Mythology meant a lot more to me now that I had become a part of it. Looking back over these first several months as an immortal, I imagined how crazy it all might look from the old me's perspective—who I was before I'd moved to Forks. I never would have believed any of it could have ever existed. I went from the most skeptical side of the non-believer spectrum to becoming the myth myself. Even now, I felt like it might not be real somehow. Like I was just dreaming with my eyes open. And new things were coming into existence every single day.
Like the impossible, half-immortal child I watched grow with an absolute sense of adoration. It was funny how all of the fairy-tale things out there now wove themselves together into the threads of my life.
The one I was most surprised to be able to have in my life were the werewolves. Six-foot-tall wolves that came in an array of deep, woodsy colors were obviously not something I'd expected either, but given our inherent status as natural enemies, weaving them into the fabric was just as much of an impossibility.
But it happened somehow. The tensions between our families were more at ease now than ever, mostly due to Luca. He was just easy to love.
Actually, Carine and Earnest had attended a tribal meeting led by Bonnie Black and the other elders to discuss the 'cold spawn,' as they'd called it. Much to their surprise, he wasn't actually cold. Carine had demanded amnesty from all trepidation presented by the werewolves. They had agreed that Luca was not an immediate threat to human life because he never left our house, and he was constantly kept satiated with donated blood.
But in reality, the you could see the tension in each member vanish immediately as they all met him. As soon as they observed him for all of ten seconds, all the fear was gone. It was like Luca had this magical gift where he could make anyone like him, no matter what the preconceived notions were. And in the end, there was no denying he was pretty much like a human baby, except exquisitely beautiful... and so intelligent it was kind of terrifying.
The agreement they'd settled upon involved day-to-day checkups on him as if he would somehow morph into a demon at any moment. And I assumed that so long as nothing too strange happened with his progress, they'd let this whole issue slide.
On a side note, they'd demanded our traditional company leave as soon as possible. Carine had tried to make the elders understand that there was a bit of a custody dispute going on, per se, and Ati's family wouldn't be leaving without him anytime soon.
Despite that, having the pack around every day kept me in touch with my old life, since theirs intercepted so much with the human world. Charlie had apparently formed a bond that was a bit more than friendship with Holly Clearwater, Sarah and Lee's mother. Saul Clearwater had died some time ago of a heart attack, and Julie said that Charlie and Holly bonded through their shared grief. He went with her pretty much everywhere these days.
This fact was something I was especially grateful for, that he was able to move on, or at least have some form of distraction.
And it was weird to think of Charlie as a grandpa... especially since he was unaware of that fact. But I suppose he technically was. Adoption counted, didn't it?
Even more weird, was the fact that I was a like a dad to this kid. The word just sounded so wrong when trying to apply it to me. Co-parent? Was that better? A child could have more than one dad, though, and I was one of them.
Don't get me wrong—I was euphoric most of the time. The days weren't long enough for me to get my fill of it all: days spent adoring this fascinating child, and nights that never lasted long enough alone with Edythe.
On the flipside of all that joy, there was a bit of a grey area. Not sorrow or remorse, but more of a bleak doubt and fear.
The faster this miracle progressed, the more worried we became. How long did we have with him?
And the ultimate question... Was he going to just live a super-accelerated life, only to grow old and wither away in just a few short years? How much did the immortal part of his DNA bind to the mechanics of human biology? There was often talk between Edythe and Carine about infinitely pliable telomerase—one of their ongoing theories. I knew it was important to discuss, but I didn't want to dig too deeply into it myself, only to discover something I didn't want to know.
But the progress was terrifying, to say the least.
Luca spoke for the first time when he was just eight days old. The word was my name, which would have made my whole day, except I was so horrified that a week-old baby had just spoken to me, I could barely force myself to smile back at him. And naturally, it didn't help that his first complete sentence came just seconds later.
"Beau...?" he asked in a perfectly clear, high voice.
He'd only bothered to speak to me out loud because I was across the room. I'd already noticed he'd asked Royal using his usual, or rather unusual, form of communication. Royal hadn't answered the question, so Luca had turned to me.
The moment I realized that it was indeed Luca who had spoken, he continued with a question. "Where is my mother?"
