensation in my body. I couldn't be sure where it first started. Because before I could even pinpoint the exact moment, there was another sharp jab, this time in the center of my chest, and that was when the fire really took off running. Waves of pain shot in every direction, exploded in my heart. It was like I was being torched from the inside out.

I thought I screamed.

Broken bones weren't pain like this. Falling off that cliff, hitting those massive gray-white streaked boulders and jagged broken tree ends, the shoots of agony that came with my splintered ribs; my punctured lung. When that guard with hair so blond it was almost white put his arms around me like a vise, slammed my head into that rock and sunk his knee into my back. No. This was worse. The fire slackened then quickened; rushed through every limb and over every tiny millimeter of my skin I could think to feel, exploding with a heat in my head, in my hands, in my heart, so intense I thought it would kill me if I wasn't so close to death already. And it went on for hours. Hours on hours on hours; days on days on days. It felt like the inside of every vein in my body was being cauterized. Like lit matches were branding every inch of my bare skin. The worst part of it was that I couldn't even move. I couldn't even scream. I endured it all, so torturously, in deafening silence.

It was for the better though, I tried to make myself understand – so Edythe wouldn't have to know; so she wouldn't have to hear me in the worst agony imaginable because I knew it would only hurt her so much more. And that was the worser pain to me; seeing her in pain. I couldn't bear to put her through any more distress, she'd already gone through so much already. Too much. What would she have thought if she'd heard me scream? If she knew the torture I was in? I couldn't do that to her. And so, I decided – as long as I had the strength to, I would endure it all in silence.

But it was almost too much for me to bear. Almost.

The fire would wax then wane, surge forward at breakneck speed. And then it would temper out, building up and up into an exploding crescendo of pain then climb back down to lower, marginally more manageable levels like piano scales only to start again with even greater intensity from the top right after.

I tried to make sense of the pain in my head; kept the light at the end of the tunnel just outside of my reach so I could continually chase after it. Endure. Survive. For my family's sake. I tried to concentrate on my fingers or my toes to see if it helped. It didn't. Somewhere in the back of my head, I recognized what a fraction of that pain had felt like and where I'd felt it: In the ballet studio, however many years ago, that I tried to block out but now it came back to me in full, sonorous clarity.

Yes. I was suffocating; drowning in that same acid river again, only it was worse. So much worse. I was inhaling the acid water now, drinking it in by the gallon. I was being burned alive.

I couldn't even tell when and if I'd been moved, I was so lost in my own pain; in my own mind. It was like I was in some unwinnable maze – one with all the twists and turns, but no end in sight. I couldn't find my way out.

The beat of my heart got lost in the mounting waves of heat tearing me apart, peaking and reaching and rising to a dizzying fever pitch that surpassed anything I could and ever have felt.

The pulse behind the fire - so hot and so destructive it felt like a living, breathing thing - was raging now in my chest and I realized that I'd found my heart again just in time to wish I never had. To wish for one split-second that I'd embraced that blackness while I still had the chance. I wanted to raise my arms and claw my chest open and rip the heart from it – anything to get rid of this unbearable agony. But I couldn't feel my arms, couldn't lift even one vanished finger. Couldn't feel much of anything besides that torturous burning.

It hit me again like a rod of lightning - I was becoming a vampire. Someone like Edythe. Not very long ago, I'd thought it was all I'd wanted. But now, in just these past few months, everything had changed. I had. It was different because I had new priorities now. A new perspective. And I changed my mind again. Yes - I was a father now. And I had to be there for CJ. I needed to see him grow up, I needed to be there for him and his mother. My son was not going to lose his father, and my wife was not going to lose her husband. Not if I had any say in it, not as long as I could help it. And Edythe was the one who made that happen.

It was the only option I had now, really. The only choice I would've made, too, if it were up to me. And I tried to be brave about it.

But it didn't make it scorch any less.

