I laughed in a short burst of humor (part of me listened in wonder to the pealing bell sound) as his words reminded me of cloudy human conversations. And then I took a whole second to run quickly through those first days with Edward—the true beginning of my life—in my head so that I would never forget them. I did not expect that it would be so uncomfortable to remember. Like trying to squint through muddy water. I knew from Rosalie’s experience that if I thought of my human memories enough, I would not lose them over time. I did not want to forget one minute I’d spent with Edward, even now, when eternity stretched in front of us. I would have to make sure those human memories were cemented into my infallible vampire mind.
“Shall we?” Edward asked. He reached up to take the hand that was still at my neck. His fingers smoothed down the column of my throat. “I don’t want you to be hurting,” he added in a low murmur. Something I would not have been able to hear before.
“I’m fine,” I said out of lingering human habit. “Wait. First.”
There was so much. I’d never gotten to my questions. There were more important things than the ache.
It was Carlisle who spoke now. “Yes?”
“I want to see her. Renesmee.”
It was oddly difficult to say her name. My daughter; these words were even harder to think. It all seemed so distant. I tried to remember how I had felt three days ago, and automatically, my hands pulled free of Edward’s and dropped to my stomach.
Flat. Empty. I clutched at the pale silk that covered my skin, panicking again, while an insignificant part of my mind noted that Alice must have dressed me.
I knew there was nothing left inside me, and I faintly remembered the bloody removal scene, but the physical proof was still hard to process. All I knew was loving my little nudger inside of me. Outside of me, she seemed like something I must have imagined. A fading dream—a dream that was half nightmare.
While I wrestled with my confusion, I saw Edward and Carlisle exchange a guarded glance.
“What?” I demanded.
“Bella,” Edward said soothingly. “That’s not really a good idea. She’s half human, love. Her heart beats, and blood runs in her veins. Until your thirst is positively under control… You don’t want to put her in danger, do you?”
I frowned. Of course I must not want that.
Was I out of control? Confused, yes. Easily unfocused, yes. But dangerous? To her? My daughter?
I couldn’t be positive that the answer was no. So I would have to be patient. That sounded difficult. Because until I saw her again, she wouldn’t be real. Just a fading dream… of a stranger…
“Where is she?” I listened hard, and then I could hear the beating heart on the floor below me. I could hear more than one person breathing—quietly, like they were listening, too. There was also a fluttering sound, a thrumming, that I couldn’t place. . . .
And the sound of the heartbeat was so moist and appealing, that my mouth started watering.
So I would definitely have to learn how to hunt before I saw her. My stranger baby.
“Is Rosalie with her?”
“Yes,” Edward answered in a clipped tone, and I could see that something he’d thought of upset him. I’d thought he and Rose were over their differences. Had the animosity erupted again? Before I could ask, he pulled my hands away from my flat stomach, tugging gently again.
“Wait,” I protested again, trying to focus. “What about Jacob? And Charlie? Tell me everything that I missed. How long was I… unconscious?”
Edward didn’t seem to notice my hesitation over the last word. Instead, he was exchanging another wary glance with Carlisle.
“What’s wrong?” I whispered.
“Nothing is wrong,” Carlisle told me, emphasizing the last word in a strange way. “Nothing has changed much, actually—you were only unaware for just over two days. It was very fast, as these things go. Edward did an excellent job. Quite innovative—the venom injection straight to your heart was his idea.” He paused to smile proudly at his son and then sighed. “Jacob is still here, and Charlie still believes that you are sick. He thinks you’re in Atlanta right now, undergoing tests at the CDC. We gave him a bad number, and he’s frustrated. He’s been speaking to Esme.”
“I should call him…,” I murmured to myself, but, listening to my own voice, I understood the new difficulties. He wouldn’t recognize this voice. It wouldn’t reassure him. And then the earlier surprise intruded. “Hold on—Jacob is still here?”
Another glance between them.
“Bella,” Edward said quickly. “There’s much to discuss, but we should take care of you first. You have to be in pain. . . .”
When he pointed that out, I remembered the burn in my throat and swallowed convulsively. “But Jacob—”
“We have all the time in the world for explanations, love,” he reminded me gently.
Of course. I could wait a little longer for the answer; it would be easier to listen when the fierce pain of the fiery thirst was no longer scattering my concentration. “Okay.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Alice trilled from the doorway. She danced across the room, dreamily graceful. As with Edward and Carlisle, I felt some shock as I really looked at her face for the first time. So lovely. “You promised I could be there the first time! What if you two run past something reflective?”
“Alice—,” Edward protested.
“It will only take a second!” And with that, Alice darted from the room.
Edward sighed.
“What is she talking about?”
But Alice was already back, carrying the huge, gilt-framed mirror from Rosalie’s room, which was nearly twice as tall as she was, and several times as wide.
Jasper had been so still and silent that I’d taken no notice of him since he’d followed behind Carlisle. Now he moved again, to hover over Alice, his eyes locked on my expression. Because I was the danger here.
I knew he would be tasting the mood around me, too, and so he must have felt my jolt of shock as I studied his face, looking at it closely for the first time.
