The Edge

Ready

Summary: Alice's training is complete

Five Months Later

Alice walked forward slowly, her chest rising and falling gently as her feet moved noiselessly across the floor.

It was cool in the room, and Alice was preternaturally aware of the feeling of Carlisle's fingers lightly resting against her neck.

The woman in front of her looked peaceful. Alice knew it was because of the drugs being pumped into her system through the I.V. parked beside her bed, but the tranquil expression struck Alice in some profound way she couldn't explain, and she stopped walking.

"Are you alright?" Carlisle asked softly, his voice lower than a whisper.

Human ears never would have been able to detect the question, even if they had been standing pressed up against his side.

"Yes," Alice breathed out in a slightly louder tone.

She continued towards the bed.

Alice stopped when she was in line with the sleeping woman's torso. She stalled, taking a moment to stretch her neck, Carlisle's fingers moving with her as she rotated it.

"She's bleeding through the bandages," Alice said softly, staring down at the figure in front of her.

"Yes," Carlisle agreed, reaching out for the blanket covering the woman with his free hand, and pulling it down. "That's why I'm going to change it," he continued, one hand steady on Alice's neck as he reached out with his other to begin undoing the bandages. "She didn't get out of surgery long ago. It'll take a while longer for the bleeding to stop completely."

Alice's eyes were focused on Carlisle's hand as it moved assuredly, her eyes easily able to follow his rapid and precise movements.

When the wound was unwrapped and it lay open to her gaze. Alice's eyes fluttered and she breathed in deeply.

Carlisle's hand stilled over the new bandages, and Alice leaned forward, bending gracefully at her waist until her nose was millimeters away from the bleeding incision.

She breathed in deeply.

Carlisle's thumb twitched against her neck.

Alice breathed in again.

She could feel her mouth beginning to fill with venom and she wanted to part her lips and let her tongue run across the warm, slick flesh in front of her. The smell of the blood was spreading throughout her, and she began to feel lightheaded, almost delirious with the scent of it.

Alice closed her eyes and stopped breathing for a second to focus herself. Keeping her eyes closed, she then breathed in and out deeply, allowing the scent to enter her once again. It would have been easier to control herself if she stopped breath, but she knew that when she fed on Bella that she would constantly be taking in her scent, and that she had to keep breathing during practice as well.

"The surgery went well," Carlisle began to say conversationally.

Alice turned her head to look at him. She was having trouble focusing on his words but she knew that he was talking to her, and the sound of his voice was comforting.

She looked back down at the woman on the bed. She listened to the steady beating of her heart, watching her sweet blood as it leaked out of her wound, her vampire eyes seeing it in all of its terrible glory as Carlisle continued to talk.

He spread antiseptics over the incisions, his latex covered fingers moving through the blood, disturbing it, increasing the potency of its scent as he worked.