Reckoner, Part VII [Twilight Fanfiction]

Hey lovers,


I just want to warn all of you soft-hearted types that this episode comes with a definite turn for the violent. If you are bothered by things like that (like me, for instance), then just be warned that the action definitely picks up and there is some stuff towards the end that might be a little disturbing. But not necessarily more disturbing than, say, Cars II (Disney, you assholes. If you have young children who love Pixar Cars as much as mine and you follow me on Twitter, you've already heard me bitch about Cars II. BUT I DIGRESS.) 


Thanks to those of you who are keeping up with this with me, and thanks for leaving me comments to let me know you care. Thanks again to the generous donors of Fandom Gives Back, and especially to Snarkier Than You who beta'd this even though she has the plague herself this week.


See you on the other side.


xo
Myg

Reckoner Part VII

“Walk with me.”

Esme took me by the hand and led me out the back door of the house. It was well past midnight and there was no moon and the dark was soothing, like I might just let my thoughts go swimming out into it, away from me. We were headed to the cemetery, the place she always walked at night, and I already knew any minute she’d be imploring me to do better, to try harder, to not give up on myself. I waited for her to gather her thoughts and focused my attention on the whisper of our tread on the damp grass, trying to stay out of her head.

“There’s only so much Carlisle can take,” she finally said as we reached the gate. Her eyes were sad and serious. “He’s got to look out for the others. And you know better than all of us where drinking human blood will lead. Think of Aro.”

“I know,” I said, considering the shriveled up, depraved leader of the Volturi who even now looked for any and all excuse to come after Carlisle and the rest of us for some obscure violation of the code. He was a powerful mess, though not one to be taken lightly.

“Edward, if Carlisle loses you, it will kill him.”

“I know that.”

We found her favorite headstone, a turn of the century, hand-carved and near illegible tribute to the Ward Thomas family. Esme dusted the top off and then bent to brush some leaves away from the grave.

“You look at all these lives lost here and wonder what they would have been like had they been brought into our world, right?” she asked. “All these people, gone who knows where.”

“These people have been gone a long time. Anyone who remembered them is long gone, too.”

“That’s the real end, right?” Esme shook her head slowly, her hand sliding over the pebbled, worn stone of the marker. “When there’s no one left who can remember the sound of your voice.”

“It sounds relaxing,” I said, attempting to lighten the mood a little, but failing. Hard.

Esme stared at me, stony and silent. Her hair fell about her face and rustled lightly in the night breeze. I am worried sick she said silently. You think of eternity without her as hell on earth, I know you do. But you can’t go on suffering like this or eventually you’ll do something desperate.

Her mind began to scatter and then race as she tried to select which of her thoughts to share with me, and then I heard the remnants of the conversation I didn’t want to have, the one where she would again implore me to seek help, or what I hated even more, to just propose to Mercy, like Mercy even deserved to be saddled with someone who would always be in love with someone he couldn’t have.

“Let’s not discuss it, okay?” I was respectful, but final.

“Are you leaving us again?”

There was an edge to her voice that I recognized as the oldest and most profound of Esme’s injuries. I put my arms around her and she grabbed me around the waist, clinging like I might be carried off by the wind, or that she might.

“I just didn’t want to see the girl get hurt tonight,” I said.

You’ve still got the thirst. I know you do.

“Look, it’s not like I’m not trying, okay? I messed up, that’s all.”

“So you’ll go back to the hospital to work with Carlisle then,” she said. That way, if it gets really bad you can just borrow from the blood supply. Not ideal, but no real harm done, right?

“It’s not the blood I crave,” I said.

What passed through her mind wasn’t a thought, but a deep shudder from the chilling confirmation of her worst fear.

I know, she said, and even her silent communication sounded resigned to me. It’s the kill.

~~~
Text me when you dock.

I’d been out for a quick sail that morning, and Mercy’s request flashed across my phone just as I got within range of the marina. I didn’t answer. I’d had enough guilt from Esme and was already re-committing myself to clean living anyway, so I thought I’d spare myself another round of pep talks. I knew she was just worried and I knew that she meant to help me, but she couldn’t help me and I was tired of disappointing people. Especially her.

The morning was gray and misty and damp as I tied Reckoner in her slip. I was planning to go back to the Cullen House to brush up on the Physicians Desk Reference in preparation for my first shift at the hospital. There weren’t all that many new afflictions but plenty of new drugs to learn and paperwork to forge since I’d last medically treated anyone. I jumped into my Volvo and started her up, unhappy about a strange knocking coming from under the hood and then I hit the stereo. My mind was almost steady when the phone rang and it was Mercy again. I still didn’t feel like talking, but I felt too much like an asshole to hit ignore, so I picked up.

“There’s no sense in trying to surprise you, so let me tell you exactly what’s going to happen, in case your sister hasn’t yet.” Allston Kaine’s voice was controlled rage.

“What the hell? Where is Mercy?”

“She’s with me,” he said. “And you and I are going to have a serious talk, right fucking now, about who’s entitled to what hunting in Portland. So get your ass over here and so help me if you bring Emmett and Jasper this time she will be without both her hands before you get through my front gate.”

“You fucking asshole,” I roared. “You squirming, petulant fuck. Nobody hunted anyone in your territory.”

“The Chief of Police’s oldest son was drained dead last night!” Allston yelled through the phone. “I’ve had an agreement with the Portland Police Department since 1948, and in one night, you’ve destroyed it!”

Rosalie, I thought. Shit, shit, shit.

“We’re giving him an offering,” Allston said. “And it’s not going to be one of mine. If you don’t man up, I’m giving him Mercy.”

Alice. Call waiting. I really wanted to know what she knew, but I couldn’t pick up until I knew Mercy wasn’t hurt.

“Put Mercy on,” I said. There was a shuffle and in the background I heard her cursing and stamping her feet.

“Edward?” Her voice was strained, like she was trying not to sound upset, but the edge in her tone was unmistakable. She was frightened. “Look, I’m all right. He hasn’t hurt me.”

“I’m on my way,” I said. “If anyone touches you, take their eyes out first. It’ll buy time.”

“All ten Kaines are here,” she said. “And more are coming.”

“I’m on my way.”

“You’d better be,” Allston said over Mercy’s protest in the background. And then the line went dead.
~~~
I didn’t have time to call Alice back before the phone rang again, and it was her.

“What the hell is going on?” she screamed.

“What did you see?” I tried to stay even and controlled, even as panic filled my lungs like sand filling a glass bottle.

“You’re dead, that’s what!” She was hysterical, her voice shaking and I could hear her moving frantically around the room as she spoke quickly. “You’re in pieces, on a pile of ashes, burning to death. Now tell me what the hell is going on!”

“Can you see Mercy?”

“No! Edward…” The line went quiet as Alice put her sight on Mercy. “My God—What the hell have you two gotten into?”

“It’s complicated,” I said. “I fucked up, Alice. Badly.”

“Emmett and Jasper are on their way to the Kaines’ right now. Let them take care of it, whatever it is.”

“They can’t!” I hollered. “Call them and tell them to back off or they’ll walk right into a fight outnumbered. The entire coven is there and they’ve called for backup.”

“You can’t do this!” she cried. “If you do this, you end up dead, do you understand me? You’ve got to turn the car around!”

