Twilight Fic: Helpless (A Change of Heart, Part 6)
Title: Helpless (Part 6 of A Change of Heart)
Author: bratanimus
Rating: PG-13 for this chapter, R for some others
Spoilers: This story was begun post-Eclipse, my vision of Breaking Dawn. First person Edward POV.
Warnings: Mild sensuality.
Pairings: Edward/Bella, all other canon pairings
Word Count: 7,353
Summary: Now I knew what it was to have something I’d wished for come true: fulfillment comes at a price. Anyone who’s ever read any fairy tale knows that.
Author’s Note: My sincere apologies for the LONG delay between chapters five and six. I promise that real life gave me a really, really good excuse (*coughbabycough*). ;) Anyhow, if you’re still following it, this is part six of my story, A Change of Heart. Prior chapters and summaries:
Chapter 1 ( Intention) - The Volturi crash Bella’s and Edward’s wedding day.
Chapter 2 (Consummation) - The wedding night and bite.
Chapter 3 (For Good) - Bella’s transformation.
Chapter 4 (Mastered) - Bella’s post-change gift.
Chapter 5 (Released) - Bella’s first hunt (and other urges).
And the newest, Chapter 6 (Helpless) - Bella faces dark feelings about her new self.
Thanks for reading and for your comments. :)
Following our hunt, after a much-needed outdoor shower and a bath, Bella and I were dressed and presentable. She wore a new set of Rosalie’s clothes; we’d have to go shopping for her today or tomorrow, if Esme couldn’t get the human scent out of Bella’s old clothes. Esme was preparing to wash everything now, even though Bella had insisted she could do the small load of laundry herself. We hovered at the door to the laundry room while Esme sorted Bella’s clothing and chatted with us, trying to make light of what was essentially an awkward chore. Even though blood repulsed Bella, she was still a new vampire: it lured and distressed her with its siren song. It was difficult for Bella to be near the scent of her former self; still, she put on a brave face for us.
But there was another reason for tension in the house, and this was a worry we all shared: the family was to convene in thirty minutes to discuss strategy for our compulsory trip to see the Volturi in Italy. Since we had some time to kill, I pulled my cell phone from my pocket.
“Let’s call your parents,” I suggested. “It’s been four days since we saw them.”
“You’re right, I should.” Bella reached for the phone.
I pulled it away. “Let me give you some pointers,” I began as I wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her toward the front door. Esme smiled at us, then went back to sorting the lights from the darks into two laundry baskets.
Bella looked up at me, confused. “Pointers?”
“You sound different,” I reminded her gently.
“Huh?”
I laughed. “Well, not in what you say, but how you say it. Your voice is richer, and clearer. You sound … older. Not older than me, of course!” I added when she punched me lightly on the arm. “It’s beautiful. But you’ll sound very different to your parents.”
She stopped walking and her mouth formed a silent “oh.” She looked at me with eyebrows raised. “What do I do about that?”
“We should call them from outside, where there’s some ambient noise and a breeze to give the phone some interference. It’ll mask your voice a little.”
Bella nodded.
“You might want to try putting a little roughness back into your voice. Like you’re hoarse.”
“Like this? Do I sound like my old self?” She tried a gravelly voice, but it only made her sound sexier, like Marlene Dietrich.
I smiled. “Not … exactly. Never mind. Let’s just hope the wind does the trick.”
She took the phone and started to dial Renée’s number, but then she froze. “What have I been up to for the last three days?” she asked.
“I don’t think your mother is going to ask you that.”
“But - oh. Oh.” Her living flesh would have blushed; even now I could almost see the sweet pinkness. “Right. Newlyweds.”
“I’m almost hurt that you forgot,” I teased. “But you have had one or two other things or your mind.”
And so had I; the trauma of her transformation roiled through my stomach again. But Bella was still impassive. How could she be so strong? On my fourth day I was screaming at Carlisle and destroying his home. There wasn’t a piece of my new father’s furniture left unbroken by sunset. I’m still not sure how he kept me from bolting out the door.
I realized I was still touching Bella’s waist, and I stepped away. “Would you prefer to speak with them alone?”
She shook her head. “No, stay with me. I might need some more … pointers.”
“I’ll stay on the steps.”
I settled on the top step of the porch and leaned with my elbows on my knees, hands clasped, watching as Bella started pacing around the yard while she waited for Renée to pick up. Her rapid, circular pacing during phone calls: that nervous habit hadn’t changed since her transformation.
Just as Renée answered, Bella reached a clearing in the trees …
And the sunlight fell on her.
I stopped breathing. I stopped everything except for watching her. My ears registered Renée’s probing questions, her voice worried and tinny-sounding through the cell phone as she wondered if her daughter was all right. I was vaguely aware that Bella was once again reassuring her mother; they fell so easily into their old roles.
But somehow none of the language of their conversation penetrated my skull. All I could recognize was that Bella was flawless, sparkling and wondrous in the sunshine, her skin so iridescent I had to squint to fully appreciate her. Her dark hair stood in stark relief to her white neck, and even her crimson eyes seemed absolutely right and perfect. Who was this luminous being who had somehow chosen me as her mate? She was angelic. I felt a smile curl my lips, and I had to shake my head.
All these years I’d thought our glittering skin was a cruel joke, a curse placed on us by God to remind us how far from heaven we were, to rub our noses in the knowledge of how utterly anti-celestial we would remain. But Bella now seemed to me to embody everything good in this world, and the one beyond, and perhaps worlds I hadn’t even contemplated. Her beauty stunned me and left me incapable of thought. I could only stare open-mouthed, like a foolish child.
Her circular pacing continued as she chatted with her mother, and periodically her figure would pass through shadows again, returning to the light moments later. I watched her hungrily and hoped she would talk for an hour, or longer.
At last she said goodbye; and as her thumb pressed “end” on the cell phone, she saw herself.
The hand that held the cell phone was radiant, and she extended her arms, dropping the phone in the grass as her eyes widened. She pushed up her sleeves, tugged her collar away from her chest as she looked down at her body. She kicked her shoes off and wiggled her ten sparkling little bare toes. Then she spun to face me, a look of astonishment on her shining face.
“Beautiful,” I whispered to her.
She managed a smile before she turned her palms toward her face again. She stared at them for a long while, then pressed them into her chest as if she were trying to feel the light vibrating off of her.
“Oh my God.” Her eyes fluttered to me again.
“Hmm,” I agreed, nodding.
We smiled at each other. The moment seemed to stretch into forever, with me sitting in shadows on the porch and Bella standing, brilliant and barefoot, on the grass. I rested my head on my hand and just watched her. She laughed and spun in a circle, flinging her arms wide. My smile grew even broader.
“You do have another parent, you know,” I reminded her.
“Oops. Right,” Bella laughed. With a sigh, she picked up the phone, flipped it open again and started dialing. “I guess I should call Charlie.”
“He’d appreciate that.”
Bella commenced her pacing again. Now the sun was behind the clouds, and I was able to concentrate on what she was saying this time without the glamour of her pale, sun-lit radiance. The wind had picked up a little, and hopefully that would better mask the new musical tones in her perfect voice.
“Hello?” Charlie’s voice was gruff, as usual.
“Hey, Dad.”
“Well, hey, Bells.” His voice brightened considerably. He’d missed her.
Bella wandered around the yard as they exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes: Charlie was never one for deep conversation. But I could hear the tension in his voice, and in Bella’s; and the speed of her pacing increased until she was at a sprinting pace, though she wasn’t aware of it. I crossed the yard and caught her hand, encouraging her with a motion of my hand to slow down, to use a human pace before Charlie wondered if she was talking on the phone in a speeding car with the windows down. Bella’s eyes flickered to mine gratefully and she squeezed my fingers in return.
She interrupted a story about Charlie’s latest fishing trip with Billy Black. Her father had tactfully avoided any mention of Billy’s son.
“What else are you eating, Dad? Besides fish?” I’d never heard her refer to him as “Dad” so many times in one conversation before. She must miss him, too. “Tell me you’re not already back to frozen dinners.”
“Uh, no,” he said. “I’m fixing myself a lot of pasta. Remembering to stir it this time.”
“That’s good.”
“You? You’re eating, too, right?”
Bella stopped moving.
“Um …” Her lips pressed together and she darted a glance at me, then looked away into the trees. I had turned to head back to the steps, but now I stopped and watched her.
“Don’t think I never noticed how many meals you skipped because you weren’t hungry. I reckon it’s a little late for me to mention it now, but that always worried me. Girl’s gotta eat.”
“I know, Dad,” she muttered. She wasn’t annoyed, I could tell. But her face was crumpling. He’d hit a nerve, and I had a feeling I knew what that nerve was.
She would never share a meal with him again.
And now she understood that it was worse than that: she’d probably never see him again. In this small moment on the phone with her father, her old world had trickled through her fingers like grains of sand. I knew what that felt like.
“And when you go to all those places in Europe Edward’s got planned for you, I want full detail of what you ate there. Maybe you could show me how to cook it when you get back.”
