Некоторые из вас, похоже, решили, что я потратила неделю на создание этого пикспама для того, чтобы вы потом могли делать из него аватары, баннеры и бог знает что еще и опубликовывать его где вам вздумается. Так что у меня для вас новость: это не так. Посему, читайте и соблюдайте правила:
1. НЕ опубликовывать эти изображения на других сайтах, форумах и дневниках.
2. НЕ редактировать изображения (т.е. никаких аватаров, обоев и прочего из них не делать).
3. НЕ выдавать мои работы за свои.
4. НЕ пользоваться ссылками на эти изображения - вы убиваете мой трафик, в буквальном смысле.
5. Пикспам создан исключительно для просмотра и любования Робертом Пэттинсоном актерами из фильма. Так что не унижайтесь и не крадите эти картинки, выставляя их без разрешения.
6. Приятного просмотра.
* * *
I’d never given much thought to how I would die…
But dying in the place of someone I love seems like a good way to go.
In the state of Washington, under a near-constant cover of clouds and rain, there’s a small town named Forks. Population – three thousand one hundred and twenty people. This is where I’m moving.
It was there, sitting in the lunchroom, trying to make conversation with seven curious strangers, that I first saw them.
There were five of them. They weren’t talking, and they weren’t eating, thought they each had a tray of untouched food in front of them.
They didn’t look anything alike. Of the tree boys, one was big – muscled like a serious weight lifter, with dark, curly hair. Another was taller, leaner, but still muscular, and honey blond. The last one was lanky, less bulky, with untidy, bronze-colored hair. He was more boyish than the others, who looked like they could be in college, or even teachers here rather than students.
The girls were opposites. The tall one was statuesque. She had a beautiful figure, the kind you saw on the cover of Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, the kind that made every girl around her take a hit on her self-esteem just by being in the same room. Her hair was golden, gently waiving in the middle of her back. The short girl was pixielike, thin in the extreme, with small features. Her hair was a deep black, cropped short and pointing in every direction.
And yet, they were all exactly alike. Every one of them was chalky pale, the palest of all students living in this sunless town. Paler than me, the albino. They all had very dark eyes despite the range in hair tones. They also had dark shadows under those eyes – purplish, bruiselike shadows. As if they were all suffering from a sleepless night, or almost done recovering from a broken nose. Though their noses, all their features, were straight, perfect, angular.
But all this is not why I couldn’t look away.
I stared because their faces, so different, so similar, were all devastatingly, inhumanly beautiful. They were faces you never expected to see except perhaps on the airbrushed pages of a fashion magazine. Or painted by an old master as the face of an angel. It was hard to decide who was the most beautiful – maybe the perfect blond girl, or the bronze-haired boy.
Just as I passed, he suddenly went rigid in his seat. He stared at me again, meeting my eyes with the strangest expression on his face – it was hostile, furious.
I’d noticed that his eyes were black – coal black.
I didn’t look up as I set my book on the table and took my seat, but I saw his posture change from the corner of my eye. He was leaning away from me, sitting on the extreme edge of his chair and averting his face like he smelled something bad.
I peeked up at him one more time, and regretted it. He was glaring down at me again, his black eyes full of revulsion. As I flinched away from him, shrinking against my chair, the phrase if looks could kill suddenly ran through my mind.
Jacob looked fourteen, maybe fifteen, and had a long, glossy black hair. His skin was beautiful, silky and russet-colored; his eyes were dark, set deep above the high planes of his cheekbones. He still had a hint of childish roundness left around his chin. Altogether, a very pretty face. However, my positive opinion of his looks was damaged by the first words out of his mouth.
“You’re Isabella Swan, aren’t you?”
“A security guard at the Grisham Mill got killed by some kind of animal…”
“An animal?”
“You’re not in Phoenix anymore, Bells.”
I heard very clearly when the chair next to me moved, but my eyes stayed carefully focused on the pattern I was drawing.
“Hello”, said a quiet, musical voice.
I looked up, stunned that he was speaking to me. He was sitting as far away from me as the desk allowed, but his chair was angled towards me. His hair was dripping wet, disheveled – even so, he looked like he’d just finished shooting commercial for hair gel. His dazzling face was friendly, open, a slight smile in his flawless lips.
