Luminosity (Book One)

Chapter 29: Things Left Behind

The news hit me harder than I would have guessed. Alice. My sister, my friend - dead. Little, happy Alice, dancing wherever she went - dead. Just like Edward.

"How?" I asked.

Jasper started to lope towards me. "Volturi," he said, the lonely timbre receding from his voice as he returned to whatever mania had possessed him before I'd asked about her. "Had one of Nahuel's sisters with them to block her vision, and a witch I've never seen before who works like Jane." He sounded comfortable and casual by the time the sentence was over, in spite of the fact that there was no pleasant way he could have learned that the witch was similar to Jane. Something was definitely wrong with him. Some defense mechanism against dealing with Alice's death, spiraling out of control to make him unstable.

"And Alice?" I whispered, backing away from him. That was two new, powerful witches with the Volturi, Addy and whoever Jasper had seen. Maybe the sister of Nahuel's they'd recruited was the witch one too. Maybe this embarrassment of riches was why they'd been willing to kill my Edward, and Alice, who they'd wanted so badly.

The pain flashed back onto his face, but he controlled it again - or it disappeared of its own accord. "Alec knocked me over, deprived me of all the usual senses, but that doesn't cut the empathy," he murmured. "That works just fine... well, not on you, dear sister... but otherwise just fine... and I felt... Alice... die." Except for the pauses, he could have been discussing any neutral subject, commenting on my scarf or something.

I kept backing up; he kept moving forward. He didn't seem to be paying any attention to what had to be an awful pain in his wrist, where his hand should have been. "Why are your eyes red?" I whispered.

"Because I've been eating people, dear sister." He practically purred.

But that was obvious, that he'd been eating people, didn't he understand why I'd ask...? "But why? Alice -"

"Don't say her name!" he roared, suddenly all violence and fury. "You have no right to say her name. It's your fault. They had no excuse until you stepped out of line, dear sister, they had no way to separate us from the group to make the attack feasible until you forced us to scatter, dear sister, you have no right -"

"Okay!" I cried, and he calmed again, all the rage drained out of him like someone had tipped him over and poured it out.

"To answer your question," he said conversationally, "I was originally able to stop eating people in the first place because, wouldn't you know it, they don't really like to be eaten. They tend to have strong feelings about it... not pleasant ones... Well, when I knew there was something else to be done, I was all too willing to try to leave that behind, although of course it was difficult. Dear. Sister. But now I find meals a pleasant respite."

"You..."

"If I feel their pain, you see," he murmured, creeping forward as I scrambled back, "if I focus on their terror, think about their despair... I don't have to remember hers. Dear, dear sister."

"I'm sorry," I whispered.

"Oh, don't be sorry," he said. "There's really no point. I can't tell, you see. And besides... I'm going to kill you."

I would have died immediately if Jasper had been in his right mind and had both hands. But he was short a weapon, and his onslaught was clumsy and desperate. His attitude and his stance and his strategy shifted chaotically as he lunged and struck, and while it made him unpredictable, it sacrificed all of his follow-through.

It was only April; I had almost two months left of newborn strength. Jasper seemed stronger than Emmett - I remembered that drinking human blood conferred an improvement there - but I was stronger still, and I could commit to my attacks.