In Which I Tolerate Eclipse: Chapter 25 -- Mirror · 10:52am Jun 12th, 2018
In spite of Victoria being decapitated, Edward refuses to take chances and quickly dismembers her body. Once he’s done with that, he goes to Seth and helps him do the same with Riley. They gather all the pieces and burn them. Can’t fault them for being thorough, at least.
The thick smoke curled up slowly, looking more solid than it should; it smelled like burning incense, and the scent was uncomfortable. It was heavy, too strong.
Pleased at their handiwork, Edward offers a fist bump to Seth, who (still in wolf form) replies with a nose bump. It’s stupid and adorable at the same time. Also, glad to see a werewolf isn’t stuck in “vampires = evil, no matter what” mode. Edward cautiously approaches Bella, telling her that he’s not going to hurt her. But Bella doesn’t act as scared as he thinks she should.
“Bella, I just” — he hesitated and then forced the words out — “I just beheaded and dismembered a sentient creature not twenty yards from you. That doesn’t bother you?”
He frowned at me.
I shrugged. Shrugging was good, too. Very blasé. “Not really. I was only afraid that you and Seth were going to get hurt. I wanted to help, but there’s only so much I can do…”
To be fair, Bella’s mostly putting on a good front for Edward. Inside, she’s on the verge of blacking out from the fear, but it’s not very obvious in her internal monologue.
Edward notifies her that he’s fine, Seth’s fine, and the others back in the clearing are fine; their fight went as smoothly as he’d hoped. However, Bella picks up something in his voice and asks if that’s really the case. Edward admits that there was a complication, but there’s no reason to be afraid.
Suddenly, Seth and Edward both spasm and collapse. Edward forces himself to his feet and orders Seth home, who reluctantly obeys. Edward tells her that the Volturi are coming — not all of them, just the part of the guard that normally cleans up newborn armies — but Alice knows it’ll turn out fine. Bella realizes that if Alice can see that, then the werewolves won’t be present; Edward says the Volturi don’t honor truces with werewolves, so the pack had to leave quickly.
Bella notices Edward still hasn’t told her what made him and Seth react so violently before and asks him about that. During the fight, a newborn was hiding, but Leah found him and tried to attack him. You know, Leah, the werewolf Edward praised during his play-by-play last chapter? The wolf who can hold her own from that moment? Suddenly, Edward calls her stupid and cocky. Jacob intervened somehow, and the newborn got to him.
And then I slipped off the edge I was clinging to inside my head.
Everything went black.
CM + 1
Bella wakes up with the Cullens around her, hearing them talk about Jacob. Carlisle says that, although he’s badly wounded, he’s not in any danger and should be back to normal in a few days, thanks to werewolf healing. At one point, he mentions that Sam is trying to convince Jacob to turn back into a human so Carlisle can treat him better; Carlisle sheepishly admits he never went to veterinarian school.
Carlisle notices Bella’s conscious again and explains the situation. Jacob, seeing Leah attacking the newborn, pushed her out of the way; the newborn got him and crushed a lot of his bones. You know, when Edward saw Jasper almost attack Bella at the beginning of the last book, he pushed Bella out of the way then, too. Why do people in these books always push the threatened out of the way rather than hold down the one doing the threatening? And why did Jacob think Leah was in danger, anyway? She’s proven herself to be capable.
Bella looks around the clearing and notices that a newborn is still alive, one who was turned when she was only fifteen. She surrendered to Carlisle, who accepted. The newborn screams and Carlisle’s at her side in an instant.
“Have you changed your mind, young one?” Carlisle asked, calm as ever. “We don’t want to destroy you, but we will if you can’t control yourself.”
“How can you stand it?” the girl groaned in a high, clear voice. “I want her.” Her bright crimson irises focused on Edward, through him, beyond him to me, and her nails ripped through the hard soil again.
“You must stand it,” Carlisle told her gravely. “You must exercise control. It is possible, and it is the only thing that will save you now.”
The girl clutched her dirt-encrusted hands around her head, yowling quietly.
I’ll be honest, that’s pretty striking. I already feel for her more than I do for any of the other characters except Charlie. Bella finds herself strangely drawn to the girl:
I stared at her, mesmerized, wondering if I were looking into a mirror of my future.
The Volturi guards arrive and are confused at the Cullens keeping the girl alive. Even though she surrendered, their policy is one of zero-tolerance: she was part of a newborn army, she needs to be put down. Jane is among the guards and uses her pain powers to torture the girl, named Bree, for information. Bree answers Jane’s questions as best she can, telling her that Victoria had promised them the city once the Cullens were wiped out. When the fight began, she got scared at tried to run. Carlisle found her and offered her a chance to surrender, which she took.
Satisfied, Jane orders one of the guard to kill Bree. Edward and Carlisle interject, since Bree didn’t know what she was doing, and accept full responsibility for taking care of her. Jane refuses; Bella looks away before Bree dies, but that doesn’t stop the scream or the smell from her burning body.
Clinginess Meter: 37
It is really weird how much the quality of this series can seesaw at times. The opening was the usual mediocre writing, but the part with Bree was surprisingly solid. I don’t read vampire books, so I’m curious: how many out there try to cover what it feels like to have a sudden thirst for blood when someone gets turned?
Wow, that's pretty cutting. c.c
Well, that was all over the place. I wonder if Meyer wrote the Bree scene ahead of time and tried to stitch into the narrative later, hence the awkwardness with Leah.