“My name is Edward Cullen,” he continued. “I didn’t have a chance to introduce myself last week. You must be Bella Swan.”
I was standing by the back corner of the truck, struggling to fight back the sudden wave of emotion the snow chains had brought on, when I heard an odd sound.
It was a high-pitched screech, and it was fast becoming painfully loud. I looked up, startled.
I saw several things simultaneously. Nothing was moving in slow motion, the way it does in the movies. Instead, the adrenaline rush seemed to make my brain work much faster, and I was able to absorb in clear detail several things at once.
Edward Cullen was standing four cars down from me, staring at me in horror. His face stood out from the see of faces, all frozen in the same mask of shock. But of more immediate importance was the dark blue van that was skidding, tires locked and squealing against the brakes, spinning wildly across the ice of the parking lot. It was going to hit the back corner of my truck, and I was standing between them. I didn’t even have time to close my eyes.
A low oath made me aware that someone was with me, and the voice was impossible not to recognize. Two long, white hands shot out protectively in front of me, and the van shuddered to a stop a foot from my face, the large hands fitting providentially into a deep dent in the side of the van’s body.
It was absolutely silent for one long second before the screaming began. In the abrupt bedlam, I could hear more than one person shouting my name. But more clearly than all the yelling, I could hear Edward Cullen’s low, frantic voice in my ear.
“Bella? Are you alright?”
“This is wrong, Edward. She’s not one of us.”
“This isn’t just about you. It’s about all of us.”
“You know your mood swings are giving me whiplash.”
“I only said it would be better if we weren’t friends, not that I didn’t want to be.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means if you were smart, you’d stay away from me.”
“Well let’s say for argument’s sake that I’m not smart. Would you tell me the truth?”
“No, probably not. I’d rather hear your theories.”
“I have considered radioactive spiders and kryptonite.”
“It’s all superhero stuff, right?
What if I am not the hero? What if I am the bad guy?”
That was the first night I dreamed of Edward Cullen.
Headlights suddenly flew around the corner, the car almost hitting the stocky one, forcing him to jump back toward the sidewalk. I dove into the road – this car was going to stop, or have to hit me. But the silver car unexpectedly fishtailed around, skidding to a stop with the passenger door open just a few feet from me.
“Get in,” a furious voice commanded.
“I can read every mind in this room. Apart from yours. It’s very frustrating.”
“Is there something wrong with me?”
“I tell you I can read minds and you think there is something wrong with you?”
“You’re impossibly fast. And strong.
Your skin is pale-white and ice-cold.”
“Your eyes change color. And sometimes you speak like… like you’re from a different time.
You never eat or drink anything. You don’t come out into the sunlight.”
“How old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
“How long have you been seventeen?”
“Awhile.”
“I know what you are.”
“Say it out loud. Say it.”
“Vampire.”
“Are you afraid?”
“No.”
“Then ask me the most basic question: What do we eat?”
“I decided it didn’t matter,” I whispered.
“It didn’t matter?” His tone made me look up – I had finally broken through his carefully composed mask. His face was incredulous, with just a hint of the anger I’d feared.
“No,” I said softly. “It doesn’t matter to me what you are.”
A hard, mocking edge entered his voice. “You don’t care if I’m a monster? If I’m not human?”
“No.”
“I’m a killer.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“It’s because you believe the lie, the camouflage. I am the world’s most dangerous predator. Everything about me invites you in: my voice, my face, even my smell. As if I need any of that… As if you could outrun me. As if you could fight me off.
I’m designed to kill.”
“I don’t care.”
“I’ve killed people before.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I wanted to kill you. I’ve never wanted a human’s blood so much in my life.”
“My family, we’re different from the others of our kind. We only hunt animals. We’ve learned to control our thirst…
But you – your scent, it’s like a drug to me… like my own personal brand of heroine.”
“To me, it was like you were some kind of demon, summoned straight from my own personal hell to ruin me. The fragrance coming off your skin…I thought it would make me deranged that first day. In one hour, I thought of a hundred different ways to lure you from the room with me, to get you alone. And I fought them each back, thinking of my family, what I could do to them. I had to run out, to get away before I could speak the words that would make you follow…”
He looked up then at my staggered expression as I tried to absorb his bitter memories. His golden eyes scorched from under his lashes, hypnotic and deadly.
