Life and Death

by Stephenie Meyer

  “We’ve got time, Edythe. Just relax. Take it slow.”

  I heard her inhale again.

  “The rules,” she said. “One rule with a thousand different permutations—the reality of vampires must be kept secret. That means newborn vampires must be controlled. I will teach you—I’ll keep you safe, I promise.” Another sigh. “And you can’t tell anyone what you are. I broke that rule. I didn’t think it could hurt you—that anyone would ever find out. I should have known that just being near you would eventually destroy you. I should have known I would ruin your life—that I was lying to myself about any other path being possible. I’ve done everything wrong—”

  “You’re letting self-castigation get in the way of information again, Edythe.”

  “Right, right.” A deep breath. “Beau. Do you remember the painting in Carine’s study—the nighttime patrons of the arts I told you about? They’re called the Volturi—they are … for the lack of a better word, the police of our world. I’ll tell you more about them in a bit—you just need to know that they exist, so that I can explain why you can’t tell Charlie or your mother where you are. You can’t talk to them again, Beau.” Her voice was straining higher, like it was about to fracture. “It’s best … we don’t have much choice but to let them think you’re dead. I’m so sorry. You didn’t even get to say goodbye. It’s not fair!”

  There was a long pause while I could hear her breath hitching.

  “Why don’t you go back to the Volturi?” Archie suggested. “Keep emotion out of it.”

  “You’re right,” she repeated in a whisper. “Ready to learn a new world history, Beau?”

  She talked all night without a break, until the sun came up and I could see her face again. She told me stories that sounded like dark fairy tales. I was beginning to grasp the edges of how big this world was, but I knew it would be a long time before I totally comprehended the size of it.

  She told me about the people I’d seen in the painting with Carine—the Volturi. How they’d joined forces during the Mycenaean age, and begun a millennia-long campaign to create peace and order in the vampire world. How there had been six of them in the beginning. How betrayal and murder had cut them in half. Someone named Aro had murdered his sister—his best friend’s wife. The best friend was Marcus—he was the man I’d seen standing with Carine. Aro’s own wife—Sulpicia, the one with all the masses of dark hair in the painting—had been the only witness. She’d turned him over to Marcus and their soldiers. There had been some question of what to do—Aro had a very powerful extra gift, like what Edythe had, but more, she said—and the Volturi weren’t sure they’d be able to succeed without him. But Sulpicia searched out a young girl—Mele, the one Edythe had called a servant and a thief—who had a gift of her own. She could absorb another vampire’s gift. She couldn’t use that stolen gift herself, but she could give it to someone else who she was touching. Sulpicia had Mele take Aro’s gift, and then Marcus executed him. Once she had her husband’s gift, Sulpicia found out that the third man in their group was in on the plot. He was executed, too, and his wife—Athenodora—joined with Sulpicia and Marcus to lead their soldiers. They overthrew the vampires who terrorized Europe, and then the ones who enslaved Egypt. Once they were in charge, they made regulations that kept the vampire world hidden and safe.

  I listened as much as I could. It wasn’t a distraction from the pain—there was no escape. But it was better to think about than the fire.

  Edythe said the Volturi were the ones who’d made up all the stories about crosses and holy water and mirrors. Over the centuries, they made all reports of vampires into myth. And now they continued to keep it that way. Vampires would stay in the shadows … or there would be consequences.

  So I couldn’t go to my dad’s house and let him see the eyes that Edythe said would be bright. I couldn’t drive to Florida and hug my mom and let her know that I wasn’t dead. I couldn’t even call her and explain the confusing message I’d left on her answering machine. If there was anything in the news, if any rumor spread that something unnatural was involved, the Volturi soldiers might come to investigate.

  I had to disappear quietly.

  The fire hurt more than hearing these things. But I knew that wouldn’t always be the way it was. Soon, this would hurt the most.

  Edythe moved on quickly—telling me about their friends in Canada who lived the same way. Three blond Russian brothers and two Spanish vampires who were the Cullens’ closest family. She told me that two of them had extra powers—Kirill could do something electrical, and Elena knew the talents of every vampire she met.

  She told me about other friends, all over the world. In Ireland and Brazil and Egypt. So many names. Eventually Archie stepped in again and told her to prioritize.

  Edythe told me that I would never age. That I would always be seventeen, like she was. That the world would change around me, and I would remember all of it, never forgetting one second.

  She told me how the Cullens lived—how they moved from cloudy place to cloudy place. Earnest would restore a house for them. Archie would invest their assets with amazingly good returns. They would decide on a story to explain their relationships to each other, and Jessamine would create new names and new documented pasts for each of them. Carine would take a job in a hospital with her new credentials, or she’d return to school to study a new field. If the location looked promising, the younger Cullens would pretend to be even younger than they were, so they could stay longer.

  After my time as a new vampire was up, I would be able to go back to school. But my education wouldn’t have to wait. I had a lot of time ahead of me, and I would remember everything I read or heard.

  I would never sleep again.

  Food would be disgusting to me. I would never be hungry again, only thirsty.

