Now I realized there was something more I had to do. I knew it would be painful, but also that it would not be painful enough. I deserved worse. I didn’t want to leave Bella, but this wasn’t the place. I would call Alice. I wasn’t sure where she had gone to hide from me.

I stepped out into the hall—much to the interest of two nurses, who had wondered whether I would ever leave the room—and before I could reach for my phone I heard Alice’s thoughts coming up the stairs. I walked out to meet her just inside the stairwell doors.

She was carrying something in her hands, something small and black and wrapped in thin cords, and she held it as though she wished she could crush her hands together to destroy it. Part of me was surprised she hadn’t.

I’ve had this argument with you over three hundred times, but I could never convince you.

“No, you can’t. I need to see this.”

Agree to disagree. But here. She shoved the camera toward me, and I could see she was happy to be rid of it. I took it unwillingly. It felt dark and wrong in my hand. Go somewhere you can be alone.

I nodded. It was good advice.

I’ll keep an eye on Bella. It’s not necessary, but I know it will make you feel better.

“Thank you.”

Alice darted out of the stairwell.

I wandered the halls, which were quiet this late, but not unoccupied. I thought of ducking into a vacant patient room, but that didn’t feel secluded enough. I made my way to the lobby and exited to the grounds. This felt more alone, but I could still see the odd security officer making rounds. As long as I walked with purpose, they didn’t mind me, but if I were to linger, I was sure they would come question me.

I searched for a bubble of empty space, and was relieved to find an area devoid of human thoughts just across the large circular drive.

It seemed ironic that the deserted building was the campus chapel, lit and unlocked, despite the hour. I knew the place would have comforted Carlisle, but I was fairly sure nothing could help me now.

From the inside, I couldn’t find a way to lock the door, so I went to the very front of the room, as far from that door as possible. There were wooden folding chairs instead of pews. I pulled one against the wall, in the shadow of the organ.

Alice had left me with headphones. I put them in my ears.

Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath. Once I saw this, I would have it in my head forever. There would never be a release from it. That seemed fair. Bella had lived it. I would only have to watch.

I opened my eyes and powered the camera on. The replay screen was just two inches across. I didn’t know whether to be grateful for that, or if I deserved to see it on a much larger scale.

The video began on a close-up of the tracker’s face. James—the name was too benign for what he was. He smiled at me, and I knew that this was what he wanted—to smile at me. This was all for me. What followed would be a conversation between the two of us. One-sided, but for all that would happen, Bella would never be the object. I was.

“Hello,” he said in a pleasant tone. “Welcome to the show. I hope you enjoy what I’ve prepared for you. I’m sorry that it’s a little rushed, a little thrown together. Who would have guessed it would only take me a few days to win? Before the curtain goes up, so to speak, I’d like to remind you that this is really your own fault. If you’d stayed out of my way, it would have been quick. This is more fun, though, isn’t it? Again, enjoy!”

The video cut to black, and then a new “scene” began. I recognized the angle of the camera. It was in place on top of the TV, pointed across the long wall of mirrors. The tracker was just leaning away. His speed, as he darted to the far-right side of the shot, was almost invisible to the camera—only a disjointed flicker was recorded. He settled himself there by the emergency exit, freezing in place with one hand extended. In that hand, a black rectangle. A remote control. His head was cocked slightly to the side, listening. He heard something too low for the recording, and smiled directly at the camera. At me.

Then I could hear her, too. Running, stumbling feet. Strained breathing. A door opened, and then a pause.

The tracker lifted his remote and pressed a button.

Louder than anything else so far, coming through the speakers right under the camera, Bella’s mother’s voice cried out in panic.

“Bella? Bella?”

In the other room, the footsteps were running again.

“Bella, you scared me!” Renée said.

Bella burst into the room, panicked and searching.

“Don’t you ever do that to me again,” Renée continued with a laugh.

Bella spun to the sound of her mother’s voice, turned to face me now, her eyes focusing just below the camera. I watched as the realization hit. She hadn’t entirely processed the trick yet, but I could see the relief beginning. Her mother wasn’t in danger.

The sound from the speakers went silent. Bella moved reluctantly. She didn’t want to see, but she knew he was there. She stiffened when her eyes found him, waiting motionlessly. I could only see the side of her face, but I could see him clearly as he smiled at her.

He approached, and I had to loosen my fingers. It was too soon to crush the recorder. He passed her, continued to the TV to set the remote down. As he did so, he looked into the camera and winked at me. Then he turned to face her. The way he turned his body put his back to me, but I had a perfect view of Bella. The camera was angled so that I couldn’t see him in the mirrors. That must have been a mistake on his part. I imagined he wanted me to see his performance.

