[9]
“Are you mated?”
“What?” I’m assuming he doesn’t mean mated as in check-mated, but we didn’t study vampire courtship rituals in school thoroughly, as most, if not all, Vampires were mated already.
The little I do know is that every vampire has a mate, and who their mate is isn’t a choice. I can remember the passage in the textbook because all the girls spent weeks giggling over it.
“Another example of the inherent superiority of the vampire race is their tendency to take mates. A vampire bond grows slowly, but once acknowledged is irrefutable, passionate and eternal. There is no infidelity.”
(I ❤ the textbook that is the ultimate 3rd person narration tool. It’s kind of a cop-out, but whatever.)
The real subject of gossip were the rumors of humans disappearing, being stolen away and changed by mateless vampires. (This would be an interesting story, wouldn’t it.) But they were just stories. Yet . . . I wonder if this is this his way of flirting with me?
Instantly, I dismiss the idea. I’m a human with a crooked nose, frizzy, brown hair and eyes the color of shit. He’s an immortal god-monster.
“Bonded, engaged, married, betrothed, hitched . . . in love?” He rattles through the list cleanly, until he gets to the last phrase which he spits out with disgust.
“Bonded?” Calling it that makes it sound like construction work..
His eyes don’t narrow and his expression is as nonchalant as ever, but his pupils dialaite. “Stop blushing.”
What kind of person reprimands someone for a reaction they can’t control?
I glance down at the spoon and see my distorted reflection, complete with ruddy cheeks. “I don’t see how it’s any of your business.”
“You don’t?” He looks at me carefully, and I know it’s a warning even though he doesn’t look angry.
“No.” It comes out timid, but it comes out.
“Well, then.” He leans back in the chair.. “You’re dismissed.”
“What?”
“You’re dismissed. You can go.” With an economical grace, he holds his hands above his head and claps once. Behind me, the doors open.
I reach for the tablet, but he doesn’t make any move to give it to me. (Bella really wants her I-pad2) “Listen, I’m sorry. It’s not my fault I blush, I just don’t feel comfortab—”
His face is as still as water at daybreak. “I said you were dismissed, Isabella. Was I not clear?”
“I don’t understand. You said you needed me to fill out my information on that thing, but you’re not giving it to me?” I point at it, as if he had forgotten and not taken it from the table on purpose.
“Why would I give you the tablet, Isabella? Why should I care what you can and cannot do, what survival skills you may or may not have? Why should I help a girl who doesn’t have the mental facility to answer a single question?”
Enough. All my fear crystallizes into one single long frustrated gasp. “Why should you help me? Try, ‘why should I trust you?’ If I was with someone, why would I ever tell you? So you could torment them if I displeased you or said something wrong?”
“You will trust me because you have no choice. You will trust me because if you don’t you will die.”
Outwardly, he gives no sign that he’s furious; his tone is droll as if I’ve just suggested something so ridiculous he won’t even indulge me by responding emotionally, but his eyes are scraping across my every imperfection. It’s clear from his sneer that he’s finding me wanting, but for being disgusted with me he looks a surprisingly long time.
“You know what?” I ask.
His eyes practically glow, two coals heated up from darkness by annoyance, but I don’t care. If I’m going to piss him off, I’m going to do it right.
“Maybe I want to die. Maybe that’d be better than being a murderer.” I stand up from the chair, but my hand still grips it hard, tethering me, keeping me from falling down.
“You want to die?” he asks softly. There’s something burnt about his smell, caramelized and cold; sweet, but metallic and off.
I take a step backwards. “There are worse things.” The little girl with blood for eyes, flashes before me, the girl from my nightmares.
I shake my head. “Anyway, I can’t trust you. I can’t trust anybody. What’s to stop you from reporting me or even just getting bored, like Tanya.” My own honesty shocks me. I hadn’t meant to be so candid.
“I am nothing like that woman,” he says.
“Prove it.”
