CHAPTER TWENTY
ᴄᴏɴᴛʀᴏʟʟᴇᴅ ᴇᴍᴏᴛɪᴏɴ

Bella stirred from where she lay on the bed, her eyes blinking open to a confused expression as she glanced to each corner of the room. We were in a hotel, the cheap kind with the carbon copy wallpaper and bedsheets, which reminded me much of the room in Mrs Rochester's bed and breakfast.

I was envious of Bella's sleep. Especially after the previous night. Alice's warning and Jasper's accusation toward the complexity of my feelings, however well intended they were, took its toll. After Bella had been strapped into the back of the car, Alice had unsurprisingly took up the drivers seat and fled down the pitch black freeway at her usual super speed. We were silent, the sound of squeaking tires against black tarmac filling up the tense air.

Bella had fallen asleep on my shoulder, and all the while, I could hear the rhythm of her breathing and the distinct beating of her heart. Even at school, I could pick her up by the familiarity of the noise that came with living. There were moments when her breath would hitch, the pace of her heart beat quickening significantly, almost in fear of whatever was happening in her sharp brain. Alice's eyes somehow remained on me through the drive.

Even as we broke into Phoenix, somewhere I'd never been, the vast expanse of flat land stretching past the road in front, I could still feel the weight of Alice's presence beside me, despite the fact that her eyes were trained calmly on the direction we were headed.  Palm trees zipped past the car, their shadows massive in the lowering sun. With the impending prospect of a hunter on our trail, everything seemed darker, able to hide even the largest of predators beneath their gloom. I was glad Bella had stayed asleep long enough to not witness it.

It wasn't until we were heading further into Phoenix from the outskirts that Bella woke for long enough to answer Jasper's first question. He'd asked where the nearest airport was, in case we needed a quick getaway. She'd answered, her face blanking at the idea of a needed escape, but despite her sudden onset of fear, she'd nodded off again before we'd reached the loop around Sky Harbour International. 

She'd been asleep since then, having been carried in by Alice's trustworthy arms. Bella sat up, arms stretching out over the thin blanket that I'd draped over her. Her eyes immediately went to the alarm clock by the side of the bed, and then to the heavy curtains that covered the small window at the opposite end of the room. She stood, not noticing my presence, and opened the blinds, revealing the darkness of the night and the busy road that the room looked out onto. Turning back to the bed, Bella jumped, breath catching in her throat as her eyes zoned in on me.

"Sorry, I didn't see you," she said.

"It's fine," I chuckled, coming to sit where she'd patted the edge of the bed for me. "I should have been louder."

"How long have I been sleeping?" She asked. The area under her eyes was still dark and slightly swollen.

"Since last evening. We got here at nine," I said.

There was a knock at the door, and then Alice's face peered in. Seeing that Bella was awake, she slid in, shutting it behind her and sitting beside us.

"You look like you could sleep longer," she said.

Her eyes drew to the open curtains at the edge of the room, the lamp light from the street pouring in through the window. She frowned, moving to close them quickly.

"We need to stay inside."

"Okay," Bella said, biting her lip, voice croaky.

"Thirsty?"

"I'm okay. How about you?"

"Nothing unmanageable," Alice said, before glancing toward me, asking the same question silently. I shook my head. "I ordered some food for you, it's in the front room. Edward reminded me that you have to eat a lot more frequently than we do."

Bella perked up. "He called?"

"No. It was before we left," Alice said, trailing off as Bella finally pulled herself from bed to lead us into the room where Jasper sat with the food.

Alice stopped me. "Are you hungry?" She asked, eyes roaming over my face for any sign of a lie in my eventual answer. "You said you have to feed more often."

I shook my head, letting myself smile. "I'm fine. I've been pushing myself to prolong before this."

In truth, I was hungry. Talking about food, even in that context, made my stomach curl angrily. We'd made the three day journey to Phoenix in one day, thanks to Alice's rapid driving, but I'd not eaten in four days, and soon it would mount up.

Alice paused for a moment, face wary. "Just be careful."

"I know. We can't risk it," I said.

"It's not that. Hunger makes us different," Alice said. "Not ourselves."

The tv played faintly in the background as we sat around the sitting room table while Bella ate. Both Alice and Jasper sat with their unnatural stillness, eyes unblinking as they stared at the screen. It was unnerving, their motionlessness- even for me. Bella glanced my way, sharing a worried look.

