In Another Life: Book Two - Taming the Beast

Chapter Twenty-One: Ripple Effects

Content Warning: "Depictions of torture"

Cullen Residence - March 18, 2004

Isabella knew the pain was coming to an end, but had forgotten how miserable it was to go through the fires of vampiric transformation. The last time she was buried alive and insane from the pain and grief she had endured, but this time she had Alice at her side. Holding her hand for days as she suffered, never once leaving her side.

Then the fires withdrew and she felt her senses come alive again, but had another moment of revelation as she grasped the difference she had taken for granted for decades. As a traditional vampire, she felt weak and deaf and blind in comparison. Her body felt strange and slow, and for the first time truly understood what she had become when she bit Eliza all those years ago.

She opened her eyes and met Alice's gaze, "How do you feel?" Alice asked with clear concern. She had already readjusted to her old body, but was looking forward to finding Eliza and regaining all the advantages of her new one.

"Like stone, I forgot how much it sucks to be like this." Isabella looked down at her newly vampiric hands with a small frown. "But it will do, first let me try something."

"Alice, can you hear me?" Isabella sent across what should be the link.

"My god, it still works. How is this possible?" Alice stared at her in shock, her mental voice full with pure love and relief.

"Mom?" Eliza's voice called out, faint and barely audible.

"Eliza?" Isabella replied with a touch of relieved desperation.

"Yes, I feel Anna and Michelle too, where am I?" Eliza responded, her mental voice confused and afraid.

"In my head." Angela grumbled. "I'll be there soon, I need you to prepare the Cullens I have worked out how to restore their memories."

"Will do. I can feel your power Angela, somehow you are a part of the link." Isabella sent back, with more than a touch of confusion.

"It probably isn't me, rather the minds of Eliza, Brianna and Michelle." Angela replied with a mental shrug.

"That makes a weird kind of sense. I do wonder if that means you will be a part of the link permanently now. Which would be totally weird." Eliza almost giggled. "Um, where is my body?"

"You haven't been born yet." Isabella said with her usual bluntness.

Eliza sent the equivalent of a manic laugh as she processed the fact she was a disembodied mind inside another mind that was now conscious years before she was even born. "Wow, I got nothin. This is like a bizarro time travel trope with a bunch of bendy rules. Like, how does my mind exist before I'm even alive? Great, I'm gonna be stewing over that one for a while." Eliza's voice was already stronger, her tone was less afraid and more incredulous.

"Anna, can you hear me?" Alice tried, and a very faint presence replied wordlessly in acknowledgement.

"Please stop, the other three are asleep, so please only one at a time. I have compartmentalized them off, so they can converse through the link freely, but it is taxing as they awaken. I can bring Leah into this shortly, she and her pack are coming with me." Angela tried to keep the hostility out of her voice, she was still dealing with newborn thirst but thankfully this new connection to Isabella came with some perks, mainly access to her shield. It made calming her mind easier, and allowed those partitions with the other consciousness to have some individuality.