The Music Of The Night By theladyingrey42.pdf

The Music Of The Night By theladyingrey42

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6859831/1/

Chapter 1: The Music Of The Night

In 1918, Edward Masen wakes from a sleep of fire and ash, his eyes opening to

stare up into a cold, golden gaze. For a moment, there is disorientation. Silence.

And then the world is a cacophony of sound. Voices. Darkness. With his hands

over his ears, Edward finds himself in a crouch in a corner of a room he doesn't

know, the floor tiles cracking beneath his feet as he shifts. The golden eyes are in

front of him again, one voice ringing out just slightly louder than the others. After

a few moments that feel like hours, Edward realizes that this voice, alone

amongst the hundreds waging war inside his skull, matches the motion of the lips

before him.

"Edward? Edward? My name is Carlisle Cullen. You're safe. You were dying, but

now you're safe."

Dying.

The word lifts something to the front of Edward's consciousness, and he scans his

body for signs of injury. Finding nothing, he begins to breathe more easily,

relaxing slightly, until the sound and sensation of his breath make him notice

what he doesn't feel.

His heart.

Shuddering, Edward sinks even deeper into his crouch, his hands still tight

around his ears.

Finally, he finds words for the question pressing hotly against his lungs. "Am I

dead?"

On some level, he wishes he was.

The loudest voice says, "No. Not exactly."

But another voice, one that hovers just above the fog of all the others, says, Yes.

For this is no real life.

I'm sorry.

…

Edward's first year of unlife passes in a rush of blood and the search for blood. He

finds an uneasy companionship with Carlisle, who he learns is his creator.

Sometimes, Edward stares at the man and mulls over that word.

Creator.

In another life, it meant a very different thing to him, and while Carlisle may

resemble some sort of a god, he is not Edward's God.

But then again, Edward never expects to see his God again.

The two of them quickly depart the city of Edward's birth – the only place that he

has ever really known – and they leave behind almost everything that Edward

ever thought of as home. As the brick and stone give way to prairie and then

woods, the chaos in Edward's head slowly lessens, and the ache that cannot be

silenced at least becomes something he can bear.

They take up residence in a cabin far from anything that could tempt Edward's

control. Together, they pass many nights in conversation about what it means to

be what they are. About vampires. Carlisle explains the difficult truce he has

made between his conscience and his desires, and about how animal blood, while

unsatisfying, is enough to keep him strong.

Edward says little in response, the taste of grass and earth and thin, weak life

leaving a bitter sensation on his tongue. Conversation, which once came so easily

to him, is almost impossible now. He hears the words that come from Carlisle's

mouth, but he also hears a different, conflicting point of view. The two voices

overlap and dovetail, but sometimes they dramatically diverge. In moments of

confusion, Edward sometimes answers the wrong one, and he must run far into

the surrounding woods to find any sort of peace inside his head.

Alone beneath a canopy of pine and sky, he finds some solace in silence.

Swallowing down watery, earthy blood, he buries corpses and exhumes memories

that are almost as thin as the liquid he forces down his throat. Carlisle has told

him that to hold on to his human memories – and, by turn, his humanity – he

should access them as much as possible in this first wild and thirsty year. But it is

difficult.

Over and over, he recalls images of a father he watched slip into death and of a

mother that, through the fog of fever and fire, he didn't. He tries to remember

what it felt like to be home, but the essence of the memory escapes him, time

and time again.

One night, he returns from his lonely wandering to his and Carlisle's cabin full of

a new set of scents, a strange amalgam of pine and spruce and steel. Carlisle is

nowhere to be found, but there is a warmth to a place that Edward is not

accustomed to, and he follows the glowing currents of air to the living room to

find it occupied.

Not by someone. But by something.

And by so, so, so many memories.

The sight of the instrument and of the bench set in front of a row of black and

white keys opens something strange inside of him, a coolness easing the burn he

has suffered since the moment he awoke to this unlife. He feels the phantom of a

pulse in the center of his chest, where he used to have a heart, and suddenly

there is a picture in his mind.

Inside it, he is a boy. A child, really. A woman with red hair and green eyes sits

by his side, and together they move their hands with abandon over keys, creating

something beautiful as sound and careless melody blend with laughter and with …

love.

The memory of love is one that has eluded Edward in these long, bloodthirsty

weeks, and he almost feels his knees give out beneath him, the stone of his new

body wanting to melt to flesh and bone beneath the weight of emotions that are

too powerful for him to carry alone. Staggering, he makes his way toward the

piano and sits too heavily, the hardwood flexing beneath his thighs.

The first note fills the room and his empty chest, but it is accompanied by a crack

and the smell of fresh ivory as it is exposed to the air. The second is equally

satisfying but more sour, the end distorted by a piece of wire stretching and then

snapping. The third hears the breaking of a hammer and the obliteration of a key,

and Edward is already relearning all over again that vampires cannot cry by the

time his hands move automatically for a chord that he remembers his mother

teaching him.

As the three keys depress at once, the entire front of the piano collapses, a host

of wires surrendering en masse to the call of non-being, steel and wood all giving.

With a dry sob, Edward looks at the destruction his monstrous hands have

wrought through the blur of dry, unsatisfying sobs, his fist coming down on the

top of the piano as he abruptly stands.

He flees back into the woods, leaving behind him the shattered ruins of the piano,

and with it, the broken shards of his lost memory.