“Sorry about that, Bella, but isn’t it better that your mother didn’t really have to be involved in all this?”

Bella looked at him with a strange, almost relaxed expression. “Yes.”

“You don’t sound angry that I tricked you.”

“I’m not.” Truth radiated in her tone.

The tracker hesitated for one second. “How odd. You really mean it.” His head cocked to the side, but I could only guess at his expression. “I will give your strange coven this much, you humans can be quite interesting. I guess I can see the draw of observing you. It’s amazing—some of you seem to have no sense of your own self-interest at all.”

He leaned toward her as though he was expecting an answer, but she stayed silent. Her eyes were opaque, giving nothing away.

“I suppose you’re going to tell me that your boyfriend will avenge you?” he asked, his voice taunting. The taunt was not for her.

“No, I don’t think so,” Bella replied quietly. “At least, I asked him not to.”

“And what was his reply to that?”

“I don’t know. I left him a letter.”

Please, please don’t come after him, she’d written in that letter. I love you. Forgive me.

Her manner was almost casual. This seemed to bother the tracker, because his voice was sharper now, his tone twisting into something ominous.

“How romantic.” The sarcasm was palpable. “A last letter. And do you think he will honor it?”

Her eyes were still impossible to read, but her face was calm as she said, “I hope so.”

Please, this is the only thing I can ask you now, she’d written. For me.

“Hmmm. Well, our hopes differ, then.” His voice turned sour. Bella’s composure was disrupting the scene he had planned. “You see, this was all just a little too easy, too quick. To be quite honest, I’m disappointed. I expected a much greater challenge. And, after all, I only needed a little luck.”

Bella’s expression was patient now, like a parent who knows that her toddler’s story is going to be long and rambling but is determined to humor him anyway.

The tracker’s voice grew harder in response. “When Victoria couldn’t get to your father, I had her find out more about you. There was no sense in running all over the planet chasing you down when I could comfortably wait for you in a place of my choosing.…”

The tracker kept going, working to keep his words slow and smug, but I could feel the undercurrent of his frustration. He started talking faster. Bella didn’t react. She waited, patient and polite. It was obvious this rattled him.

I’d thought little about how the tracker had found Bella—there hadn’t been time for anything besides action—but this all made sense. None of it surprised me. I winced a little when I realized our flight to Phoenix had been the trigger for his last move. But it was only one of a thousand mistakes on my conscience.

He was wrapping up his monologue—I wondered whether he thought I would be impressed?—and I tried to brace myself for what would follow.

“Very easy, you know,” he concluded. “Not really up to my standards. So, you see, I’m hoping you’re wrong about your boyfriend. Edward, isn’t it?” It was a silly thing, to pretend he’d forgotten my name. He couldn’t forget it any more than I would ever forget his.

Bella didn’t answer him. She was looking a little confused now. As though she didn’t understand the point. She didn’t realize the show wasn’t for her.

“Would you mind, very much, if I left a little letter of my own for your Edward?”

The tracker walked backward until he was out of the frame. The picture suddenly zoomed tight on only Bella’s face.

Her expression was perfectly clear to me. She was starting to realize. She’d known he was going to kill her. She had never considered that he would torture her first. Panic touched her eyes for the first time since she’d discovered her mother was safe.

My own fear and horror grew with hers. How would I survive this? I didn’t know. But she had, so I must.

When the tracker was sure I’d had time to absorb her dawning fear, he widened the frame again, turning the angle slightly so that I could now see his reflection in the mirror over Bella’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry, but I just don’t think he’ll be able to resist hunting me after he watches this.” He was satisfied again with his production. Bella’s terror was the drama he’d been waiting for, expecting. “And I wouldn’t want him to miss anything. It was all for him, of course. You’re simply a human, who unfortunately was in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and indisputably running with the wrong crowd, I might add.”

He stepped into frame again, moving closer to her. His smile was twisted in the mirrors. “Before we begin…”

Bella’s lips were white.

“I would just like to rub it in, just a little bit.” His eyes met mine in the mirror. “The answer was there all along, and I was so afraid Edward would see that and ruin my fun. It happened once, oh, ages ago. The one and only time my prey escaped me.”

Alice had shown me the way to make the tracker lose interest. He didn’t realize that I’d rejected the idea. He would never have understood why.

He began another monologue, and though I recognized that his need to gloat was the reason Bella had survived long enough for us to get there, I was still grinding my teeth in frustration until he said the words little friend, and I realized this was something more. This was what Bella had tried to tell us. Alice, the video—he knew you, Alice, he knew where you came from.

