Only For You (Twilight Fan Fiction)

Chapter Fourteen

I awoke in an unfamiliar room with Bella in the bed next to me. I sat up and looked around at the room. It was a hotel room I guessed by the design of it

I looked down at myself. I was still wearing Rosalie’s clothes, and they didn’t fit very well at all. I looked around the room, glad when I discovered my bag on top of the low dresser. I manage to get changed before Bella woke up. She smiled and me and went to get some new clothes before a light tap on the door stopped her in her path.

"Can I come in?" Alice asked.

Bella took a deep breath. "Sure."

She walked in, and looked us over cautiously. "You look like you could sleep longer," she said.

We both just shook our heads.

She drifted silently to the curtains and closed them securely before turning back to us.

"We'll need to stay inside," she told us.

"Okay." Bella’s voice was hoarse; it cracked.

“Thirsty?" she asked.

Bella shrugged. "I'm okay. How about you?"

"Nothing unmanageable." She smiled. "I ordered some food for you guys, it's in the front room. Edward reminded me that you have to eat a lot more frequently than we do."

Bella was instantly more alert. "He called?"

"No," she said, and watched as her face fell. "It was before we left."

She took Bella’s hand carefully and led us through the door into the living room of the hotel suite. I could hear a low buzz of voices coming from the TV. Jasper sat motionlessly at the desk in the corner, his eyes watching the news with no glimmer of interest.

Bella sat on the floor next to the coffee table, where a tray of food waited, and began picking at it without noticing what she was eating. I just looked at the food every so often Bella would look at me with sympathy and suddenly look away

Alice perched on the arm of the sofa and stared blankly at the TV like Jasper.

Bella ate slowly, watching her, turning now and then to glance quickly at Jasper. It began to dawn on us that they were too still. They never looked away from the screen, though commercials were playing now. Bella pushed the tray away. Alice looked down at me.

What's wrong, Alice?" she asked.

"Nothing's wrong." Her eyes were wide, honest… and we didn't trust them.

"What do we do now?"

"We wait for Carlisle to call."

"And should he have called by now?" I could see that I was near the mark.

Alice's eyes flitted from Bella to the phone on top of her leather bag and back.

"What does that mean?" Bella’s voice quavered.

"That he hasn't called yet?"

"It just means that they don't have anything to tell us."

But her voice was too even, and the air was harder to breathe.

Jasper was suddenly beside Alice, closer to Bella than usual.

"Bella," he said in a suspiciously soothing voice. "You have nothing to worry about. You are completely safe here."

"I know that."

"Then why are you frightened?" he asked, confused.

"You heard what Laurent said." Bella’s voice was just a whisper, but I was sure they could hear her. "He said James was lethal. What if something goes wrong, and they get separated? If something happens to any of them, Carlisle, Emmett… Edward…" Bella  gulped. "If that wild female hurts Esme…" Bella’s voice had grown higher, a note of hysteria beginning to rise in it. "How could I live with myself when it's my fault? None of you should be risking yourselves for me —"

"Bella, Bella, stop," he interrupted me, his words pouring out so quickly they were hard to understand. "You're worrying about all the wrong things, Bella. Trust me on this — none of us are in jeopardy. You are under too much strain as it is; don't add to it with wholly unnecessary worries. Listen to me!" he ordered, for I had looked away. "Our family is strong. Our only fear is losing you."

"But why should you —"Alice interrupted this time, touching my cheek with her cold fingers.

"It's been almost a century that Edward's been alone. Now he's found you.  You can't see the changes that we see, we who have been with him for so long. Do you think any of us want to look into his eyes for the next hundred years if he loses you?"

It was like I wasn’t even there, but I was used to it. I was the girl that hardly anyone noticed. I got up and walked to the room Bella put her hand on mine but I just shook it off and went to sit in the room.

We stayed in the room. Alice called down to the front desk and asked them to ignore our maid service for now. The windows stayed shut, the TV on, though no one watched it. At regular intervals, food was delivered for me. The silver phone resting on Alice's bag seemed to grow bigger as the hours passed.

At one point Bella came to join me in the room and started to ask me questions.

“So how long have you been with Rosalie?” She asked playing with her sleeve.

“Since the third of January”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I am totally gonna tell my cousin that I am in a relationship with a vampire. I was desperate not to have you in this world”

“Why?”

“I didn’t want my cousin who had everything she wanted, who had a good life ahead of herself to be drawn into this,” I sighed and rubbed my nose before looking up at her

“I guess, if I had told you then maybe we wouldn’t be here”

Bella went over to my bed and sat down on it wrapping her arms around me and we sat there hugging for a while. Before heading back outside to where Alice and Jasper were.

"Alice?"  Bella asked.

"Yes?" She kept her voice very calm. "What do you think they're doing?"

