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Dream's Shadow

Summary:
This is my take on the over- and usually poorly- done plot. Edward leaves Bella again. She is changed and they meet again in the future. There will be a big twist! Requested by Iris. Banner by Iris!

Notes:
Try it! I know stories like this usually stink, but I thought I'd give it a try. I own nothing. Stephenie Meyer owns all.

73. Chapter 73

Rating 5/5   Word Count 543   Review this Chapter

“Run, love. RUN!”

“Edward…” What was going on? He’s scaring me. I can hear my lungs seizing up as I run and run. It’s a good thing I don’t need to breathe, and it’s a good thing my heart doesn’t beat, and dear God it hurts to hear Edward scream like this, beg me like this, for things I don’t know how to give him. I run on, of course, as he commands, sprint through the Italian streets, felt the air whiz by my head.

“Bella, don’t… run. Run!”

I can hear, distinctly, footsteps behind me. They are as fast and light as mine. It is a vampire behind me, I know that much. And I realize something. I stop dead.

“What are you doing? You need to keep…”

“No, I don’t. I need to know what the hell I’m running away from!”

He sighs. “It’s a vampire.”

“Obviously. I’m not stupid, Edward. Which vampire? Is it the Denali clan again? More Volturi?”

“No.”

“Does it have something to do with that girl?” I ask. She was weird, totally freakish, as far as I could tell. She seemed to know exactly what was going on, who I was, what I was thinking.

“Bella, you need to run.”

“No.”

“Bella…”

“No. I’m not so easily swayed anymore, Edward, my love. I’m a vampire now, and you aren’t here to dazzle me anyway.”

I heard a heavy exhalation of breath in my ear. “Please, Bella… trust me.”

“Nope!” I pop the “p” sound, as I remember Jake used to when I was human. Edward didn’t answer. I began to fear he’d left, and I calmed myself with effort.

It wasn’t real. It was only a voice in my head. The real Edward loved me, or… didn’t, entirely independently of what this delusion did.

But it sounded so much like him… that velvet voice, like sweet relief, like cool hands to a feverish forehead, like a kiss in the night, like air to a drowning man or food to a starving one… I needed his voice. I needed him, and if all I could get was pretending, I’d pretend.

Because I couldn’t have my real Edward. I could only have this delusion, because of Alice. My sister. She deserved a consideration, didn’t she? Only twenty more years, and I could have my real Edward, all of him, all I wanted and needed could be mine.

I only had to wait. And I would, I would be able to. I had to be able to.

I turn and see the tower of the Volturi, looming ahead of me. I knock on the great iron door. I hear a loud call. “Who goes there?”

“Isabella Swan. Let me in.”

There is a loud silence. It rings in my ears, as I hear the footsteps behind me grow louder. I had almost forgotten my pursuer- my mystery enemy. Don’t I have enough of them?

“Yes. Come on in,” says the bored voice of Gianna’s replacement, and I sigh in relief, just before I hear the footsteps stop.

There is an unexpected voice in my ear.