“… She didn’t even seem to notice the pain, poor little creature,” the tracker was explaining. “She’d been stuck in that black hole of a cell for so long. A hundred years earlier and she would have been burned at the stake for her visions. In the nineteen twenties, it was the asylum and the shock treatments. When she opened her eyes, strong with her fresh youth, it was like she’d never seen the sun before. The old vampire made her a strong new vampire, and there was no reason for me to touch her then. I destroyed the old one in vengeance.”

“Alice,” Bella breathed. The revelation didn’t bring any color back into her face. Her lips were ever so faintly green now. Would she pass out? I found myself hoping there would be a break, a moment of escape, even though I knew it couldn’t last.

There was a lot to think about here, and at some point I would want to know what Alice felt, but not now. Not now.

“Yes, your little friend. I was surprised to see her in the clearing.” He made eye contact with me again. “So I guess her coven ought to be able to derive some comfort from this experience. I get you, but they get her. The one victim who escaped me, quite an honor, actually.

“And she did smell so delicious. I still regret that I never got to taste… She smelled even better than you do. Sorry—I don’t mean to be offensive. You have a very nice smell. Floral, somehow…”

He walked closer and closer until he was looming over her, then reached out with one hand, and I nearly crushed the camera again. He didn’t hurt her yet, he just played with a strand of her hair, drawing out her dread. Milking it.

I slid out of the chair, to the ground, and put the camera on the floor beside me. I clenched my fists tightly together. It was good I had done this. Next the tracker reached out to softly stroke her cheek, and I wondered if I would break my hands.

“No, I don’t understand,” the tracker concluded. “Well, I suppose we should get on with it.” He looked at me again, the hint of a smile on his lips. He wanted me to see that he was eager, that he was going to enjoy this. “And then I can call your friends and tell them where to find you, and my little message.”

Bella started to tremble. Her face was so ashen I was surprised she was still on her feet. The tracker started to circle her, smiling at me in the mirror. He crouched, his eyes shifted to her face, and that smile turned into an exhibition of teeth.

Terrified, she broke for the back door. I guessed this is what he wanted, that he’d been trying to goad her into action. His bared teeth shifted into a pleased smile as he leaped in front of her and, with a dismissive backhand, hurled her toward the wall of mirrors.

She was airborne for one fleeting, endless pause, and then with a metallic clang, a crunch of bone, and the shattering of glass, she slammed into the brass ballet barre and the mirror behind it. The barre burst free of its brackets and crashed to the boards below. Her body followed, completely limp as she slid to the floor, splinters of glass catching the light like glitter around her. I hoped again that she was unconscious. But then I saw her eyes.

Stunned, helpless, petrified.

My hands ached with the crushing pressure of my grip, but I couldn’t relax them.

The tracker sauntered toward her, his eyes focused in the mirror on the lens of the camera, staring at me.

“That’s a very nice effect,” he pointed out to me, hoping I wasn’t taking any of his planning for granted. “I thought this room would be visually dramatic for my little film. That’s why I picked this place to meet you. It’s perfect, isn’t it?”

I didn’t know if Bella was aware of his shift in attention, of if she was just acting on instinct alone, but she twisted painfully to put her hands on the floor and began crawling for the entrance.

The tracker laughed quietly at her pathetic attempt, and then he was standing over her.

Alice had shown me this. I wished I could look away. But I couldn’t, and the tracker’s foot came down hard against her calf. I heard both snaps as her tibia and her fibula gave way.

Her whole body jerked, and then her scream filled the small room, ricocheting off the glass and the polished wood. It felt like a drill boring into my ears through the headphones. Her face strained with the agony, and tiny blood vessels burst inside her eyes.

“Would you like to rethink your last request?” he asked Bella, all his focus on her now. He pointed one toe and pressed it with delicate care into the nexus of the break.

Bella screamed again, the sound scraping and tearing out of her throat.

“Wouldn’t you rather have Edward try to find me?” the tracker prompted like a director on the edge of the stage.

The tracker was going to torture her until she begged me to hunt him. She must know that I would understand that her answer was coerced. Surely she would give him what he wanted quickly.

“Tell him what he wants to hear,” I whispered uselessly to her.

“No!” she rasped hoarsely. For the first time she stared into the camera’s lens, her bloody eyes pleading, speaking directly to me. “No, Edward, don’t—”

He kicked her in her upturned face.

I’d already seen the mark of this blow developing across the left side of her face. There were two tiny fissures in her cheekbone. He’d been careful, knowing if he kicked her with even a fraction of his strength, it would kill her, and he wasn’t done yet. It was just a tap, really.

She flew through the air again.

I saw his mistake immediately, watching her trajectory.