The fire blazed hotter still. But it wasn't just that, no - the immense weight of some invisible thing was still there, crushing me. It wasn't just that invisible darkness holding me down though, nor the burning. It was my own body. My own self. So heavy. Burying me in the fiery flames that started then chewed their way out from my heart, spreading with impossible levels of pain through my shoulders and stomach, scalding their way up and down my broken spine and shattered ribs and up through my seizing throat, licking at my face with invisible rods of white-hot branding iron.

But that invisible darkness; the thing that was weighing me down and keeping my body prisoner… What exactly was it? Why couldn't I move? Why couldn't I scream? This wasn't part of the stories.

And then my mind was made unbearably clear – so sharpened by that fierce pain – and I saw the answer almost as soon as I could form the questions.

The morphine.

It seemed forever ago, but I remembered in that never-ending moment what Edythe had talked about with Carine before – how they'd hoped, in turning Eleanor all those years ago, that the morphine would neutralize the pain of the transformation. But as I'd known from my own experience; from when I had both venom and morphine in my system at the same time before, in that ballet studio, that vampire venom just didn't care. It only burned through my veins and through the morphine before it could even spread. Just one never-ending, unbalanced chase, and the absence of pain that the drug would have brought me was nothing now but an old fantasy. Useless in its one fated purpose, it only held me down and gagged me; paralyzed me in mind and body. No. Vampire venom didn't feel the need to follow any medical rules.

And then without warning, the pain doubled. Tripled. It came so suddenly, so impossibly, and I swear I heard it mending some broken connection; knitting it together with scorching fingers of flame. And I thought very seriously to myself, how the hell could it possibly be fixing me when it only burned more instead? Incinerated every limb in my body?

I wanted to dissolve into the cold night air, evaporate into it like mist curling up to the sky. I wanted to be anywhere but here; my body was its own prison cell.

But through it all, the one image I clung to was that of my son nestled safe in Edythe's arms. The brightest joy, the purest happiness, and the greatest love – so much love – radiating off her beautiful face as she looked upon his. My wife, the love of my life, and that tiny little being I would live and die for which she'd given birth to with all the strength, all the grace, and all the power in the world. I was still in awe even now. That was the one thing I had going for me – that, even in such excruciating pain, I could still remember why I shouldn't scream. I could remember the reason why I'd committed to enduring this unendurable agony. I could remember that, though it felt impossible at times, there was something that might be worth the torture after all - a "something" that meant everything to me.

I tried to remember it exactly - where was I, at that moment? The last time I was conscious? I shivered - it hurt even to do that. Ah. We were still in the mountains, still in the snow. So far away from home, in the midst of turmoil and chaos maybe, but there was still something amazing happening in that desolate landscape. Because it was the end – and the beginning – of our journey. Our son was born right there, on that day. Despite all the pain I was in, despite the war the Volturi had waged on our family, the destruction left in their wake, nothing could ever compare to the moment our son took his first breath. The first time Edythe held him. The love, and the pure joy, on her face when she marveled at his. And I tried to remember that; tried to snuff out the flames that mercilessly consumed me by remembering that ice cold and that glowing warmth.

Edythe had once said that human memories fade over time. And I was so desperately set on making sure that doesn't happen, so desperately set on never forgetting our story from the beginning that I turned my pain, through sheer willpower, into fuel for something else - to know by heart, and to commit those moments to memory forever. It played like the most amazing movie to ever exist in my head: The day I first laid eyes on Edythe in the school cafeteria. That dazzling meadow, bursting with the vibrant colors of spring where she trusted me enough to let me into her world and how we let it become our place. The face of an angel who picked up all the broken pieces of me off that ballet studio floor and made me whole again. When I ran to her through that red-caped crowd and covered her with my body because her life was all that mattered to me then. The pictures I took of her, and the drawings I made with those fancy graphite pencils which tried, in vain, to capture every facet of her beauty. That day by the water's edge, at nightfall, where the waves of Alki Beach lapped our toes as the city lit up like stars around us. Her pure, gorgeous voice singing softly to me as I fell asleep in her arms. When I proposed to Edythe on that warm summer day. Our wedding as she made her way down the flower-covered aisle to me. The night we made love to each other for the very first time, under that peerless night sky where the moon and the stars shone so brightly and created a miracle. When I felt our child move for the first time, the best birthday gift I never thought to ask for. The birth of our son, and that gorgeous expression on my wife's tired, beautiful face when she looked upon his mere moments after it.