"Carlisle wanted to lead the tracker as far north as possible, wait for him to get close, and then turn and ambush him. Esme, Jess and Rosalie were supposed to head west as long as they could keep the female behind them. If she turned around, they were to head back to Forks and keep an eye on your dad. So I imagine things are going well if they can't call. It means the tracker is close enough that they don't want him to overhear."

"And Esme?"

"I think she must be back in Forks. She won't call if there's any chance the female will overhear. I expect they're all just being very careful."

"Do you think they're safe, really?"

"Bella, how many times do we have to tell you that there's no danger to us?"

"Would you tell me the truth, though?"

"Yes. I will always tell you the truth." Her voice was earnest.

Bella deliberated for a moment, and decided she meant it.

"Tell me then… how do you become a vampire?"

Bella’s question caught her off guard. She was quiet. I rolled over to look at her, and her expression seemed ambivalent. I looked at her waiting for her story

"Edward doesn't want me to tell you that," she said firmly, but I sensed she didn't agree.

"That's not fair. I think I have a right to know."

"I know." Bella and I looked at her, waiting.

She sighed. "He'll be extremely angry."

"It's none of his business. This is between you and me. Alice, as a friend, I'm begging you." And we were friends now, somehow — as she must have known we would be all along.

She looked at Bella with her splendid, wise eyes… choosing.

"I'll tell you the mechanics of it," she said finally, "but I don’t remember it myself, and I've never done it or seen it done, so keep in mind that I can only tell you the theory.” I waited.

"As predators, we have a glut of weapons in our physical arsenal — much, much more than really necessary. The strength, the speed, the acute senses, not to mention those of us like Edward, Jasper, and I, who have extra senses as well. And then, like a carnivorous flower, we are physically attractive to our prey."

We were very still,

She smiled a wide, ominous smile. "We have another fairly superfluous weapon. We're also venomous," she said, her teeth glistening. "The venom doesn’t kill — it's merely incapacitating. It works slowly, spreading through the bloodstream, so that, once bitten, our prey is in too much physical pain to escape us. Mostly superfluous, as I said. If we're that close, the prey doesn't escape. Of course, there are always exceptions. Carlisle, for example."

"So… if the venom is left to spread…" I murmured.

"It takes a few days for the transformation to be complete, depending on how much venom is in the bloodstream, how close the venom enters to the heart. As long as the heart keeps beating, the poison spreads, healing, changing the body as it moves through it. Eventually the heart stops, and the conversion is finished. But all that time, every minute of it, the victim would be wishing for death."I shivered.

"It's not pleasant, you see."

"Edward said that it was very hard to do… I don't quite understand," Bella said.

“We're also like sharks in a way. Once we taste the blood, or even smellit for that matter, it becomes very hard to keep from feeding. Sometimesimpossible. So you see, to actually bite someone, to taste the blood, itwould begin the frenzy. It's difficult on both sides — the blood-lust onthe one hand, the awful pain on the other."

"Why do you think you don't remember?"

"I don't know. For everyone else, the pain of transformation is thesharpest memory they have of their human life. I remember nothing ofbeing human." Her voice was wistful.

We lay silently, wrapped in our individual meditations.

Then, without any warning, Alice leaped from the bed, landing lightly on her feet. My head jerked up as I stared at her, startled.

"Something's changed." Her voice was urgent, and she wasn't talking to  us anymore.

She reached the door at the same time Jasper did. He had obviously heard our conversation and her sudden exclamation. He put his hands on her shoulders and guided her back to the bed, sitting her on the edge.

"What do you see?" he asked intently, staring into her eyes. Her eyes were focused on something very far away. I sat close to her, leaning into catch her low, quick voice.

"I see a room. It's long, and there are mirrors everywhere. The floor is wooden. He's in the room, and he's waiting. There's gold… a gold stripe across the mirrors."

"Where is the room?"

"I don't know. Something is missing — another decision hasn't been made yet."

"How much time?"

"It's soon. He'll be in the mirror room today, or maybe tomorrow. It all depends. He's waiting for something. And he's in the dark now.” Jasper’s voice was calm, methodical, as he questioned her in a practiced way. "What is he doing?"

"He's watching TV… no, he's running a VCR, in the dark, in another place."

"Can you see where he is?"

"No, it's too dark."

"And the mirror room, what else is there?"

"Just the mirrors, and the gold. It's a band, around the room. And there’s a black table with a big stereo, and a TV. He's touching the VCR there, but he doesn't watch the way he does in the dark room. This is the room where he waits." Her eyes drifted, then focused on Jasper's face.

"There's nothing else?" She shook her head. They looked at each other, motionless.

"What does it mean?" I asked.

Neither of them answered for a moment, then Jasper looked at me.