“I forget sometimes. We have so many plans for you, yet you—you don’t know anything. You can’t know anything. But—” His face twists into a grimace. “I suppose it may be necessary to enlighten you somewhat.”
And then he’s gone, blurring around the room.
He practically teleports, all at once at the window, the floor, and the vid-screen. Finally, he stops by the table and opens his hand. At least twenty little black spheres tumble onto the white tablecloth, bouncing and clattering against the dirty dishes and onto the floor.
I try to peer around him to see what he gathered from every nook and cranny, but Edward merely side-steps me. “Look,” he says steady and low. I can feel the vibrations from his voice in soles of my feet.
Just as I’m about to ask at what, because the only thing I can see right now is the square, strong line of his jaw, he holds something up. It’s the size of a pebble, but black and very plastic. He squeezes it with incredible gentleness. I had thought the textbooks exaggerated the physical godliness of vampires, but Edward doesn’t just have super-human strength, but superhuman control of that strength. Perhaps the stories in the textbook of vampires performing thought-impossible surgeries on humans were true.
“Bonded?” A girls voice asks, tinny and gritty, filtered through a tiny speaker on the plastic pebble.
“Stop blushing.” A man’s voice deep and commanding replies. Edward.
Whiny and petulant. “I don’t see how it’s any of your business.”
It’s me. A recording.
“Bugs,” I whisper, as if they can hear me.
He tosses away the sphere. “They’re disengaged, but only for a moment. I will signal their respawning in the walls by commenting on your token.” A long elegant finger gestures to the silver bull pin on my chest. “Until then we can talk freely.”
“You say that as if they’re are alive.”
He smirks. “They are.” He brings his hands upwards, gesturing to the Zepplin as a whole. “This is. A marvel of vampire bio-engineering, half alive, half not. Much like me.” (Vampire technology will play large role in the story.)
“Bio-engi—”
“The explanation itself would take an hour, and for you to understand it, seven years schooling more.”
I pivot slowly, looking at the walls, at the floor. They’re still and give no hint that they’re alive. I don’t know what I expected; I guess thought if it was alive the walls to go up and down like the belly of a large sleeping animal.
“Focus.” Edward reprimands sharply. “There are some key misunderstandings I’m going to clear up for you. First of all, I wasn’t assigned to be your mentor. I chose you.”
“That’s not possible. It’s based on what district you come from. Anyway, how would you even know it was going to be me?”
“Do you take pleasure in interrupting me?”
His eyes are wide and guileless, but there is a sharpness to his smile that makes me grit my teeth. I had my share of controlling teachers in training school, but Edward is on a whole other level.
“I enjoy an unprecedented level of privilege in the Capitol due to some mistakes(HAHA! that’s what he’s calling it now-a-days?!) I made when I was younger, mistakes I am now trying to rectify. Because of my inability to read your mind, among other factors, you have been pre-selected as the Prospective most likely to successfully aid my associates and I with our cause.”
So I’m right, he can’t read my mind, but what other factors could there be? Please let him not know what I did to my brother. Please let him not have chosen me because he thinks I’ll be a good killer.
He must see the questions teeming in my eyes, because he elaborates. “I cannot tell you exactly what our cause is, let alone how we plan on achieving it. All I can tell you is that it is diametrically opposed to the current Volterran government.”
“That’s treason.” I breathe out. “I could report you.” I am in shock. My own mother was killed for saying these things, and here I am, playing with fire—no—dancing in the inferno with the devil himself.
“You won’t,” he says with all the lightness of someone making small-talk.
He’s right, but there’s no way he could know that without reading my mind, which he can’t. But him plotting treason with me, after knowing me less than forty-eight hours? Well, it’s stupid. And I don’t entrust my life to stupid people.
“You’re putting a lot of trust in someone whose thoughts you can’t read.” I cross my arms.
He gives a short laugh and moves closer to me. “Just because I don’t know your thoughts doesn’t mean I don’t know you.” Without looking, he reaches backwards and plucks the tablet from the table.
