Children of a Lesser God

Mate bonds are strange things. They are a vampire's instinct, his primal answer to nature's age old question of mating. They are not the stuff of fairytales, the mate bonds, but an immortal's nightmare. Vampires often trick themselves into falling in love with their intended mate, as if they're capable of such human emotions, as if such emotions can aptly describe what a vampire feels for their mate...

—Carlisle Cullen

*

London, England.

Men often created monsters in loneliness, because of loneliness.

When they grew tired of pressing emptiness from all sides, when they turned and there was no one for conversations, when nights saw them sitting silently in the shadows; often their treacherous minds prodded them to seek out things that would appease their lonely selves, for loneliness was like a blanket that smothered you, one that you couldn't shake off. Often, people started to talk to themselves to dispel the silence that hung around them.

It made you do things—that loneliness.

Nobody knew it better than Carlisle Cullen.

He had been kneeling on the hard stone for the past couple of hours, confessing his sins softly to the ruins.

This had once been a beautiful church, before he'd stepped inside it and defiled it over the years.

It was that day of the year, the day when he ran away from his family, back to his roots; when he wept tearlessly in front of the cracked stone and old grass.

He still remembered the stained glass windows that had once adorned this church. The sunlight streaming through them used to create colorful shadows on her skin.

She had trusted him like she'd trusted her god.

He, in return, had betrayed it sincerely.

When he closed his eyes, the images of chopped limbs trembling on the table filled his mind.

Her silent screams haunted him.

He'd never drunk blood, never drained a body, but he'd been a monster and his hands too were stained with the life force of innocents. Maybe it was his ability, his gift—this apathy that he showed in the face of blood, the ease with which he'd torn apart bodies and bathed in crimson without being tempted to lick a single drop.

If vampires had souls, his would be a charred fragment barely present in his body.

'Forgive me, Isabella,' he choked on the sob trapped in his throat, guilt weighing heavy on him.

The crypt beneath the stone cross jutting from the floor was empty, but he still came here every year to kneel before it and remember.

Remember that Carlisle Cullen was no saint. He was just too adept at hiding his demon beneath his gentle, kind demeanor.

He liked to pretend that in the crypt, beneath the stone slab, her bones still lay, carefully preserved as she deserved by virtue of her station in society during the time she'd lived. But the truth was that this crypt was empty and she'd been reduced to dust a long time ago. That dust too had scattered, the wind carrying it away, far away from him...

*

Washington, USA.

'She smells funny!' Alice hissed to Edward, crouching behind the dumpster and keeping her unblinking eyes on the target.

'She smells divine,' Edward purred.

'Edward, focus!' Alice snapped, jabbing his stomach with her elbow to get the dopey expression off his face.