“If I turn the car around, that dead vampire you’re seeing will be Mercy, and there’s no way, Alice. No way.”

“Please, please don’t do this!”

“I don’t have any better ideas right now!” I yelled. “What am I supposed to do, leave her?”

“I…I’m getting Carlisle,” she said, almost absently and I knew she was trying to see the different lines of probability for each of us on the trajectory we were on. “He’ll know what to do.”

Carlisle would be beyond enraged once he found out I’d given Rosalie the cop’s son’s address, and so would Emmett, but there was no way in hell their anger would rival the rage I felt at myself for my own stupidity, my own reckless self-indulgence.

I hung up the phone as I heard Alice pleading, “Edward just wait a minute. Wait…”

I slammed the gas again, but even at full power the car was too fucking slow. I punched it going into another curve and then saw Emmett’s Jeep pull across the road, cutting me off at the last second. It was a still-life to me as my favorite antique car bid fond farewell, crumpling into the side of that behemoth SUV and I was launched what felt like seventy-five feet up into the air. The ground shook violently as I landed, making a deep crater in the asphalt 100 yards north of where we collided. I pulled myself to my feet in time to see Jasper and Emmett running towards me at top speed and I took off to the north through the thickest part of the woods.

I put everything I had into getting away from them. I might have led Rosalie to commit murder, but I wasn’t going to lead Jasper and Emmett to an unwinnable battle with the most ruthless vampire coven in the northeast.

Sun filtered down through the trees and the pounding of our feet sounded like a herd of racing elk. They wouldn’t catch me, I knew, not even Jasper. They called after me, cursed me, begged me to stop or even just slow down so they could figure out what the hell had happened.

“Does this have something to do with that asshole from last night?” Emmett called from twenty yards behind me.

“You’re being a real prick, you know that?” Jasper called. “Alice is practically in a coma.”

“Go home!” I called back to them. “Take the coven back to Forks!”

I heard a phone, not my own since I’d lost it in the wreck, and then I heard the abrupt absence of their feet pounding the ground. They’d stopped following me. Alice must have called them, I figured. No idea what she might have seen, what she might have said, and I might never know. Good, I thought. Maybe I can take care of this without risking any more lives of people I love. Now if I could only save Mercy.

I ran faster until I was well inside Kaine territory. The woods seemed quiet and dusty here, and reeked of something sinister I couldn’t name. Maybe there were witches gathering. But I smelled no trace of humans.

I worried about Mercy, about what Allston might do to her, because I understood what he was capable of. She’d never taken me seriously enough when I warned her to stay away from him, even though tears ago he’d beheaded and burned the leader of a small, wandering coven out of Montréal for making a kill in Portland without his clearance. I cursed her in my head for not listening to me, then felt guilty as I realize the only reason she was in danger now was because of my own stupidity. Maybe Allston would just start by taking her fingers, to punish her for ever leaving him. More than 30 years later and he still hadn’t really gotten over her. It was no surprise to me that he’d found an excuse to hurt her, but it was unbearable that I’d been the cause of it. What she had ever seen in that parasite was beyond me, but that was Mercy--always selling herself short.

My stride grew longer, the woods streamed by in a blur of filtered sunlight and earthy tones. I was getting closer. But then I heard something I couldn’t understand—thoughts in some language I’d never heard before. Distressed, angry thoughts from in front of me, behind me, next to me, keeping pace and then I saw them.

Black bears. They were everywhere, swarming around me like angry hornets. But these were no ordinary bears. They were too large, too fast, and they were talking to each other, silently, though I had no idea what they were saying. They had to be shape shifters. And I had just rocketed right through their tribe.

I’d known shapeshifters before, and I was no fan. The feeling tended to be mutual. The Quileute tribe out on the Olympic Peninsula were known for their prowess in hunting vampires, and we’d had plenty of run-ins with them as we established territory out there. Once we joined them to rid the rest of the peninsula of predatory vampires we had no further problems from them, but they were a far cry from friendly. Shape-shifting black bears were something I’d encountered in the lore, but never in person. I was sorry to have made their acquaintance now.

I ran faster, but three of them kept pace with me, and soon they were on me, tearing into my back with great claws and dropping me to the ground. I rolled to my back and gnashed my teeth into the neck of the tallest one, tasted what was most definitely human blood and spat it out immediately.  If I had any chance of escape, it would be destroyed by indulging my lust. He clawed at my face and I kicked him in the gut, sent him hurtling through the air into a tree. I sprang to my feet and was tackled by two more bears who threw me back to the ground and held me there as I thrashed against them. Wild thoughts of Mercy being tortured began to race through my mind as I fought to free myself from their hold, but I stopped thrashing when I realized they were no longer trying to kill me—they were just holding onto me. I closed my eyes and tried to rummage through the voices I heard, looking for patterns of language, impressions of feeling to figure out what they wanted, and then I was suddenly confused, because someone—one of them—was showing me something. And it was her.

Dark hair, piled elegantly, but loosely on top of her head, brown eyes and flushed face, soft lips that broke into a familiar smile as I held her in the light of the fading sun. What was this?
I opened my eyes and towering over me was a massive dirty-white bear, fur yellowing around the eyes, stained at the paws with grass and soil. He was flanked by twenty slightly smaller black bears, all larger than me, most even larger than Emmett. I jumped to my feet and took a defensive stance.

Midor the bear thought, and somehow I understood this was his name. He was the leader of this tribe, whatever it was, and I got the distinct feeling he didn’t want to kill me. And then Midor pictured her again—my dead love—in that same vision that had plagued me every day for fifty two years.

“What are you doing?” I asked, my voice pleading, confused. “Are you reading my mind?”

Midor pulled the vision back and I saw the sunset and the top half of myself in a tuxedo, waltzing this woman slowly, looking down at her with all of the love and longing I already knew I felt. But then it was gone, and in its place there was an image of Mercy and Allston and several Kaines in a heated argument.

“Please let me go,” I said, flooded with anxiety that I’d already been detained too long. “She’s in terrible danger.”

As I said it, I imagined Mercy having her fingers cut off by Allston flashed and recoiled at the thought. But then, so did Midor.

You can read my mind? I asked, and watched as the great bear tipped his head slightly. Then I silently said, Let me go or she will be murdered. Though I had little hope that a shapeshifter would take pity on a vampire, I just didn’t know what else to do.

Midor reared up on his hind legs and pawed into the air like he was fighting, and the wind began to blow leaves from the forest floor into a swirling column around us. Clouds came to darken the sky overhead and then, in my mind, I saw a fire with twenty vampires and ten humans. Mercy and I were held captives in front of it, my head was covered in some canvas wrap and as I looked to Midor, I understood this was my immediate future. This bear was a gifted seer, and I did not like what he was seeing. At all.

I wasn’t afraid of death, or even of pain and suffering. There had been days—plenty of them—I’d thought I wanted annihilation. Cessation. Not living an eternity as a being of stone, trapped in a withering world, unable to sleep, to dream or even to rest, or to discover what, if anything existed beyond the doors of death. I’d spent plenty of time alone touring cemeteries, not just to surround myself with the morose, but to imagine what an eternal rest might actually feel like. But now that I was confronted with what appeared to be my real exit from this world, I felt cold. I let the cold feeling take me, first in the chest, then out to my arms and legs. But as it crept up my neck and into my head I thought of Mercy again.