Bella paused, her lips curving into a frown, chin quivering just the slightest bit. But when she spoke she sounded composed. “That’d be great,” she lied.
“Crap, I didn’t spoil his surprise, did I? He told me a while back, but - aw, shoot, I think I just let the cat out of the bag.”
“No, you didn’t, Dad. Edward told me already.” Her voice was all steel, but she was blinking rapidly, as if she were trying to hold back the ghosts of tears.
I placed a fingertip under her chin, trying to get her to look at me. But she withdrew from my touch and stalked into the forest. I followed, worrying, wanting to yank the phone from her hand and make her talk to me.
“That’s good,” said Charlie. “I mean, he planned it all out for you, sounds like. Anyway, I expect you’ll pick up some new recipes over there.”
“Yeah, I’m sure I will.” Bella stopped at a pine tree and leaned heavily against it with one hand. She stared at the ground, her back to me, her hair hiding her face.
“Maybe we could have a party over here. Invite Billy and Jake - well, if Jake’s up to it - I mean, if Edward’s okay with it - ” Charlie coughed. “Get Sue Clearwater and her kids over, some of your school buddies if they haven’t left for college yet. Edward’s family, too. Let you and Edward show off your culinary skills.”
“Sounds great.”
Charlie paused. “You okay, Bells?”
I didn’t think he’d be asking to see her so soon. I placed my hand on the small of Bella’s back and she didn’t pull away this time; instead she turned her body towards me, wrapped her fingers into the front of my shirt, holding me there, and I could see that she was crying silently - though, of course, no tears ran down her cheeks.
I held out my hand for the phone, but she turned her head away, the phone still to her ear. “Yeah, I’m fine, Dad. But I should probably start packing. We leave in a couple of days and we’re going to be gone a while.”
“Oh. Oh, sure. Well, call me again before you go, if you can.”
“I will.”
“Okay. Bye, honey.”
Bella managed a small “bye” in return before she hung up. A sigh shuddered out of her. She stared at the phone in her hand until I took it from her and pocketed it.
It was bound to happen: Bella was finally breaking down.
“Talk to me, Bella,” I said, taking her face in my hands, stroking her hair. “Talk to me.”
Her palm went to her chest, rubbed her sternum and the ribs around them, rested over her heart.
She stopped breathing for a moment. She stared into the sky past my shoulders, her scarlet eyes unblinking, the passing clouds reflecting in them. Pine trees swayed above us, and under the moving branches her skin alternately sparkled and paled before me. She said nothing as her gaze followed the clouds overhead. Then she looked back at me for a long while, and it seemed she was taking the measure of me in some new way.
“Bella?” I whispered.
“Let’s go inside.” And she turned away from me and walked quickly back to the house.
I couldn’t speak. I stood watching her go, as motionless as a statue frozen on its pedestal. Birds twittered above and around me. The clouds covered the sun, making her profile almost white-blue in its chiseled paleness as she turned to climb the steps. Then they wafted away again, bringing dazzling light to her white cheeks and her ruby lips once more.
We sat together on the sofa in tortured silence, and Jasper kept staring at us. I glared at him to stop, and he did try.
I had worried that Emmett would continue to tease us about our wrecked post-coital appearance this morning; but when Bella and I joined the family in the living room, everyone was already mulling over her apparent talent and the powerful effect it had had on each of us: we were disgusted by the human hiker’s blood, couldn’t even imagine ourselves drinking it, and all because Bella was repulsed by it. Her aversion seemed to have permeated us as surely as Jasper’s sense of calm had dampened my own fears on our wedding night. But Bella still seemed uncertain about how she’d affected us; her hand reached for mine and I clutched it tightly, grateful for the contact, glad to have some way of reassuring her.
“Is the change Bella sparked in us permanent?” wondered Esme as she paced slowly along the length of the window. The morning sunlight slanted into the room, its wide golden stripe illuminating the hardwood floor and pale carpets. My mother’s calves and ankles shimmered beneath the soft swish of her skirt as she passed.
Alice tilted her head and silently traced the piano keys from her position on the padded bench. “And will Bella’s influence affect all vampires, or just ones like us who want to refrain from human blood?”
“And is there more to what she can do than just making us feel sick around it?” asked Emmett, his eyes glinting with excitement. Like Esme, he couldn’t keep still; but his motion was frenetic as he stalked from one corner of the room to the other, gesticulating with his hands. “She tracked a bear, and a mountain lion. She found the human from four miles away. She seemed to know which was which.”
“And don’t forget she sensed Carlisle and the others from the parking lot,” added Rosalie. She sat on the bottom stair and toyed with the ends of her hair, frowning, but her thoughts were entirely preoccupied by Bella. This side of Rosalie still caught me off-guard; she seemed almost humbled by the power of Bella’s talent.
“So it’s not just blood she senses,” agreed Jasper, settling next to Alice on the piano bench. “It’s also - ” He pursed his lips as he struggled to make sense of it.
“The … absence of blood?” offered Bella.
All eyes turned toward her.
“I don’t know,” she said in a small voice. She looked overwhelmed.
Jasper stood again and crossed the room to kneel next to us, his voice matter-of-fact. “I know you’re confused,” he said. “You don’t have to be afraid. Everyone’s happy this has happened. Trust me.”
“Everyone’s happy about it?” In spite of herself, Bella laughed. “I guess you would know, huh?”
He nodded solemnly, eyes twinkling just before he broke into a grin.
I didn’t really know this new, relaxed Jasper, but I was starting to like him a lot. Bella needed all the reassurance she could get, and Jasper was giving it to her without even using his talent. But his thoughts told me there was one person in the room who wasn’t entirely happy about Bella’s gift, and he was looking at her.
“He’s right,” said Alice, sitting next to me on the arm of the sofa. “And we’ll keep telling you until you believe us.” She winked at Bella, who ducked her head and tried to smile.
“I know,” Bella said. “But it just - it happened so fast. And I … I couldn’t control it. It happened to you without my meaning for it to. What if - ”
“Do you really need to control it?” interrupted Emmett, coming to a halt in the middle of the room. “Let me simplify. Murder bad. Not murdering - pretty good, I’d say.” And he commenced his pacing again with a smirk on his face.
“Thanks for spelling it out for us,” I muttered. Bella looked up at me and I smiled, but the worry didn’t leave her forehead. I felt my smile slowly fall as I tried to read the emotion in her eyes. Since I’d met Bella, I’d often wished I could borrow Jasper’s gift.
Like now, for example. Now it certainly would be a relief to know what was behind those blood-red eyes as her gaze focused laser-sharp on each member of our family. It was as if she was seeing us all for the first time, or trying to memorize us. She stared at the back of my hand like she could count the blood vessels inside it. She looked as though she were about to weep, or flee from the room. I wanted to scream … but I sat completely still and tried to tear my eyes away from her.
“It’s really okay, you know,” said Alice. “I can’t see a down side to this. In fact … ” She trailed off, her eyes far away as she caught another vision. “Ha,” she said.
But her thoughts were murky and, in my upset over Bella, I couldn’t put the pieces together. She shook her head as images of the Volturi drifted away and then she looked at Jasper, who still knelt next to Bella. The couple started planning something in that strange, unspoken language they shared, the one even I couldn’t always crack. Now Jasper was thinking of the Volturi; and Alice, for some reason, was thinking of going to Seattle today. Before I could consider what this meant, Carlisle’s voice drew me out of Alice’s thoughts.
“The important question is how will Bella’s ability affect our meeting in Italy?” He’d been relatively quiet, seated with his feet propped up on an ottoman, his head resting on the back of the chair with a hand over his eyes.
The family quieted as Carlisle voiced the subject we all wanted to avoid: the confrontation with the powerful Volturi. Now he stood, crossed to us, and regarded Bella intensely. She blanched, as though she were a student caught passing a note in class. “Will her gift be an asset to us?”
“Or a liability?” she muttered, lowering her gaze.
“I don’t think - ” Carlisle began.
“It’s my fault we have to go in the first place,” Bella insisted. “If I’d agreed to marry Edward sooner, they might not have come here at all. The delay drew their attention. They suspect me of - of not wanting this - this change. They want to be sure I haven’t exposed you … or any vampires, for that matter.”
“No, no,” said Carlisle, pulling the ottoman over to sit directly facing Bella. “They’ve felt threatened by me - by our family, rather - for decades. Long before Edward met you. You’re the excuse, Bella. They’ve known for a long time that you wanted to join us, and it frightens them that our numbers are growing, even though we’re still a tiny group compared to their compound. But they can’t take any chances, you see. You’re the excuse they’d been waiting for to bring us all to Italy.”
To absorb us into their ranks, or to kill us, he thought, and everyone else’s mind echoed his. It was a symphony of fear and I wanted to shut it out. Bella looked from person to person; I was sure she sensed the terror in her new family. Her eyes narrowed and lowered to our clasped hands once more.
“Of course they would see us as a threat because there are so many of us,” said Jasper. “Vampires don’t usually remain in a clan, remember? In their eyes, why else would we join forces other than to gain power?” As if to punctuate his words, disturbing images of Jasper’s bloody past flooded my mind until he forcibly turned his attention to other memories - his wedding day with Alice, walking in the sunlight on a mountaintop with her, laughing with Emmett over some joke to which I hadn’t been privy.