The glass was already broken, the buckled edges pointing outward like ragged silver teeth. Her head hit nearly the same spot as before, but this time the glass teeth ripped into her scalp as gravity pulled her down to the floor. The sound of her skin giving way was impossible to miss.

He turned to watch, and in the mirror I saw his expression tighten when he realized what he’d done.

Blood was already seeping through her hair, trickling in crimson threads down the sides of her face, rolling down her neck and pooling in the hollows above her collarbones. Just watching this called fire into my throat, and the memory of the taste of that blood.

The blood found the floor, dripping in loud splats as it started to puddle around her elbows.

There was so much blood, flowing so quickly. It was overwhelming. I watched, shocked that she’d survived this. The tracker watched, too, all his planning and all his conceit fading. His face turned feral, inhuman. Some small part of him wanted to fight his thirst—I could see that in his eyes—but he wasn’t conditioned for control. He could barely remember his audience or his show.

A hunting snarl ripped from between his teeth. Instinctively, she raised one hand to protect herself. Her eyes were already closed, life bleeding from her face.

An explosive crunch, a roar. The tracker lunged. A pale shape flashed so quickly through the shot that it was impossible to make it out. The tracker vanished from the scene. I saw the crimson mark of his teeth across Bella’s palm, and then her hand fell, lifeless, into the lake of blood with a quiet splash.

I watched, entirely numb, as my image on the screen sobbed and Carlisle’s worked to save her. My eyes were pulled to the bottom right corner of the shot, where every now and then, some piece of the tracker would flash through the picture. Emmett’s elbow, the back of Jasper’s head. It was impossible to create any sense of the fight from these little glimpses. Someday, I would have Emmett or Jasper remember it for me. I doubted it would soothe any of the rage I felt. Even if I had been the one to rip the tracker apart and burn him, it wouldn’t have been enough. Nothing could make this right again.

Eventually, Alice walked toward the lens. A spasm of agony crossed her features, and I knew she was seeing a vision of the recording, and also, I was sure, a vision of me watching it now. She picked up the camera, and the screen went dark.

I reached slowly for the camera and then, just as slowly, methodically crushed it into a pile of metal and plastic dust.

When that was done, I pulled from my shirt pocket the little bottle cap I’d been carrying around with me for weeks. My token of Bella—my talisman, my silly but reassuring physical link to her.

It flashed dully in my hand for a moment, and then I pulverized it between my thumb and index finger and let the fragments of steel fall onto the remains of the camera.

I didn’t deserve any link, any claim to her at all.

I sat for a long time in the empty chapel. At one point, music started playing quietly through the speakers, but no one entered and there was no sign that anyone had noticed me here. I guessed the music was on an automatic timer. It was the adagio sostenuto from Rachmaninoff’s second piano concerto.

I listened, numb and cold, trying to remind myself that Bella was going to be all right. That I could get up now and return to her side. That Alice had seen that her eyes would open again in only thirty-six more hours. A day and a night and a day.

None of that seemed relevant now. Because it was my fault, everything she had suffered.

I stared out the high windows across from me, watching the black of night slowly give way to a pale gray sky.

And then I did something I hadn’t done in a century.

Curled there in a ball on the floor, motionless with agony… I prayed.

I didn’t pray to my God. I’d always instinctively known that there was no deity for my kind. It made no sense for immortals to have a god; we had taken ourselves out of any god’s power. We created our lives, and the only power strong enough to take them away again was another like us. Earthquakes couldn’t crush us, floods couldn’t drown us, fires were too slow to catch us. Sulfur and brimstone were irrelevant. We were the gods of our own alternate universe. Inside the mortal world but over it, never slaves to its laws, only our own.

There was no God that I belonged to. No one for me to supplicate. Carlisle had different ideas, and maybe, just maybe, an exception could be made for someone like him. But I wasn’t like him. I was stained like all the rest of our kind.

Instead, I prayed to her God. Because if there was some higher, benevolent power in her universe, then surely, surely, he or she or it would have to be concerned about this bravest and kindest daughter. If not, there was really no purpose to any such entity. I had to believe she mattered to that distant God, if one existed at all.

So I prayed to her God for the strength I would need. I knew I wasn’t strong enough in myself—the power would have to come from the outside. With perfect clarity, I recalled Alice’s visions of Bella abandoned—her bleak, shadowed, empty, hollow face. Her pain and her nightmares. I’d never been able to imagine my resolve not breaking, not caving to the knowledge of her grief. I couldn’t imagine it now. But I would have to do it. I had to learn the strength.

I prayed to her God with all the anguish of my damned, lost soul that he—or she, or it—would help me protect Bella from myself.