Let me go, I said. Let me go or they will kill her.

The bear reared up into the air again and roared ferociously, and then landed on its front paws, scratched angrily in the ground and then gave a mournful cry. It felt like a lightning bolt had hit me and my vision blacked out, and all I could see was the brown haired woman again, smiling up at me. What it all meant, I had no way to know but it didn’t matter in the face of what I had to do.

“Let me go!” I yelled in his hairy, white face.

He took several steps back from me, and all of the bears parted like a small black sea.

He roared again as I turned and bolted away.

~~~

The Kaine estate was on 450 acres outside of Portland, rimmed by the woods I now ran through. I broke out of them into the southern pasture, where the main herd of Allston’s champion thoroughbreds grazed and then took off toward the barn when I came flying through. There was an enormous restored farmhouse on the hill with several smaller dwellings for the ten regular members of Allston’s coven, all of them with shades drawn against the bright mid-morning sun.

I was passing the cottages on my way to the main house when I heard Mercy’s frantic train of thought.

I’m in the third cottage, the third one from the left. Don’t go into the house… Oh please I hope you’re not coming from the roadfront. Where are you, Edward? Please hear me. Please…

And then, the inner thoughts of Timothy Kaine, I hope Allston lets us have at her before we burn her tonight. He shouldn’t have kept her all for himself. Asshole.

On hearing that, and without much of a plan, I busted in through the front door of the small structure to see Timothy leering at Mercy, who was peering out the back window. They both snapped their heads around to find me fuming in the entryway. I throttled Timothy and then dropped him to the ground and had my foot on his neck, ready to snap his head off when Joseph and Mark Kaine grabbed me by the shoulders and dragged me out of the cottage, into the back door of the main house. Mercy ran after us and jumped onto Mark’s back and gave him a nasty bite on the back of his neck, digging her fingers into his eye but he single-arm hurled her to the ground. They grabbed me around the neck and dragged me inside.

“Don’t kill him yet,” Allston barked from the library. “Jesus Christ.”

They brought me to the library where Allston stood waiting, smug. He wore a grey suit with a yellow paisley tie, like he might be going to a board meeting. In the 1980s.

“Let him go,” Allston said, and they dropped me to the floor but I sprang to my feet.

“Edward!” Mercy ran over and threw her arms around me. The scent of her fear, mixed with the all-too-fresh scent of the sex she’d had with someone who wasn’t me hit me as I held her, and I took a step back and caught the smirk on Allston’s face. She wasn’t nearly as good as I remembered, he thought directly to me. Sort of a let down, really.

Mercy’s face was drawn and pinched, her eyes wide with worry.

I’m sorry, she thought at me. I thought I could placate him for you, but why didn’t you tell me about the murder? I would have never come over here…

“Let Mercy go,” I said. “This has nothing to do with her.”

“He didn’t kill him,” Mercy said, looking up into my eyes, down into my gut where her special sense confirmed the truth. “I told you he didn’t do it! So it was definitely a Kaine, then.”

“My coven knows better than to kill any member of the Reynolds family,” Allston said. “It was certainly not one of us.”

“Look at his eyes!” Mercy insisted. “You know it wasn’t him!”

“Mercy…” I started to say something, but stopped. Then I took her by the shoulders and looked her in the eyes, hoping she’d read something there I couldn’t say. “You need to go home now, okay?”

“Are you insane?” she said, shaking her head. “Do you understand what they plan to do to you?”

“They’re giving me to the cop,” I said. “I know.”

“Edward, the Chief of the Portland Police Department is not your typical traffic cop,” she said. “You’re not going to be arrested and thrown into a jail cell you can just walk out of. This man has knowledge, and he is violently enraged right now. They will torture you and burn you to death."

“Why are you so worried about a cop?” I challenged Allston. “So you’ve got a treaty—what can he do to you that you can’t just crush the vengeance out of him?”

“Now why would I do that?” Allston said. “I happen to like the man, and how would you feel if your son was murdered?”

“He was a rapist,” I said.

“So you knew him, then,” Allston said.

“You have no right to hand Edward to them!” Mercy pulled away from me and got right in Allston’s face. “If you want to indulge the man’s vengeance, at least give him the right vampire.”

“No,” I said and Mercy snapped her head to me, eyeing my brain to see what she might glean from the stern tone of voice.

“So it definitely was a Cullen then,” Allston said with a nod. “Who was it? Jasper?”

“You’ve wanted me dead for thirty years, so what do you care who it was?”

“Edward, no,” Mercy said, her voice breaking. “This is suicide.”

The sound of the doorbell surprised me, but not nearly as much as whose broken and confused thoughts I heard on the other side of the door. Joseph Kaine went to answer and a moment later I met the widened stares of my brothers, appearing heavy with burden.

What the fuck did you do? Emmett’s voice was forlorn in my head and Jasper didn’t even attempt to intervene with his mood altering energy. He turned his dark gaze to Allston, staring him down with the intensity of a sniper eyeing an empty street for signs of a target.

“We have a message from Carlisle,” Jasper said, his voice dead in the room.

“Is that so?” Allston said sharply. “It can’t be that important if he couldn’t be bothered to come here himself.”

Jasper’s eyes were dark and drained as he stared right at me. I can’t even tell you how this is killing me, Edward. What on earth happened out there last night?

I almost wanted to answer him, to take him aside and explain the whole fuck up with Rosalie and the heavy consequence I was about to pay, but there was little I could do but just shake my head.

“Well? What is it?” Allston demanded.

“You can have Edward,” Jasper said, his mind a flurry. “Carlisle doesn’t want him back.”

I’d been clinically dead for 91 years, but it wasn’t until that moment that I finally truly felt dead. More dead than I imagined all those dead and gone bodies in Gray’s cemetery to be. But I understood why he did it. It was one thing for me to transgress against him, and quite another for me to lead his children astray. I’d become much more than a problem of poor impulse control and unrequited obsessive love. I’d become viral.

“What? No!” Mercy cried and threw her arms around my neck. “Carlisle’s not giving up Edward. He would never do this.”

I should have said something to let Jasper and Emmett know I understood. I should have told them not to be angry with Carlisle, but I couldn’t speak. I just nodded and watched them shift their eyes around to the vampires in the room, taking stock as they each individually tried to decide whether it would be totally impossible to fight their way out of a brawl there, should they defy Carlisle and get me out. There was no way we could have won, and I didn’t want them defecting on my account. I subtly shook my head and locked eyes with each of my brothers. No, I said to them. Don’t even think it.

“As you can see,” Allston said, “I already have Edward. So that’s not a very generous gift.”

“Carlisle said for you to come with us, Mercy,” Jasper said, again not using any of his soothing power on her, which I found strange until I realized that he couldn’t. He was too unravelled to use it.

“Well, tell him I’m not coming,” Mercy said. “I’m not leaving Edward here to be slaughtered and for what? Which one of you killed that man?!”

“What?” Emmett asked. “What man?”

“You can’t stay here, do you understand me, Mercy?” I whispered into her hair. “I’ll find get out of this, don’t worry.”

“Good luck with that,” Allston said, all cool and smug and I wanted nothing more than to beat the living shit out of him just once before I died. “And Jasper, tell Carlisle I expect a proper meeting tomorrow, after Edward is disposed of. A Cullen murdered someone last night and destroyed a sixty year old treaty of mine, and while I’ll happily kill Edward as restitution, we’ve got some business to discuss if you plan to stay in Portland.”

Oh Jesus… So that’s where Rose has been… Emmett thought. Edward, I will fucking kill you myself.

Nothing would change Mercy’s mind, she and her misplaced affections were staying with me until the bitter end. It was almost enough to make me wish I’d never met her, and not because I wasn’t moved or that I didn’t appreciate her sentiment or her loyalty. She would have just been much better off had she never met me. I’d thought it plenty over the years, but never felt it as painfully as I did then.

“Take them to the cellar,” Allston said after the heavy door closed and Emmett and Jasper were on their way back to Gray. Then with the demeanor of a banker late to work, he adjusted the hang of his suit and walked back to the library, two faded females flanking him.

The last thing Mercy managed to tell me before the real shitstorm started was “I love you, Edward. It doesn’t matter that you don’t love me back. It never did.” Coming from her it was another hell to endure, because I knew it was the first time she’d ever said, or ever imagined saying those words to anyone, and she knew better than anyone how little I deserved to hear them from her.

“I love you too,” I said, and I was glad I’d said it because it was probably the last thing I’d ever say to anyone, or so I believed as six Kaines dragged me down into the basement and shoved a gasoline-soaked rag in my mouth. They poured the rest of the can out over my head, all over my clothes and then wrapped duct tape around my mouth, nose and eyes. And then I felt the canvas bag, rough against what my face, and a wire wrapped around my neck. I started to buck and swing blindly at them, clocking someone who briefly stuttered before pinning me down to the concrete floor. When I realized my struggle was causing Mercy more distress and made me look more desperate and frightened than I even was, I stopped and took what was coming as the Kaines began to beat me and break me over and over. It hurt, but not nearly as much as hearing Mercy’s frantic reaction as she trained her insight on my body, keeping tabs on how I was faring.

Left leg, fracture. Hairline, in a minute that will be... Oh dear God—lumbar spine. Crushed. Skull fractured. That’s okay. It will regenerate, Edward, just let your body take over. Try to put your mind elsewhere. We’re on Reckoner then, all right? We’re not even here. They’re just playing with you now, but your brain Edward… your brain. Do NOT quit, do you hear me? Don’t you dare.

With Mercy’s prompt I managed to see the horizon and how empty and calm it looked from Reckoner’s bow when I was deep in the Pacific. All the voices in that room finally disappeared and a soft, lilting guitar melody took their place, now scoring the dance I was in with my lost love. Maybe there was another life after this one, I began to hope. Maybe there was some remote chance I’d see her after all, in the next world. As her serene smile came into view, I felt the soft shuffle of her feet in time with mine and focused on nothing but the quiet calm of her gaze as she held me close in some alternate reality calling me home.

Reckoner Part VI [Twilight Fan Fiction]

Hey! Look what's back! 

Reckoner is brought to you by the kind donors of Fandom Gives Back, 2011. When it's all done, those special folks will receive an epub and a pdf of the entire thing. I think we've got either two, three, or four or maybe five installments left. If you donated to FGB back in November and you'd like the pdf or epub, shoot an email to me at mygdala (at) gmail and I'll put you on the list. 

Thanks for reading!

Love,

Myg

Reckoner Part VI

Before I killed the Kaine’s supplier in Boston, I’d managed to go close to sixty years without tasting human blood. During that time I’d become such a dedicated humanitarian I never even flinched when I caught the smell of it, as rare as that was. A child’s scraped knee on a sidewalk, a store clerk’s paper cut? I’d notice, yes, but that stirring inside, the blood lust had all but faded away. But not now. Now it was a fight every single day. And I was getting tired of it.

It was mid-April and beginning to get warm again, the days were getting longer and I was now hunting two and three times a week, up into New Brunswick and Quebec. Caribou, moose and the occasional wildcat kept me well-fed, but it wasn’t the nourishment I was craving. It was the distraction.

Every day, still, I thought of her—my dead fantasy girl. And every day it was the same vision. The same brown eyes, the same soft hand on my shoulder, in my hand. That small, shy smile. It was strange that I kept seeing it, but what really bothered me was that I felt no different about it. Time passed and I still felt all the anguish, the pain, the loss—the longing. The longing for something that would never be. 

“Try to see if you can alter it—the vision,” Mercy had instructed, after I admitted I was still seeing it. “You’ve got to will yourself to change it somehow. Make her a redhead, or change the color of the dress. Try to make the vision different in your mind.”

“What good will that do?”

“It will put you back in control, don’t you see?” she said. “You thought this was your destiny for so long—you’re stuck. You’ve got to realize it for what it is—a fantasy. And you are in charge of your fantasies, right? Sooner or later you’ll be able to change the girl herself, maybe even to someone you can actually date.”

“I don’t want to do that,” I said.

“Well, then.” Mercy threw up her hands in frustration and stomped across the room, away from me, her heels clacking on the wood floor. “You’ll just have to suffer indefinitely, I suppose. A helpless victim of your own mind.” 

Fine. That had already been my plan anyway and I was okay with it, because whatever I was or wasn’t doing, I knew Alice was better, and that was all I really cared about. Alice looked great, her hair grown out into long, dark waves. She’d been hunting and shopping and learning the guitar and scheming with Rosalie and Esme for a trip to Paris. She laughed more and started drawing again—she even drew me a decent picture of Reckoner for Christmas.

“Hang it on your wall,” she said. “So you can have her with you in the off-season.” 

I longed for May, when I’d put Reckoner back in the water and take an extended vacation. I thought about it every day. May 15^th she’d be ready to go and I’d head out to sea, probably for the entire summer. Maybe six months or more. Maybe the solitude would help me get over my thirst, that mounting desire to kill someone. I hoped so, because nothing else seemed to be working.