Bella had been staring into Jasper’s eyes keenly, and now she nodded reluctantly. Her gaze again lingered over the rest of our family, and her expression was unreadable.
Finally I could resist no longer, and, like a rat in the night scuttling into a kitchen, I crept deliberately deeper into Jasper’s thoughts where I heard his assessment of her state of emotion: Skeptical. Guilty, angry, terrified. Trapped.
Trapped, I thought, scurrying out of his mind like I’d been scalded. My stomach lurched. Trapped. Of course. And why wouldn’t she feel that way? Her sudden immortality had left her feeling imprisoned, just as mine had. It was undoable. It was my fault.
I was abruptly terrified of her abandoning me.
Stop that, Edward, thought Jasper, deliberately not looking at me. His mental “voice” was gentle and chiding. She loves you. She’s not going anywhere.
Startled, I glared at him, but he avoided my eyes. His readings of my emotions always felt intrusive, and he was always as accurate as if he could read my thoughts. But I had to remind myself that he couldn’t tune out sudden surges of emotion; and, no doubt about it, I was full of them now. My insecurity must have hit him like a tsunami. I felt seventeen again.
Like every young man, when I was a teenager - actually seventeen, not a long-dead man wearing a young man’s face - I thought I was, I wished to be, immortal. War couldn’t kill me, I thought, and my plan was to barge into battle, blood pumping, fists flying. I’d win the war and live forever and things would always be that simple. I honestly didn’t even think the Spanish influenza would kill me in the end; and I was right about that, in a sense, but through no doing of my own. Now I knew what it was to have something I’d wished for come true: fulfillment comes at a price. Anyone who’s ever read any fairy tale knows that.
I reminded myself that Bella was young, and as naïve as I had been when I was her age. She’d gotten what she wanted, at unfathomable cost. And now my fairy tale ending with Bella was turning into a nightmare in front of me.
“Jasper was right last night,” said Carlisle, unaware of what had passed between Jasper and me. “Before we go to Italy, we need to see how far Bella’s gift reaches. Then we’ll know if we have a bargaining chip or not. The Volturi could see her as a threat, which means she is our weapon.” His eyes softened as he looked at Bella. “I’m sorry, but it’s best you know where you stand.”
Bella nodded once. She released my hand and threaded her fingers together on her lap.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Bargaining chip? Weapon? What are you talking about?”
“The Volturi outnumber us, and they’ve probably amassed a number of even more powerful members since I was with them - Jane, for one, and her brother, whose power we don’t know yet. There may be more like them. There probably are.”
Jasper stood up behind Carlisle, who was still seated on the ottoman facing Bella. Something about seeing the two of them together, the strategists of the family clearly understanding one another, made me feel threatened. Anger blossomed in me like an ugly flower.
Carlisle went on, ignoring my clenched jaw. “Since Aro ‘read’ Edward and Alice in Volterra, the Volturi now know our family’s strengths, and they’ll be prepared for us. So what do we have that they don’t know about? What could threaten their very way of life?”
“Me,” said Bella. Her expression was clear and resigned.
“No. No.” I stood up. “She’s not a weapon. We won’t use her like that. It’s too dangerous. She’s only just been turned, isn’t that enough? We can’t put this on her shoulders.”
Carlisle rose. “I’m not saying I want this for her. I just don’t know what else we can do. If we have a weapon - something that will alter any vampire, perhaps irrevocably, something that will starve them unless either they let us leave or decide to change and live the way we do - then we have to be prepared to use it against Aro and his clan. I’m sorry, Bella, but we have no choice.”
The lamb on the slaughtering block, I thought, horrified. “This can’t happen.” I stepped toward Carlisle and Jasper. “We can’t - we can’t go. Bella and I will go away. The family can scatter. They can’t track us all. Carlisle, if - ”
“Stop it, Edward,” whispered Bella.
I whirled to face her.
“There’s no way out of this,” she said to no one, and she sounded surprised, almost as if she were just realizing it. “We’ll do what we have to do, of course.” And she stood up and walked out the front door, her face as emotionless as a shark’s.
I started to follow her, but Jasper’s hand caught my shoulder. “Let her go.” I glowered at him, but he shook his head. She doesn’t want you right now. With his thoughts, it felt as though stinging nettles had wrapped themselves around my heart.
“Should I - ?” Esme’s gentle smile almost disguised the worry in her eyes.
“Alice - ” I began.
“I’ll go,” offered Rosalie. Before anyone could say “no,” she darted after Bella. Alice smiled apologetically at me. I heard Rosalie call for Bella to wait for her, then their footsteps crunched over dead pine needles in the woods, becoming fainter as they put distance between themselves and the house.
I had a dreadful feeling about this.
The rest of the family was quiet. No one looked at me. Everyone worried for Bella. Everyone pitied me. Suddenly and fiercely, I hated them all. Trapped, I thought again. Bella felt trapped. I felt that way, too.
I stalked into the corner of the room and leaned heavily against the wall, staring out the large back window. From here I could watch the woods for signs of movement, of Bella. I could watch my family’s reflections in the glass. And I could pretend to care what Carlisle wanted. Emmett wandered over to join me, but my dark look sent him back to his side of the room.
Okay, okay, sheesh, he thought. But it’s all going to be fine, you’ll see … His optimism infuriated me. I started reciting Gilbert and Sullivan in my head to drown out his unsolicited reassurances.
Carlisle was now strategizing with Jasper, as if nothing had happened. He wanted Jasper and Alice to leave town for the afternoon to find out how far Bella’s influence reached.
Jasper nodded at Carlisle and held out a hand to Alice. “Fancy an adventure?”
She took his hand and hopped lightly to his side, a brilliant smile lighting her face. “Always.”
Alice went upstairs for her purse, and in a blur of movement they were gone - taking Alice’s Porsche to travel over a hundred miles away to Seattle, I now knew, to see how far Bella’s gift would continue to affect them.
Carlisle lowered his eyes and sighed heavily. We don’t have much time, he couldn’t help thinking.
“So now we wait,” Emmett murmured.
All was quiet inside the house. Esme sat in silence on the sofa, clenching her fists as she envisioned each of us suffering grisly, prolonged deaths at the hands of the Volturi. We were her family, and she was terrified by the thought of being powerless to protect us. I knew how she felt.
Emmett was imagining himself killing several of the Italian vampires, starting with Demetri; but even he figured we’d be outnumbered in the end. I understood that, too.
Carlisle paced alongside the perimeter of the carpet as he tried to analyze Bella’s talent and pick apart potential negative aspects of it, how it might backfire on us once we were in the clutches of the Volturi; then he examined the positive aspects, how we might use Bella’s gift to keep the Volturi out of our lives permanently. His thoughts were as emotionally detached as Esme’s were charged; and even though - as our father - he was right to think that way, I wanted to strike him.
With a struggle, I forced my focus outward. I heard the droning of insects outside. Birds cackled and flew from tree to ground as they began a long day of hunting. In the distance, cars sliced across local roads. A plane’s jet engine growled.
And still I fumed, and feared.
Trapped. She feels trapped. The words thundered in my head as though God Himself were shouting at me. It was no less than I deserved.
Reflected in the window glass, I saw Esme narrow her eyes at me, then look significantly at Carlisle.
“Perhaps,” Carlisle said, taking her cue and turning towards the staircase, “we should start packing for Italy.”
“Good idea,” said Esme, rising from the sofa and joining her husband on the stairs. “Emmett?”
“What do - ”
“Come on and start packing.”
After a moment during which I suppose he was trying to figure out why they wanted him out of the living room, Emmett huffed once, stared meaningfully at me, and started stomping up the stairs. He was used to my moods.
Of course they didn’t need extra time to pack; even Emmett saw through that ruse. To his credit, he managed not to look back at me.
After thirty interminable minutes, twenty-nine of which consisted of me alternately talking myself into and out of trying to track them, I was on the verge of running into the woods after Bella and Rosalie. I wanted to give Bella the space she needed, but I was going insane wondering what they were talking about. If only I could hold her and reassure her that she’d feel better in time, that my love would be enough to ease her through the rough beginning …
Who was I kidding? Even I didn’t believe me.
Thankfully, they returned. I heard Rosalie’s mind as she continued a conversation with Bella. They were talking about … fashion?
I paced the porch as if that was all I’d been doing while they were gone. Rosalie reached the house first, thundering toward me like a tank. Bella hung back and kicked at the ground.
“Stay out of my head, Edward,” Rosalie warned in a steely voice. She shouldered past me, singing an Italian aria in her mind to block me from her thoughts. From the living room on her way to the stairs she called back, “Bella and I are going shopping.”
I looked back at Bella, utterly confused.
She shrugged. “I told her I had my own clothes, once they’re clean. She insisted. She said it was Italy, I had to have something more fashionable to wear. Seems a little ridiculous, considering we might all - ”
“We’re not going to die.” I didn’t have to read Bella’s mind to know what she was thinking.