There was a hint of doubt in his tone. I'd never thought of this before. What would he remember of Huilén? I knew he had shown everyone images of her when she'd held him in her arms just the one time. But how would he have made the connection? How would he even know there was a difference between a biological mother and the mothers that were raising him?
I stood there with a dumbfounded expression, not knowing what to say to him. Which was worse than telling him a lie, because I watched his face turn down as he realized what our silence meant.
"She's... dead, isn't she?" he asked. The sound of his voice was so bleak it made my silent heart ache.
I looked at Royal, bulging my eyes out pleadingly for him to come up with some sort of answer. But he didn't speak a word. He sat there looking just as sad as I felt.
"Luca..." I said slowly. "Um, your mother will always be with you in a way. She just can't be here right now. You'll understand one day."
My diversion of the whole truth didn't thwart him.
"I killed her." His voice was dead cold with shame and regret.
My mouth dropped open, and I looked frantically at Royal again. All I got was a subtle shake of the head.
It was honestly the saddest thing I think I'd ever witnessed. I let out a sigh as I thought of how to explain that one to him.
"I'm a monster," he said softly. Then he looked down at the floor, and a tear rolled down one of his cheeks.
"No!" both of us assured him in unison.
Royal picked him up from the floor immediately into a comforting embrace.
I ran over to him and took him from Royal's arms.
"You're not a monster, Luca. Don't ever think that," I whispered to him. "Your mother loves you a lot. It's just that she loved you so much that she couldn't stay here with you."
He stuck his hand to my face, looking up at me with glistening eyes.
The question of why was in his thoughts.
"So that you could live. For reasons I can't explain, the two of you couldn't both stay here. This is what she wanted, for you to be here, even if that meant she had to leave us."
It was so bizarre to be explaining life and death to a baby, but he seemed to understand perfectly well what I was telling him.
Images of Huilén's bloodied, twisted body flashed into my head.
"But it's my fault," he said, his voice breaking.
"Nooo..." I consoled him. "You didn't have a choice. There's nothing you could have done differently. No one knows why things are the way they are, buddy. But none of this is your fault. You are your mother's choice. She wouldn't have had it any other way."
It was then I had noticed Edythe standing on the other side of the room, her mouth pressed tight into a line. She looked even sadder than I felt.
Difficult first conversations aside, there were other steps he took too quickly in his life. He walked for the first time just a few weeks later. He had simply stared at Archie for a long moment, watching every move he made as he paced around the house. Then, with no warning at all, Luca got to his feet, and it wasn't like the typical, wobbly-legged baby walk at all. He crossed the floor over to Archie just as effortlessly as when he had spoken for the first time.
Everyone burst into applause because that was clearly the response he wanted. My eyes met Edythe for a moment, and I saw all the same panic that plagued me echoed in hers.
Edythe and Carine continued the research day and night, trying to scrounge up any answers, anything to expect from him. There was next to nothing to be found, and of course, none of it verifiable.
In the meantime, Archie and Royal had Luca becoming the best-dressed kid in America. Every morning was practically a fashion show. He never wore the same thing twice, partly because he grew up a size in a matter of a day, and also because we were trying to throw together a collection of photos that appeared to show a span of years of him growing up, rather than weeks. There were thousands of pictures, documenting every phase of his rapid development.
At two months, Luca could have passed for two years, or maybe even a small three-year-old. It was hard to gauge, though. He wasn't exactly shaped like a baby, but not a toddler either. He was longer and leaner, and graceful, more like an older child. His dark brown hair hung down straight to his shoulders now. No one could bear to cut it.
From the first time he spoke, his grammar and articulation were flawless. There was no toddler-speak phase, per se. He rarely bothered with words, though, because it was much simpler to show what wanted to say. Pictures really were worth more than a thousand words. He spoke mostly to me because he seemed to have a harder time getting into my brain than anyone else, which really didn't come as a surprise. But it did work to some degree, which perplexed Edythe.
That wasn't all, though... not in the slightest. It wasn't long before Luca could walk and run, and even dance. He could jump higher than an Olympic athlete. He could lift things many times heavier than his own weight. He could draw and paint extraordinarily detailed and accurate depictions of the world around him.