“Those questions? This?” He waves the tablet front of my face before setting it down again. “A prop, a formality to appease the Volturi. I know everything about you already. Isabella Swan, daughter of Charlie Swan and Renee Swan, née Dwyer. Good with knives and poisons. Can’t shoot a bow to save her life. Can run fast but not fast enough. Excellent swimmer. Good with knots and boats. Above average sense of direction. Greatest weakness: stealth. Lacking grace of any kind.”
I re-cross my arms—tighter. “Those are just facts anyone could find out from my school record.”(Sometimes writing a scene is like directing it on stage you don’t want the actors to repeat actions, and you don’t want actions to be repeats. My favorite kind of scenes to write are ones where the character has business to keep their hands busy, which is why this scene was so hard to write– they weren’t really doing anything.)
“Rich girl. Grew up with dad in high places. Mom got scared of seeing her baby playing with knives, so she acted out.” His adoption of the District 2 accent—bright vowels mutated by thick consonants—makes me cringe.
He’s closer still now. I can feel his cool breath on my skin. “Mom got caught. Killed. Dad went crazy. You, well, you went a little crazy too, Isabella. Didn’t you?”
I back up, tripping over the chair and landing on it. “Shut up.”
But he doesn’t let up, his eyes capturing mine and not letting me go. “Hurt your brother. Not just hurt, damaged. Felt so bad about it, you thought you’d act out, too.”
“I said shut up,” I stammer. I turn and scramble toward the door, but I only come crashing into his chest. Everywhere I go, there is Edward.
He ignores me, stepping forward, and I’m forced to move further backward or else end up in his arms. “But then you met a friend, good old Jacob Black: sunny, solid, happy.” He looks at me meaningfully. “Ignorant of the real struggles and sins of this world, of our world. Ignorant of who you really are.”
“Jacob knows me.”
Edward backs up slightly, satisfied that I won’t try and escape, making a low humming in his throat, non-committal. “You know what he thought as you volunteered for his sister?”
“No, because I’m not some kind of mind rapist.” I sneer. What right has Edward to know these things, let alone taunt me with them?
Edward contorts his face into an innocent expression of worry, which reminds me so much of Jacob it makes my heart ache. “I will never be as pure as Bella Swan.” It’s such an accurate imitation that I almost believe it’s not satirical. (Yeah E doesn’t like Jacob..)
I’m not sure if I want to cry in his arms or kill him. Instead I ask, “Why are you doing this?”
He bends down to whisper in my ear. Look me in the eye, I want to scream. Look me in the eye as you say these things about me. These true things.
“Why?” He hisses, repeating my question. “You’ve spent so long thinking you can’t ever make up for what you’ve done, haven’t you, Isabella? You’re sure that you will die with your sins, or worse, live with them forever, damned to eternal perdition.”
I turn my head to get a glimpse of him, but he is gone, a disembodied voice. It’s as if he’s coming from inside my own head.
He croons in my right ear. “You don’t have to live with that, Isabella. You can change the world.”
In my left. “We can change the world.”
“I can’t do anything like that,” I whisper, choked. I had thought about trying to save the children, but I hadn’t thought about the repercussions. My thoughts were all scrappy and torn, so torn that I didn’t even think they could be pieces of a bigger picture. “You said yourself I’m not pure.”
His harsh laugh rings out so discordantly that I flinch. It sounds like vampire music. “You think it’s the pure that change the world? If that were the case you and I wouldn’t be having this conversation. The Volturi never would have taken power. You’d be in a quaint university, lounging in bed with a boyfriend, fretting about the economy and whether your philosophy degree would result in you being poor or absolutely destitute.” (Lol, replace philosophy with music and you have my life.)
“University? Philosophy?” The words sounding ancient and mystical.
He sighs, but I can’t see where from. Analytically, it’s most likely that he’s moving so quickly I can’t see him, but understanding the effect doesn’t make it less powerful.
