Feel the fear, and do it anyway.
- Susan Jeffers
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Aris scoffed. "You're kidding, right?" Osiris shook his head no. "You want me to kill someone? And not only that, but someone that I care deeply for?"
Osiris chuckled. "I wish there could be some other way, but the fact that you care deeply for him is sort of just icing on the cake, in a sick and twisted way. Since you seem to know the Cullen's so well, they'll never see it coming, so the task should be fairly easy."
"And what if I don't do it?" She challenged.
"We've been over this. I'll simply just bring you to the Volturi, and then they'll give you the same choice that they gave me - join them or die." He shrugged. "I'm giving you a way out, Aris, and I'm truly not asking for much."
She groaned, slumping her head in her hands. "Why can't you just do it? I mean, why do you even want him dead in the first place?"
"Ah, that truly is a lovely story." He sighed, putting his hands behind his head. "Edward and I go way back, and from your cluelessness about why I'd want him dead, tells me that he hasn't told you the story, or probably even mentioned me for that matter, I'm assuming?"
Aris shook her head no, causing him to tsk. "Well, to put it in its simplest terms, Edward killed my fiancé about three decades ago when he'd just moved to Oregon." He shrugged. "I only later found out that the reason he'd moved to Oregon in the first place was due to the tragedy that took place the previous year in Forks."
Aris scoffed. "Edward doesn't just kill for no reason, there has to be something that your fiancé did, or was doing, for him to act like that."
Osiris hummed. "Sure, my fiancé wasn't completely innocent, but the reason for Edward murdering him was unjustified." He scoffed. "My fiancé was simply just hunting, seeing as he was compelled to do so because that's what vampires need to do to survive. However, Edward didn't seem to like that." He continued. "We were out and about, walking around in a mostly deserted part of town, when my fiancé got a whiff of someone's blood that he wanted for himself. We tracked down the person, who just so happened to be a teenage girl, probably around your age or so. Luckily for us, the girl was by herself in a back alley, most likely waiting for an Uber or something." He explained. "She wasn't my preference for my fiancé's prey, since she was so young, but once he smelled someone that he knew would satiate his appetite, who was I to stand in his way, even if it was only a teenage girl? Anyways, like usual, I stood back while he did his thing, drinking the young girl's blood, but your dear friend Edward happened to catch us as that was happening." He sighed. "Something must've hit close to home, watching my fiancé drink a teenage girl's blood, and Edward didn't like that. My fiancé was too focused on his kill to notice as Edward came up from behind, ripping him to shreds easily, and I was too weak at the time to stop him." Aris struggled to understand how Osiris had managed to keep his tone so casual, talking about his fiancé's death like this.
"Edward burned my fiancé's body, though let me be. I could tell he wasn't a killer, and as grateful as I was that he hadn't decided to kill me too, I still vowed to get my revenge on him that day." He continued darkly. "I needed to mourn though, so stupidly enough, I decided to run away to Italy, where I was then captured by Jane and Felix who happened to cross my path as they were out looking for iridescent's." He scoffed at his unfortunance. "And now you're caught up. Living in Volterra and working for them, I'd never gotten a chance to plan out my revenge on Edward Cullen, but when you just so happened to be in the same place as him, I couldn't believe my luck." He finished, smiling.
"Why can't you just kill him yourself, why do you need me to do it?" Aris asked, still slumped forward with her head in her hands.
"Because, like I said earlier, he'll never see it coming." He stated. "If he saw me approach him out of the blue one day, then he'd know what was coming, and I'm not quite strong enough for a sneak attack. Edward would easily be able to defend himself against that."
"Okay, well I can easily just tell Edward and his family what's going on, and then they'll kill you first." She threatened, causing him to laugh condescendingly. "Oh Aris, do you not remember me clearly stating that I'm a prized possession of the Volturi? They know I'm here, and if I don't return to them within the next month or so, then they'll know that I was either killed, or I tried to escape. Either way, they'll come here looking for me, and then they'll find you." He chuckled."Besides, I truly do want Edward Cullen dead, so if you think that I'm going to let you out of my sight for even a second until you kill him, well, then you're very wrong."
Aris groaned, wondering for the millionth time how this was really happening. "Don't you think that Edward will get suspicious if you're constantly hanging around me? He's bound to remember you and what he did to your fiancé. He'd know that something's going on." She reminded him.
"You'll find that I can be very," he snapped his fingers, and suddenly, his skin shifted to match the colors each part of him was touching to a T, causing him to blend in perfectly with the bench, aside from his clothes and hair which remained the same, "discreet."
Aris's eyes went wide as she watched his skin shift back to its normal pale, from its previous camouflaging. "How did you do that?" She asked, genuine curiosity behind her tone.
"Oh Aris, you clearly don't realize the potential you have, being iridescent." He smirked. "After you kill Edward Cullen, you're welcome to join me back in Volterra. I'd be more than happy to help you explore your potential."
"If I wanted to join you in Volterra, then I'd just do that, I wouldn't kill Edward first." She snapped, her chest tight at the idea of hurting him.
"That's true." He relented. "And actually, the more that I think about it, the thirst that I have for Edward's death is too great to pass up. You no longer have a choice. You will kill Edward, or I'll make sure that Jane and Felix kill you. I was too generous before by offering you the choice of joining us. Now, you can kill him or die, and I really hope you don't choose that latter, because that truly would be such a waste." He sighed, feigning sadness.
Aris whimpered, tears starting to cascade down her face. Her life, or Edward's. Of course she'd choose her own, it wasn't like she was in love with him. She cared for him, and she loved him as a friend, but she hadn't yet gotten to the point of being in love with him, to the point where she'd choose his life over her own.
That didn't mean it wouldn't hurt though. It would hurt tremendously. It would hurt so much that she couldn't see herself ever moving past it, but she prayed that she would with time.
"So the nightmares that you put in my head weren't premonitions?" She asked after a moment, still stuck on how it all worked.
"No, not necessarily. I merely just placed nightmares into your head that I thought would provoke the most fear, allowing me to narrow down your location faster." He explained. "Another amazing thing about it, is that I was able to watch your dreams as they were happening. That's actually how I figured out so much about you in the first place, and who you cared for. You dreamt of Edward so often before I started causing nightmares, that I knew he must be important to you, so I knew that the best way to provoke fear, would be to cause a nightmare in which you killed him. However, that nightmare no longer seemed to cause you as much panic as time went on, most likely due to a conversation you had with him, or closure you got." He raised his eyebrows insinuatingly, causing her to nod as she reminisced back to when she finally came clean to Edward about her nightmare. "Boy was I surprised to see him in your dreams when I found your mind. That's actually how I found out that he was living near you." He explained. "Anyways, after you seemed to no longer be scared of that dream, I just went with the simple answer of causing fear by inserting Jane and Felix into your dreams, which worked like a charm, let me tell you." He finished with a chuckle.
Aris's tears continued to silently stream down her face as she kept her head in her hands, hardly even able to fathom the thought of what she had to do.
Osiris waited patiently. He understood that she needed some time to process this, but like he had said before, he wasn't a very patient man.
Finally, after several long minutes of Aris coming to terms with it, shutting off the love and emotion in her heart to where all she felt was stone coldness, she managed to meet his eyes.
"I'll do it."