~~~

The Saturday before I was supposed to leave, Reckoner was provisioned and I was packed and ready to go. Mercy, Alice, Jasper and Emmett had convinced me to come out to see Mercy play that night, despite my gut instincts telling me I was much better off staying away from anywhere public. But I wouldn’t be seeing them for a few months, and Mercy was already disappointed I wouldn’t be doing a summer tour with her. She’d wanted me to perform with her that night, since she was playing songs off the new album we recorded together, but I really just wanted to watch her one last time before I left. There was little else in the world that took my mind off of things as well as Mercy’s singing, and that was one thing I’d definitely miss while I was away.

We were all hanging out at Jim’s Bar and Grill at a table right in front of the stage waiting for Mercy to go on. I was trying to relax, to be cool, despite feeling rattled by all of the mental noise in that bar. It’d been awhile since I’d been around so many people, and Mercy had packed them in that night.

“Hi Edward,” a vaguely familiar voice said from behind me.

I snapped my head around to see it was that young college girl, Jules, that Mercy had brought home that night back in October. She was standing next to our table with a very tall red-haired guy with a gut the size of a truck tire, pounding a Budweiser. I didn’t like the look of him, the smell of him or the scattered, sketchy pattern of his thoughts. I stood up and looked the guy over and felt venom begin to pool in my mouth, and should have known right there and then how the night would turn out. I was suddenly in kill mode. I felt my eyes go black, my tongue twitch against my teeth, my body go rigid. 