“What power do I have?” Maybe it’s because I can’t see him, but I feel somehow freed by his odd omnipresence. “God, I can’t even protect people from myself, how can I save the world?”
In the encroaching darkness, the sun has long since given way to the skeletal crescent-moon, and through the skin of the Zepplin I can just barely see the stars. The strange shadow-light silhouettes Edward.
“It’s because you’ve hurt people that you are the one to do it,” he says.
“So only evil people can have power? That’s why you want me? Because I’m a monster, like you?”
He gives a bark of a laugh, dark as a starless sky. “You aren’t a monster.”
“Don’t laugh at me.” I want it to come out sharp and imposing, but it comes out more of rasp.
My attempts to dislodge his mirth fail. His eyes still dance. “You don’t even have a conception of the word.”
“I blinded my own brother,” I murmur into my folded hands. The weight of the words settle onto me. I’ve never said it like that before. I’ve never admitted it aloud. I didn’t think it would feel good, but I thought there would be a release.
There isn’t.
His posture softens slightly, and when he speaks it’s almost tender. “You aren’t pure, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t good. The pure are the ones who think themselves heroes. The good are the ones who actually are. I believe in you because of your mistakes; I believe in you because only people who understand the perils of darkness can have a prayer of defeating it.”
“Believe in me to do what? Are you talking about— ” I don’t even know how to express the sentiment.
“I am not talking about anything until you are an official part of our organization, which means being changed. Which means winning the games.” He glides from the table to the edge of the room. With pensive slowness he trails his fingertips over the walls of the Zepplin, skating over it like a skipped rock. There is something about the way that he touches the wall, drawing connections from stars, composing constellations, that affects me. It’s as if he’s performing magic.
A puppeteer of the sky.
He turns around slowly, fingertips lingering. “So, what say you?”
Do I really have a choice?
He steps closer, but I don’t step back. I can feel every molecule between us. I want to keep the feeling, as painfully present (I do over-use this word a little, ah well.) as it makes me feel.
“Train me, then.” This times the words come out as bold as I feel, but my voice doesn’t sound like my own.
He looks me over for a moment—every part of me. I can’t help the blush that flows from my cheeks. There is no scorn in his expression this time. Some part of me wishes desperately that he’s liking what he sees.
He brings one hand to touch my cheek, and I know I should move away, but I can’t. “Perhaps I will.”
He sees the forest fire of blush spreading across my skin and withdraws. “I’m almost positive that the very sincere promise of atonement will allow you to trust me, even when it seems I’ve led you false. But only almost.”
“I thought you know everything about me? What’s keeping you from making your decision?” It’s not until I notice that somehow he seems taller, that I realize I’m hunched and cowering before him. Funny, he could have threatened to break my neck. He could have actually broken my neck, and I would have screamed, but I wouldn’t have whimpered. His emotional assault is more effective than any physical one.
He moves back in front of me, pulling up a chair so that we are eye level. The hordes of dead bugs are strewn out between us like toppled chess pieces. “I know everything you’ve done, and I can make logical conjectures from that about how you feel, but there’s one thing I don’t yet know.” He takes one of the spheres between his fingers and crushes it like a nut. “Are you in love with Jacob Black?”
I turn from him, so that I can only see him through the curtain of my hair. “I don’t have to tell you that.”
“If you want me to insure your survival in the arena, you do.”
“Jealous?” I snort.
“I could care less about your feelings towards me. But I need to know if at the end of the day you’re greatest priority is changing the world, making up for your mistakes and allowing others never to be forced to make the same ones, or about returning home safe to your sweetheart.”
My lips part slightly at the shock of it all.
His voice is so soft so sure, and his gaze stirs something hungry in me. I am about to say, yes, anything. I would do anything, but then, he smirks.
I hate that smirk. Like I’m something to be triumphed over. Like he’s better than me.
“I love Jacob Black.” I huff.
The smirk widens.
I bite my lip in frustration. “Why are you so happy?”