"What's wrong Alice?" She said, placing a half bitten pizza dice back into the box, suddenly full.

"Nothing's wrong," Alice said, quickly. Her voice was sickly sweet, the same tone one would use to butter someone up before a blow. Bella cringed, tucking her legs closer to her body. Alice went back to staring at the long advertisements on the telly.

"What do we do now?"

"We wait for Carlisle to call," Alice said.

"And should he have called by now?" Bella asked. Alice didn't say anything, but I didn't miss the twitch of her lip.

"What does that mean?" Bella said, eyebrows furrowing. "That he hasn't called yet?"

Alice sighed, smiling pitifully with her hand reaching to shake her shoulder. "It just means that they don't have anything to tell us."

Bella began to breath heavily, the sound of her heart pounding through my own ears. Jasper appeared by her side, his head tilting and face unusually close. He could feel the strength of whatever she was feeling.

"Bella, you have nothing to worry about. You are completely safe here," he said in his soothing voice.

"I know that."

"Then why are you frightened?" He said.

"You heard what Laurent said... he said James was lethal," Bella whispered, frowning. "What if something goes wrong? What if they get separated? If something happened to any of them, Carlisle, Emmett, Edward." She shook her head, glaring at the ground. "If that wild female hurts Esme. How could I live with myself if it's my fault? None of you should be risking your lives for me-"

"Bella, Bella, stop," Jasper interrupted. It was only then that I realised how reassuring even his face was. "You're worrying about the wrong things, Bella. None of us are in jeopardy. You are under too much strain as it is; don't add to it with wholly unnecessary worries. Listen to me." Bella blushed, having looked away as he spoke. "Our family is strong. Our only fear is losing you."

"But why should you-"

"Jasper is right, Bella. We all love you in our own way. We wouldn't be here otherwise. We're here on our own free will," I said, moving to sit down by the floor beside her. "Please don't stress. You'll only make yourself worse."

It was Alice who interrupted her nervous thoughts next. Touching her cheek with her cold fingers. "It's been almost a century that Edward's been alone. Now he's found you. You can't see the changes that we see, we who have been with him for so long. Do you think any of us want to look into his eyes for the next hundred years if he loses you?"

The rest of the day felt as if it had been strung out purposefully. We stayed in our room. Alice called down to the reception to call of the maid service for the rest of the day, and I'd tagged along out of frustration of sitting in the stuffy room. The curtains stayed closed, the false light of the lamps filling the room coldly.

Bella spent the long hours in her own head, hands fidgeting against the stitches of the tan settee. It wasn't until Jasper and Alice had left to collect the room service, that she looked my way nervously, and asked the question that'd been at the top of her tongue for at least half and hour.

"What was it like?" Bella said.

I looked over to where her head was resting against the back of the settee, eyes staring up at me filled with curious boredom.

"What was what like?"

She blinked. "The change. When you first came back to reality, how did you feel?"

Everything was the same at first. The sun still glared down from high up in the full sky, and the winds still rustled against the trees as I'd always noticed. I felt the tingling first. Like sharp needles sticking into each pore of my uncovered skin. Like I was burning from the inside. And then I heard the birds. It was late evening, and the birds never flew about at that time- not where I was from, at least. But the sound was so distinct, beautiful as if I was meant to hear it. It was so close and yet I knew it had to be coming from miles away.

"It felt different," I said, pausing slightly.

We'd never talked about it. I'd easily forgotten that it'd only been two days since she'd found out, given how cooly she took the fact.

"But really, how did you feel?" Bella asked, shuffling so she could see me clearly.

"It felt different," I repeated with a smile. "Truly different, like I was reborn with a piece left missing. Everything was clearer, the sky, the trees, the sounds. It was beautiful. But at the same time, the whole thing was blurred with the fact that I was alone and terrified and confused, with no idea what had happened to me."

Bella was quiet for a moment, contemplating something with pursed lips. Then she looked at me again, this time with serious eyes.

"I know what happened to Esme and Carlisle and... Edward. But how were you turned?"

I let my eyes flutter away. I was thankful that Alice had clearly kept what I'd told her in the woods a secret, even from Edward's prying mind.