Her hard, desperate face made me rush to her and wrap my arms around her. She was stiff and wouldn’t return my embrace.
“Bella, we can run away,” I whispered.
She shook her head. “We’ve been over this. They’ll find us. There’s Demetri - ”
“Who’s not as smart as he thinks he is. Trust me, I’ve been inside his head.” I was lying to her now, but I didn’t care. I only cared about trying to protect her. “We can go away. I have passports for us under false names already, and - ”
Her eyes flamed into mine for a split second, and I wasn’t sure if it was panic or fury or passion I saw in them; but suddenly she was kissing me, both hands on my jaw, fingers raking into my hair. She pushed into me until we were against the side of the house, and her body ground against mine with intention. My desire awoke instantly, and with a fervor that could only be attributable to my own anxious and fearful state of mind. I clutched at her helplessly, and her kisses drove me on. I kissed her deeper, and harder. It took an effort not to whimper. I wanted to have her, now, if only to prove to myself that she was still mine. Selfish, selfish, but I couldn’t help it. As my greedy fingers reached for the buttons of her blouse, I wondered vaguely if we should go inside.
Just then I became aware of Alice and Jasper approaching, hearing their thoughts a second before Bella recognized the car’s engine buzzing along the road. She stepped away from me and we looked at each other. Her lips were a darker red because I’d been kissing them so forcefully. Her eyes smoldered into mine and I couldn’t look away if I tried. But Bella turned her back to me and strode forward to meet Alice and Jasper, buttoning her shirt’s top button as she walked. I trailed behind, unable to bear being even a few feet away from her. Why wouldn’t she talk to me?
Alice pulled the Porsche into the driveway, parked, got out of the car, and strolled over to us as we tried to compose ourselves. Reading Alice’s thoughts, I knew everything was fine; they’d stopped at a rest area off the highway outside of town and discovered that Jasper still felt ill when they were too close to the humans, which meant that Bella’s power was still affecting him. But Alice, for some reason, felt the familiar, dry-throated craving.
Alice didn’t think it was a male-versus-female response. In my sister’s mind I saw a flash of Jasper touching Bella’s forehead in our bedroom as he tried to calm her impulsivity when she was newly born, and then I saw Bella’s hand on Jasper’s head when he’d fallen to his knees as the hiker walked blithely away from his would-be killers.
Alice thought that touching Bella would extend the reach of her gift, perhaps permanently.
“Back so soon?” asked Bella.
“I’ve got a theory,” said Alice. She took Bella’s hand in hers and squeezed it, as if the action were nothing more meaningful than a sudden wish for affection. “You’re very pretty,” she added as they stood there shimmering together in the sunlight.
Bella cocked her head, confused.
Alice let go and skipped back to the Porsche. “See you later!” She backed the car all the way to the main road. Jasper waved a lazy hand at us as they disappeared.
“What just happened?” asked Bella. She still held her hand out where Alice had released it.
“Alice started craving human blood just outside of town, but Jasper was fine. She thinks anyone who touches you can carry your gift with them even farther away. She thinks your touch might even change a vampire forever.”
“Why would that be?” she wondered, staring down the driveway.
I shook my head. “Who knows why any of us have the powers we do?” I replied. “Why does my ability reach a few miles for people I know, and less far for people I don’t? How can Alice sometimes see what the Volturi are planning on the other side of the world when other times she’s blindsided by them? It’s all a mystery to me.”
But miracle, not mystery, was what I was thinking. Things were changing, and I found my own outlook about our talents changing with them. No longer could I look at my own power as a curse, not completely, when Bella’s equally inexplicable talent had given us all such hope.
“Well,” she muttered, “I hope we can figure the mystery out before we go to Italy.”
“Bella, listen, we can still - ”
“All right.” Rosalie’s strident tone reached our ears as she skipped down the stairs inside the house. “I’m ready. Got my purse. Let’s go shopping - if you can call it that in a place like Forks.”
Let her be, thought Jasper several hours later.
I wanted to glare at him, but found that I was too defeated to do so.
I still wasn’t quite certain how I’d ended up in his room. But Emmett was too happy-go-lucky for my mood just now, and I couldn’t bear Esme’s sad eyes or Carlisle’s sensible calculation.
I suppose, in secret, I was hoping I could sway Jasper to my way of thinking. Perhaps if he thought using a newborn vampire as our only “weapon” was reckless, he could change Carlisle’s mind.
At the moment, Jasper was packing an old leather suitcase for himself, with a few extra things for Alice, while I reclined on their comfortable sofa.
Alice had been right: touching Bella had extended the effect of her power all the way to Seattle. They had wanted to travel farther, but Alice had had what she considered a brilliant idea. She had gone on to Italy, deciding on the spur of the moment to take the afternoon flight from Seattle today instead of two days from now.
Alice wanted to scout out the situation, to see what she could learn about the Volturi’s plans. Perhaps she’d pick up more with her talent by being closer to the trio of leaders, Aro, Caius, and Marcus. More importantly, she wanted to see if Bella’s gift would still affect her on the other side of the world; that could mean that Bella’s touch did indeed create a permanent change. Alice wanted so badly for that to be true that she simply couldn’t wait to find out; and if we all traveled to Italy with Bella, we’d never know. Someone had to put distance between them in order to find out, so Alice happily volunteered herself for the task. Without telling Jasper, she’d even stuffed her passport and a change of clothing into her large purse, just in case.
Because of the risk of danger, Jasper understandably had wanted her to wait and travel with the rest of us; but aside from restraining her bodily there wasn’t much he could do to make her stay. Alice had told him not to worry, said she’d draw less attention if she arrived by herself; and he hadn’t had his passport with him, anyhow. She insisted the more we knew about Bella’s gift beforehand, the better for us. The pragmatist in Jasper couldn’t disagree with her assessment.
“Besides,” she’d assured him, “you’ll be there less than two days after I land.”
Unfortunately Jasper, the husband, didn’t see eye to eye with Jasper, the strategist. I’d never seen him more agitated.
Now he was a whirl of motion as he finished tossing clothes into their luggage. He stood still, staring at the suitcase for a long while. His mind was searching for more to do to keep himself busy, but there was nothing left. His passport sat on top of the dresser beside his wallet. Finally he perched on the stretched skin of a huge drum he and Alice had bought in Africa. If Alice were here she’d nudge him off it, threatening to make him play it instead. His fingers drummed the edges as he looked around restlessly.
Their room was as colorful as mine was monochromatic, with lots of paintings and tapestries hanging on the walls. The effect was overwhelming to the eyes, yet somehow soothing to the ears; I supposed the sound in the room must have been dampened somewhat by all the extra fabric and canvases hanging on the walls. I liked their room. It felt like a cozy library to me.
Bella just needs to work through this. It’s only been a day since she turned. Jasper looked at the handwoven carpet at his feet. It was odd for him to be offering me advice, to be comforting me. Perhaps it took his mind off his own worry about Alice.
“I know,” I acknowledged. “But with Rosalie?” I squinted at the ceiling, trying to imagine what they were talking about while they were shopping back in town and finding that, of course, I imagined the worst.
It makes the most sense, Jasper thought, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
But it wasn’t obvious to me.
Stay out of my head, Rosalie had warned me again before they drove off in her BMW.
I sighed. It was killing me, not knowing how Bella was feeling, not understanding why she wanted to confide in Rosalie instead of her own husband, and - most of all - not being able to fix it.
Rosalie’s still hanging onto her human life. She’s the only one who could really understand how Bella’s feeling right now.
That stung. Desperation clutched my gut even more tightly.
I’m not saying that to hurt you, Edward.
I sighed. Our one-on-one conversations were always like this, with him speaking the thoughts inside his head and me responding rarely or not at all. He could feel what I was likely to say, so speech was hardly necessary. I still felt awkward, communicating in this fashion, and he did, too; but verbalizing things with each other felt redundant. And we’d both know, in our own way, if the other were lying. So our conversations were unavoidably more intimate than either of us would prefer, which was why we’d seldom had them. It was more comfortable for both of us to steer clear of each other.
Though I was grateful that he wanted to help me, I desperately wanted to change the subject. And I wanted to talk him out of wanting to use Bella as a weapon. I’d have to ease my way into the subject, because I felt his certainty that that was our best hope.
“How long until Alice lands?”
He looked at his wristwatch. “She said she’d call around eight in the morning, Italian time. Her flight lands around seven, then there’s the immigration line, and - ”
My cell phone rang. I flipped it open hurriedly, hoping it was Bella; but it was Rosalie.
“Yes?” I said.
“Is Bella there with you?”
My heart turned to ice. Jasper hopped off the drum and crossed the room to me in an instant.
I spoke into the phone, measuring each word as my gaze held onto Jasper’s for dear life. “What do you mean, is Bella with me?”
Read on ... Part 7
Author’s Note: Oh no, a cliffhanger! Never fear; Bella’s whereabouts will be revealed. ;) I’m planning one or two more chapters, and I hope to finish the story before another year passes. Can any of you loan me some time (or a babysitter) so I can write? As always, thanks in advance for your thoughtful feedback. I do appreciate it. :D
Author: bratanimus
Rating: PG-13 for this chapter, R for some others
Spoilers: This story was begun post-Eclipse, my vision of Breaking Dawn. First person Edward POV.