“Prepositions, Isabella, make all the difference.”
“I don’t follow.”
He rolls his eyes.
“What? I studied Kali knife fighting and field craft, not sentence structure.” I retort. (This is the response I give to my Beta’s, they find it just as amusing as Edward seems to.)
He gives me a condescending smile. “You love Jacob Black, but you are not in love with him.” He draws away, and I can’t help but lean forward by an inch, some part of me drawn to the echoes of him. God, it’s pathetic, no worse—dangerous. Yes, he may be against the Volterran government, but the enemy of your enemy is not always your friend, and even if they are friendship is a dangerous game if you’re friend is ambitious. And Edward clearly has plans.
“I didn’t say that I wasn’t.” I say gruffly, leaning backwards. The chair creaks, giving my façade of bravery away.
He raises an eyebrow. “Tell me, Isabella. Did you ever yearn for him to kiss you? Were there moments of silence when you tilted your head up so prettily and begged with your eyes for his lips to meet yours?”
“I—”
“No?” He smiles but it is so sharp. “Then were your fantasies of a rougher nature?” He taps a finger against his chin almost casually, like a professor puzzling over how to explain a particularly complicated concept, but his eyes darken in a way that is not at all clinical.
His eyes stalk even my most microscopic of movements. “I’d imagine you’d hardly be content with sweet nothings.”
I push up from the chair. “I don’t want to talk about this,” I say stiffly, taking a step backwards.
He doesn’t stand up but sits perfectly still. “Would you want him to pin you down onto the soft, glassy beach as you tried to scratch and claw him? Maybe, you fantasized of him biting you and marking you as his, until the only word you could remember was his name? Until you writhed like a little fish gasping for air, gasping for life, grasping for him.” Each word falls over and into the other, the cadence of his voice musical and feral at the same time.
The thought of Jacob ever doing anything like that (Bella is a little repressed, she can’t even say the word sexual. In some ways she’s very much a child. But I think it also signifies the importance of how she feels to Edward, the intensity of her own feelings makes her recalcitrant to acknowledge it.) would make me laugh and squirm were it not for the fact I can’t help but picture Edward doing these things to me. And that doesn’t make me laugh at all. “No, I don’t think of Jacob t-that way.”
He doesn’t have the same problem of mixing darkness with amusement. “Of course you don’t.”
“I don’t think about anyone that way.” I clarify.
But this is a lie; I have now. I’ve imagined Edward pinning my hands against the table, twisting my body towards him and crashing his lips against mine.
He hums low in his throat. “Are you sure?”
I gulp. “P-positive.”
He smiles, and this time it is almost polite. “I wouldn’t expect an innocent like you to think those things.”
I blush, but say, “Edward, if you know anything about me, you know I’m not innocent.” All too late, I realize I’ve fallen into a trap.
“So then you do have such dreams?”
“No, I—”
“I suggest you not argue the point further unless you want a demonstration of the full extent of your naïveté.”
His face has fallen back into that eerie stillness, but now that I know what lies beneath it, I can’t help but be more wary.
I will never take his smile at face value again.
He is oblivious to my revelation, because he continues on. “I’d also strongly advise that you try to contain that blush of yours.”
I bring my hands to my neck as if this will protect me. “Blood lust?”
“Something like that,” he says colorlessly, but his eyes don’t leave the spot on my neck that my hand covers.
“I thought the chemicals in blood prevented that?”
He stands up, tucking his chair in neatly to the table. “Oh, they do. I imagine if I was on my normal diet of animal blood there would have been an incident long ago. Probably the first moment I was close to you in the atrium of your little Blood Temple.”
“Blood Bank.” I correct instinctively, suppressing a shiver at the image of him cracking my neck. I’ll have to get used to the idea of lethal violence quickly, because I’ll be facing the reality of it soon enough.
“A bank is where you make deposits you can get back; a temple is where you make sacrifices.” His eyes flit across my skin in a way that makes me feel as if I am the sacrifice.