He could even read. It took less than a couple days of going over the alphabet and phonetics for him to understand how the whole system worked. It was like a puzzle for him, and he would stay up late at night putting sentences together off the page while we begged him to get some sleep.
All of us were used to taking turns reading him to sleep at night. And one night I was reading Tennyson to him because the flow and rhythm of his poetry seemed restful to me. That's when he reached out and said, "Let me do it."
I gave it to him, smiling.
"There is sweet music here..." he read without hesitation.
I sighed out a laugh because naturally, he'd perfected this skill as well in a matter of days.
"...that softer falls than petals from blown roses on the grass, or night-dews on still waters between walls of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass..."
I took the book back from him. He scowled at me, and I laughed. "Okay, if you read it, how are you supposed to fall asleep?"
He hadn't put up much of a fight with that one, though. He slept regularly, and all the way through the night, which I knew wasn't typical at all. People would beg for a baby like this.
It was hard to keep him occupied with things to do during the day. He was very inquisitive, and he would put all of his efforts into learning everything there was to know about a particular thing before getting burnt out and abandoning it just as quickly.
Edythe started showing him piano from the time he could reach his hands to the keys of the big Steinway. He was always fascinated by her, just as I was, when her hands danced across the ivory.
And he didn't just pick up the technique and play well, which he did. He even composed his own pieces when he discovered that Edythe could make up songs of her own. One day he asked us why people wanted to play stuff other people wrote, and then told us how he was going to make his own music.
We'd laughed at first, because it was so adorable, watching his little forehead furrow as he'd find the right pitches and intervals, fitting them into cadences.
But then when the song that came out of the piano sounded like a tenured composer had written it, we all stared at him in disbelief.
At first hearing it, I'd thought he was playing some classical piece Edythe had shown him.
"Wait, what song is that one?" I whispered to her.
She shrugged. "He made this one up."
I stared at her with a blank expression as she continued accessing his thoughts, an amused smirk on her face. "He refers to it as 'In-Between'."
"In-Between?" I asked. "In between what?"
Luca looked up at me then, as if the answer were blatantly obvious, and the sound continued seamlessly from his hands.
The piece had begun slowly with these soft, simple arpeggios, but now it was picking up the pace, and he threw in low, rattling notes from the piano's lower end at precisely the right moments. It was beautiful, yet unsettling. It sounded so ominous as it picked up in tempo. It could have been the underscore of his accelerated, mysterious life.
"I took inspiration from Beethoven, Debussy, and Liszt, and threw several themes together," Luca explained, not interrupting the song. "I call it 'In-Between' because of the repeated note in the low register. It goes from being on the downbeat to the upbeat when the melody jumps in between the notes, and becomes the dominant part, defining the repeated note as the pedal point. So the name refers to how the melody is in between those repeated notes."
I blinked spastically at his little hands. I didn't even think I understood whatever he just said.
Edythe laughed at my expression. "Makes sense to me..."
"I'm glad it does to someone," I said, squinting my eyes at her.
Everyone laughed, including Luca. He had the most infectious, high-pitched laughter that no one could help but adore.
"It's okay, Beau," Edythe smirked at me. "You'll be as good as Luca one day... well, maybe."
By Carine's calculations, the growth of his body was gradually slowing, but his mind surely raced ahead of his physical development. Even if the rate of decrease held up, he'd still be an adult in less than a decade.
A decade. And an old man by his twenties.
Just twenty years of life.
But he was so healthy. Vital, bright, charming, and so full of life. The constant fear and doubt surrounding his wellbeing made it easier for us to cherish him in the moment and put off worrying about the future for tomorrow.
We discussed the options for that future from every angle. Even the unthinkable, which was to halt the growth at the appropriate age.
My instincts seemed to shout at me that it was too dangerous; vampire venom had brought his mother a swift death when it otherwise should have healed. Who knew what it would do to him...
We'd exhausted all the research we could do from a distance, and now we were planning to follow old legends at their source. We contemplated going to Brazil, or even back to Bora Bora. The Ticunas had legends in South America, which included stories about children like Luca... If other children like him had existed somewhere, perhaps some tale of their fate had been passed down through the folklore.
