“Renes… mee. So… beautiful.”
And then she gasped—gasped in pain.
By the time I looked, it was too late. Edward had snatched the warm, bloody thing out of her limp arms. My eyes flickered across her skin. It was red with blood—the blood that had flowed from her mouth, the blood smeared all over the creature, and fresh blood welling out of a tiny double-crescent bite mark just over her left breast.
“No, Renesmee,” Edward murmured, like he was teaching the monster manners.
I didn’t look at him or it. I watched only Bella as her eyes rolled back into her head.
With a last dull ga-lump, her heart faltered and went silent.
She missed maybe half of one beat, and then my hands were on her chest, doing compressions. I counted in my head, trying to keep the rhythm steady. One. Two. Three. Four.
Breaking away for a second, I blew another lungful of air into her.
I couldn’t see anymore. My eyes were wet and blurry. But I was hyperaware of the sounds in the room. The unwilling glug-glug of her heart under my demanding hands, the pounding of my own heart, and another—a fluttering beat that was too fast, too light. I couldn’t place it.
I forced more air down Bella’s throat.
“What are you waiting for?” I choked out breathlessly, pumping her heart again. One. Two. Three. Four.
“Take the baby,” Edward said urgently.
“Throw it out the window.” One. Two. Three. Four.
“Give her to me,” a low voice chimed from the doorway.
Edward and I snarled at the same time.
One. Two. Three. Four.
“I’ve got it under control,” Rosalie promised. “Give me the baby, Edward. I’ll take care of her until Bella . . .”
I breathed for Bella again while the exchange took place. The fluttering thumpa-thumpa-thumpa faded away with distance.
“Move your hands, Jacob.”
I looked up from Bella’s white eyes, still pumping her heart for her. Edward had a syringe in his hand—all silver, like it was made from steel.
“What’s that?”
His stone hand knocked mine out of the way. There was a tiny crunch as his blow broke my little finger. In the same second, he shoved the needle straight into her heart.
“My venom,” he answered as he pushed the plunger down.
I heard the jolt in her heart, like he’d shocked her with paddles.
“Keep it moving,” he ordered. His voice was ice, was dead. Fierce and unthinking. Like he was a machine.
I ignored the healing ache in my finger and started pumping her heart again. It was harder, as if her blood was congealing there—thicker and slower. While I pushed the now-viscous blood through her arteries, I watched what he was doing.
It was like he was kissing her, brushing his lips at her throat, at her wrists, into the crease at the inside of her arm. But I could hear the lush tearing of her skin as his teeth bit through, again and again, forcing venom into her system at as many points as possible. I saw his pale tongue sweep along the bleeding gashes, but before this could make me either sick or angry, I realized what he was doing. Where his tongue washed the venom over her skin, it sealed shut. Holding the poison and the blood inside her body.
I blew more air into her mouth, but there was nothing there. Just the lifeless rise of her chest in response. I kept pumping her heart, counting, while he worked manically over her, trying to put her back together. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men…
But there was nothing there, just me, just him.
Working over a corpse.
Because that’s all that was left of the girl we both loved. This broken, bled-out, mangled corpse. We couldn’t put Bella together again.
I knew it was too late. I knew she was dead. I knew it for sure because the pull was gone. I didn’t feel any reason to be here beside her. She wasn’t here anymore. So this body had no more draw for me. The senseless need to be near her had vanished.
Or maybe moved was the better word. It seemed like I felt the pull from the opposite direction now. From down the stairs, out the door. The longing to get away from here and never, ever come back.
“Go, then,” he snapped, and he hit my hands out of the way again, taking my place this time. Three fingers broken, it felt like.
I straightened them numbly, not minding the throb of pain.
He pushed her dead heart faster than I had.
“She’s not dead,” he growled. “She’s going to be fine.”
I wasn’t sure he was talking to me anymore.
Turning away, leaving him with his dead, I walked slowly to the door. So slowly. I couldn’t make my feet move faster.
This was it, then. The ocean of pain. The other shore so far away across the boiling water that I couldn’t imagine it, much less see it.
I felt empty again, now that I’d lost my purpose. Saving Bella had been my fight for so long now. And she wouldn’t be saved. She’d willingly sacrificed herself to be torn apart by that monster’s young, and so the fight was lost. It was all over.
I shuddered at the sound coming from behind me as I plodded down the stairs—the sound of a dead heart being forced to thud.
I wanted to somehow pour bleach inside my head and let it fry my brain. To burn away the images left from Bella’s final minutes. I’d take the brain damage if I could get rid of that—the screaming, the bleeding, the unbearable crunching and snapping as the newborn monster tore through her from the inside out. . . .
I wanted to sprint away, to take the stairs ten at a time and race out the door, but my feet were heavy as iron and my body was more tired than it had ever been before. I shuffled down the stairs like a crippled old man.
I rested at the bottom step, gathering my strength to get out the door.
Rosalie was on the clean end of the white sofa, her back to me, cooing and murmuring to the blanket-wrapped thing in her arms. She must have heard me pause, but she ignored me, caught up in her moment of stolen motherhood. Maybe she would be happy now. Rosalie had what she wanted, and Bella would never come to take the creature from her. I wondered if that’s what the poisonous blonde had been hoping for all along.