That was the most vivid one so far; the last one we'd left off on and I kept coming back to it. Through all the drowning, through all the blinding pain I was in, I could see it so clearly even now - it was the face of a girl whose deepest wish had been fulfilled. Of someone who had gotten everything she ever dreamed of. And we made that happen, us two. And I was so eternally grateful that I could help grant her dearest wish for through her, it became mine's as well. And I had to get back home to them. Every image, every memory, was so very precious to me and I sealed them away in my mind, in the deepest part of my heart.

But there were new memories I needed to make, too.

And so, I did the one thing I'd always done – I endured.

I replayed those images over and over again in my mind. It would help me get through this burning.

And burn I did.

It could have been seconds or days, weeks or years, but, eventually, time came to mean something again.

Because three things happened together, grew from each other so that I didn't know which came first: time restarted, the morphine's weight faded, and I got stronger.

I could feel the control of my body come back to me in increments - my first markers of time passing. I knew it when I was able to twitch my toes and twist my fingers into fists – it was too difficult to act on fully, though. And even if I could have, I feared I would lose all ability to stay silent; to keep Edythe from knowing all the pain I was in. I still wanted to shield her. By then, I knew the environment I was in had changed; that somehow, we were home.

But I was still burning.

And though the fire didn't decrease by even one tiny degree - in fact, I started developing a new capacity for experiencing it; a new sensitivity to appreciate, separately, each blistering tongue of flame that licked through my veins - I discovered that I could think around it. I could somehow feel progress being made little by little. I remembered hearing footsteps moving through the house, and I swear I was even able to tell the differences between them now. The decisive, confident step was Eleanor, I was sure. Arch's were the quicker, more rhythmic ones. His footfalls always seemed to float more than fall. Earnest's were a little slower, more thoughtful. Carine's were the sure, quick steps, taking my pulse or monitoring my heart rate or checking my breathing at different times. A doctor through and through like no other. I thought I heard some music, but I couldn't be sure it was even in the house, it sounded too faint somehow. Then there was the TV crackling on somewhere, a baseball game now playing on it. That one was closer. The hinges of a window creaking open or shut, I couldn't tell which. Those sounds gave me something else to concentrate on, something physical. It would help, I hoped. A baby's cries. My baby's cries. Those were definitely nearby. I felt awful for leaving Edythe alone to care for him, but I was glad she was getting help from the rest of our family, even though I knew I was the one who should have been there with her instead. I thought about everything I could do to make it up her, to them. I waited, and waited, and waited…

But it still wasn't done yet.

Just when I thought I was finally getting used to the torture, the fire ripped hotter through my heart, dragging the flames up from my elbows and knees. It shook my resolve to the core and pushed me to my furthest limit. I wanted to scream. I needed to scream. But I couldn't. I wouldn't. For Edythe.

Instead, I let my mind wander; felt it begin to drift just to not think of the pain. I thought about my wife going through this, suffering this way, and it put a different perspective on my own torturous burning. She didn't even know Carine then. She didn't know what was happening to her. She hadn't had someone she loved yet by her side. And I did sense Edythe there with me, day and night around that invisible clock. Sometimes it was her scent, or the feel of her cool hand pressed to mine, at least when those sensations started coming back to me. A long, arduous process, it started outwards – fingertips, toes – and moved inwards, slowly but surely creeping over the rest of my limbs and every inch of my skin, so hypersensitive to even the slightest changes in the air now that it felt like I could almost know the exact texture of it - like air could even have a texture in the first place - with those new hands; those new nerve-endings in my body.