The only real question left was when we'd go.
We eventually settled on tickets for Brazil when Luca was eight weeks old. He was determined to come with us, but we were a little apprehensive about having him out there in the real world. Who knew how he'd respond to them? Even I had trouble with it. He seemed remarkably even-tempered, and so well behaved. But there was no point in risking it. He would be a liability to the most absolute law—keeping the secret.
Luca was understanding on the whole good vs. bad as it applied to people, but he'd never actually been around them. No matter how much we explained it to him, there would be no guessing what would happen in practice.
He did in fact feed on human blood still, from the donated blood. It filled him and seemed compatible with his system, but he reacted to all varieties of human food with the same rejection most kids would give to cauliflower or Brussels sprouts. We'd started to wean him off the human blood and taken him hunting with us a few times, but until that process was solidified, none of us liked the idea of risking it.
He didn't hold back on the argument though. "I love humans! Just like Julie and Sarah."
"They're not exactly the same as most people, though," Edythe explained to him.
Werewolves had an off-putting scent that detracted from the human aroma that was still there.
Luca frowned as Edythe crouched down to his level. He pushed her hair away from her face to put his hand to her cheek.
"No, I don't care if you bite Royal," Edythe said with a laugh. "You just have to be very careful with people who aren't like us. It's dangerous for everyone else."
As for the animal blood, he had a competitive nature, and so we made it a challenge to try to get him excited to hunt. He and Eleanor would see who could find the biggest deer or elk.
It was entertaining, to say the least, seeing him jump through the grass to take down animals ten times his size.
As I watched from afar, he crouched and sprang fifteen feet into the air. His hands closed around a snowflake, most of which weren't reaching the ground. Then he dropped lightly to his feet.
He turned back to smile at me. And that wasn't something you could just get used to. He was the definitely cutest kid in the whole world, despite my obvious biases. His hands opened to show me the perfectly formed, eight-pointed ice star in his palm before it melted from the heat of his skin.
"Nice one!" I called out.
"I think you're trying to distract me!" Eleanor taunted as she darted back out into the trees.
We all listened to the sound of the small heard of elk moving farther into the woods.
"But I'm not thirsty!" he shouted after her.
"Suuuuure, you're not thirsty, Luke," Eleanor's voice called from the trees. "You're just afraid I'll get the biggest one again!"
His lips pursed together, and his forehead wrinkled. He darted off toward her.
Eleanor was just as much a child as he was sometimes.
The snow flurries fluttered high above us, disappearing before our eyes. Archie had seen that it wouldn't stick for several more weeks.
Edythe wasn't with us this time, because she was planning the trip to Rio with Carine. I frowned. Maybe Luca should come with us. If one of the elders saw him, perhaps they would know something like the woman on the island had.
The other area of concern was the ongoing havoc in Seattle, which seemed to only get worse as time went on.
Back at home, Edythe and Carine were discussing it again. "Maybe we should do something about these newborns..." Carine said. "Either we do something, or the Volturi will get involved. And if Sulpicia gets this far west, she will certainly want to pay me a visit. We can't have them here with Luca and Benji. It's too risky. Perhaps there's a way to lure these young ones out of the city."
"Maybe we won't actually need to," Edythe said. "Has it not occurred to anyone else that the purpose for all these newborns could quite possibly be... us?"
Jessamine narrowed her eyes.
Edythe shrugged. "I think it's safe to consider that we might be the targets."
"They're not coming after us," Archie shook his head. "Or at least... they don't know that they are."
I watched Edythe look expectantly at Archie then like he had been holding back on something.
"They're just flickers, Edythe," he said. "All these strange flashes... nothing to make sense of. It's like someone is constantly changing up the plan, and the courses change so rapidly I can't get a hold on one of them for long."
"Indecision?" Jessamine offered.
"More like knowledge." Edythe rolled her eyes. "Archie, it's obvious that someone knows about you, and they're trying to slip through your loopholes."
"But who would know that?"
"I think you already know the answer. Who did you see out there on the mountainside months ago? Who is the only person out there who probably wants me dead?" Edythe sighed.