  I would never get sick. I would never feel tired.

  I would be able to run faster than a race car. I’d be stronger than any other living species on the planet.

  I wouldn’t need to breathe.

  I would be able to see more clearly, hear even the smallest sound.

  My heart would finish beating tomorrow or the next day, and it would never beat again.

  I would be a vampire.

  One good thing about the burning—it let me hear all this with some distance. It let me process what she was telling me without emotion. I knew the emotion would come later.

  When it was starting to get dark again, our journey was over. Edythe carried me into the house like I was a child, and sat with me in the big room. The background behind her face went from black to white. I could see her much more clearly now, and I didn’t think it was just the light.

  In her eyes, my face reflected back, and I was surprised to see that it looked like a face and not a charcoal briquette—though a face in anguish. Still, maybe I wasn’t the pile of ash I felt like.

  She told me stories to fill the time, and the others took turns helping her. Carine sat on the ground next to me and told me the most amazing story about Jules’s family—that her great-grandmother had actually been a werewolf. All the things Jules had scoffed about were straight history. Carine told me she’d promised them she would never bite another human. It was part of the treaty between them, the treaty that meant the Cullens could never go due west to the ocean.

  Jessamine told me her story after all. I guess she’d decided I was ready now. I was glad, when she did, that my emotions were mostly buried under the fire. She’d lost family, too, when the man who created her stole her without warning. She told me about the army she’d belonged to, a life of carnage and death, and then breaking free. She told me about the day Archie had let her find him.

  Earnest told me how his life had ended before he’d killed himself, about his unstable, alcoholic wife and the daughter he’d loved more than his own soul. He told me about the night when his wife, in a drunken rampage, had jumped off a cliff with his little daughter in her arms, and how he hadn’t been able to do anythi
ng but follow after them. Then he told me how, after the pain, there had been the most beautiful woman in a nurse’s uniform—a nurse he recognized from a happier time in another place when he was just a young man. A nurse who hadn’t aged at all.

  Eleanor told me about being attacked by a bear, and then seeing an angel who took her to Carine instead of to heaven. She told me how she’d thought at first she’d been sent to hell—justly, she admitted—and then how she got into heaven after all.

  She was the one who told me that the redhead had gotten away. He’d never come near Charlie after the one time that he’d searched Charlie’s house. When we’d all gotten back to Forks, she, Royal, and Jessamine had followed the man’s trail as far as they could; it disappeared into the Salish Sea and they hadn’t been able to find the place where he came back out. For all they knew, he’d swum straight out to the Pacific and on to another continent. He must have assumed that Joss had lost the fight and realized it was smarter to disappear.

  Even Royal took a turn. He told me about a life consumed with vanity, with material things, with ambition. He told me about the only daughter of a powerful man—exactly what kind of power this man wielded, Royal hadn’t entirely understood—and how Royal had planned to marry her and become heir to the dynasty. How the beautiful daughter pretended to love him to please her father, and then how she had watched when her lover from a rival criminal syndicate had Royal beaten to death, how she’d laughed aloud the whole time. He told me about the revenge he’d gotten. Royal was the least careful with his words. He told me about losing his family, and how none of this was worth what he’d lost.

  Edythe had whispered Eleanor’s name; he’d growled once and left.

  I think it must have been while Royal or Eleanor was talking that Archie watched Joss’s video from the dance studio. When Royal was gone, Archie took his spot. At first I wasn’t sure what they were talking about, because only Edythe was speaking out loud, but eventually I caught up. Archie was searching right there on his laptop, trying to narrow down the options of where he’d been kept in his human life. I was glad he didn’t seem to mention anything else about the tape—the focus was all on his past. I was trying to remember how to use my voice so that I could stop him if he tried to say anything about the rest of it. I hoped Archie was smart enough to have destroyed the tape before Edythe could watch.

  The stories helped me think of other things, prepare myself, while the fire burned, but I was only able to pay partial attention. My mind was cataloguing the fire, experiencing it in new ways. It was amazing how each inch of my skin, each millimeter, was so distinct. It was like I could feel all my cells burning individually. I could feel the difference between the pain in the walls of my lungs, and the way the fire felt in the soles of my feet, inside my eyeballs, and down my spine. All the different agonies clearly separated.

  I could hear my heart thudding—it seemed so loud. Like it had been hooked to an amp. I could hear other things, too. Mostly Edythe’s voice, sometimes the others talking—though I couldn’t see them. I heard music once, but I didn’t know where it was coming from.

  It seemed like I was on the couch, my head in Edythe’s lap, for several years. The lights stayed bright, so I didn’t know if it was night or day. But Edythe’s eyes were always gold, so I guessed that the fire was lying about the time again.

  I was so aware of every nerve ending in my body that I knew it immediately when something changed.

  It started with my toes. I couldn’t feel them. It seemed like the fire had finally won, that it had started burning off pieces of me. Edythe had said I was changing, not dying, but in this moment of panic I thought she’d gotten it wrong. Maybe this vampire thing wouldn’t work on me. Maybe all this burning had been just a slow way to die. The worst way.

