la belle dame sans merci | carlisle cullen

58

Minerva woke up with an axe to grind. Her mouth was set in a scowl before she ever awoke, an unsettling dream plagued her night. It was bizarre, enthralling, a little horrifying. The best kind of dream, really.

Minerva could tell that her every action was predetermined, there was a role to be played and she was playing it damn well. They felt like her choices, her motives. There was a simple prime directive. Make them pay. Who they were, she wasn't sure. All she knew is she was surely going to make them pay.

It was a bloodbath, townspeople came at her with pitchforks. One after another they fell, until there wasn't a spot of earth left untarnished. It was a new meaning to painting the town red.

It was a reflection that brought on the Volta. She knew she wasn't herself and the sight told her as much. The hair was lighter, the face rounder and incensed with bloodlust. Just as she recognized the face staring back at her, the face of her great grandmother, it began to change. The eyes softened, turning from a murky green to a lighter shade, the hair darkened from root to tip until she was staring at a reflection of herself. Her face was more red than not, running like beads of sweat down on her pallid face.

The smile slowly faded from her face, she looked down at her hands marred with the same shade of red. It had felt so good a moment ago, it had faded with her ancestor's face. With her eyes downcast, for the first time she took note of the townsfolk's faces.

Her feet stumbled back, over a body, that sent her to the ground. She scrambled, trying to put more distance between herself and the corpses. The faces were growing more familiar by the second.

Charlie, Bella, Dana, Gus, Harry, Sue, Billy, Kevin, Rena. The list could have gone on forever. It wasn't a ramshackle little village anymore, it was Forks. The town of Forks had been slain and she enjoyed every second. It was when she came face to face with the corpse she'd tripped over that she began to scream.

The scream pulled her from the dreamscape and into reality where she lurched upward in bed, a cold sweat coating her skin. Her throat was raw as she caught her breath, pressing her palms into her eyes.

There was no getting rid of the image, it set a rot in her chest that took hold. Charred as it was, there was no mistaking his beautiful face. He was still smouldering, a died out flame chewing through the remnant of his golden eyes, staring at her in absent horror.

Her hands slid down from her eyes to cover her mouth, "God." She whispered into her palms. At least she was certain it wasn't some kind of horrible premonition, vampires didn't burn like that. If it had any prospect of being real, she would have tripped over a pile of ashes.

Minerva went into her day agitated, a shower could wash away the sweat but not the visions. Every person that came into the shop brought with them the reminder of how they'd fallen in their dream. She ended up calling Bella, telling her to take the day off. Those big, brown doe eyes would send her spiralling. They had stared at her so coldly from the ground, an accusation.

It was 2pm when she decided she was driving herself crazy. She put a sign on the door that read 'closed for deliveries, open tomorrow' and got the hell out of dodge.

Her delivery circuit was a pretty consistent rotation. The funeral home, the chapel, the old folks home and the one she dreaded less today than she had in past days: the hospital.

Her stomach twisted in knots. Conflicting desires of avoiding Carlisle at all costs and crossing paths to know he hadn't been burnt to a crisp riddled her mind.

It was infuriating. There was always a quiet voice in her head that wanted nothing more than to see him, it was a sentimental voice that clung to what had been like it's life depended on it. It had been a whisper before but with this foolish worry that somehow her dream had foretold the man's death, it was shouting. The angry voice was yelling right back, it was starting to give her a headache.