Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE ᴛʜᴇ ᴛʀᴜᴛʜ
Glass fell down around Alice's feet as she punched through the window at the bottom of the stairs. I watched from the top landing as she kicked and smashed, throwing things from the top floor and down to the ground outside. I sighed- she'd been like that, angry and resentful- since she'd watched the video in the dance studio. Nothing I could say had made her calm, and instead she took her pain out on the window of the hotel we'd stayed in the other day.
"Alice, calm down," I said, floating down the steps to pull her back by the shoulder. "Smash any more glass, and it'll look like a car crash, not a slip on the stairs."
Bella had lived to see another day through human eyes, thanks to Edward's control and Carlisle's medical skills. The only believable things we could come up with to hide the fact that she'd been hunted down by a vampire, was that she'd fallen down the stairs in a hotel after leaving Forks. It was conceivable, considering that it was Bella.
"I just can't believe that's the reality," Alice said, dropping a wooden piece of the banister to the floor beside her.
I couldn't quite believe it was the reality either.
The video had said exactly what Bella said it would- James somehow knew about Alice's past. I stood with her, hands gripped in hers as she pressed play.
It first showed James setting the camera up upon the speakers, balancing it so Bella was in sight across the room, hunched weakly against the smashed mirror. He grinned maliciously, teeth curling around his face as he turned to face her
"Before we begin... I would just like to rub it in, just a little bit. The answer was there all along, and I was so afraid that Edward would see that and ruin my fun. It happened once, oh, ages ago. The one and only time my prey escaped me," he said, as he began to circle her like a vulture, knees bent and fingers curled like talons.
"You see, the vampire who was so stupidly fond of this little victim made the choice that your Edward was too afraid to make. When the old one knew I was after his little friend, he stole her from the asylum where he worked- I never will understand the obsession some vampires seem to form with you humans- and as soon as he freed her he made her safe. She didn't even seem to notice the pain, poor little creature. She'd been stuck in the black hole of a cell for so long."
I hadn't made the connection at all. Until he said his next line...
"A hundred years earlier and she would have been burned at the stake for her visions."
Visions. My eyes snapped toward Alice, watching as her face didn't flicker with emotion as I'd expected her to. She stayed motionless, staring at the screen as James threw his head to stare back at the camera, almost as if he was staring through the lense.