The shiver I tried to fight, wins, blighting my body with goosebumps. Hastily, I change the subject. “Fine, so I’m not in love with Jacob. But you don’t know everything about me.” I tilt my chin upwards.
“Don’t I?” he asks. For the first time he looks surprised. When his eyes widen, when really open up, you can see every shade of red in them. It’s beautiful, like the way the sea-glass darkens when they’re wet.
But he’s a monster. I have to remember that. He was talking about killing me as being an incident. And it doesn’t matter that he was nice before when he untied my shoes or told me I didn’t have to worry about what I said.
“I’m going to save them,” I look at the now star-painted walls. I can do this.
Edward tilts his head again, but this time it throws his whole face into shadow. “Who?” he asks, so low it vibrates my skin a little.
“The kids.” With the bugs off for the first time, I can be completely candid. “I’m not going to kill them. I’m going to protect them.”
Something snaps. I look down and see his hand clasped around the jagged edge of a newly broken fork. He sees that I see it and quickly spirits it away.
I decide that if I’m going to continue ruining his plans than I should be grateful that it’s a piece of silverware broken and not my neck.
He sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose as if to stave off a headache. “You could only save one of them. It would be emotional and physical torture to try and beat the game, and in the end you would lose.”
“And it’s not torture already? I’m being forced to fight for my life, to kill people, for a prize I don’t even want?”
He grimaces. “There is no one less in need of instruction on the evils of the Morphing Games than I, Isabella, but you’re not going to kill yourself to save anyone.”
“I didn’t say that.” Framed as suicide—which in truth it is—I feel much less sure of my plan.
“The implication was perfectly clear.” He moves closer to me. “Put such thoughts out of your mind.”
As he nears, my stomach tightens. Too close. He’s too close.
“I have to do it,” I mumble, hoping that he won’t hear me.
His hand stills in his hair and he turns to face me. “You’re serious, aren’t you,” he says incredulously.
Before I can confirm this, he moves toward me. “I won’t let you.” Roughly he grabs my wrists and I try to tug away from him, but his grip is unshakable. “If I can convince you of anything let it be this: you will not die in the games.”
His hands are cold, but when they touch me I feel so warm, no hot. It’s like there’s chemical reactions every place our skin meets.
I want. I need—
He turns me slowly, his hands wrapping around my abdomen, pushing me into him. I was wrong he doesn’t smell sweet or sour. He smells like a nothing I can name.
Then—oh god—one of his hands draws back the curtain of my hair twisting it, capturing it. With the other, he trails a gentle path down my neck with his fingernail tracing a vein.
“Isabella.” He cajoles in a falsetto that lends an illusion of vulnerability. “Promise me you’ll do as I say. Forget about this nonsense.”
“I, no—”
The nail digs in. “What was that?”
I try to clench my fists, but my nerves are all cross-wired.
“Isabella.” He sing-songs over my skin, his lips dancing against the small invisible hairs on my neck. “Answer me.”
Then, he presses a single kiss to my neck.
It undoes me.
“Yes,” I whisper.
Instantly, assured of my compliance, he lets go. I fall to my knees, but he doesn’t offer me a hand up, just surveys me dispassionately.
“What the hell?” I ask when I finally get my voice back.
He looks at me silent, expressionless, but his eyes are just a bit wider. He’s also not acknowledging my swearing at him..
I bring my hands up to my neck. “Seriously? What was that?”
“I play to win; you will, too.”
I snort, hiding in the hole of sarcasm. “Not if you kill me first.”
His gaze roots me out.
“If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead.”
I guess I really have to play his game. I’m not going to kill the children, but he has to believe I will. Who knows what he’ll do if it seems like I’m not going along with his plans.
Still, I want to leave. So I do.
His hands remain at the table, his eyes don’t even meet mine, but the masculine weight of his voice stops me. “You do not leave until I dismiss you.”