Of his love.

And of his humanity.

…

Edward sits in silence in the parlor of his and Carlisle's new home. Slowly, over

the course of three difficult, trying years, he has come to exercise control over

himself. The thirst which once consumed him and the voices which nearly drove

him mad are all more manageable now, the torment of his throat and of his mind

both fading. While he still prefers to spend most of his time in solitude, he has

come to recognize a third player in the delicate balance of needs.

In deference to his heart, his throat and his mind have both needed to be tamed.

Time has given him perspective on his relationship with the vampire that created

him, and Edward is now at a loss for what he would do without Carlisle's

friendship. While he still does not understand all of his companion's

compunctions, he knows that the loneliness that lives deep within his heart would

fester were it not for Carlisle and for the brushes with humans that they now

have in their life on the edge of town.

And so, for the sake of that friendship, he forsakes the blood of humans and

tolerates the voices he can never completely silence. He gives up and gives in,

and finds that a half-life is better than no life at all, and that the sacrifice of

everything he was, and of so much of what, as a vampire, he could be, is

acceptable, if not necessarily comfortable.

His ruminations are brought to a sudden end with the sound of voices

approaching the house, and Edward instantly abandons his book and falls into a

defensive posture near the door. With some concentration, he realizes that one of

the silent voices is Carlisle's, but the tenor of the other, unknown mind is so

unsettling that he cannot let his guard down completely.

Kill me … Die … Baby … Why?

There is wordless agony in and amongst the disconnected words, and Edward's

own abdomen coils in reflex.

He recognizes this agony.

With the memory of flames licking hotly at his heels, he rushes forth from the

house to meet Carlisle and a woman whose body is utterly broken. From multiple

wounds along her neck and ankles and wrists, she is seeping blood, and there is a

taste, too, of venom in the air.

Jumped. Couldn't let her die. Not her.

Carlisle's physical voice is rendered useless by worry, but Edward takes the

disjointed thoughts and assembles them in his head. There are memories there,

none of which Edward has ever seen in full before, although at times he is certain

he has caught passing glances. A girl. A broken leg. Warm thoughts and a feeling

of possessiveness.

And love.

Already, there is love.

Mate. My mate. Esme.

"Carlisle." Edward's voice is choked and flat. He has been told about the idea of

vampires and their mates, and in flashes of memory, Edward has heard that word

pass in a ghostly wisp through Carlisle's thoughts.

There is another rush of panic through them both as the woman's body shivers

and wracks, the air split by a piercing scream, and Carlisle is also a wreck.

Let her survive. Let her forgive me. Let her want this life.

Please. Please. Let her want me.

Prayers are no less potent when they bypass frozen lips, and Edward realizes that

his friend is suffering with every wracking sob and shudder coming from this

woman. From Esme. From Carlisle's mate.

Sucking down the bittern knowledge that, even when seen through the fog of fire,

Carlisle was not nearly so destroyed during his transformation, Edward springs

into action, moving ahead to open the door to their home and preparing an

unused, unnecessary bed. Carlisle's gratitude, while palpable, is only offered

silently and without words as he sinks down onto the mattress, Esme's shattered

body still held tightly in his arms.

Certain that they are alright and that there is nothing more that he can do,

Edward retreats, feeling for the first time that he is unneeded and unwelcome in

his own home. For a few hours, he sits in silent support, until the audible and

inaudible torrents of Esme's pain become to much for him.

Out in the cool night air, he is alone again.

Uncertain what he is seeking or fleeing, Edward runs. For hundreds and hundreds

of miles, he runs.

But the festering feeling of his own obsolescence still chases him.

…

A year after Esme's scarlet eyes snap open, Edward finds it hard to believe that

he ever had a difficult time remembering the concept of love.

Or that he had never, in those three long years before her arrival, considered

physical love.

The woods have become more of a home to him than the secluded cottage that

the three of them now ostensibly share. Edward winds up in the forest often,

seeking escape from the things that his two companions now share, and yet

which he feels quite certain that he will never, ever be party to.

Even as he nears the property line, thoughts of all-consuming, passionate love

overwhelm him, and in the thoughts he cannot push out, there is a new kind of

cacophony. He is bombarded with images of skin and sensations of wet sliding,

with open mouths and depraved combinations of lips and hands and sex.

At the unwelcome reaction of his own body, Edward turns, his form soon

ensconced again inside the crook of an aging tree. The sounds of love and love-

making and mating are out of range, but there is no way to push the images from

his mind. He tries, though. In his head, he recites poems and performs the most

complex calculations he can manage, but still the pressures inside his body

persist until his own need becomes yet another voice he cannot push away.

With reluctance, he takes a hand to unsatisfied flesh, indulging in a necessary but

unsavory orgasm, venom spilling uselessly to the forest floor. With the physical

act of release, he finds his mind is once more clear.

But still, he does not dare return.

On so many levels, there is already no home for him to go to.

…

For hours, Edward stares at the painting. It is old, he knows. Older than himself,

and already, nine years into his unlife, he feels ancient.

Over the past few years since Esme's transformation, he and the two of them

have reached something of an understanding. More than once, he has offered

them his absence and their privacy, but each time, they have declined. Slowly, he

has come to understand that, while not exactly necessary to their union, he is not

entirely unwelcome either.

And so he has continued to make a home with them.

After all, he has nowhere else to go.

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