What’s his fucking problem? I heard him think. 

“Hey Jules,” I said, standing up to greet her. “How’ve you been?” I leaned down and kissed her lightly on the cheek, glaring at her date, inhaling the scent of too much wine from her, the scent of the brute’s agitation as he glared back and clenched his jaw at me.

“Just came to see Mercy play,” Jules said, slurring her words, smiling a sloppy smile. Her eyes were drooping and there was spittle in the corner of her mouth. It wasn’t even ten o’clock yet. “She’s got a new album coming out,” she barely managed to say.

“She does and it’s brilliant,” I said. “Like all of her albums.”

Who is that? Alice thought at me, scrunching her nose but then giving a small smile in Jules’ direction. I didn’t introduce them.

Mercy came to the stage and began to play and gave a funny look when she saw Jules, like she was trying to place her. Then she thought at me, Something’s wrong with that girl, but I’m not sure what. Keep an eye on her. 

But Jules and her ape of a date went to the back bar and I just thought, this asshole with Jules just is not my problem. I don’t even want to know what he’s up to. And I definitely don’t want to think about how his blood might taste, just in case he was up to something, and I sure as hell didn’t want to know if he was up to something. Let it be someone else’s problem. 

I tried to forget about it, focusing intently on Mercy’s performance, blocking out everything else as I concentrated on her voice. But I found I was still swallowing venom for the next twenty minutes, until the urge to strike out was so strong I just had to get up and leave. Mercy looked perturbed, almost upset as she saw me jump up from the table and make my way to the door. Alice frowned at me. 

“Be right back,” I said. 

Alice rolled her eyes slowly to the ceiling and held them there for a minute as she tried to see my immediate future. But all she saw was me smoking a cigarette against the side of the club, since that’s was all the plan I had.  

I leaned against the brick wall in the alley and lit a Camel unfiltered and took a deep, long drag. That felt better. Then I took another, and smoked the entire thing in about three minutes. Then I lit another. And then I saw Jules, being dragged by her sweater sleeve down the sidewalk by her ape-date. She was half-arguing with him, slurring her words even more and that’s when I realized that he’d drugged her. I followed them silently and his thoughts came clearly, methodically. He would take her to his red Hummer. He’d bind her and drive her to the woods. That’s all I had to know.

There was no deliberation, no consideration, no hesitation on my part, though maybe I should have weighed my options a little first. I just found myself on top of him in the alley behind the club and Jules was slinking down the wall, into a pile of cardboard boxes, slurring, “What are you doing? What’s happening?” One light crack of his nose against the sidewalk and I was enjoying the bouquet of Budweiser-laced Type O Negative, ready to kill.

“Edward!” Alice cried from the back door of the club. “You nearly relapsed!” Emmett and Jasper pulled me off of the guy, right before I sunk my teeth into him. “And you missed the last part of Mercy’s set, too.”

“She’ll get over it,” I growled. 

“What the hell is with you, man?” Emmett asked. “You’re not getting back into that decree hunting crap, are you?”

“No, of course not.” I said. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Edward?” Jules whimpered from the ground. “What’s going on?”

“You have shitty taste in guys, that’s what,” I said. “And you are too young to be out in bars or hooking up with people you barely know. And another thing…”

“Edward,” Jasper said, cutting me off as Alice helped Jules to her feet and whisked her out of the alley and back into the bar. “You have to let him go, you know.”

“What the hell are you people?” The ape gazed up at the four of us, his eyes watery, his mouth open, his stale beer breath disgusting me as he heaved under the weight of my knee on his lungs. I crushed into them a little and he panicked, his heart pumping blood furiously, my rage and my thirst nearly blinding me. 

“Remember how lucky you were tonight and know this,” I said. “The next time you even fantasize about drugging and raping a girl, I will most definitely kill you.” I pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and took out his driver’s license. “I now know where you live, asshole. I’ll be watching.” 

Emmett and Jasper’s eyes went wide and then narrowed in disgust at the guy. I let him get up, and Emmett grabbed the guy by his neck and pushed him into the brick wall. “We’ll all be watching you.” 

Then he let him go and the ape ran, staggering, taking out two garbage cans before breaking into a full tilt drunken gallop down the block.

“Jesus,” Jasper said. “That was close.”

“Edward?” Mercy appeared in the back door of the club, admonished me in a single utterance with that disappointed, all-knowing tone in her voice.

“What?” I said, lighting another cigarette and taking a deep, deep drag. “That guy was a rape in-progress.” 

I exhaled a gust of thick smoke and it hung in the night between all of us, a cloudy veil draped over a whole heaping pile of attitude. Mercy was pissed, but she didn’t say anything else. She just turned and walked back inside the club without a word.

“You’re not turning on us again, are you?” Emmett asked. “Because that would really suck.”