　　"It means the tracker's plans have changed. He's made a decision that will lead him to the mirror room, and the dark room."

"But we don't know where those rooms are?" Bella asked

"No."

"But we do know that he won't be in the mountains north of Washington, being hunted. He'll elude them." Alice's voice was bleak.

"Should we call?" I asked. They traded a serious look, undecided.

And the phone rang.

Alice was across the room before I could lift my head to look at it.

She pushed a button and held the phone to her ear, but she didn't speak first.

"Carlisle," she breathed. She didn't seem surprised or relieved, the way I felt.

"Yes," she said, glancing at me. She listened for a long moment.

"I just saw him." She described again the vision she'd seen. "

Whatever made him get on that plane… it was leading him to those rooms." She paused.

"Yes," Alice said into the phone, and then she spoke to Bella.

"Bella?” She held the phone out toward  Bella and she ran to it.

"Hello?" She breathed.

I looked away from Bella not listening to her conversation with Edward. When Bella was done she turned to give the phone back to Alice and found her and Jasper bent over the table, where Alice was sketching on a piece of hotel stationery. I leaned on the back of the couch with Bella , looking over her shoulder. She drew a room: long, rectangular, with a thinner, square section at the back. The wooden planks that made up the floor stretched lengthwise across the room. Down the walls were lines denoting the breaks in the mirrors. And then, wrapping around the walls, waist high, and a long band.

The band Alice said was gold.

"It's a ballet studio," Bella suddenly said

They looked at her, surprised.

"Do you know this room?" Jasper's voice sounded calm. Alice bent her head to her work, her hand flying across the page now, the shape of an emergency exit taking shape against the back wall, the stereo and TV on a low table by the front right corner.

"It looks like a place I used to go for dance lessons — when I was eight or nine. It was shaped just the same." Bella touched the page where the square section jutted out, narrowing the back part of the room. "That’s where the bathrooms were — the doors were through the other dance floor.

“But the stereo was here" — she pointed to the left corner — "it was older, and there wasn't a TV. There was a window in the waiting room — you would see the room from this perspective if you looked through it.” Alice and Jasper were staring at Bella.

"Are you sure it's the same room?" Jasper asked, still calm.

"No, not at all — I suppose most dance studios would look the same — the mirrors, the bar." Bella traced her finger along the ballet bar set against the mirrors. "It's just the shape that looked familiar." She touched the door.

"Would you have any reason to go there now?" Alice asked,

"No, I haven't been there in almost ten years. I was a terrible dancer —they always put me in the back for recitals," Bella admitted.

"So there's no way it could be connected with you?" Alice asked intently.

"No, I don't even think the same person owns it. I'm sure it's just another dance studio, somewhere."

"Where was the studio you went to?" Jasper asked in a casual voice.

"It was just around the corner from my mom's house. I used to walk thereafter school…" Bella said, her voice trailing off. I didn't miss the look they exchanged as they though about Bella.

"Here in Phoenix, then?" His voice was still casual.

"Yes," She whispered. "Fifty-Eighth Street and Cactus."

We all sat in silence, staring at the drawing.

"Alice, is that phone safe?"

"Yes," she reassured me. "The number would just trace back to Washington."

"Then I can use it to call my mom."

"I thought she was in Florida."

"She is — but she's coming home soon, and she can't come back to that house while…" Her voice trembled.

"How will you reach her?"

"They don't have a permanent number except at the house — she's supposed to check her messages regularly."

"Jasper?" Alice asked.

He thought about it. "I don't think there's any way it could hurt — be sure you don't say where you are, of course." Bella reached for the phone and dialled a number waiting for it to dial.

"Mom," Bella said after the beep, "it's me. Listen, I need you to do something. It's important. As soon as you get this message, call me at this number." Alice was already at my side, writing the number for me on the bottom of her picture. I read it carefully, twice. "Please don't go anywhere until you talk to me. Don't worry, I'm okay, but I have to talk to you right away, no matter how late you get this call, all right? I love you, Mom. Bye."

I settled into the sofa, whilst Bella was nibbling on a plate of leftover fruit, anticipating a long evening. Bella concentrated on the news, watching out for stories about Florida, or about spring training —strikes or hurricanes or terrorist attacks — anything that might send them home early.

Immortality must grant endless patience. Neither Jasper nor Alice seemed to feel the need to do anything at all. For a while, Alice sketched the vague outline of the dark room from her vision, as much as she could see in the light from the TV. But when she was done, she simply sat, looking at the blank walls with her timeless eyes. Jasper, too, seemed to have no urge to pace, or peek through the curtains, or run screaming out the door, the way I did.

Bella and I must have fallen asleep on the couch, waiting for the phone to ring again. I knew that I was moved but I was too tired to open my eyes.