“You would have come,” he promised.
I tried to speak calmly. “Without a doubt.”
“Isabella.”
He pronounced my full name carefully, then playfully ruffled my hair with his free hand. A shock ran through my body at his casual touch.
“Bella, I couldn’t live with myself if I ever hurt you. You don’t know how it’s tortured me.”
He looked down, ashamed again.
“The thought of you, still, white, cold… to never see you blush scarlet again, to never see that flash of intuition in your eyes when you see through my pretenses… it would be unendurable.”
He lifted his glorious, agonized eyes to mine.
“You are the most important thing to me now. The most important thing to me ever.”
“You already know how I feel, of course,”
I finally said.
“I’m here…which, roughly translated, means that I would rather die than stay away from you.”
“And so the lion fell in love with the lamb…” he murmured.
“What a stupid lamb,” I sighed.
“What a sick, masochistic lion.”
About three things I was absolutely positive.
First, Edward was a vampire.
Second, there was a part of him , and I didn’t know how dominant that part might be – that thirsted for my blood.
And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.
“You know everybody’s staring, right?”
“I’m breaking all the rules now anyway. Since I’m going to hell.”
Waiting to greet us, standing just to the left of the door, on a raised portion of the floor by a spectacular grand piano, were Edward’s parents.
I’d seen Dr. Cullen before, of course, yet I couldn’t help but be struck again by his youth, his outrageous perfection. At his side was Esme, I assumed, the only one of the family I’d never seen before. She had the same pale, beautiful features as the rest of them. Something about her heart-shaped face, her billows of soft, caramel-colored hair, reminded me of the ingénues of the silent-movie era. She was small, slender, yet less angular, more rounded than the others. They were both dressed casually, in light colors that matched the inside of the house. They smiled in welcome, but made no move to approach us. Trying not to frighten me, I guessed.
“Rosalie is jealous of me?”
I asked incredulously. I tried to imagine a universe in which someone as breathtaking as Rosalie would have any possible reason to feel jealous of someone like me.
“I’m not scared of you.”
“You really shouldn’t have said that.”
“I was born in Chicago in 1901.”
He paused and glanced at me from the corner of his eyes. My face was carefully unsurprised, patient for the rest. He smiled a tiny smile and continued.
“Carlisle found me in a hospital in the summer of 1918. I was seventeen, and dying of the Spanish influenza.”
“He acted from loneliness. That’s usually the reason behind the choice. I was the first in Carlisle’s family, though he found Esme soon after. She fell from a cliff. They brought her straight to the hospital morgue, though, somehow, her heart was still beating.”
“I was thinking there was something I wanted to try.”
And he took my face in his hands again.
I couldn’t breathe.
He hesitated – not in a normal way, the human way.
Not the way a man might hesitate before he kissed a woman, to gauge her reaction, to see how he would be received. Perhaps he would hesitate to prolong the moment, that ideal moment of anticipation, sometimes better than the kiss itself.
Edward hesitated to test himself, to see is this was safe, to make sure he was still in control of his need.
And then his cold, marble lips pressed very softly against mine.
He played intelligently, keeping the ball low, out of the reach of Rosalie’s always-ready hand in the outfield, gaining two bases like lightening before Emmett could get the ball back in the play. Carlisle knocked one so far out of the field – with a boom that hurt my ears – that he and Edward both made it in. Alice slapped them dainty high fives.
The score was constantly changing as the game continued, they razzed each other like any street ballplayers as they took turns with the lead. Occasionally Esme would call them to order. The thunder rumbled on, but we stayed dry, as Alice had predicted.
Carlisle was up to bat, Edward catching, when Alice suddenly gasped. My eyes were on Edward, as usual, and I saw his head snap up to look at her. Their eyes met and something flowed between them in an instant. He was at my side before the others could ask Alice what was wrong.
“Alice?” Esme’s voice was tense.
“I didn’t see – I couldn’t tell,” she whispered.