I told Bella exactly what I had told Alice, except in less words and without the emotion that had escaped with my sudden downpour of memories. It hurt less, the second time around, to tell someone about what happened: about William and Thomas.

"Did it hurt?"

I frowned, unable to hide the accruing tone of my voice. "Why are you asking me this Bella?"

She sucked in a breath, avoiding my eye. "I just want to know what it would be like. If it would ever be... possible," she said. "How do you actually become a vampire?"

Alice strolled into the room, her eyes narrowed suspiciously as she forced herself in the middle of us on the chair. She crossed her arms, going back to staring at the telly as Jasper shuffled with the room service in the other room. Her expression was still hesitant, as if she'd heard the question and was ready to answer it.

"Edward doesn't want us to tell you that," she said.

"That's not fair! I think I have a right to know," Bella exclaimed.

"I know."

Bella didn't say anything but stayed staring pointedly at the both of us. Alice and I shared a look before she sighed.

"He'll be extremely angry."

"It's none of his business. This is between you and me. Alice, Elide, as my friends. I'm begging you," she pleaded, reaching forward to shake at our wrists.

I shrugged, turning to Alice. "I owe him nothing," I said. "Just tell him it was all me."

Alice sighed again, nodding. "I'll tell you the mechanics of it. But I don't remember it myself, and I've never done it or seen it be done, so keep in mind that I can only tell you the theory."

"As predators, we have a glut of weapons in our physical arsenal- much, much more than really necessary. The strength, the speed, the acute senses-"

"Not to mention the gifts that some of us have," I added, and Alice agreed.

"Then, we're physically attractive to our prey. We have another fairly superfluous weapon. We're also venomous," she explained, her sharp, white teeth suddenly becoming more noticeable. "The venom doesn't kill- it merely incapacitates. It works slowly, spreading through the bloodstream, so that, once bitten, our prey is in too much physical pain to escape us. Mostly redundant, as I said. If we're that close, the prey doesn't escape. Of course, there are always exceptions. Carlisle for example."

Alice glanced to me, and I could almost see exactly what she was thinking. I was an exception too, though my changing had been on purpose on the vampire's behalf. I could still remember the pain of the bite: the scorching agony as the venom battered through my veins.

"So if the venom is left to spread..." Bella trailed off.

"It takes a few days for the transformation to be complete, depending on how much venom is in the blood-stream, how close the venom enters to the heart. As long as the heart keeps beating, the poison spreads, healing, changing the body as it moves through it. Eventually the heart stops, and the conversion is finished. But all that time, every minute of it, a victim would be waiting for death."

"It's not pleasant, you see."

My arm tingled with the memory of the bite. I'd never known such pain. 'Not pleasant' was such a quiet way to put it.

"Edward said that it was very hard to do... I don't quite understand."

"For all the strength we have, hunger is our weakness. The scent of blood could drive a vampire mad, depending on how hungry they were, no matter how controlled they were thought to be," I explained.

Alice nodded grimly. "Like sharks in a way. Once we taste blood, or even smell it for that matter, it becomes very hard to keep from feeding."

"Why do you think you don't remember?"

"I don't know. For everyone else the pain of transformation is the sharpest memory they have of their human life. I remember nothing of being human," Alice said, looking down at her lap.

We spent a while in silence, contemplating the words that's been shared while trying to fill the long hours. Bella was nodding off as Alice jumped up from the settee.

"Something's changed," she shouted, eyes opening wide as if everything around her was suddenly clearer.

"What do you see?" I gasped, watching as she turned to me, clinging to my shoulders.

"I see a room. It's long, and there are mirrors everywhere. The floor is wooden. He's in the room, and he's waiting. There's gold, a gold stripe across the mirrors," she said, speaking rapidly, as if she had to get the words out before they slipped out of grasp.

"Where is the room?"

"I don't know. Something is missing- another decision hasn't been made yet."

Sometime in between Alice's exclamation and my questioning response, Jasper had fled into the room. He was beside us, face abnormally calm as he asked his own question.

"How much time?"

"It's soon. He'll be in the mirror room today. Or maybe tomorrow. It all depends. He's waiting for something. He's in the dark now."

"What's he doing?" He asked.

"He's watching TV... no, he's running a VCR, in the dark, in another place."

"Can you see where he is?"

