Our Infinite Sadness

Revelation

They raced across the parking lot and down Cactus Boulevard for the Mercedes in broad daylight, with sirens converging from all directions. They could go only so fast with their precious cargo, and they had not quite reached the car when Jasper, who had hung back at the doomed building, aimed the colorless flame of the sodium torch into the broken window of a room doused with gasoline.

The ballet studio exploded, and Jasper was a tiny sprinting shadow backdropped by a wall of flame. By the time he reached the car, half the block was on fire.

Edythe sat in the back seat between Carlisle and Emilia. Ben lay across them, and Carlisle pressed his fingers lightly to Ben's carotid artery. Emilia wasn't breathing, and she hung her head out of her window, like a golden retriever. Jasper, riding shotgun, did the same.

Alice drove, and she advocated for detours, as she wanted to begin working on the alibi immediately.

"No," Carlisle said. "Straight to the hospital. Ben needs blood, soonest."

That would complicate her cleanup duties, but she knew better than to argue.

Alice watched Edythe warily in the rear view, studying her eyes with alarm. None of them knew what to make of the phenomenon, not even Carlisle, whose thoughts expressed astonishment at Edythe's strength of will, which exceeded his own in his estimation, to some incalculable multiple.

Emelia brooded over the fact that Jillian had already been damaged goods, reeling punch-drunk with deeply effacing burn injuries, before they had even arrived. Jasper had gone out of his way to let Emmie rush ahead and take the kill, and to the amazement of both of them, a significant percentage of the job had been accomplished before they even got there. The moment they grappled Jillian and hoisted her away, she was already staggering under the pain of the grisly mutilation that she had suffered before their arrival.

They couldn't watch the minicassette, as the camcorder had been smashed and would need to be replaced, but they had already pieced together what had happened to Jillian, because they had all seen the destroyed television and the mangled ax. Edythe's brave, stalwart Benjamin had promised to give Jillian a good fight, and he had delivered by drawing first blood against a vampire with nothing in his hands but a club, perhaps the first human in history ever to do so.

That boy.

"Is he okay? Will he be alright?" Edythe desperately asked Carlisle for the hundredth time.

He put a hand on hers, nodding fervently, and couldn't answer with words.

The disappointment of being cheated of the kill was driving Emmie crazy, for all of her admiration. She kept saying to Jasper, "Jazz. Did you see that? Did you see what Ben did to that filthy bitch?"

"Yes. I saw it. I still don't believe it, but I saw it."

"Edy. Seriously, sis. Where did you find this dude?"

"Forks."

They were also astonished by her eyes. Of course they were dumbfounded by the miracle that she had just performed in there, seconds after she had resolved to commit a mercy killing and follow her beloved straight into the grave. But they couldn't deal with that, so they focused on her eyes instead.

Alice, looking at her again in the rear view, asked, "That really doesn't interfere with your vision?"

Edythe shook her head. She didn't want to talk about it. Ben and she had theorized on Sunday morning that his seed in her system had induced the transformation in her eye color. That had been two short days ago. Now she knew that his blood worked, too. So it was neither his sperm, nor his blood, per se. It was Benjamin himself. The way their bodies reacted to each other, warmed for each other, achieved arousal for each other, the way they tasted and smelled delicious to each other. She had a lot to think about. Somehow her venom had not been poisonous to him—which of course they had already suspected, given his delight in imbibing it, not that she ever would have dared to confirm the theory by biting him— but now she knew that her venom acted purposefully in his defense, to clean poison from his body and preserve his humanity. To what practical end, she couldn't imagine. According to vampiric knowledge, their venom had just two purposes: to incapacitate their prey and to parasitically generate new monsters. Apparently the plot thickened. She was too exhausted to dwell on it now, not while Ben was still very much in danger.