They emerged one by one from the forest edge, ranging a dozen meters apart. The first male into the clearing fell back immediately, allowing the other male to take the front, orienting himself around the tall, dark-haired man in a manner that clearly displayed who led the pack. The third was a woman; from this distance, all I could see of her was that her hair was a startling shade of red.
They closed ranks before they continued cautiously toward Edward’s family, exhibiting the natural respect of a troop of predators as it encounters a larger, unfamiliar group of its own kind.
As they approached, I could see how different they were from the Cullens. Their walk was catlike, a gait that seemed constantly on the edge of shifting into a crouch. They dressed in the ordinary gear of backpackers: jeans and casual button-down shirts in heavy, weatherproof fabrics. The clothes were frayed, though, with wear, and they were barefoot. Both men had cropped hair, but the woman’s brilliant orange hair was filled with leaves and debris from the woods.
Their sharp eyes took in the more polished, urbane stance of Carlisle, who, flanked by Emmett and Jasper, stepped guardedly forward to meet them. Without any seeming communication between them, they each straightened into a more casual, erect bearing.
The man in front was easily the most beautiful, his skin olive-toned beneath the typical pallor, his hair was a glossy black. He was of a medium built, hard-muscled, of course, but nothing next to Emmett’s brawn. He smiled an easy smile, exposing a flash of gleaming white teeth.
The woman was wilder, her eyes shifting restlessly between the man facing herm and the loose grouping around me, her chaotic hair quivering in the slight breeze. Her posture was distinctly feline. The second male hovered unobtrusively behind them, slighter that the leader, his light brown hair and regular features nondescript. His eyes, though completely still, somehow seemed most vigilant.
Three things seemed to happen simultaneously while Carlisle was speaking. My hair ruffled with the light breeze, Edward stiffened, and the second male, James, suddenly whipped his head around, scrutinizing me, his nostrils flaring.
A swift rigidly fell an all of the as James lurched one step forward onto a crouch. Edward bared his teeth, crouching in defense, a feral snarl ripping from his throat. It was nothing like the playful sounds I’d heard from him this morning; is was the single most menacing thing I had ever heard, and chills ran from the crown of my head to the back of my heels.
“You brought a snack?”
“He’s coming after me?”
“The hunt is his obsession. He’s never gonna stop!”
“I’ll do whatever it takes to make you save again.”
I’d never given much thought to how I would die – though I’d had reason enough in the last few month – but even if I had, I would not have imagined it like this.
I stared without breathing across the long room, into the dark eyes of the hunter, and he looked pleasantly back at me.
Surely it was a good way to die, in the place of someone else, someone I loved. Noble, even. That ought to count for something.
I knew that if I’d never gone to Forks, I wouldn’t be facing death now. But, terrified as I was, I couldn’t bring myself to regret the decision. When life offers you a dream so fat beyond any of your expectations, it’s not reasonable to grieve when it comes to an end.
The hunter smiled in a friendly way as he sauntered forward to kill me.
I was definitely sick now. There was pain coming, I could see it in his eyes. It wouldn’t be enough for him to win, to feed and go. There would be no quick end like I’d been counting on. My knees began to shake, and I was afraid I was going to fall.
“Would you mind, very much, if I left a little letter of my own for your Edward?”
He took a step back and touched a palm-sized digital video camera balanced carefully on top of the stereo. A small red light indicated that it was already running. He adjusted it few times, widened the frame. I stared at him in horror.
“I’m sorry, but I just don’t think he’ll be able to resist hunting me after he watches this.”
“You’re alone. Because you’re faster than the others. But you’re not stronger.”
“I’m strong enough to kill you.”
My face and neck flushed crimson with anger. I could feel the rage-induced tears starting to fill my eyes.
He looked at me in surprise.
“Was that last part a bit too much? I didn’t mean to offend you.”
I ignored that.
“You’re taking me to the prom!” I yelled.
“So ready for this to be the end,” he murmured, almost to himself, “for this to be the twilight of your life, though your life has barely started. You’re ready to give up everything.”
“It’s not the end, it’s the beginning,” I disagreed under my breath.
His eyebrows rose. “Is that what you dream about? Being a monster?”
“Not exactly,”
I said, frowning at his word choice. Monster, indeed.