I didn’t answer him. I just flicked the lit cigarette into the garbage can, willing it to catch on fire, disappointed when instead it began to rain.

~~~

Emmett, Jasper, Alice and Mercy dragged me back to the Cullen House and kept me cornered in Carlisle’s study until they’d told him the details of my altercation. He listened, that heavy curtain of concern about his eyes, glancing up at me now and then, and I tried to shield myself from the guilt of disappointing him. He didn’t even try to conceal his thoughts.

You’re very frustrated, Carlisle thought to me after sending the others out. I understand. But if you’re going to be a Cullen, you can’t hunt humans. I don’t care if they’re rapists and pedophiles. I can’t have you tempting the others. Think of Jasper—he’s still so vulnerable out there.

“I know,” I said, my attention drawn to Carlisle’s shoe as he tapped it, uncharacteristically agitated. Then he began to pace rapidly from one side of the room to the other, and I realized he was thinking, but he didn’t want me to make out his thoughts, the movement nearly hypnotizing me into silent focus. Then he stopped in front of me.

“You’re coming back to work with me at the hospital,” he said definitively, his hands tucked neatly behind his back as he spoke out loud. 

“But… I’m leaving. I’ll be on Reckoner for at least the summer. I won’t kill anyone at sea—I won’t even see anyone.”

“You need rehabilitation, Edward,” Carlise said. “You’re losing your empathy. Can’t you see that?”

“I had a lot of empathy for that poor girl who almost got raped tonight, don’t you think?”

“That’s no excuse for murder.”

“Well, maybe some humans aren’t worth…”

Don’t you dare say it, Carlisle got right in my face with his enraged stare, defying me to continue my sentence. “Don’t even think it.”

But I was thinking it. Some humans are such scum bags, they are a waste of the air they breathe. Not many humans, but there are some, yes, some—too many—whom I believe need to just not be here. If I could choose to not know who they were, to not hear some of the grotesque things these monsters think about, I would. But sadly that hadn’t been my luck.

I waited for Carlisle to launch into a lecture about compassion, not doling out judgment and the self-destruction that kind of power would cause, but he spared me. We’d been there. I knew it already. It just didn’t seem to change much.

“You know, we could use a new pediatrician,” he said. “Art Guildenstein is out on family leave and I have no idea when he’ll be back.”

“Kids? You’re going to make me work with sick children?”

“You are wonderful with children,” Carlisle said. 

“I can’t stand watching children suffer. That’s why I quit the pediatric unit at Mass General. All that fucking polio…”

“It’s 2009, Edward. You’re not going to be treating polio,” he said, his eyes softening. “And if you don’t do something drastic to keep your teeth off of humans, you’re going to become one miserable son of a bitch.”

“He’s already a miserable son of a bitch,” Rosalie said, leaning in the doorway of Carlisle’s private study, sneering. Her long blonde hair was loose down her back and she wore a navy blue cashmere cardigan, the first few buttons undone revealing the enormous diamond pendant Emmett had gotten her for Christmas. 

“He’ll get worse—and why are you here?” Carlisle asked, annoyed. “Don’t gloat right now. It’s unbecoming.”

“Esme needs you,” Rosalie said to him, keeping her eyes on me. “There’s trouble with Allston Kaine again. He’s complaining about territory infringement.”

Carlisle glared at me and I shrugged my shoulders. 

“Look, I didn’t take the guy out, all right? Allston has no reason to claim foul. I just scared some drunken mutt off a college girl.”

“How many are with him?” Carlisle asked.

“It’s just him,” Rosalie said. “Mercy is talking to him now.”

Carlisle straightened out his tweed vest and smoothed his hair down. “Edward, we’re not done here.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

After Carlisle excused himself, Rosalie came into the room and closed the heavy oak door behind her, and then perched on the edge of the chaise like a cat on a branch, waiting to pounce on an unsuspecting titmouse.

Were you really going to kill another rapist? I thought you gave that up, Rosalie asked, her voice somehow eager and tentative at once. I didn’t answer her, didn’t even look her way and it didn’t matter because I knew where she was headed. “Emmett said you almost had the guy. I was sorry to hear they caught you in time.” She gave a small half-hearted laugh and then was quiet.

I glanced up and saw she wasn’t even looking in my direction, but somewhere out the dark window, her eyes hollow as she imagined the scene. Rosalie’s own brutal rape and agonizing near-murder that brought her to us all those years ago was the reason I stalked rapists when I first broke with the coven charter. Though I’d never told her that.

“I let him go,” I said. 

Next time, take me with you.

“So you really do want me out of the coven.” I laughed at her absurd suggestion. Rosalie would hardly set foot in the same room as me, let alone decree hunt with me.

“Can you imagine, Edward? The two of us kicked out for hunting humans together?” Rosalie said, joining me in a sardonic laugh.

“No, I can’t,” I said. “At all.”

We sat there quietly for a few moments and I tried to stay out of her thoughts. Her memories strayed further and further back in time and I shifted mine elsewhere but it was difficult. Why she chose to go there then, I really didn’t understand at the time, but it was damned painful even as an outsider looking in.

I crossed the room and took her hand for a moment and she looked at me like I was nuts, but she didn’t draw away. Then I put the driver’s license of Jules’ would-be attacker in the palm of her hand. She looked at me, puzzled.

“Happy early birthday, Rose,” I said. “Now don’t say I didn’t get you anything.”

Reckoner Part V [Twilight Fan Fiction]

Author's Note - 


So, I got sick again. Some awful spewing stomach virus ripped through the Myg house last week and pre-empted your usual dose of Reckoner. We all got it, me, the boys and Mr. Myg, and let me tell you, twin boys in diapers during a digestive illness is not something I EVER to experience again in my lifetime. 


I was back on the mend this week (sheesh, I am actually terrified to type that out loud) but an insane work schedule made writing time scarce, so again you've got a short update. But an update, nonetheless. I am projecting and hoping and praying that the next installment will actually be quite long, and there will only be a couple left before we're done here. Until then, hope you enjoy this.


As always, many thanks to the generous donors of Fandom Gives Back for making this story see the light of day.


Yours in sickness and in health, 
Myg

Reckoner, Part V

Heavy, cold rain fell. Fell in the cloud-shrouded dark, soaking the earth, forming pools on the surface of the road, flooding the ditches and the gutters. I remember thinking it should have been snow.

As Mercy drove, slowly and badly, and sometimes sang a few bars of something I’d never heard, I found my thoughts drifting ever so often back to that imaginary dance with the only woman I’d ever loved. For several moments I let myself fixate on her deep brown eyes, the way her hair framed her face, the feel of her against me. And then I tried to remind myself how ridiculous the whole thing was. How can you possibly love someone you’ve never met? How can you love someone you will never hope to meet? You can’t do it—it isn’t possible. It couldn’t have been love. This couldn't be real grief. It must have been some fucked up displacement of my grief for my mother. Yes, Dr. Freud would have approved of this interpretation. It had just been some bizarre fantasy I’d twisted Alice’s vision into, and it had to be over now. Whoever she was, had been, she was dead now. I had to bury the fantasy with her. But how?

As we got closer to Gray, I considered my next move. I’d see Alice and try to sort out what was going on with her, what she’d seen, and what I’d have to do to make that future disappear. But as soon as she was back to herself again, as soon as possible, I’d put Reckoner back in the water and leave. I’d sail south and just spend a year or so at sea. However long it took to get my head back together, if that was even possible. I just wanted to get far, far away from where I could do any more damage to anyone I loved.

We turned down the long driveway of the Cullen House and I balked a little as I considered what an asshole I’d been to Carlisle. I didn’t look forward to facing him again after what I’d done. But at least I could give him a proper apology. He deserved a lot more than that.

As the house came into view, we saw Alice standing in the middle of the lane, in the downpour without her penguin slicker or her boots this time. Her feet were bare. She wore a pair of Jasper’s running pants that hung off of her and an old black fleece with rug lint all over it. I almost didn’t believe it was her. A light flickered and went out in the kitchen and then Jasper came to the window and then backed away.

“Oh dear,” Mercy said, pulling the car to a stop. 

“Wait here,” I said. I got out of the car and approached Alice cautiously.

Her thoughts were garbled and fragmented, conflicted, confused feelings of agony and relief but no words I could decipher. I couldn’t tell the last time she’d bathed, but it wasn’t recent.

“This is all my fault,” she said out of nowhere, wringing her hands. Her eyes were weary, like she’d actually seen the horror of my assorted futures with them instead of in her mind.

“No, Alice,” I said. “It’s not your fault at all. It’s my fault.”

You’re going to get yourself killed and it will be my fault. My fault that I ever showed you that woman…

“This is exactly why I asked you to stop watching my future.”

I’d stop watching if you’d stop trying to get yourself killed.

“I’m not trying to get myself killed,” I said. “I just wanted—”

“Vengeance,” she said, her eyes flashing in the dark. 

“Justice.”

We stood there facing each other. Her hair was soaked and sticking to the side of her face. She buried her head in her hands and when she did that, I couldn’t help myself. I put my arms around her and pressed her tightly to me.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was wrong. I shouldn’t have left.”

You never even said goodbye. It’s like you don’t care what happens to the rest of us anymore. All you care about is her, and that’s my fault. 

“Alice,” I said, feeling defensive, but then I caught myself. Really, after how I’d behaved, what else could she think? 

“Just tell me,” I said. “What can I do to make it better?”

“Stay,” she said.

I didn’t answer, because I didn’t want to say no. But I really didn’t want to say yes, either.

Alice looked up at me, doubtful. The expectation of disappointment I read across her face told me she didn’t—couldn’t count on me anymore. And I didn’t want to be that guy, the one who was so self-absorbed with his own bullshit that the people in the world he loved the most couldn’t count on him. Couldn’t trust him. However much I’d fucked up in my life, especially recently, that just wasn’t who I was—who I ever wanted to become.

“Will Carlisle even take me back?” I asked.

He already has.

Over her shoulder I could see Carlisle, Jasper and Esme emerging from the house, cautiously observing us. Emmett came out next, a little befuddled, but there was a sense of relief too. Rosalie peered at us through a window upstairs. Mercy got out of the car and joined them on the porch, where Esme hugged her and thanked her for finding me, and I was immobilized there in the lane, facing a most uncharacteristically bedraggled Alice and her pessimistic eyes, feeling like the world’s biggest asshole. And like the asshole’s own asshole because still, all I could think about was leaving. All I wanted was to be alone until I could figure out some way to move forward in my existence without resenting every moment I had ahead of me. But that wasn’t what I would do. I knew it not from my own thoughts, but from the small, grateful smile Alice gave me then, and the sigh of relief when she put her head back on my shoulder and hugged me.

I stood there quiet for a couple of minutes, my eyes shifting away from hers, over to the porch where my family looked worried and haggard.

“How do I get over this, Alice?” I asked. “Tell me I get over it.”

“I don’t know, Edward,” she said. “I can’t see it. But maybe that’s because you haven’t tried.”