Warnings: Mild sensuality.
Pairings: Edward/Bella, all other canon pairings
Word Count: 7,353
Summary: Now I knew what it was to have something I’d wished for come true: fulfillment comes at a price. Anyone who’s ever read any fairy tale knows that.
Author’s Note: My sincere apologies for the LONG delay between chapters five and six. I promise that real life gave me a really, really good excuse (*coughbabycough*). ;) Anyhow, if you’re still following it, this is part six of my story, A Change of Heart. Prior chapters and summaries:
Chapter 1 ( Intention) - The Volturi crash Bella’s and Edward’s wedding day.
Chapter 2 (Consummation) - The wedding night and bite.
Chapter 3 (For Good) - Bella’s transformation.
Chapter 4 (Mastered) - Bella’s post-change gift.
Chapter 5 (Released) - Bella’s first hunt (and other urges).
And the newest, Chapter 6 (Helpless) - Bella faces dark feelings about her new self.
Thanks for reading and for your comments. :)
Following our hunt, after a much-needed outdoor shower and a bath, Bella and I were dressed and presentable. She wore a new set of Rosalie’s clothes; we’d have to go shopping for her today or tomorrow, if Esme couldn’t get the human scent out of Bella’s old clothes. Esme was preparing to wash everything now, even though Bella had insisted she could do the small load of laundry herself. We hovered at the door to the laundry room while Esme sorted Bella’s clothing and chatted with us, trying to make light of what was essentially an awkward chore. Even though blood repulsed Bella, she was still a new vampire: it lured and distressed her with its siren song. It was difficult for Bella to be near the scent of her former self; still, she put on a brave face for us.
But there was another reason for tension in the house, and this was a worry we all shared: the family was to convene in thirty minutes to discuss strategy for our compulsory trip to see the Volturi in Italy. Since we had some time to kill, I pulled my cell phone from my pocket.
“Let’s call your parents,” I suggested. “It’s been four days since we saw them.”
“You’re right, I should.” Bella reached for the phone.
I pulled it away. “Let me give you some pointers,” I began as I wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her toward the front door. Esme smiled at us, then went back to sorting the lights from the darks into two laundry baskets.
Bella looked up at me, confused. “Pointers?”
“You sound different,” I reminded her gently.
“Huh?”
I laughed. “Well, not in what you say, but how you say it. Your voice is richer, and clearer. You sound … older. Not older than me, of course!” I added when she punched me lightly on the arm. “It’s beautiful. But you’ll sound very different to your parents.”
She stopped walking and her mouth formed a silent “oh.” She looked at me with eyebrows raised. “What do I do about that?”
“We should call them from outside, where there’s some ambient noise and a breeze to give the phone some interference. It’ll mask your voice a little.”
Bella nodded.
“You might want to try putting a little roughness back into your voice. Like you’re hoarse.”
“Like this? Do I sound like my old self?” She tried a gravelly voice, but it only made her sound sexier, like Marlene Dietrich.
I smiled. “Not … exactly. Never mind. Let’s just hope the wind does the trick.”
She took the phone and started to dial Renée’s number, but then she froze. “What have I been up to for the last three days?” she asked.
“I don’t think your mother is going to ask you that.”
“But - oh. Oh.” Her living flesh would have blushed; even now I could almost see the sweet pinkness. “Right. Newlyweds.”
“I’m almost hurt that you forgot,” I teased. “But you have had one or two other things or your mind.”
And so had I; the trauma of her transformation roiled through my stomach again. But Bella was still impassive. How could she be so strong? On my fourth day I was screaming at Carlisle and destroying his home. There wasn’t a piece of my new father’s furniture left unbroken by sunset. I’m still not sure how he kept me from bolting out the door.
I realized I was still touching Bella’s waist, and I stepped away. “Would you prefer to speak with them alone?”
She shook her head. “No, stay with me. I might need some more … pointers.”
“I’ll stay on the steps.”
I settled on the top step of the porch and leaned with my elbows on my knees, hands clasped, watching as Bella started pacing around the yard while she waited for Renée to pick up. Her rapid, circular pacing during phone calls: that nervous habit hadn’t changed since her transformation.
Just as Renée answered, Bella reached a clearing in the trees …
And the sunlight fell on her.
I stopped breathing. I stopped everything except for watching her. My ears registered Renée’s probing questions, her voice worried and tinny-sounding through the cell phone as she wondered if her daughter was all right. I was vaguely aware that Bella was once again reassuring her mother; they fell so easily into their old roles.
But somehow none of the language of their conversation penetrated my skull. All I could recognize was that Bella was flawless, sparkling and wondrous in the sunshine, her skin so iridescent I had to squint to fully appreciate her. Her dark hair stood in stark relief to her white neck, and even her crimson eyes seemed absolutely right and perfect. Who was this luminous being who had somehow chosen me as her mate? She was angelic. I felt a smile curl my lips, and I had to shake my head.
All these years I’d thought our glittering skin was a cruel joke, a curse placed on us by God to remind us how far from heaven we were, to rub our noses in the knowledge of how utterly anti-celestial we would remain. But Bella now seemed to me to embody everything good in this world, and the one beyond, and perhaps worlds I hadn’t even contemplated. Her beauty stunned me and left me incapable of thought. I could only stare open-mouthed, like a foolish child.
Her circular pacing continued as she chatted with her mother, and periodically her figure would pass through shadows again, returning to the light moments later. I watched her hungrily and hoped she would talk for an hour, or longer.
At last she said goodbye; and as her thumb pressed “end” on the cell phone, she saw herself.
The hand that held the cell phone was radiant, and she extended her arms, dropping the phone in the grass as her eyes widened. She pushed up her sleeves, tugged her collar away from her chest as she looked down at her body. She kicked her shoes off and wiggled her ten sparkling little bare toes. Then she spun to face me, a look of astonishment on her shining face.
“Beautiful,” I whispered to her.
She managed a smile before she turned her palms toward her face again. She stared at them for a long while, then pressed them into her chest as if she were trying to feel the light vibrating off of her.
“Oh my God.” Her eyes fluttered to me again.
“Hmm,” I agreed, nodding.
We smiled at each other. The moment seemed to stretch into forever, with me sitting in shadows on the porch and Bella standing, brilliant and barefoot, on the grass. I rested my head on my hand and just watched her. She laughed and spun in a circle, flinging her arms wide. My smile grew even broader.
“You do have another parent, you know,” I reminded her.
“Oops. Right,” Bella laughed. With a sigh, she picked up the phone, flipped it open again and started dialing. “I guess I should call Charlie.”
“He’d appreciate that.”
Bella commenced her pacing again. Now the sun was behind the clouds, and I was able to concentrate on what she was saying this time without the glamour of her pale, sun-lit radiance. The wind had picked up a little, and hopefully that would better mask the new musical tones in her perfect voice.
“Hello?” Charlie’s voice was gruff, as usual.
“Hey, Dad.”
“Well, hey, Bells.” His voice brightened considerably. He’d missed her.
Bella wandered around the yard as they exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes: Charlie was never one for deep conversation. But I could hear the tension in his voice, and in Bella’s; and the speed of her pacing increased until she was at a sprinting pace, though she wasn’t aware of it. I crossed the yard and caught her hand, encouraging her with a motion of my hand to slow down, to use a human pace before Charlie wondered if she was talking on the phone in a speeding car with the windows down. Bella’s eyes flickered to mine gratefully and she squeezed my fingers in return.
She interrupted a story about Charlie’s latest fishing trip with Billy Black. Her father had tactfully avoided any mention of Billy’s son.
“What else are you eating, Dad? Besides fish?” I’d never heard her refer to him as “Dad” so many times in one conversation before. She must miss him, too. “Tell me you’re not already back to frozen dinners.”
“Uh, no,” he said. “I’m fixing myself a lot of pasta. Remembering to stir it this time.”
“That’s good.”
“You? You’re eating, too, right?”
Bella stopped moving.
“Um …” Her lips pressed together and she darted a glance at me, then looked away into the trees. I had turned to head back to the steps, but now I stopped and watched her.
“Don’t think I never noticed how many meals you skipped because you weren’t hungry. I reckon it’s a little late for me to mention it now, but that always worried me. Girl’s gotta eat.”
“I know, Dad,” she muttered. She wasn’t annoyed, I could tell. But her face was crumpling. He’d hit a nerve, and I had a feeling I knew what that nerve was.
She would never share a meal with him again.
And now she understood that it was worse than that: she’d probably never see him again. In this small moment on the phone with her father, her old world had trickled through her fingers like grains of sand. I knew what that felt like.
“And when you go to all those places in Europe Edward’s got planned for you, I want full detail of what you ate there. Maybe you could show me how to cook it when you get back.”
Bella paused, her lips curving into a frown, chin quivering just the slightest bit. But when she spoke she sounded composed. “That’d be great,” she lied.