I sigh. Fine. I can do rules. I had a training professor, Banner, who was this strict. Although he wasn’t half as beautiful—not even a quarter, really. I bend my knees to sit back down.
“The bugs are set to be fully functional in less than a minute. Once they are, you are never to mention any of this again. If you do I will claim that you are trying to weasel your way out of the competition by plotting treason. In the trial against you, I will argue passionately for your immediate death.”
My breath catches in my throat. How is it that I haven’t even entered the arena and I already feel like I’m fighting for my life?
“And, Isabella, make no mistake, I will win.”
And I had threatened him before about telling someone. He was right, I was naïve, no, even worse — I was foolish to think that I could ever have power in this game we were playing, ever be a step ahead of him. I don’t know why, but I almost feel choked with bitter tears at the thought of it.
I had actually thought he was stupid for trusting me, when the truth was there was never any way he could have been hurt by me. He doesn’t care about me. I’m just a tool. It was amazing how naïve I could be, even after years of training in manipulation. The only explanation was he had dazzled me somehow.
“Secondly—” he holds up two fingers, numbering his list “—my first goal is your survival. As I am better equipped to coach and teach you than anyone else, and you will follow my instructions explicitly. This starts with not complaining about whatever choices the stylist makes when you meet with her tomorrow.”
For the first time I see what appears a genuine smile over Edward’s face. It’s almost as disconcerting as his glare; it looks so out of place. “Esme may seem demure, but she is a better stylist than anyone, perhaps even better at her job than I am at mine.”
Fashion is perhaps my weakest area after stealth, but I don’t let Edward know this, partly because I’m sure he already does, and partly for a reason I don’t quite understand, I don’t want him to know how unstable I am in heels. “Fine.”
A thought occurs to me as I stare at the bugs, and then at the walls. Nothing has appeared to have grown or changed, but then again I hadn’t noticed the bugs in the first place. “Won’t this thing—”
“The Cloud Gate.” He corrects.
“Won’t it monitor that you killed the bugs; won’t it sense a gap in its records?”
He nods. “It will notice the gap, but with some rewiring and reconditioning of it’s nervous system I should be able to convince it that that it had an immune malfunction. Namely that its built in security systems accidentally pegged parts of its own body, if you will, as hostile.”
“Oh,” I say to the floor, not looking at him, not really comprehending, but tired of looking a feeling like an off balance idiot.
If it wasn’t totally crazy I would almost say that Edward’s expression softens a little, “This is a lot for you to take in, I understand, but—” In an instant, whatever gentleness there was in his expression disappears.
“But what?” I ask, baffled.
“But that’s a very charming pin you have there.” He gestures to the pin in my chest, and I can’t help but sigh.
That’s our agreed upon cue. The bugs are functional again. Hello, anonymous audience. I missed you.
I would be getting no more answers from Edward tonight. In fact, it was possible that he wouldn’t talk to me candidly again until the games were over. I realize the sinking feeling in my gut isn’t because I won’t be getting answers, but because some part of me liked the honesty of Edward, no matter how brutal it was. True honesty was something I hadn’t had a taste of in almost five years. I hadn’t realized how freeing it could be. It made my blood electric . . . or maybe that was something else?
No, it had to be the candidness.
“Thanks.” I fingered the two bulls horns, overlaid upon each other. “Emily, Jacob’s sister, gave it to me.”
He gives an almost genial smile. So he can be nice. “That was a very kind thing you did, volunteering for her, but I expect you wanted some of the glory, too.”
I look at him in confusion. “What?”
I am beginning to see hidden shadows in his smile, and I can’t help be almost be in equal parts fascinated and disturbed. “Stirb und werde.” (this is German for Die and become from Goethe.)
I don’t know what he just said— but I can guess. We had to do a unit on codes; was it possible that this was just a formulated code? If S=1— no. No, the answer was simpler somehow. Maybe the words were modifications of English sounds.
Does this hold the answer to the mysterious “cause”?
