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Immortal: Chapter 14

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Chapter 14
I woke up the next morning to sun streaming through my window, blinding me as I tried to sit up. It was just a dream. Just a dream. Oh, thank God that it was just a dream. I wasn’t really crazy. I hadn’t really gone absolutely mad and dug up my husband’s grave.

I rolled over, my hair crinkling beneath my cheek. Sure, I couldn’t remember the last time I showered, but my hair could not have gotten that dirty that quickly. I sat up to find myself covered in dried mud. My sheets were hard and stiff with it and my scalp itched with the feeling. My hands were crusted with blood and my fingernails were broken and jagged. I had a pounding headache and the world spun around me. Clutched in one of my hands was a soggy, dirty piece of paper.

My hands shaking, I unfolded the piece of paper. The words were smeared and hard to read and I could hardly make them out, but once I finally deciphered them, I was disappointed. I expected Edward to have written more. But there were just three words.

This is real.

That was just freaking great. This. Is. Real. Wow. That was exactly what I needed the note from my supposed deceased husband to say. No “I miss you” or “I love you” or even “don’t fret, my dear, because I am alive.” No, all I got was a confirmation that this whole thing was real which really didn’t mean anything if I was really as schizo as I thought I was. For all I knew, I was imagining the little piece of paper in my hands. What I didn’t imagine, though, was digging up my husband’s grave. What I had found in that grave, on the other hand – well, I wasn’t quite sure if I imagine the blue, decomposing yet still-alive body of Edward’s.

A straight jacket and a padded room was exactly what I needed at the moment. It would give me a chance to have silence and be alone and think, which I seriously needed to do since I had no idea what the hell was going on in my life. Was I crazy or was this real? I had no clue.

Or maybe a hot shower would work for now.

Once the steam of the shower had rinsed away all the grime of graveyard dirt and cleared my befuddled mind a bit, I wrapped myself in a towel and wiped cloudy film off the mirror. I stared at myself, barely recognizing the girl staring back at me. In the few weeks since Edward had died, I had really let myself go. I wasn’t eating well, most of the time forgetting to eat at all. The lack of nutrition had turned my translucently pale skin a sickly color of grey, blue veins pulsing under the surface. I spent most of my time in bed lately but I wasn’t sleeping well. My bloodshot eyes were surrounded with dark circles and my hair had an unhealthy, dull sheen to it. I had lost weight which wasn’t good since I was already skinny and I now resembled a skeleton whose skin hadn’t started to waste away. I look like the dead one.

“Bella, mail for you!” Alice screamed from downstairs. It was the longest sentence she had said to me in a week and a half.

I pulled on clothes and hurried downstairs. Alice threw a white envelope at me without looking my way and stalked off. I made a face at her behind her back. When was she going to get over this?

The envelope looked very business-like and the return address was from the college in Seattle. This was weird. I never even applied there. I ripped open the letter and instead of finding a business-print, typed-out letter, I found a short, handwritten note. I seemed to be getting a lot of those lately.

You’re husband’s not really dead. Don’t let them make you think he is. Please come talk to me as soon as you get this. More people will die if you don’t. Please, Mrs. Cullen.

There was no name, just a room number at the bottom of the page. I assumed this person, whoever he or she was, wanted me to go to the college ASAP. Or else people would die. When was my life going to stop taking the path of a horror movie? This was worse than being kidnapped than jigsaw and put through his cruel, mind-game tests.

And then I decided, what did I have to lose.

That’s how I found myself walking into a college a few hours later, searching for room 234. I found the classroom and walked into what seemed like the end of a very long lecture. College students not much older than me were nodding off in their seats and only one very bookish-looking girl was taking notes. Everyone else was dozing though I couldn’t imagine how. The older professor who was teaching was extremely hansom for how old he was and he had a voice like honey. His hair was graying though it looked almost dashing on him and he smiled a dazzling smile at me as he saw me slide into an empty seat at the back.

“The fountain of youth is something that has enthralled people since the Spanish came over to the new world, but people have been searching for immortality much longer than that,” he continued without any more notification that he had an extra person in the room, an extra person whose husband he somehow knew was alive. “The Romans and Greeks created Gods who lived forever and were therefore revered. Others made religions where they were the ones that got to live forever if they followed a simple set of rules in life. Immortality is the one promise that have made people do anything to get there. Now, your assignment for the weekend is to write an essay about what you give to live forever. How far would you go to never die? Or would you even want to have immortality? Class dismissed.”

There was a bunch of noise and laughing and talking as the students hurried out of the room. Within a minute, they were gone, the only sign that the room had recently been occupied by a bunch of students were the multiple papers left on the tables.

“You must be Bella,” the professor said, coming up to me and shaking my hand. His hand was warm against mine and his skin almost more pale than my own. “That was probably my most interesting lesson of the year and yet they still hurried to get out of here.”

“Hello, Professor…” I started, quickly realizing I didn’t know his name.

“Sterling, my dear.”

“Professor Sterling. How – how do you know my husband’s alive?”

“You’re not one to beat around the bush, are you? You heard the end of my lecture now, right? Tell me, Isabella, what would you do for immortality?”