“Crap, I didn’t spoil his surprise, did I? He told me a while back, but - aw, shoot, I think I just let the cat out of the bag.”
“No, you didn’t, Dad. Edward told me already.” Her voice was all steel, but she was blinking rapidly, as if she were trying to hold back the ghosts of tears.
I placed a fingertip under her chin, trying to get her to look at me. But she withdrew from my touch and stalked into the forest. I followed, worrying, wanting to yank the phone from her hand and make her talk to me.
“That’s good,” said Charlie. “I mean, he planned it all out for you, sounds like. Anyway, I expect you’ll pick up some new recipes over there.”
“Yeah, I’m sure I will.” Bella stopped at a pine tree and leaned heavily against it with one hand. She stared at the ground, her back to me, her hair hiding her face.
“Maybe we could have a party over here. Invite Billy and Jake - well, if Jake’s up to it - I mean, if Edward’s okay with it - ” Charlie coughed. “Get Sue Clearwater and her kids over, some of your school buddies if they haven’t left for college yet. Edward’s family, too. Let you and Edward show off your culinary skills.”
“Sounds great.”
Charlie paused. “You okay, Bells?”
I didn’t think he’d be asking to see her so soon. I placed my hand on the small of Bella’s back and she didn’t pull away this time; instead she turned her body towards me, wrapped her fingers into the front of my shirt, holding me there, and I could see that she was crying silently - though, of course, no tears ran down her cheeks.
I held out my hand for the phone, but she turned her head away, the phone still to her ear. “Yeah, I’m fine, Dad. But I should probably start packing. We leave in a couple of days and we’re going to be gone a while.”
“Oh. Oh, sure. Well, call me again before you go, if you can.”
“I will.”
“Okay. Bye, honey.”
Bella managed a small “bye” in return before she hung up. A sigh shuddered out of her. She stared at the phone in her hand until I took it from her and pocketed it.
It was bound to happen: Bella was finally breaking down.
“Talk to me, Bella,” I said, taking her face in my hands, stroking her hair. “Talk to me.”
Her palm went to her chest, rubbed her sternum and the ribs around them, rested over her heart.
She stopped breathing for a moment. She stared into the sky past my shoulders, her scarlet eyes unblinking, the passing clouds reflecting in them. Pine trees swayed above us, and under the moving branches her skin alternately sparkled and paled before me. She said nothing as her gaze followed the clouds overhead. Then she looked back at me for a long while, and it seemed she was taking the measure of me in some new way.
“Bella?” I whispered.
“Let’s go inside.” And she turned away from me and walked quickly back to the house.
I couldn’t speak. I stood watching her go, as motionless as a statue frozen on its pedestal. Birds twittered above and around me. The clouds covered the sun, making her profile almost white-blue in its chiseled paleness as she turned to climb the steps. Then they wafted away again, bringing dazzling light to her white cheeks and her ruby lips once more.
We sat together on the sofa in tortured silence, and Jasper kept staring at us. I glared at him to stop, and he did try.
I had worried that Emmett would continue to tease us about our wrecked post-coital appearance this morning; but when Bella and I joined the family in the living room, everyone was already mulling over her apparent talent and the powerful effect it had had on each of us: we were disgusted by the human hiker’s blood, couldn’t even imagine ourselves drinking it, and all because Bella was repulsed by it. Her aversion seemed to have permeated us as surely as Jasper’s sense of calm had dampened my own fears on our wedding night. But Bella still seemed uncertain about how she’d affected us; her hand reached for mine and I clutched it tightly, grateful for the contact, glad to have some way of reassuring her.
“Is the change Bella sparked in us permanent?” wondered Esme as she paced slowly along the length of the window. The morning sunlight slanted into the room, its wide golden stripe illuminating the hardwood floor and pale carpets. My mother’s calves and ankles shimmered beneath the soft swish of her skirt as she passed.
Alice tilted her head and silently traced the piano keys from her position on the padded bench. “And will Bella’s influence affect all vampires, or just ones like us who want to refrain from human blood?”
“And is there more to what she can do than just making us feel sick around it?” asked Emmett, his eyes glinting with excitement. Like Esme, he couldn’t keep still; but his motion was frenetic as he stalked from one corner of the room to the other, gesticulating with his hands. “She tracked a bear, and a mountain lion. She found the human from four miles away. She seemed to know which was which.”
“And don’t forget she sensed Carlisle and the others from the parking lot,” added Rosalie. She sat on the bottom stair and toyed with the ends of her hair, frowning, but her thoughts were entirely preoccupied by Bella. This side of Rosalie still caught me off-guard; she seemed almost humbled by the power of Bella’s talent.
“So it’s not just blood she senses,” agreed Jasper, settling next to Alice on the piano bench. “It’s also - ” He pursed his lips as he struggled to make sense of it.
“The … absence of blood?” offered Bella.
All eyes turned toward her.
“I don’t know,” she said in a small voice. She looked overwhelmed.
Jasper stood again and crossed the room to kneel next to us, his voice matter-of-fact. “I know you’re confused,” he said. “You don’t have to be afraid. Everyone’s happy this has happened. Trust me.”
“Everyone’s happy about it?” In spite of herself, Bella laughed. “I guess you would know, huh?”
He nodded solemnly, eyes twinkling just before he broke into a grin.
I didn’t really know this new, relaxed Jasper, but I was starting to like him a lot. Bella needed all the reassurance she could get, and Jasper was giving it to her without even using his talent. But his thoughts told me there was one person in the room who wasn’t entirely happy about Bella’s gift, and he was looking at her.
“He’s right,” said Alice, sitting next to me on the arm of the sofa. “And we’ll keep telling you until you believe us.” She winked at Bella, who ducked her head and tried to smile.
“I know,” Bella said. “But it just - it happened so fast. And I … I couldn’t control it. It happened to you without my meaning for it to. What if - ”
“Do you really need to control it?” interrupted Emmett, coming to a halt in the middle of the room. “Let me simplify. Murder bad. Not murdering - pretty good, I’d say.” And he commenced his pacing again with a smirk on his face.
“Thanks for spelling it out for us,” I muttered. Bella looked up at me and I smiled, but the worry didn’t leave her forehead. I felt my smile slowly fall as I tried to read the emotion in her eyes. Since I’d met Bella, I’d often wished I could borrow Jasper’s gift.
Like now, for example. Now it certainly would be a relief to know what was behind those blood-red eyes as her gaze focused laser-sharp on each member of our family. It was as if she was seeing us all for the first time, or trying to memorize us. She stared at the back of my hand like she could count the blood vessels inside it. She looked as though she were about to weep, or flee from the room. I wanted to scream … but I sat completely still and tried to tear my eyes away from her.
“It’s really okay, you know,” said Alice. “I can’t see a down side to this. In fact … ” She trailed off, her eyes far away as she caught another vision. “Ha,” she said.
But her thoughts were murky and, in my upset over Bella, I couldn’t put the pieces together. She shook her head as images of the Volturi drifted away and then she looked at Jasper, who still knelt next to Bella. The couple started planning something in that strange, unspoken language they shared, the one even I couldn’t always crack. Now Jasper was thinking of the Volturi; and Alice, for some reason, was thinking of going to Seattle today. Before I could consider what this meant, Carlisle’s voice drew me out of Alice’s thoughts.
“The important question is how will Bella’s ability affect our meeting in Italy?” He’d been relatively quiet, seated with his feet propped up on an ottoman, his head resting on the back of the chair with a hand over his eyes.
The family quieted as Carlisle voiced the subject we all wanted to avoid: the confrontation with the powerful Volturi. Now he stood, crossed to us, and regarded Bella intensely. She blanched, as though she were a student caught passing a note in class. “Will her gift be an asset to us?”
“Or a liability?” she muttered, lowering her gaze.
“I don’t think - ” Carlisle began.
“It’s my fault we have to go in the first place,” Bella insisted. “If I’d agreed to marry Edward sooner, they might not have come here at all. The delay drew their attention. They suspect me of - of not wanting this - this change. They want to be sure I haven’t exposed you … or any vampires, for that matter.”
“No, no,” said Carlisle, pulling the ottoman over to sit directly facing Bella. “They’ve felt threatened by me - by our family, rather - for decades. Long before Edward met you. You’re the excuse, Bella. They’ve known for a long time that you wanted to join us, and it frightens them that our numbers are growing, even though we’re still a tiny group compared to their compound. But they can’t take any chances, you see. You’re the excuse they’d been waiting for to bring us all to Italy.”
To absorb us into their ranks, or to kill us, he thought, and everyone else’s mind echoed his. It was a symphony of fear and I wanted to shut it out. Bella looked from person to person; I was sure she sensed the terror in her new family. Her eyes narrowed and lowered to our clasped hands once more.
“Of course they would see us as a threat because there are so many of us,” said Jasper. “Vampires don’t usually remain in a clan, remember? In their eyes, why else would we join forces other than to gain power?” As if to punctuate his words, disturbing images of Jasper’s bloody past flooded my mind until he forcibly turned his attention to other memories - his wedding day with Alice, walking in the sunlight on a mountaintop with her, laughing with Emmett over some joke to which I hadn’t been privy.