"I say we stop piddling around and just go already," Eleanor said as she jumped off the couch. "We can take them."
Everyone paused for a long second, and then Edythe actually nodded.
"We don't know how many of them there are," Carine said. "If they have numbers on their side, we'll need assistance."
And suddenly, Archie's face went blank... devoid of any expression. I knew that look well. What he saw now wasn't the room around him; it was some situation that hadn't happened yet. Then one of his hands gripped the handrail of the staircase like he needed support.
I was the first one to speak. "What, Archie, what? What do you see?" I started walking towards him automatically.
But he didn't look at me. He was looking at Edythe. And her face was just as empty. Then they both turned and disappeared upstairs.
Something they didn't want the rest of us to know... but what might that be?
"Archie!" Carine called up the stairs after them.
Eleanor and I followed after them. We were suddenly standing in the doorway of the room that had been set up as a hospital. We all stared intently at Edythe and Archie. He was sitting on the floor with his head between his hands as we towered over him.
"Explain," I demanded.
Edythe and Archie looked at each other, then back to our faces, confused and wary.
"Beau, I don't know everything," he said in a strained voice.
"Well, what do you know?" Eleanor interrogated.
And then Archie disappeared into the hallway in the blink of an eye. "Leave me alone! I need to think... Keep Luca away!"
Archie still had trouble seeing anything when Luca was near him. It was like he was some sort of radar block.
"It's okay, Beau," Edythe reassured us. "He needs to gather all the information while it's still coming to him. Let him concentrate."
My voice was still impatient. "Victor? The person in my old room? Seattle?"
"Sort of... I can't make any better sense of it than he can. He has a point about the decisions changing right and left."
We went back down to the living room, where the Egyptians waited silently, reading every unconscious play of emotions on our faces. They held completely still. It was something our kind did instinctively in anxious situations.
Archie appeared quite literally out of nowhere then, which was saying something. It was hard to sneak up on vampires. His expression was terrifying.
"The decision has been made."
"We're going to Seattle?" Jessamine asked.
"No." Archie shook his head.
Then I got it. It was so obvious that it was about us. And these newborns weren't going to wait for us to come to them.
"They're coming for us," I said.
"Yes," Edythe answered.
"To our house?" I asked nervously.
"No," Carine answered. "We need to lead them to an area far from town. We don't want a bunch of deranged newborns around any people."
"She's right," Jess added. "There aren't enough of us to protect the town from all of them. We'll need to lure them far away from civilization."
"I know," Archie said, and his face was desolate. "But will there even be enough of us to take them all out?"
And here we all were, facing horror... danger... maybe death. Because of me, essentially.
"Archie..." I said. "We have to get help fast. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if anyone got hurt."
"Hold it," Edythe ordered. "No one's getting hurt. I know of a certain party who will be willing to offer plenty of help..."
Carine answered. "Edythe, it sounds like there are dozens of them. That means an ugly fight even if..."
"We do have a few advantages, Carine," Jess bridled. "No matter how many of them there are, it still won't be a fair fight for them."
"The wolves..." Eleanor answered.
"Dammit, El..." Archie sighed. "Now everything's just disappeared that you've gotten them involved... You might as well throw Luca into the mix just as well for good measure!"
No one laughed at the joke.
Archie growled. "Ugh... This is inconvenient, but yes, all things considered, we could use their help."
Coordinating with the werewolves wasn't going to be easy. Julie and Sarah were one thing... but I could tell the others hated even being near us.
"You'll all need some instruction," Jessamine said as she jumped up on her feet. "They will, too."
"This has to be a first..." Edythe said in a snide comment.
"Where do you guys suggest this all go down?" I asked.
"About ten miles due north of the Hoh Forest ranger station. We'll come in from the east, and they should be able to follow our scent in," Jessamine answered.
"Let's go tell the pack." Eleanor was already heading for the door. Royal disappeared along with her.
Great... It was bad enough that we'd all be fighting again because of me. It was too much to even allow that, but now all those kids from La Push... My nerves felt frayed and worn out already.
I whispered in a low voice. "What about Luca?"
"That's a good point..." Carine said.
Edythe looked at him quickly, then to me. "Beau, you'll watch him somewhere far away while we do this."
