Renesme's Dream

Chapter 30: How to Control A Vampire 101

Chapter 30: How to Control A Vampire 101

Carlisle and Esme were standing apart from the others, Esme had Ben in her arms and was talking to him with Carlisle. I walked over to them. “Esme, may I speak with you and Carlisle for a moment please?”

Renesme, still in my arms, smiled brightly at Max, who returned a small, shy smile.

We left Renesme and Max with Rosalie and Jacob, and headed back into the kitchen with Edward.

“What is it?”

“Bella and I have talked about it, and we’ve come to the decision that we would like to adopt Max as our son. He has no home, no parents, and no one to care for him and teach him.”

“I’ve been talking with him and I’m convinced that he’s not to blame for his actions. It was as if Ben had some kind of mind control over him, he has no desire to harm any of us. In fact,” Carlisle paused, an amused smile budding at the corner of his mouth. “He even expressed his wish to join us, but he felt sure we would not allow him into our family based on what he almost did.”

I frowned. “Normally I’d agree with him and refuse, but with Max….I’m not sure why, but he’s different.”

“I know what you mean,” Edward smiled fondly. “And I do understand that he is genuinely sorry and means us no harm. I was reading his mind as he held the gun on us. He was having an inward battle of consciousness, and the desire to join our family is what turned him around.”

“Are there any kind of papers required for this sort of thing?” I asked.

“Normally yes, with humans there is a great amount of paper work required for adoption. But with vampires,” he smiled. “There isn’t any. There is a physical examination required on both the adopters and the adoptee, and for obvious reasons, we would never pass their tests.” He laughed. “We get our adoption papers from Jay Jenks, that’s how we ‘adopted’ all of you.” He smiled fondly at Edward and I.

“It’s been 50 years, do you think Jay is even still alive?” Edward asked.

“I doubt it, he was so stressed the last time I met him that his veins were almost popping out of his head and neck.” They all cringed. “Oh! Right! Sorry…”  I still had phenomenal control of my thirst, as well as considerable will power over my attention to it. The rest of my family, however, was unfortunately not so able to control their thirst. 

“I guess we’ll go find out if he’s still around tomorrow then; they won’t be bringing people back for at least a day.” I said to Edward.

“Shouldn’t we bring Jasper? I mean he usually-“

“No!” I cut him off. They all stared at me, shocked. “Er, I mean, it’s fine, he needs to  travel with Alice. We can handle it.”

We all jumped when we heard the screaming from the basement.

It wasn’t Ben.

We all rushed to the stairs and down into the basement. Emmett was laying on the ground, convulsing. Edward ran over to Ben, who was laughing sinisterly, and grabbed him by his collar, hoisting both Ben and the chair he was chained to high into the air.

“What have you done to him?!” He screamed. I could hear both the anger and the raw fear in his voice. There wasn’t much that could disable a vampire like that….

Ben only continued laughing, this time with a slightly higher pitch, making him sound even more insane.

Edward tossed him in the air slightly, just enough for him to turn Ben around mid air and catch hold of him by the back of his chair. He then threw Ben across the room, smashing him into the concrete wall. The concrete crumbled into pieces where Ben’s face collided with the wall.