~~~

So I tried.

I apologized to Carlisle and asked if I could come back. Of course, he welcomed me back as a Cullen without any caveat, any reprimand, any warning. None was needed, I knew the expectations well enough. My apology was accepted with hardly a comment, just an “I know you’re sorry, Edward. I’m just glad you’re home.”

I did swear to stop plotting Allston Kaine’s death, and immediately Alice’s appearance changed, not quite back to the old Alice but much improved from the depressed and half-deranged one. I swore off decree killing forever, again, and felt immediately better. Carlisle was right about that. He always had been. 

I also agreed to return to Forks with them at the first sign of trouble. Rosalie was pissed at the prospect of moving back to “the most depressing place on earth,” as far as she was concerned, but then Rosalie was pissed off most of the time anyway. 

“She’ll deal with it,” Carlisle said. “And hopefully things won’t get that far.”

The very next night, Carlisle, Jasper, Emmett and I met with Allston and his muscle in Portland at Jim’s Bar and Grill. We picked a public place for obvious reasons—nobody was likely to get their legs ripped off in a bar. We hammered out a new truce with the Kaines—one where they wouldn’t out me to my enemies in Boston and I wouldn’t go around killing their suppliers. I had a very, very hard time with this, I will admit. But I agreed to it. For Alice. For all of my family. It went more smoothly than I expected, but just as we were leaving, Allston gave one last taunt.

You can thank Mercy for this new arrangement, he thought. She paid me a special visit last night and that girl has always had a way of being persuasive.

Then he shared a vision of Mercy in his bed, as though this would rankle me with jealousy, as though Mercy hadn’t taken to the bed of more random lovers than I could ever count or name in the time I’d known her. Had the image been real it would have bothered me anyway, just because he was such an asshole. But the fact that he didn’t realize I’d know immediately that he was lying nearly made me laugh. Instead I tried to appear duly perturbed, and I must have been convincing because he smirked and then turned to Carlisle and said, “You really must bring the family over sometime soon. We’ll get Mercy to perform and make a night of it.”

“That’s very kind of you,” Carlisle said. And that's all he said.

We never did get that invitation to the Kaines, though that was fine since the following week I went into the studio with Mercy and we recorded those songs we'd worked on before I left. I have to say, that helped my mood a lot. At least it gave me something to do all day. Nothing had really changed between Mercy and me, other than I found myself completely uninterested in sleeping with her, or anyone, actually. That certainly didn’t put her out or slow her down any. She brought plenty of guests home, but instead of watching or joining like I once might have, I just went out for long walks, went to midnight showings of classic films. I spent hours in Carlisle’s library reading medical texts for the hell of it. I did anything I could do to not think about vengeance. To not think about that fantasy or that beautiful woman I'd never know.

Over the following weeks, Carlisle relaxed and Esme encouraged my newfound tranquility. Spring came and I hunted religiously every week with Emmett and Jasper, just to keep myself focused. Best of all, Alice was back to her old pixieish self, and that made the effort feel well worth it. It seemed as though maybe I was really on my way--maybe I would find a way to get over things. It certainly looked that way on the outside, and Alice was relaxed enough that I could almost believe it. But inside of me something was still wrong.

And that was my thirst.

~~~

Until next week...

Reckoner, Part--what part are we on again? iV ii, I think. [Twilight Fan Fiction]

So, how's it going?


I've been back at work one week and I no longer have the plague but I do feel like I've been back at work for a month, if that's any indicator of how danged busy I've been. I know you know what I'm talking about.


This is the rest of the chapter I didn't post last week. I was hoping to have some, you know, time at work to get a bunch more of this so I could hand you a nice meaty chunk, but damn if work didn't make me work this week. What is that bullshit? Do they not realize I'm a public servant?


In any case, I'd sincerely like to thank those of you who have been reading Reckoner and leaving the very supportive comments (I'm looking at you, Lindsay Rae). I really do appreciate the feedback very much, even if I didn't have a chance to comment back this week (ref. above paragraph about being so busy working and oh, also tweeting a lot of pictures of a certain Welsh actor I'm into, but that's another blog post for another day).


Thanks again especially to the wonderful donors of Fandom Gives Back for their generosity in supporting Alex's Lemonade Stand. Without them, I wouldn't be posting this so if you're enjoying it, thank an FGB donor.


It's getting to be a little cumbersome to point you to the individual links if you haven't started reading this yet, so click here and start at the bottom if you'd like to read.


Much love and until next week,
Myg

~~~

Reckoner, Part IV ii

The Fort Kent Police Department was a small box of a building right near the bridge to Canada. When I brought Jimmy in, the Chief of Police wasn’t happy. Chief Barton bowled with Jimmy’s father, had known little Jimmy Colter since his DARE days in middle school and he worked with him often enough since he’d become an EMT. He’d taught him CPR, for Christ’s sake. So when he saw he was attached to me, he immediately gestured with his head toward a wooden stake with a carving of a bear on it, hanging unceremoniously behind the intake desk. I nearly laughed in his face, but his point was taken. It wasn’t unusual for cops to be aware of our existence, even if they never spoke about our kind. He assumed I was up to something and I couldn’t blame him for that.

He didn’t ask me any questions, he just asked Jimmy what the hell was up and Jimmy, I had to give him credit, spilled everything. The unregistered handgun in his pick up truck, his plan to kill Jolene, he even confessed to a quarter ounce he had stashed in his bedroom. Chief Barton wasn’t expecting that, and he took Jimmy in the back where I suppose he thought I couldn’t hear and asked him up and down if he was okay, if I’d put him up to anything and Jimmy swore he was telling the truth, and why was he asking? What did he know about me? But Chief Barton didn’t say what he was thinking, which was that maybe I was plotting some kind of small town terror. 