Through my sightless human eyes, the scars left from his former life with the newborn armies in the South had been mostly invisible. Only with a bright light to throw their slightly raised shapes into definition could I even make out their existence.
Now that I could see, the scars were Jasper’s most dominant feature. It was hard to take my eyes off his ravaged neck and jaw—hard to believe that even a vampire could have survived so many sets of teeth ripping into his throat.
Instinctively, I tensed to defend myself. Any vampire who saw Jasper would have had the same reaction. The scars were like a lighted billboard. Dangerous, they screamed. How many vampires had tried to kill Jasper? Hundreds? Thousands? The same number that had died in the attempt.
Jasper both saw and felt my assessment, my caution, and he smiled wryly.
“Edward gave me grief for not getting you to a mirror before the wedding,” Alice said, pulling my attention away from her frightening lover. “I’m not going to be chewed out again.”
“Chewed out?” Edward asked skeptically, one eyebrow curving upward.
“Maybe I’m overstating things,” she murmured absently as she turned the mirror to face me.
“And maybe this has solely to do with your own voyeuristic gratification,” he countered.
Alice winked at him.
I was only aware of this exchange with the lesser part of my concentration. The greater part was riveted on the person in the mirror.
My first reaction was an unthinking pleasure. The alien creature in the glass was indisputably beautiful, every bit as beautiful as Alice or Esme. She was fluid even in stillness, and her flawless face was pale as the moon against the frame of her dark, heavy hair. Her limbs were smooth and strong, skin glistening subtly, luminous as a pearl.
My second reaction was horror.
Who was she? At first glance, I couldn’t find my face anywhere in the smooth, perfect
planes of her features.
And her eyes! Though I’d known to expect them, her eyes still sent a thrill of terror through me.
All the while I studied and reacted, her face was perfectly composed, a carving of a goddess, showing nothing of the turmoil roiling inside me. And then her full lips moved.
“The eyes?” I whispered, unwilling to say my eyes. “How long?
“They’ll darken up in a few months,” Edward said in a soft, comforting voice. “Animal blood dilutes the color more quickly than a diet of human blood. They’ll turn amber first, then gold.”
My eyes would blaze like vicious red flames for months?
“Months?” My voice was higher now, stressed. In the mirror, the perfect eyebrows lifted incredulously above her glowing crimson eyes—brighter than any I’d ever seen before.
Jasper took a step forward, alarmed by the intensity of my sudden anxiety. He knew young vampires only too well; did this emotion presage some misstep on my part?
No one answered my question. I looked away, to Edward and Alice. Both their eyes were slightly unfocused—reacting to Jasper’s unease. Listening to its cause, looking ahead to the immediate future.
I took another deep, unnecessary breath.
“No, I’m fine,” I promised them. My eyes flickered to the stranger in the mirror and back. “It’s just… a lot to take in.”
Jasper’s brow furrowed, highlighting the two scars over his left eye.
“I don’t know,” Edward murmured.
The woman in the mirror frowned. “What question did I miss?”
Edward grinned. “Jasper wonders how you’re doing it.”
“Doing what?”
“Controlling your emotions, Bella,” Jasper answered. “I’ve never seen a newborn do that—stop an emotion in its tracks that way. You were upset, but when you saw our concern, you reined it in, regained power over yourself. I was prepared to help, but you didn’t need it.”
“Is that wrong?” I asked. My body automatically froze as I waited for his verdict.
“No,” he said, but his voice was unsure.
Edward stroked his hand down my arm, as if encouraging me to thaw. “It’s very impressive, Bella, but we don’t understand it. We don’t know how long it can hold.”
I considered that for a portion of a second. At any moment, would I snap? Turn into a monster?
I couldn’t feel it coming on.… Maybe there was no way to anticipate such a thing.
“But what do you think?” Alice asked, a little impatient now, pointing to the mirror.
“I’m not sure,” I hedged, not wanting to admit how frightened I really was.
I stared at the beautiful woman with the terrifying eyes, looking for pieces of me. There was something there in the shape of her lips—if you looked past the dizzying beauty, it was true that her upper lip was slightly out of balance, a bit too full to match the lower. Finding this familiar little flaw made me feel a tiny bit better. Maybe the rest of me was in there, too.
I raised my hand experimentally, and the woman in the mirror copied the movement, touching her face, too. Her crimson eyes watched me warily.
Edward sighed.
I turned away from her to look at him, raising one eyebrow.
“Disappointed?” I asked, my ringing voice impassive.
He laughed. “Yes,” he admitted.
I felt the shock break through the composed mask on my face, followed instantly by the hurt.
Alice snarled. Jasper leaned forward again, waiting for me to snap.
But Edward ignored them and wrapped his arms tightly around my newly frozen form, pressing his lips against my cheek. “I was rather hoping that I’d be able to hear your mind, now that it is more similar to my own,” he murmured. “And here I am, as frustrated as ever, wondering what could possibly be going on inside your head.”
I felt better at once.
“Oh well,” I said lightly, relieved that my thoughts were still my own. “I guess my brain will never work right. At least I’m pretty.”
It was becoming easier to joke with him as I adjusted, to think in straight lines. To be myself.