  Edythe felt me freaking out again, and she started humming in my ear. I tried to look at the positives. If it was killing me, at least it would be over. And if it was going to end, at least I was in Edythe’s arms for the rest of my life.

  And then I realized that my toes were still there, they just weren’t burning anymore. In fact, the fire was pulling out of the soles of my feet, too. I was glad I’d made sense of what was happening, because my fingertips were next. No need for more panic, maybe a reason for hope. The fire was leaving.

  Only it seemed to be doing more than leaving—it was … moving. All the fire that receded from my extremities seemed to be draining into the center of my body, stoking the blaze there so that it was hotter than before.

  I couldn’t believe there was such a thing as hotter.

  My heart—already so loud—starting beating faster. The core of the fire seemed to be centered there. It was sucking the flames in from my hands and my ankles, leaving them pain-free, but multiplying the heat and pain in my heart.

  “Carine,” Edythe called.

  Carine walked into the room, and the amazing part about that was that I heard her. Edythe and her family never made any noise when they moved. But now, if I listened, I could hear the low sound of Carine’s lips brushing together as she spoke.

  “Ah. It’s almost over.”

  I wanted to be relieved, but the growing agony in my chest made it impossible to feel anything else. I stared up at Edythe’s face. She was more beautiful than she had ever been, because I could see her better than I ever had. But I couldn’t really appreciate her. So much pain.

  “Edythe?” I gasped.

  “You’re all right, Beau. It’s ending. I’m sorry, I know. I remember.”

  The fire ripped hotter through my heart, dragging the flames up from my elbows and knees. I thought about Edythe going through this, suffering this way, and it put a different perspective on my pain. She didn’t even know Carine then. She didn’t know what was happening to her. She hadn’t been held the whole time in the arms of someone she loved.

  The pain was almost gone from everywhere but my chest. The only leftover was my throat, but it was a different kind of burn now … drier … irritating… .

  I heard more footsteps, and I was pretty sure I could tell the difference between them. The decisive, confident step was Eleanor, I was positive. Archie was the quicker, more rhythmic motion. Earnest was a little slower, thoughtful. Jessamine was the one who stopped by the door. I thought I heard Royal breathing behind her.

  And then—

  “Aaah!”

  My heart took off, beating like helicopter blades, the sound almost a single sustained note. It felt like it would grind through my ribs. The fire flared up in the center of my chest, sucking all the flames from the rest of my body to fuel the most painful burn yet. It was enough to stun me. My body bowed like the fire was dragging me upward by my heart.

  It felt like a war inside me—my racing heart blitzing against the raging fire. They were both losing.

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

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

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

  I stared up at Edythe in wonder. I felt like I’d taken off a blindfold I’d been wearing all my life. What a view.

  “Beau?” she asked. Now that I could really concentrate on it, the beauty of her voice was unreal.

  “It’s disorienting, I know. You get used to it.”

  Could you get used to hearing a voice like this? Seeing a face like that?

  “Edythe,” I said, and the sound of my own voice jolted me. Was that me? It didn’t sound like me. It didn’t sound … human.

  Unnerved, I reached out to touch her cheek. In the same instant that the desire to touch her entered my mind, my hand was cradling the side of her face. There was no in-between—no process of lifting my
hand, watching it move to its destination. It was just there.

  “Huh.”

  She leaned into my touch, put her hand over mine, and held it against her face. It was strange because it was familiar—I’d always loved it when she’d done that, to see that she so obviously liked it when I touched her that way, that it meant something to her. But it was also nothing the same. Her face wasn’t cold anymore. Her hand felt right against mine. There was no difference between us now.

  I stared into her eyes, then looked closer at the picture reflected in them.

  “Ahh …” A little gasp escaped my throat by accident, and I felt my body lock down in surprise. It was weird—it felt like the natural thing to do, to be a statue because I was shocked.

  “What is it, Beau?” She leaned closer, concerned, but that just brought the reflection closer.

  “The eyes?” I breathed.

  She sighed, and wrinkled her nose. “It goes away,” she promised. “I terrified myself every time I looked in a mirror for six months.”

  “Six months,” I murmured. “And then they’ll be gold like yours?”

  She looked away, over the back of the couch, to someone standing there behind us where I couldn’t see. I wanted to sit up and look around, but I was a little afraid to move. My body felt so strange.

  “That depends on your diet, Beau,” Carine said calmly. “If you hunt like we do, your eyes will eventually turn this color. If not, your eyes will look like Lauren’s did.”

  I decided to try sitting up.

  And like before, thinking was doing. Without any movement, I was upright. Edythe kept my hand in hers as it left her face.

  Behind the sofa, they were all there, watching. I’d been one hundred percent with my guesses—Carine closest, then Eleanor, Archie, and Earnest. Jessamine in the doorway to another room with Royal watching over her shoulder.

  I looked at their faces, shocked again. If my brain hadn’t been so much … roomier than before, I would have forgotten what I was about to say. As it was, I recovered pretty fast.

  “No, I want to do it your way,” I said to Carine. “That’s the right thing to do.”