100 Years Without Love 21

Okay, fine, maybe I did scream…but only a little. I flew at the blond haired angel standing in front of me, throwing my arms around his neck. He hugged me back in a fatherly way. People were stopping to stare at us but I didn’t care.

“Carlisle!” I said when I released him from my hug. “Oh my god. You’re alive!”

“Bella, you remember me?” he asked.

“Of course I do,” I said. “How could I forget my father-in-law?”

“We were just in Volterra talking to Aro,” Carlisle said. “He said they had brainwashed you – you remembered nothing.”

“Well, they think I don’t remember anything,” I said. “It’s been pretty hard to act ignorant about anything but I have them all fooled.”

“And Edward said you couldn’t act,” Carlisle laughed, and I laughed with him even though his words tore at the edges of my hole. But, wait. If Carlisle was alive did that mean that Edward was too…?

“Carlisle,” I said. “What about everyone else?”

“I think it would be best if I showed you,” he said. He picked up my suitcase, being the sixteenth century gentleman that he was and led me off down one of the dank alleys of the little French town.

After a few minutes of walking I tried again. “The other’s are okay…aren’t they?”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t even look at me. He focused straight ahead although I knew he could find wherever he was leading me blindfolded even if he had never been there before. I tried to look into his thoughts but he was blocking them by mentally looking at a medical journal

“Carlisle, why aren’t you answering?” I demanded.

“Bella, dear,” Carlisle sighed. “We are okay, in one sense, but in the other, we aren’t.”

This puzzled me. So many questions flew through my head that I felt like I was going to explode but Carlisle didn’t seem like he was willing to answer anything at the moment so I followed him in silence. Rats scurried around our feet and the puddles I stepped in were nasty. I’m not usually prissy but I didn’t even want to know what was in them.

Carlisle came to a stop at a dead end. In front of us was a rotted, wooden door. He opened it and ushered me in. I found myself in a small room with the same cobblestone floor as the road outside. The roof looked liked it had been patched up many times and it was dark and clammy. If I hadn’t been a vampire, I would’ve been seriously uncomfortable and scared.

Then, I looked at the people in the room. Esme was standing in the corner staring off into space. Alice had a comforting arm around Emmett’s shoulder and Jasper was standing off to the side, not even trying to make everyone around him happier with gift. Then, sitting in the one chair in the room shirtless and looking depressed, with his head in his hands, was my angel. My wonderful other half. Edward

He looked up when Carlisle and I entered. Once he recognized me a smile overtook his frown. I ran to him and was in his lap with my arms around his neck in a death grip before he could even stand up. He clutched me to him, sobbing tearlessly into my hair.

“Oh, Bella, oh my Bella,” he said over and over again. “I thought I had lost you again. I thought you had forgotten all about us – about me.”

“You told me to never forget,” I whispered into his ear. “How could I not listen to you? But I thought you were…dead.”

My voice broke and he kissed me hard, as though making sure I was real. I kissed him back, feeling especially guilty about how I had kissed Andrew the night before. I had thought I was a widow then. I had thought my husband was dead. But here he was, in my arms at last.

“I’m so sorry I couldn’t let you know I was alive sooner,” Edward said, obviously trying to convince to forgive him for something I wasn’t even mad about. Or maybe he was trying to forgive himself. “We tried…everything. Volterra was impenetrable.”

“Edward, don’t be sorry,” I said.

I loosened my grasp around his neck a little bit so that I could look at him. He had horrible marks – scars – crisscrossing all over his chest. It looked like he had been bitten thousands of times. I huge chunk of skin was missing from his stomach and he had a huge bruise blossoming on his cheek.

I touched the black and blue bruise lightly with my fingers. It stood out horribly against his pale skin. “I thought you said vampires couldn’t bruise.”

His eyes clouded over and I wondered just how much torture he had been through. All of them. Now that I looked at his family I realized that they had the same scars all over their necks and a few bruised. I take that back – I didn’t want to know how much they had really been through because then I’d never be able to forgive myself.

“It takes a lot to bruise a vampire,” he said solemnly, trying to remain stoic but I could see the pain flooding his eyes. “A lot more than just falling on your head.”

“What did they do to you?” I asked, not really wanting to know the answer. None of the Cullens were the same. Alice hadn’t bounced up and down when she had seen me and Emmett hadn’t even attempted to sweep me into one of his bear hugs. Esme had barely noticed me. And Rosalie hadn’t scowled-

Wait! That was what was missing. Rosalie. She wasn’t anywhere to be seen. She was MIA. “Where’s Rose?” I asked, barely hearing myself. “What happened to her?”

That was when Emmett looked up at me. Rage burned like fire in his eyes that had become black from thirst. It looked almost as though he blamed me for whatever had happened to Rosalie.

Then, all of the sudden, Alice’s arm tightened around Emmett. She had just seen him attacking me. If you’re wondering how I know this, you really have to remember that I read minds. Emmett pushed Alice onto the ground easily and soared through the arm towards me, pushing me out of Edward’s arms and onto the ground. His jaws snapped at my throat and I was having trouble keeping him from sinking his razor sharp teeth in my skin.

I felt his weight being lifted off of me and he struggled against Edward and Jasper as they tried to restrain him. He continued to snap wildly, a bloodlust glowing in his eyes.

“You and your stupid Volturi is what happened to her!” he yelled, so loud that I’m sure the whole town heard him – not an exaggeration. “They took her. They took my Rose.” He started to sob and sank down to the ground. “I’m never going to see her again and it’s all because of you and your precious friends.”

He broke off and continued to bawl. I moved over to him, carefully putting my own arm around his huge, shaking shoulders.

“Emmett, it wasn’t me, it was the Volturi,” I told him. “And I promise that they are no friends of mine. I thought they had killed you all and I was already starting to take them down. I promise that I will help you get Rose back.”

I stood up and looked around the small room at the heartbroken looks on the faces of my family. If I thought killing them was bad, this was worse. The Volturi had broken some of the strongest people – ahem, vampires – I knew. I know I have said this before, but they were going. Oh, were they going to pay.