Unfortunately, the best I can come up with is, “Wearing the stirrup?” (Oh lol Bella and your funnyz tranzlations.)
I didn’t think it was possible to surprise Edward more than a quirked eyebrow, but he bursts into laughter. Something catches in me, like my heart is velcro and his laugh has a thousand little hooks to latch right onto it.
I glare. Partially because I am angry at him for making fun of me, partially because I’m angry at myself for smiling at his laugh.
His chuckles soothe and his grin compresses to a smile. “You know what it means; you’ve seen it plastered across every surface of District 2.”
“Your vitality is your greatest asset?”
The memory of the smile lingers on his lower lip, even as his upper lip falls. “Try a bit more topical to our current situation.”
Not for the first time, I think it is convenient Edward cannot read my mind, because I think loudly: I have the most treasonous, arrogant, asshole of a mentor on the history of the planet. Childish, I know, but I can’t help but regress under the pressure.
“I give up,” I say instead.
The smile is gone now entirely, leaving only boredom and disappointment. Except his eyes, his eyes still watch me with unnerving patience. “It’s late and we’ve had a long conversation, but if this is the kind of effort you’re going to put into training, then Tanya was right, I do have my work cut out for me.”
“Die and become.” I blurt out. “The slogan for the Morphing Games.” The words and syllable numbers map out better than anything else I can think of.
“And what does this mean?” he asks, reminding me of the times a teacher would try to have us figure out new weapon hold on our own.
I can’t help but roll my eyes. This is what we learn in first-year: the symbolism, the history. Why is Edward making me repeat it now when I could be in a nice comfortable bed, forgetting all about causes and atonement, running back to my old friend denial. “Only through the power of death, can we be transformed into a vampire, only through morphing, metamorphosis, can we grow.”
“A caterpillar dies to become a butterfly, a snake sheds its skin. Growth is loss at its heart, but humans only die once.”
On the surface I could take it to be a comment for me to stay alive, but I know there’s a deeper meaning here. “But vampires never die, never change,” I say slowly.
For the second time, Edward smiles at me. It’s utterly devastating and he knows it. I’ll have to keep myself aware of the fact that it seems Edward will use every weapon in his arsenal to bend me to his “cause.” Certainly, his beauty is one of them.
“Anything can change with enough pressure and force, even vampires. Throw lame old graphite into the fiery furnace of the deep, dark mantle of the earth and what do you get—” (Hunger Games reference ahoy!!!)
His face is illuminated by starlight as he speaks. I hadn’t realized it until now, now the outside wall of his suite is completely coated with constellations. They cast thousands of glimmering dots over Edward’s face. He’s sparkling like . . .
“Diamonds,” I say.(In an interesting play Edward sparkles but in the night-time. hmm.)
He gives me a pensive look. “I know you’re tired, Isabella, but if you could stay for just one moment more.”
I’m about to grumble and ask why. I am tired of riddles and cross-examinations. I just want to sleep. Forever maybe. Just as I open my mouth to say so, I notice something: a burst of red at my feet.
I look down.
“There it is,” he says, as if he had been holding his breath, waiting for something, but of course, he hadn’t. As a vampire he has no reason to breathe.
“What is it?” I look at the dot. It’s growing bigger and bigger.
“Just watch,” he says, reverently.(I like that this is a continuation of the Edward as puppeteer of the stars metaphor. The man playing God images is one of my favorites. I find it very sexy.)
As the light grows it fractures, and while most of the off-shoots are red some are white. It divides and divides until the whole floor is covered with patterns of light, patterns that look almost like a city.
Then, the lights burst into shapes below us, towers, spires and long illuminated neon ropes of streets looping between and around every surface, with cars zipping through them at unimaginable speeds. Soon the shapes and shadows grow from the floor onto the walls.
It isn’t like a city— it is one, and we are plummeting right into it.
“Welcome to Volterra, Isabella.”
(DUM DUM DUM!)
The Morphing Games 