Her eyebrows furrowed. "No. It's too dark."

"And the mirror room, what else is there?"

"Just the mirrors, and the gold. It's a band, around the room. And there's a black table with a big stereo and a tv. He's touching the VCR there, but he doesn't watch it the way he does in the dark room. This is the room where he waits."

"There's nothing else?" Alice shook her head in response.

"What does it mean?" Bella said, cutting her head in between the two. We were quiet for a moment.

"It means the trackers plans have changed. He's made a decision that will lead him to the mirror room, and the dark room."

"But we don't know where those rooms are?"

"No."

"But we do know that he won't be in the mountains north of Washington, being hunted. He'll elude them," Alice said, scared most of all of us, of all the possibilities it could lead to.

"Should we call?"

Bella jumped as the phone rang behind her from where it was buried in Jasper's bag. She stared at it, and then Alice flashed across the room, flipping it open and answering without the urgency that was expected. She couldn't help but speak with the heaviness we all felt.

"Carlisle."

They talked for a quick moment, explaining all that's happened, and then she was reaching across the settee to hand the phone to Bella. Her lips pressed together as she manoeuvred herself to stand by my side.

"Hello," a raspy voice called from the other end.

"Oh Edward!"

We stepped away, giving Bella her first moment of privacy since we'd arrived at the hotel. Alice's lips were still pursed, her whole face creased with worry- nothing like the light and airy girl I'd come to know. I pulled her to the side.

"What did your vision depend on?" I asked.

She shook her head. "I can only imagine one thing: Bella. She'll think of something, then it'll be concrete."

I could see why she was so worried. We glanced toward our friend as she grinned into the phone, round face flushed with both relief and yearning. I could still remember the first time I'd talked to her in school- the person in front of me was not as I'd expected her to be. But I admired her passion above all else.

"We need to find out where this room is," I finally said. "Could you draw it?"

Alice hurried across the room, grabbing the closest piece of paper- the back of the room service list- and started scribbling left and right. She drew a sloppy box, a smaller one inside with a horizontal line across it. A wall and a mirror. Then her pencil was moving down, drawing a disheveled table, a box- a speaker- on top.

"It's a ballet studio," Bella stated.

As she said it, it all became clear. I'd never been to one exactly, I'd never had reason to. But the mirrors, the stretch of shiny wood flooring and the music speakers all came together.

Our eyes flashed up. "You know this room?"

"It looks like a place I used to go for dance lessons- when I was eight or nine. It was shaped just the same."

"Are you sure it's the same room?"

"No, not at all. I suppose most dance studios look the same," she said.

"Would you have any reason to go there now?"

"No. I haven't been there in years. I was a terrible dancer." Bella flushed a deep red again.

"So there's no way it could be connected with you?"

"No. I don't even think the same person owns it. I'm sure it's just another dance studio somewhere."

"Where was the studio you went to?"

"It was just around the corner from my moms house," she answered.

"Here in Phoenix then?"

"Yes. Fifty eighth street and cactus." The fact that it was close made my anxiety reach.

Bella's eyes floated to the phone she's put down a few minutes before. "Alice, is that phone safe?"

"Yes. The number would just trace back to Washington," she reassured.

"Then I can use it to call my mom."

"I thought she was in Florida?"

"She is, but she's coming home soon, and she can't come back to that house while..." her voice trembled, her lip bubbling with it.

I felt the room calm around me, my cool skin suddenly feeling some false sense of warmth. Jasper smiled from beside me. Bella's shaking stopped.

"I don't think there's any way it could hurt. Be sure you don't say where you are though," he said.

I frowned. "Wait. Are you sure this is a good idea?"

"Please, I just need to phone my mom," Bella said.

I nodded, watching her skip to the other room, hearing the failing of a number from behind the door.

Turning to Alice, I said, "you said it was waiting to be decided. Her moms house is near that studio. Surely it can't be a coincidence?"

"It's already been decided."

What'd Alice seen, both today and the other day. She'd seen something to make her wary of my actions. She'd seen something to know that the future had already been decided. All I knew, was that I had a very, very bad feeling. And they were almost always right.

☾

Unedited.
Wanted to say another thank you to everyone who comments, votes and reads this book! It's my favourite to write and I love Elide and Alice so much.
Thank you for all your appreciation and love
Xoxo
M