I was puzzled by the question he was asking. What did this have to do with Edward? Still, I answered, “Immortality? That sounds more like a sentence than a privilege. I don’t want to live forever.”

“What if you had no choice?”

“The only thing that anyone ever has to do is die. There’s no such thing as immortality.”

“What about an afterlife?”

“I’m not so sure. I wish I could say there is one but I can’t.”

“Mrs. Cullen, I know your husband is alive for a fact. Don’t let anyone fool you into thinking that he’s dead. That’s what they want. I’m not supposed to be telling you any of this but I felt obligated to. That’s the only way to – well, it’s the only way.”

“Only way to what?”

“Jesus Christ once said let the dead bury the dead. Scholars have pondered –”

I groaned. I didn’t need a sermon at the moment. “Please, professor, don’t become a religious fanatic on me. Even if Christianity was real and my husband is in heaven or whatever afterlife there is, I don’t count that as alive. I mean, alive on this earth, not anywhere else. If heavens what you’ve been talking about this whole time, you’re wasting my time.”

“No, it’s not what I’ve been talking about. Please just hear me out for a minute. Jesus was this controversial figure of his time. Whether or not I believe in Christianity, I do believe in Jesus and what he brought to this world. He went against things that were preached at the time and he wasn’t scared to hurt people’s feelings as long as he was saying what needed to be said. He told a man whose father just died to let the dead bury the dead. This isn’t something anyone would tell someone who is suffering a lost lightly. These words have been thought about and thought about and most seem to think that he means the first dead in terms of figuratively – those who are spiritually dead should be the ones to bury the dead on earth. That’s not the task of those who are spiritually alive. However, there’s another way to look at this. What if he meant it literally? What if there are dead walking among us, looking as though they are alive? They’re the ones that get to bury those who have died. Do you get what I’m saying?”

“No. You’ve lost me.”

“Vampires, Mrs. Cullen. Bloodsucking, undead parasites that roam among us. What if they’re real?”

Vampires? He had to be kidding me. Was he seriously saying that Edward was now a vampire? That he had been abducted by some occult society and turned into a member of the undead? I hurriedly stood up, knocking the chair I had been sitting in over. This guy was absolutely, freaking nuts.

“That’s quite enough for me, professor.  I think I’ll – I’m leaving now. Please don’t try to contact me ever again.”

“Bella, you’ve got to listen to me.” Professor Sterling grabbed my arm in an inhuman grip. “This is more important than anything else has ever been in your life. Vampires are real – and you’ve been marked by them. You’ve been marked to be one of them since birth. They’re recruiting, building up an army. Most people join them willingly, desperate for immortality. They literally sell their souls. That’s why they’re dead, both literally and figuratively. They’re soulless, only half alive. And they want you to be one of them.”

“This is ridiculous. How would you know, even if this is true? How would you know this?”

His eyes flashed red and he stared down at me with an intense gaze. Shocked, I backed away from him slowly. And that’s when I started to believe him.

“I made the mistake myself. I was old and frail and dying. I chose immortality over my own soul.”

“What does this have to do with Edward? If they want me, why would they take him?”

“They’ve been watching you your whole life. They saw that you wouldn’t join them on your own, not without a push.  Your mother sold you to them at birth because she didn’t want the fate herself and she made them a deal. You remained human until you were eighteen, the age she was when they came for her. They didn’t mind the deal. They couldn’t use you until you were older regardless. But then they started to realize that you wouldn’t want to be one of them, especially if it meant you’d have to leave your precious Edward. So they took him, the one way they were sure would make you want to join. As long as you could be with him, it wouldn’t matter what you were. They were right, weren’t they?”

“Is – is there any way to stop them? To get Edward back without becoming…that? Any way at all?”

“You’re mother found the only way – selling the soul of another, of someone who was once a part of you. But your mother was a selfish bitch for that, pardon my french. Besides, you can’t do that anymore since your husband is now part of the immortally dead. As long as you’re not pregnant already.” Worry flooded his face. “You’re not pregnant, right?”

My hand flew down to my stomach that wasn’t quite as flat as it used to be. What if I was? Would I do the same as my mother had and sell my child to them? Would I be that desperate to escape this fate that I had been plagued with.

“I have to go,” I said in a hurry, scrambling to pull on my coat. “Really this time. Thanks so much for the help.”

Tears were flooding my eyes as I raced out of the room. The last thing I heard the professor say was, “They’re coming for you, Bella. Sooner than you think. And you’re child too. Neither of you will ever be safe again.”

I was in my car and flying down the highway. I needed to get home to that pregnancy test. I had to know what exactly was going on. Everything I had just learned was whirling through my head. My mother had sold my soul so that she could keep her own. They had taken Edward so that I would join them without a fight. And now this hypothetical child that I was carrying around was in danger.

At least I now had proof that I wasn’t going crazy. I was just dealing with vampires, which I guessed most people would consider the same thing.
Here's the next chapter that you guys have been bugging me about. haha. Hope you like it. Let me know what you think!!!!

Stephenie Meyer owns these characters.

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