Bella had been staring into Jasper’s eyes keenly, and now she nodded reluctantly. Her gaze again lingered over the rest of our family, and her expression was unreadable.
Finally I could resist no longer, and, like a rat in the night scuttling into a kitchen, I crept deliberately deeper into Jasper’s thoughts where I heard his assessment of her state of emotion: Skeptical. Guilty, angry, terrified. Trapped.
Trapped, I thought, scurrying out of his mind like I’d been scalded. My stomach lurched. Trapped. Of course. And why wouldn’t she feel that way? Her sudden immortality had left her feeling imprisoned, just as mine had. It was undoable. It was my fault.
I was abruptly terrified of her abandoning me.
Stop that, Edward, thought Jasper, deliberately not looking at me. His mental “voice” was gentle and chiding. She loves you. She’s not going anywhere.
Startled, I glared at him, but he avoided my eyes. His readings of my emotions always felt intrusive, and he was always as accurate as if he could read my thoughts. But I had to remind myself that he couldn’t tune out sudden surges of emotion; and, no doubt about it, I was full of them now. My insecurity must have hit him like a tsunami. I felt seventeen again.
Like every young man, when I was a teenager - actually seventeen, not a long-dead man wearing a young man’s face - I thought I was, I wished to be, immortal. War couldn’t kill me, I thought, and my plan was to barge into battle, blood pumping, fists flying. I’d win the war and live forever and things would always be that simple. I honestly didn’t even think the Spanish influenza would kill me in the end; and I was right about that, in a sense, but through no doing of my own. Now I knew what it was to have something I’d wished for come true: fulfillment comes at a price. Anyone who’s ever read any fairy tale knows that.
I reminded myself that Bella was young, and as naïve as I had been when I was her age. She’d gotten what she wanted, at unfathomable cost. And now my fairy tale ending with Bella was turning into a nightmare in front of me.
“Jasper was right last night,” said Carlisle, unaware of what had passed between Jasper and me. “Before we go to Italy, we need to see how far Bella’s gift reaches. Then we’ll know if we have a bargaining chip or not. The Volturi could see her as a threat, which means she is our weapon.” His eyes softened as he looked at Bella. “I’m sorry, but it’s best you know where you stand.”
Bella nodded once. She released my hand and threaded her fingers together on her lap.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Bargaining chip? Weapon? What are you talking about?”
“The Volturi outnumber us, and they’ve probably amassed a number of even more powerful members since I was with them - Jane, for one, and her brother, whose power we don’t know yet. There may be more like them. There probably are.”
Jasper stood up behind Carlisle, who was still seated on the ottoman facing Bella. Something about seeing the two of them together, the strategists of the family clearly understanding one another, made me feel threatened. Anger blossomed in me like an ugly flower.
Carlisle went on, ignoring my clenched jaw. “Since Aro ‘read’ Edward and Alice in Volterra, the Volturi now know our family’s strengths, and they’ll be prepared for us. So what do we have that they don’t know about? What could threaten their very way of life?”
“Me,” said Bella. Her expression was clear and resigned.
“No. No.” I stood up. “She’s not a weapon. We won’t use her like that. It’s too dangerous. She’s only just been turned, isn’t that enough? We can’t put this on her shoulders.”
Carlisle rose. “I’m not saying I want this for her. I just don’t know what else we can do. If we have a weapon - something that will alter any vampire, perhaps irrevocably, something that will starve them unless either they let us leave or decide to change and live the way we do - then we have to be prepared to use it against Aro and his clan. I’m sorry, Bella, but we have no choice.”
The lamb on the slaughtering block, I thought, horrified. “This can’t happen.” I stepped toward Carlisle and Jasper. “We can’t - we can’t go. Bella and I will go away. The family can scatter. They can’t track us all. Carlisle, if - ”
“Stop it, Edward,” whispered Bella.
I whirled to face her.
“There’s no way out of this,” she said to no one, and she sounded surprised, almost as if she were just realizing it. “We’ll do what we have to do, of course.” And she stood up and walked out the front door, her face as emotionless as a shark’s.
I started to follow her, but Jasper’s hand caught my shoulder. “Let her go.” I glowered at him, but he shook his head. She doesn’t want you right now. With his thoughts, it felt as though stinging nettles had wrapped themselves around my heart.
“Should I - ?” Esme’s gentle smile almost disguised the worry in her eyes.
“Alice - ” I began.
“I’ll go,” offered Rosalie. Before anyone could say “no,” she darted after Bella. Alice smiled apologetically at me. I heard Rosalie call for Bella to wait for her, then their footsteps crunched over dead pine needles in the woods, becoming fainter as they put distance between themselves and the house.
I had a dreadful feeling about this.
The rest of the family was quiet. No one looked at me. Everyone worried for Bella. Everyone pitied me. Suddenly and fiercely, I hated them all. Trapped, I thought again. Bella felt trapped. I felt that way, too.
I stalked into the corner of the room and leaned heavily against the wall, staring out the large back window. From here I could watch the woods for signs of movement, of Bella. I could watch my family’s reflections in the glass. And I could pretend to care what Carlisle wanted. Emmett wandered over to join me, but my dark look sent him back to his side of the room.
Okay, okay, sheesh, he thought. But it’s all going to be fine, you’ll see … His optimism infuriated me. I started reciting Gilbert and Sullivan in my head to drown out his unsolicited reassurances.
Carlisle was now strategizing with Jasper, as if nothing had happened. He wanted Jasper and Alice to leave town for the afternoon to find out how far Bella’s influence reached.
Jasper nodded at Carlisle and held out a hand to Alice. “Fancy an adventure?”
She took his hand and hopped lightly to his side, a brilliant smile lighting her face. “Always.”
Alice went upstairs for her purse, and in a blur of movement they were gone - taking Alice’s Porsche to travel over a hundred miles away to Seattle, I now knew, to see how far Bella’s gift would continue to affect them.
Carlisle lowered his eyes and sighed heavily. We don’t have much time, he couldn’t help thinking.
“So now we wait,” Emmett murmured.
All was quiet inside the house. Esme sat in silence on the sofa, clenching her fists as she envisioned each of us suffering grisly, prolonged deaths at the hands of the Volturi. We were her family, and she was terrified by the thought of being powerless to protect us. I knew how she felt.
Emmett was imagining himself killing several of the Italian vampires, starting with Demetri; but even he figured we’d be outnumbered in the end. I understood that, too.
Carlisle paced alongside the perimeter of the carpet as he tried to analyze Bella’s talent and pick apart potential negative aspects of it, how it might backfire on us once we were in the clutches of the Volturi; then he examined the positive aspects, how we might use Bella’s gift to keep the Volturi out of our lives permanently. His thoughts were as emotionally detached as Esme’s were charged; and even though - as our father - he was right to think that way, I wanted to strike him.
With a struggle, I forced my focus outward. I heard the droning of insects outside. Birds cackled and flew from tree to ground as they began a long day of hunting. In the distance, cars sliced across local roads. A plane’s jet engine growled.
And still I fumed, and feared.
Trapped. She feels trapped. The words thundered in my head as though God Himself were shouting at me. It was no less than I deserved.
Reflected in the window glass, I saw Esme narrow her eyes at me, then look significantly at Carlisle.
“Perhaps,” Carlisle said, taking her cue and turning towards the staircase, “we should start packing for Italy.”
“Good idea,” said Esme, rising from the sofa and joining her husband on the stairs. “Emmett?”
“What do - ”
“Come on and start packing.”
After a moment during which I suppose he was trying to figure out why they wanted him out of the living room, Emmett huffed once, stared meaningfully at me, and started stomping up the stairs. He was used to my moods.
Of course they didn’t need extra time to pack; even Emmett saw through that ruse. To his credit, he managed not to look back at me.
After thirty interminable minutes, twenty-nine of which consisted of me alternately talking myself into and out of trying to track them, I was on the verge of running into the woods after Bella and Rosalie. I wanted to give Bella the space she needed, but I was going insane wondering what they were talking about. If only I could hold her and reassure her that she’d feel better in time, that my love would be enough to ease her through the rough beginning …
Who was I kidding? Even I didn’t believe me.
Thankfully, they returned. I heard Rosalie’s mind as she continued a conversation with Bella. They were talking about … fashion?
I paced the porch as if that was all I’d been doing while they were gone. Rosalie reached the house first, thundering toward me like a tank. Bella hung back and kicked at the ground.
“Stay out of my head, Edward,” Rosalie warned in a steely voice. She shouldered past me, singing an Italian aria in her mind to block me from her thoughts. From the living room on her way to the stairs she called back, “Bella and I are going shopping.”
I looked back at Bella, utterly confused.
She shrugged. “I told her I had my own clothes, once they’re clean. She insisted. She said it was Italy, I had to have something more fashionable to wear. Seems a little ridiculous, considering we might all - ”
“We’re not going to die.” I didn’t have to read Bella’s mind to know what she was thinking.