And with my returning senses I could feel our son at different times, too, that tiny person I had known so briefly, so fleetingly, and yet it was as if I'd known him my entire life. His little heartbeat was perfection to my new ears. I still couldn't open my eyes then, but God, I wanted to. I felt them with me every step of the way; the warmth, that fluttering heartbeat, and the cool it was surrounded by. Yes – it was Edythe cradling our son in her arms. Two entirely different beings, but beings that had miraculously been a part of each other, once. At least in those moments I could pretend I was all there with them, too. But then those sensations would be gone almost as soon as I picked up on them. Was Edythe putting CJ to bed? Going to prepare him a bottle in the kitchen? Just walking around with him in her arms to soothe him? I wanted to do that, too. I wanted to hold him so close to me and never let go; feed him his bottle as I rocked us in my old rocking chair upstairs. Feel his fingers wrap around mine and marvel at how much strength those little hands had in them. Watch him fall asleep in my arms and plant kiss upon kiss on his tiny, wrinkled forehead. I wanted to meet him. I wanted him to know me. And I held on to that new dream.

I didn't know how much more time passed, but suddenly the pain was almost gone from everywhere but my chest. The only leftover was my throat, but it was a different kind of burn now… drier… more irritating…

And then-

My heart took off, beating like helicopter blades. So fast and so quick, those once-separate sounds became nearly a single sustained note. It felt like it would grind through my ribs. The fire flared up in the center of my chest, sucking all the flames from the rest of my body to fuel the most painful burn yet. It was enough to stun me if I hadn't been so involuntarily stunned already. I thought my body bowed, like the fire was dragging me upwards by my heart. It felt like a war inside me - my racing heart blitzing against the raging fire. They were both losing.

The fire constricted tighter, concentrating into one fist-sized ball of pain with a final, unbearable surge. The surge was answered by a deep, hollow-sounding thud. My heart stuttered twice, then thudded quietly again one more time.

There was no sound. No breathing. Not even mine.

For a second, all I could process was the absence of pain. That dull, dry afterburn in my throat was easy to ignore, because every other part of me felt amazing. The release was an incredible high.

And I just wanted to see Edythe.

You are my Everything, and Everything comes back to You.

And I am coming back home to you.

Wait for me.

Mustering up all the strength I could, I opened my eyes and immediately sought out the other half of my heart; the woman who is my life.

I saw her there, by the window. The sun shined so brightly behind her and in it, she looked everything an angel.

"Edythe." I said her name, and it felt like I was soaring.

And then she ran over to me so quick, throwing her arms tight around me.

"Beau," she sobbed out, "Oh, Beau."

I lifted my wife into my arms and kissed and kissed her. This was Heaven. Heaven was her.

"I'm home." I whispered.

She smiled.

Hi everyone!

I apologize once again for the super-late update and how short this one is - originally, I was going to combine Beau's transformation here with the events leading up to and through his first hunt but decided afterwards to split it into two different chapters to sort of follow the flow of the original novel more. Plus, I figured y'all have waited long enough lol so I wanted to drop at least this little part as soon as I could! It was fun getting back into (now vampire!) Beau's POV, though that also posed a pretty big challenge itself for this chapter specifically - I mean, there's only so many ways to say how much turning into a vampire hurts and burns and everything with a narrator who's mostly unconscious-ish for a majority of it lol. The struggle is both physical as well as mental, so I wanted to play a little more into the interiority of the process and where Beau was at mentally in those moments, which led me to just showing Beau wanting to commit every moment of his and Edythe's love story from the start to memory before he dives headfirst into this new life of theirs both in terms of him becoming a vampire and then him and Edythe being parents now and learning to not only accept these profound changes in his life but to also embrace them, and the future in general, as well.

As always, thank you for reading and for all your patience and support, I truly appreciate it! Y'all are awesome :) Until next time!