Edward growled in my ear. “Bella, you have never been merely pretty.”
Then his face pulled away from mine, and he sighed. “All right, all right,” he said to someone.
“What?” I asked.
“You’re making Jasper more edgy by the second. He may relax a little when you’ve hunted.”
I looked at Jasper’s worried expression and nodded. I didn’t want to snap here, if that was coming. Better to be surrounded by trees than family.
“Okay. Let’s hunt,” I agreed, a thrill of nerves and anticipation making my stomach quiver. I unwrapped Edward’s arms from around me, keeping one of his hands, and turned my back on the strange and beautiful woman in the mirror.
21. FIRST HUNT
“The window?” I asked, staring two stories down.
I’d never really been afraid of heights per se, but being able to see all the details with such clarity made the prospect less appealing. The angles of the rocks below were sharper than I would have imagined them.
Edward smiled. “It’s the most convenient exit. If you’re frightened, I can carry you.”
“We have all eternity, and you’re worried about the time it would take to walk to the back door?”
He frowned slightly. “Renesmee and Jacob are downstairs. . . .”
“Oh.”
Right. I was the monster now. I had to keep away from scents that might trigger my wild side. From the people that I loved in particular. Even the ones I didn’t really know yet.
“Is Renesmee… okay… with Jacob there?” I whispered. I realized belatedly that it must have been Jacob’s heart I’d heard below. I listened hard again, but I could only hear the one steady pulse. “He doesn’t like her much.”
Edward’s lips tightened in an odd way. “Trust me, she is perfectly safe. I know exactly what Jacob is thinking.”
“Of course,” I murmured, and looked at the ground again.
“Stalling?” he challenged.
“A little. I don’t know how. . . .”
And I was very conscious of my family behind me, watching silently. Mostly silently. Emmett had already chuckled under his breath once. One mistake, and he’d be rolling on the floor. Then the jokes about the world’s only clumsy vampire would start.…
Also, this dress—that Alice must have put me in sometime when I was too lost in the burning to notice—was not what I would have picked out for either jumping or hunting. Tightly fitted ice-blue silk? What did she think I would need it for? Was there a cocktail party later?
“Watch me,” Edward said. And then, very casually, he stepped out of the tall, open window and fell.
I watched carefully, analyzing the angle at which he bent his knees to absorb the impact. The sound of his landing was very low—a muted thud that could have been a door softly closed, or a book gently laid on a table.
It didn’t look hard.
Clenching my teeth as I concentrated, I tried to copy his casual step into empty air.
Ha! The ground seemed to move toward me so slowly that it was nothing at all to place my feet—what shoes had Alice put me in? Stilettos? She’d lost her mind—to place my silly shoes exactly right so that landing was no different than stepping one foot forward on a flat surface.
I absorbed the impact in the balls of my feet, not wanting to snap off the thin heels. My landing seemed just as quiet as his. I grinned at him.
“Right. Easy.”
He smiled back. “Bella?”
“Yes?”
“That was quite graceful—even for a vampire.”
I considered that for a moment, and then I beamed. If he’d just been saying that, then Emmett would have laughed. No one found his remark humorous, so it must have been true. It was the first time anyone had ever applied the word graceful to me in my entire life… or, well, existence anyway.
; “Thank you,” I told him.
And then I hooked the silver satin shoes off my feet one by one and lobbed them together back through the open window. A little too hard, maybe, but I heard someone catch them before they could damage the paneling.
Alice grumbled, “Her fashion sense hasn’t improved as much as her balance.”
Edward took my hand—I couldn’t stop marveling at the smoothness, the comfortable temperature of his skin—and darted through the backyard to the edge of the river. I went along with him effortlessly.
Everything physical seemed very simple.
“Are we swimming?” I asked him when we stopped beside the water.
“And ruin your pretty dress? No. We’re jumping.”
I pursed my lips, considering. The river was about fifty yards wide here.
“You first,” I said.
He touched my cheek, took two quick backward strides, and then ran back those two steps, launching himself from a flat stone firmly embedded in the riverbank. I studied the flash of movement as he arced over the water, finally turning a somersault just before he disappeared into the thick trees on the other side of the river.
“Show-off,” I muttered, and heard his invisible laugh.
I backed up five paces, just in case, and took a deep breath.
Suddenly, I was anxious again. Not about falling or getting hurt—I was more worried about the forest getting hurt.
It had come on slowly, but I could feel it now—the raw, massive strength thrilling in my limbs. I was suddenly sure that if I wanted to tunnel under the river, to claw or beat my way straight through the bedrock, it wouldn’t take me very long. The objects around me—the trees, the shrubs, the rocks… the house—had all begun to look very fragile.
Hoping very much that Esme was not particularly fond of any specific trees across the river, I began my first stride. And then stopped when the tight satin split six inches up my thigh. Alice!
Well, Alice always seemed to treat clothes as if they were disposable and meant for one-time usage, so she shouldn’t mind this. I bent to carefully grasp the hem at the undamaged right seam between my fingers and, exerting the tiniest amount of pressure possible, I ripped the dress open to the top of my thigh. Then I fixed the other side to match.
The Twilight Saga Collection Page 161