She held something dark in her hands, and there was a greedy sucking sound coming from the tiny murderer she held.
The scent of blood in the air. Human blood. Rosalie was feeding it. Of course it would want blood. What else would you feed the kind of monster that would brutally mutilate its own mother? It might as well have been drinking Bella’s blood. Maybe it was.
My strength came back to me as I listened to the sound of the little executioner feeding.
Strength and hate and heat—red heat washing through my head, burning but erasing nothing. The images in my head were fuel, building up the inferno but refusing to be consumed. I felt the tremors rock me from head to toe, and I did not try to stop them.
Rosalie was totally absorbed in the creature, paying no attention to me at all. She wouldn’t be quick enough to stop me, distracted as she was.
Sam had been right. The thing was an aberration—its existence went against nature. A black, soulless demon. Something that had no right to be.
Something that had to be destroyed.
It seemed like the pull had not been leading to the door after all. I could feel it now, encouraging me, tugging me forward. Pushing me to finish this, to cleanse the world of this abomination.
Rosalie would try to kill me when the creature was dead, and I would fight back. I wasn’t sure if I would have time to finish her before the others came to help. Maybe, maybe not. I didn’t much care either way.
I didn’t care if the wolves, either set, avenged me or called the Cullens’ justice fair. None of that mattered. All I cared about was my own justice. My revenge. The thing that had killed Bella would not live another minute longer.
If Bella’d survived, she would have hated me for this. She would have wanted to kill me personally.
But I di
dn’t care. She didn’t care what she had done to me—letting herself be slaughtered like an animal. Why should I take her feelings into account?
And then there was Edward. He must be too busy now—too far gone in his insane denial, trying to reanimate a corpse—to listen to my plans.
So I wouldn’t get the chance to keep my promise to him, unless—and it was not a wager I’d put money on—I managed to win the fight against Rosalie, Jasper, and Alice, three on one. But even if I did win, I didn’t think I had it in me to kill Edward.
Because I didn’t have enough compassion for that. Why should I let him get away from what he’d done? Wouldn’t it be more fair—more satisfying—to let him live with nothing, nothing at all?
It made me almost smile, as filled with hate as I was, to imagine it. No Bella. No killer spawn. And also missing as many members of his family as I was able to take down. Of course, he could probably put those back together, since I wouldn’t be around to burn them. Unlike Bella, who would never be whole again.
I wondered if the creature could be put back together. I doubted it. It was part Bella, too—so it must have inherited some of her vulnerability. I could hear that in the tiny, thrumming beat of its heart.
Its heart was beating. Hers wasn’t.
Only a second had passed as I made these easy decisions.
The trembling was getting tighter and faster. I coiled myself, preparing to spring at the blond vampire and rip the murderous thing from her arms with my teeth.
Rosalie cooed at the creature again, setting the empty metal bottle-thing aside and lifting the creature into the air to nuzzle her face against its cheek.
Perfect. The new position was perfect for my strike. I leaned forward and felt the heat begin to change me while the pull toward the killer grew—it was stronger than I’d ever felt it before, so strong it reminded me of an Alpha’s command, like it would crush me if I didn’t obey.
This time I wanted to obey.
The murderer stared past Rosalie’s shoulder at me, its gaze more focused than any newborn creature’s gaze should be.
Warm brown eyes, the color of milk chocolate—the exact same color that Bella’s had been.
My shaking jerked to a stop; heat flooded through me, stronger than before, but it was a new kind of heat—not a burning.
It was a glowing.
Everything inside me came undone as I stared at the tiny porcelain face of the half-vampire, half-human baby. All the lines that held me to my life were sliced apart in swift cuts, like clipping the strings to a bunch of balloons. Everything that made me who I was—my love for the dead girl upstairs, my love for my father, my loyalty to my new pack, the love for my other brothers, my hatred for my enemies, my home, my name, my self—disconnected from me in that second—snip, snip, snip—and floated up into space.
I was not left drifting. A new string held me where I was.
Not one string, but a million. Not strings, but steel cables. A million steel cables all tying me to one thing—to the very center of the universe.
I could see that now—how the universe swirled around this one point. I’d never seen the symmetry of the universe before, but now it was plain.
The gravity of the earth no longer tied me to the place where I stood.
It was the baby girl in the blond vampire’s arms that held me here now.
Renesmee.
From upstairs, there was a new sound. The only sound that could touch me in this endless instant.
A frantic pounding, a racing beat…
A changing heart.
BOOK THREE
bella
CONTENTS
PREFACE
19. BURNING
20. NEW
21. FIRST HUNT
22. PROMISED
23. MEMORIES
24. SURPRISE
25. FAVOR
26. SHINY
27. TRAVEL PLANS
28. THE FUTURE
29. DEFECTION
30. IRRESISTIBLE
31. TALENTED
32. COMPANY
33. FORGERY
34. DECLARED
35. DEADLINE
36. BLOODLUST
37. CONTRIVANCES
38. POWER
39. THE HAPPILY EVER AFTER
Personal affection is a luxury you can have only after all your enemies are eliminated. Until then, everyone you love is a hostage, sapping your courage and corrupting your judgment.