"What? Me? But you'll need my help!"
"No offense, Beau, but you aren't exactly the most experienced with this sort of thing," Jess said to me. "We'll be just fine. We can handle it with eleven of us easily."
I shook my head. "I'm not going to sit there with him unprotected. What if some of this army breaks off and finds us? Edythe, you'll need to stay with me."
"Beau, I really don't think..." she started.
"No! You're staying with me! Either it's so dangerous that we need every single one of us, or it's so easy you can be taken out of the equation. I won't stand there helplessly while someone comes looking for me."
"He has a good point," Jessamine said.
Edythe sighed. "Fine."
They explained that this place where we would confront the newborns was the baseball clearing. I'd never known what it was called. It would be the same place where, almost a year ago, my first evening with my new family had been interrupted by Joss and Victor and Lauren.
I almost laughed, because the picture wouldn't be complete without the three of them again, but Joss and Lauren were never coming back to pose any threat. The pattern wouldn't be repeated. But Victor on the other hand...
He'd seemed like a force of nature to me, like a storm coming that made everyone need to take cover. He was unavoidable, unpredictable, implacable... like Lauren had once told us.
"You know what I think?"
Edythe looked at me as if to say, Not funny.
"Obviously not, Beau."
I almost smiled at my unintentional joke.
"Three bad things have happened recently," I said as I started ticking items off my fingers. "The newborns... the stranger in my room... and Victor came to look for me."
Her eyes narrowed. "Looking for you?"
"I was the proof he was looking for. That you'd won the game. Plus, he probably hadn't expected me to not be human. That's why he seemed so angry that day. I'm no longer a fragile, easy target."
Edythe frowned. "True. But it wasn't Victor in your room."
"He can't make new friends? Think about it... Victor has made a lot of new friends, and they're tearing it up in Seattle as we speak."
"Hmm," she said as she paced. "It's possible. There's something there in your theory... Victor's personality aligns with that sort of scenario perfectly. He seems to have an essence for being capable of great self-preservation. Perhaps it's his talent. This plot would keep him safe behind it all and let the newborns do all the dirty work."
"What about the Volturi?" Carine asked. "Why haven't they put a stop to this? Surely Sulpicia has noticed by now with it making national news."
"She must be counting us for the win," Jessamine answered. "But obviously not without the specific casualties she's aiming for. If his little army is destroyed, though... no one can bear witness against him. In fact, I'm betting he plans to destroy any survivors himself. But the person in your room couldn't have been a newborn. No one new would leave your father alive... I think he's coordinating with someone more mature, someone we don't know. That person is making all of the decisions. He's hiding behind them."
I felt a chill down my spine. It felt like some spy of his was watching us even now.
"God, what I wouldn't give to have him in my grasp." Edythe gritted her teeth and clenched her hands. "Victor... anyone who's ever thought of hurting Beau... To have a chance to end it myself, with my own hands this time."
There was a ferocious longing in her voice. Jessamine looked relatively at ease. She'd dealt with this sort of thing plenty of times. But Archie didn't look so comfortable. He sat on the steps, rubbing his arms nervously.
"Is something wrong, Archie?"
Edythe laughed. "The wolves must be coming back with El and Roy... So he's blind at the moment."
Archie scowled. "It makes me so uncomfortable. You have no idea..."
Poor Archie, having to live like the rest of us, in the present.
And that's when Eleanor and Royal popped back in the door.
"Hey, guys," she greeted us. "Heads up. The wolves are coming."
Ati and her coven sank silently out the back, as per usual when the pack came around. It was best to make them as comfortable as possible.
"It wasn't easy to convince them," El said. "But mention that their people could be in danger, and their ears perk up really fast."
Royal laughed. "We had to bluff and say we might not be able to hold the newborns off from coming into town and having a feast. That got them going."
"When will our guests arrive?" Carine asked.
Edythe concentrated for a moment, then she spoke. "About another two minutes. I'll have to translate. They're too on edge at the moment for any of them to remain in their human forms."
Carine nodded. "This is a big step for them. I'm thankful they'll be helping us at all."
"The pack seems to have grown..." Edythe murmured. "I can hear ten of them."