When Chief Barton came back out front and saw I hadn’t left, I asked what he was going to do with Jimmy. He basically told me to fuck off, but I wasn’t leaving until they got the guy some help. So I waited until he reached the intake unit at the forensic psychiatric place in Augusta and made arrangements to have him admitted later that evening. With that, he asked me, and not nicely, to leave Fort Kent and not come back. I hadn’t gotten all that attached to the place in the 18 or so hours I’d been there and in fact, was planning to head to Montreal anyway. But I didn’t answer the man, I just turned for the front door and said, “You’re welcome, by the way.”

“You’re not normal,” Jimmy called from the doorway of the back office as I was about to leave. 

“You’re just figuring that out, Jimmy? After all we’ve been through?” I turned and faced him one more time, wondering if sparing him was really worth the uncomfortable thirst burning at the back of my throat. 

“Thank you,” Jimmy said, wiping the grime and the left over tears from beneath his eyes with an overused tissue. “Whatever you are. What did you call yourself? Reckoner or something?”

“Reckoner?” Chief Barton raised his eyebrows, reappraising me, the recognition of my reputation now lodged in his mind. He still didn’t know what to make of me and he was right  to be unsure, because I was so thirsty I felt like I might kill the next man who so much as eyed a girl for too long. But before he could decide whether I was all right or not, I was gone.

~~~

Disgusted and alarmingly unsure of my killer instincts now, I took to the woods and in very little time sniffed out the trail of a bull moose, exactly what I wasn’t in the mood for. I found it sleeping, of course, in a grove of elm trees. It was just a few years old and big as hell and I had no taste for it at all. But I did kill it and sucked the volume of its blood down until it nearly caved in on itself, all hot and steamy against my cold throat. The drink was completely unsatisfying on every level but the one deep in my brain that said survive, in spite of myself. Survive. 

It was after midnight when I got back to the hotel in Caribou, and Mercy was standing outside smoking a cigarette, waiting for me. I was not glad to see her. At all.

“We need to talk,” she said.

“You need to not be here,” I said.

It must have been some kind of whim, some sort of gut reaction that caused Mercy to hit me, because I didn’t hear her think about it and didn’t see it coming at all. She landed a hard punch square on the jaw, her fist cracking, my face aching with the impact. It sounded like a clap of thunder and sent me several steps back, reeling with the surprise of it, nearly toppling over. That really pissed me off. Before I could collect myself and give her the rash of shit she had coming, she hurled herself into me, knocking both of us into the side of a Dodge Caravan in the parking lot and putting a cow-sized dent in the door.

“What the hell are you doing?” I said, grabbing her around the waist and pulling her arms across her body in restraint.

“You have no idea, do you?” she yelled, nearly wrenching herself out of my grasp, but I held onto her even as she struggled against me. “You’ve no idea what you’ve put us all through. Did you ever stop to think through the consequences of your actions?”

She stopped struggling but I kept my hold on her anyway, ignoring the shadow of the tired old woman who slipped out of the hotel to see what had caused the clamor. She saw us leaning against the dented minivan and just went back inside. 

Mercy stayed quiet and still as I gripped her to me, rummaging through the tragic, desperate image she shared of Alice cowering in a corner of the basement at the Cullen house in Gray, her eyes wide open and vacant, her arms over her head, unresponsive even to Jasper as he begged her to come back to him. This was a far greater shock than the blow of Mercy’s fist. 

“Tell me who did this to her,” I said quietly, practically whispering in her ear. “I will kill whoever it is. Just give me a name.” 

“Edward Anthony Masen Cullen,” she said.

~~~

The drive back to Gray was much longer in Mercy’s old Crown Victoria sticking to roads and speed limits than it would have been had we just run back, but she wanted to talk at me for several hours before we arrived. She wouldn’t let me drive, either, which made me crazy but then she was in a mood to punish me and there was little I could do but endure her diatribe and her abysmal driving. I couldn’t say I didn’t deserve worse.

Our conversation was silent and it was just as well. Mercy was in no mood for listening to anything I had to say, and I had nothing to say, really. All she did was rail at me in her mind for renouncing the Cullens and fantasizing about Allston Kaine’s murder for three straight weeks. She didn’t care that I wanted Allston dead, though. The real problem with my plot for vengeance had been Alice. I’d been too much of an asshole to realize that she’d be worried and so projecting my future the entire time I was away, trying to figure out how to prevent me from getting myself killed by the Kaines.  Apparently everything she’d seen—every end of mine—had caused her so much anxiety she just fell apart. Mercy couldn’t even be sure what Alice had seen because after a week of constant bombardment with the various ways she’d seen me die in all the assorted futures she saw, she stopped talking. Carlisle, Jasper, even Esme had all tried to reach me by phone, but I’d gotten rid of my phone on the way to Caribou so I wouldn’t be tempted to answer it. I thought I was doing them a favor by cutting them out of my life. What an ass I’d been. 

I didn’t really know if going back would fix anything at this point. But I knew I was the only one who could figure out what was happening in Alice’s head. That would be a start, anyway.

“You’re going to have to let go of this plot to kill Allston, Edward,” Mercy said.

“I know that,” I said. “But he knows who I am—what I am. He’s going to hold it over me for as long as we’re in Portland.”

“Why don’t you let me talk to him?” she said.

“You’re not to go near him.”

“Edward, you are not my father and you do not tell me who I can and can’t go near. I’ve known Allston for more than 100 years. I’ll talk to him.”

“You can’t trust him,” I said. “We’ll have to think of something else.”

“Does he know you want to kill him?” Mercy said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Probably not.”

“Then you’re making more out of it than you need to,” she said. “You don’t know, do you, that he killed your destiny girl?”

“Do not call her that,” I said. “And I told you I don’t want to discuss it.”

“You can make peace with the Kaines, and you can still consider her death avenged,” she said. “Whatever happened, you killed the man directly responsible for her death. That supply man in Boston found her and led her to her slaughter. You killed him, so her death is avenged, technically speaking.”

“Mercy,” I snapped. “Stop it or I’m getting out of the car.”

She caught herself then and finally recovered her manners. “Of course,” she said. “I’m so sorry, Edward. What was I thinking?”

She wasn’t really thinking, though. Her mouth was just moving. If she wanted me to let go of my thirst for vengeance then talking about the murder of the love of my life wasn’t going to help matters. But if my ruminating on Allston’s murder had anything to do with Alice’s catatonia, then I had to stop. My love’s life was over. She was gone. Alice was here. I could protect her and I would, even though protecting her meant getting a handle on my own dark thoughts and I really had very little idea how I was going to manage that. But I’d have to find a way.

I stretched back in the front seat and noticed the torn leather on the head rest, the worn mats on the floor and frowned. 

“When are you going to let me buy you a proper car?” I said, changing the subject. “This one handles like a sinking ship.”

“Never,” she said. “I hate cars. I’d rather have a horse.”

Then she stopped thinking at me and she stopped talking at me and started singing a low, soft folk song from her childhood. The sound was sweet and kind, frustratingly soothing as the words flowed into the ragged core of my regret. 

~~~

Stay cool, Twitards. And thanks for reading.