Orson Scott Card
Empire
PREFACE
No longer just a nightmare, the line of black advanced on us through the icy mist stirred up by their feet.
We’re going to die, I thought in panic. I was desperate for the precious one I guarded, but even to think of that was a lapse in attention I could not afford.
They ghosted closer, their dark robes billowing slightly with the movement. I saw their hands curl into bone-colored claws. They drifted apart, angling to come at us from all sides. We were outnumbered. It was over.
And then, like a burst of light from a flash, the whole scene was different. Yet nothing changed—the Volturi still stalked toward us, poised to kill. All that really changed was how the picture looked to me. Suddenly, I was hungry for it. I wanted them to charge. The panic changed to bloodlust as I crouched forward, a smile on my face, and a growl ripped through my bared teeth.
19. BURNING
The pain was bewildering.
Exactly that—I was bewildered. I couldn’t understand, couldn’t make sense of what was happening.
My body tried to reject the pain, and I was sucked again and again into a blackness that cut out whole seconds or maybe even minutes of the agony, making it that much harder to keep up with reality.
I tried to separate them.
Non-reality was black, and it didn’t hurt so much.
Reality was red, and it felt like I was being sawed in half, hit by a bus, punched by a prize fighter, trampled by bulls, and submerged in acid, all at the same time.
Reality was feeling my body twist and flip when I couldn’t possibly move because of the pain.
Reality was knowing there was something so much more important than all this torture, and not being able to remember what it was.
Reality had come on so fast.
One moment, everything was as it should have been. Surrounded by people I loved. Smiles. Somehow, unlikely as it was, it seemed like I was about to get everything I’d been fighting for.
And then one tiny, inconsequential thing had gone wrong.
I’d watched as my cup tilted, dark blood spilling out and staining the perfect white, and I’d lurched toward the accident reflexively. I’d seen the other, faster hands, but my body had continued to reach, to stretch. . . .
Inside me, something had yanked the opposite direction.
Ripping. Breaking. Agony.
The darkness had taken over, and then washed away to a wave of torture. I couldn’t breathe—I had drowned once before, and this was different; it was too hot in my throat.
Pieces of me shattering, snapping, slicing apart. . . .
More blackness.
Voices, this time, shouting, as the pain came back.
“The placenta must have detached!”
Something sharper than knives ripped through me—the words, making sense in spite of the other tortures. Detached placenta—I knew what that meant. It meant that my baby was dying inside me.
“Get him out!” I screamed to Edward. Why hadn’t he done it yet? “He can’t breathe! Do it now!”
“The morphine—”
He wanted to wait, to give me painkillers, while our baby was dying?!
“No! Now—,” I choked, unable to finish.
Black spots covered the light in the room as a cold point of new pain stabbed icily into my stomach. It felt wrong—I struggled automatically to protect my womb, my baby, my little Edward Jacob, but I was weak. My lungs ached, oxygen burned away.
The pain faded away
again, though I clung to it now. My baby, my baby, dying. . . .
How long had passed? Seconds or minutes? The pain was gone. Numb. I couldn’t feel. I still couldn’t see, either, but I could hear. There was air in my lungs again, scraping in rough bubbles up and down my throat.
“You stay with me now, Bella! Do you hear me? Stay! You’re not leaving me. Keep your heart beating!”
Jacob? Jacob, still here, still trying to save me.
Of course, I wanted to tell him. Of course I would keep my heart beating. Hadn’t I promised them both?
I tried to feel my heart, to find it, but I was so lost inside my own body. I couldn’t feel the things I should, and nothing felt in the right place. I blinked and I found my eyes. I could see the light. Not what I was looking for, but better than nothing.
As my eyes struggled to adjust, Edward whispered, “Renesmee.”
Renesmee?
Not the pale and perfect son of my imagination? I felt a moment of shock. And then a flood of warmth.
Renesmee.
I willed my lips to move, willed the bubbles of air to turn into whispers on my tongue. I forced my numb hands to reach.
“Let me… Give her to me.”
The light danced, shattering off Edward’s crystal hands. The sparkles were tinged with red, with the blood that covered his skin. And more red in his hands. Something small and struggling, dripping with blood. He touched the warm body to my weak arms, almost like I was holding her. Her wet skin was hot—as hot as Jacob’s.
My eyes focused; suddenly everything was absolutely clear.
Renesmee did not cry, but she breathed in quick, startled pants. Her eyes were open, her expression so shocked it was almost funny. The little, perfectly round head was covered in a thick layer of matted, bloody curls. Her irises were a familiar—but astonishing—chocolate brown. Under the blood, her skin looked pale, a creamy ivory. All besides her cheeks, which flamed with color.
Her tiny face was so absolutely perfect that it stunned me. She was even more beautiful than her father. Unbelievable. Impossible.
The Twilight Saga Collection Page 158