Her hard, desperate face made me rush to her and wrap my arms around her. She was stiff and wouldn’t return my embrace.
“Bella, we can run away,” I whispered.
She shook her head. “We’ve been over this. They’ll find us. There’s Demetri - ”
“Who’s not as smart as he thinks he is. Trust me, I’ve been inside his head.” I was lying to her now, but I didn’t care. I only cared about trying to protect her. “We can go away. I have passports for us under false names already, and - ”
Her eyes flamed into mine for a split second, and I wasn’t sure if it was panic or fury or passion I saw in them; but suddenly she was kissing me, both hands on my jaw, fingers raking into my hair. She pushed into me until we were against the side of the house, and her body ground against mine with intention. My desire awoke instantly, and with a fervor that could only be attributable to my own anxious and fearful state of mind. I clutched at her helplessly, and her kisses drove me on. I kissed her deeper, and harder. It took an effort not to whimper. I wanted to have her, now, if only to prove to myself that she was still mine. Selfish, selfish, but I couldn’t help it. As my greedy fingers reached for the buttons of her blouse, I wondered vaguely if we should go inside.
Just then I became aware of Alice and Jasper approaching, hearing their thoughts a second before Bella recognized the car’s engine buzzing along the road. She stepped away from me and we looked at each other. Her lips were a darker red because I’d been kissing them so forcefully. Her eyes smoldered into mine and I couldn’t look away if I tried. But Bella turned her back to me and strode forward to meet Alice and Jasper, buttoning her shirt’s top button as she walked. I trailed behind, unable to bear being even a few feet away from her. Why wouldn’t she talk to me?
Alice pulled the Porsche into the driveway, parked, got out of the car, and strolled over to us as we tried to compose ourselves. Reading Alice’s thoughts, I knew everything was fine; they’d stopped at a rest area off the highway outside of town and discovered that Jasper still felt ill when they were too close to the humans, which meant that Bella’s power was still affecting him. But Alice, for some reason, felt the familiar, dry-throated craving.
Alice didn’t think it was a male-versus-female response. In my sister’s mind I saw a flash of Jasper touching Bella’s forehead in our bedroom as he tried to calm her impulsivity when she was newly born, and then I saw Bella’s hand on Jasper’s head when he’d fallen to his knees as the hiker walked blithely away from his would-be killers.
Alice thought that touching Bella would extend the reach of her gift, perhaps permanently.
“Back so soon?” asked Bella.
“I’ve got a theory,” said Alice. She took Bella’s hand in hers and squeezed it, as if the action were nothing more meaningful than a sudden wish for affection. “You’re very pretty,” she added as they stood there shimmering together in the sunlight.
Bella cocked her head, confused.
Alice let go and skipped back to the Porsche. “See you later!” She backed the car all the way to the main road. Jasper waved a lazy hand at us as they disappeared.
“What just happened?” asked Bella. She still held her hand out where Alice had released it.
“Alice started craving human blood just outside of town, but Jasper was fine. She thinks anyone who touches you can carry your gift with them even farther away. She thinks your touch might even change a vampire forever.”
“Why would that be?” she wondered, staring down the driveway.
I shook my head. “Who knows why any of us have the powers we do?” I replied. “Why does my ability reach a few miles for people I know, and less far for people I don’t? How can Alice sometimes see what the Volturi are planning on the other side of the world when other times she’s blindsided by them? It’s all a mystery to me.”
But miracle, not mystery, was what I was thinking. Things were changing, and I found my own outlook about our talents changing with them. No longer could I look at my own power as a curse, not completely, when Bella’s equally inexplicable talent had given us all such hope.
“Well,” she muttered, “I hope we can figure the mystery out before we go to Italy.”
“Bella, listen, we can still - ”
“All right.” Rosalie’s strident tone reached our ears as she skipped down the stairs inside the house. “I’m ready. Got my purse. Let’s go shopping - if you can call it that in a place like Forks.”
Let her be, thought Jasper several hours later.
I wanted to glare at him, but found that I was too defeated to do so.
I still wasn’t quite certain how I’d ended up in his room. But Emmett was too happy-go-lucky for my mood just now, and I couldn’t bear Esme’s sad eyes or Carlisle’s sensible calculation.
I suppose, in secret, I was hoping I could sway Jasper to my way of thinking. Perhaps if he thought using a newborn vampire as our only “weapon” was reckless, he could change Carlisle’s mind.
At the moment, Jasper was packing an old leather suitcase for himself, with a few extra things for Alice, while I reclined on their comfortable sofa.
Alice had been right: touching Bella had extended the effect of her power all the way to Seattle. They had wanted to travel farther, but Alice had had what she considered a brilliant idea. She had gone on to Italy, deciding on the spur of the moment to take the afternoon flight from Seattle today instead of two days from now.
Alice wanted to scout out the situation, to see what she could learn about the Volturi’s plans. Perhaps she’d pick up more with her talent by being closer to the trio of leaders, Aro, Caius, and Marcus. More importantly, she wanted to see if Bella’s gift would still affect her on the other side of the world; that could mean that Bella’s touch did indeed create a permanent change. Alice wanted so badly for that to be true that she simply couldn’t wait to find out; and if we all traveled to Italy with Bella, we’d never know. Someone had to put distance between them in order to find out, so Alice happily volunteered herself for the task. Without telling Jasper, she’d even stuffed her passport and a change of clothing into her large purse, just in case.
Because of the risk of danger, Jasper understandably had wanted her to wait and travel with the rest of us; but aside from restraining her bodily there wasn’t much he could do to make her stay. Alice had told him not to worry, said she’d draw less attention if she arrived by herself; and he hadn’t had his passport with him, anyhow. She insisted the more we knew about Bella’s gift beforehand, the better for us. The pragmatist in Jasper couldn’t disagree with her assessment.
“Besides,” she’d assured him, “you’ll be there less than two days after I land.”
Unfortunately Jasper, the husband, didn’t see eye to eye with Jasper, the strategist. I’d never seen him more agitated.
Now he was a whirl of motion as he finished tossing clothes into their luggage. He stood still, staring at the suitcase for a long while. His mind was searching for more to do to keep himself busy, but there was nothing left. His passport sat on top of the dresser beside his wallet. Finally he perched on the stretched skin of a huge drum he and Alice had bought in Africa. If Alice were here she’d nudge him off it, threatening to make him play it instead. His fingers drummed the edges as he looked around restlessly.
Their room was as colorful as mine was monochromatic, with lots of paintings and tapestries hanging on the walls. The effect was overwhelming to the eyes, yet somehow soothing to the ears; I supposed the sound in the room must have been dampened somewhat by all the extra fabric and canvases hanging on the walls. I liked their room. It felt like a cozy library to me.
Bella just needs to work through this. It’s only been a day since she turned. Jasper looked at the handwoven carpet at his feet. It was odd for him to be offering me advice, to be comforting me. Perhaps it took his mind off his own worry about Alice.
“I know,” I acknowledged. “But with Rosalie?” I squinted at the ceiling, trying to imagine what they were talking about while they were shopping back in town and finding that, of course, I imagined the worst.
It makes the most sense, Jasper thought, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
But it wasn’t obvious to me.
Stay out of my head, Rosalie had warned me again before they drove off in her BMW.
I sighed. It was killing me, not knowing how Bella was feeling, not understanding why she wanted to confide in Rosalie instead of her own husband, and - most of all - not being able to fix it.
Rosalie’s still hanging onto her human life. She’s the only one who could really understand how Bella’s feeling right now.
That stung. Desperation clutched my gut even more tightly.
I’m not saying that to hurt you, Edward.
I sighed. Our one-on-one conversations were always like this, with him speaking the thoughts inside his head and me responding rarely or not at all. He could feel what I was likely to say, so speech was hardly necessary. I still felt awkward, communicating in this fashion, and he did, too; but verbalizing things with each other felt redundant. And we’d both know, in our own way, if the other were lying. So our conversations were unavoidably more intimate than either of us would prefer, which was why we’d seldom had them. It was more comfortable for both of us to steer clear of each other.
Though I was grateful that he wanted to help me, I desperately wanted to change the subject. And I wanted to talk him out of wanting to use Bella as a weapon. I’d have to ease my way into the subject, because I felt his certainty that that was our best hope.
“How long until Alice lands?”
He looked at his wristwatch. “She said she’d call around eight in the morning, Italian time. Her flight lands around seven, then there’s the immigration line, and - ”
My cell phone rang. I flipped it open hurriedly, hoping it was Bella; but it was Rosalie.
“Yes?” I said.
“Is Bella there with you?”
My heart turned to ice. Jasper hopped off the drum and crossed the room to me in an instant.
I spoke into the phone, measuring each word as my gaze held onto Jasper’s for dear life. “What do you mean, is Bella with me?”
Read on ... Part 7
Author’s Note: Oh no, a cliffhanger! Never fear; Bella’s whereabouts will be revealed. ;) I’m planning one or two more chapters, and I hope to finish the story before another year passes. Can any of you loan me some time (or a babysitter) so I can write? As always, thanks in advance for your thoughtful feedback. I do appreciate it. :D