I sent this chapter to my new beta this morning so hopefully I'll have it back and be able to post it soon. In the meantime, here is the (unbeta'd) teaser.
Ridiculously long Chapter=Long Teaser :D
**Also, please be advised- there is some strong language in this chapter.**
Enjoy!!
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Phantom Cruise
Chapter 7
~Jasper~
Being an empath sucked motherfucking ass. It was even worse when one was a vampire empath. As a human, it's bad enough. You don't exactly feel the emotions of others, but you're hypersensitive to those feelings; you can pick up on and understand almost everything which makes it hard to choose a side when that kind of thing is called for. You can see what someone is feeling enough for it to affect you. That information either makes you desperately desire to help that person or run away and hide. The point is that you can choose. You can choose to use that charisma that seems to come along with being empathic and do what you can to help or you can walk away. If you can clear your mind of it, you can forget about it and move on. As a human, this is easy enough to accomplish without feeling an irrational amount of guilt.
Not the case as a vampire. Every sense, every emotion, every ability is heightened beyond belief. I'm not just hypersensitive - I actually have to feel this shit. And the closer I am to someone emotionally, the farther away I have to be before their emotions aren't bearing down on me, suffocating me. Which means I have to put this whole damn ocean in between me and Edward in order to get the hell away from his constant emo bullshit which is now intensified a hundred fold by the fact that he tried to eat Bella's mouth. The man needs a therapy session stat. And did I mention that vampires remember absolutely everything? So even if I did decide to flee from the ship, my guilt for leaving my family - for leaving Bella - at such a turbulent time would just eat me alive (or undead) until I swam my little pansy, emotional ass right back here.
Plus, I couldn't leave Alice or ask her to choose between coming with me or staying with Bella. She'd come with me, but she'd be royally pissed off and my girl is a firecracker when she's pissed off and totally not above withholding sex. She's not like Rose. Rose's emotional climate always toggles between bitchy or horny. Sometimes both at the same time. This causes her to be unable to go without sex for a single day because if she did, she'd be completely intolerable. Alice, however, is like a beacon of sunshine - happiness just exudes out of her most of the time - which means she doesn't require nearly as many orgasms to be pleasant toward others. Much to my utter dismay.
So, no I won't be running away. I'll be trapped here. In this room on this God forsaken boat. With all these damned emotions. So many, in fact, that I don't even know what the fuck I'm feeling right now other than supremely irritated. Not that my family was irritating. Of course they'd all be concerned and worried. I'd expect nothing less, especially from Edward. It was just that feeling so many things at once was simply overwhelming. It took a lot of effort to control my ability; to separate the feelings so that they didn't fuse together into one crazy conglomeration of "freak the fuck out soup".
Alice is pretty devastated because she thinks she caused this whole mess and in a way she did. But she had her reasons and something would have happened regardless. Alice's instincts were good and the fact that she saw that this was going to happen and didn't stop it meant that she truly believed it was the right thing. I tried to convince her that second-guessing herself wouldn't do her any good, but it was no use. She was still feeling unsure of herself. She tried so hard to shield her feelings from me, but we were so remarkably in tune that it was impossible. Edward's feelings of helplessness and anguish were so overpowering that he was the one I was feeling most, but Alice was a close second. Then there's Esme who was born to be a mother. She's such a genuine and caring woman. She feels responsible as well and the only conclusion I can come to for why she feels that way is because she approved so whole-heartedly of Edward's decision to stay with Bella because it made him happy. In short, she put Edward's happiness in front of Bella's safety and now both were in jeopardy. I know Esme well enough to be almost certain that I'm right. Carlisle, being the compassionate man that he is, feels saddened, but there is a determination I can feel buzzing in the background that I can only assume means his ever-intelligent brain is hard at work trying to find a solution. A way out.
Next to Alice, Emmett has the most effortless emotional climate to bathe in on a typical day, but considering that today hasn't been what I would call a typical day even for a family of vampires, his hasn't been much more pleasant than anyone else's. Emmett's melancholy was admittedly a lighter feeling than all the rest in the room, but compared with his usual jovial nature, it was downright suicide inducing. Too bad that wasn't an option for me at the moment. Beside him Rose was, as usual, bitchy. We were also blessed with the stench - I mean presence - of Jacob Black. Can I just say that I've never been a dog lover? They may be loyal, but they smell, they piss everywhere and they eat their own regurgitation. 'Nuff said. He was feeling vehement rage along with a piercing worry, but holding it back quite well probably due to the fact that there were eight vampires in the room who wouldn't mind ripping him limb from disgusting, furry limb.
The eighth vampire was Bill Compton. He came in just after the sun went down to inquire about Bella's condition and decided to stay once he saw that she was no better. There was some hostility there that was directed toward Jacob, but there was no secret as to why he should be feeling that. I sent Bill a small wave of "back the fuck off" and then I sent Jacob a little spark of "down, boy!" once I saw his nose hairs bristling. It wasn't my most effective chill-pill ever, but it did the job well enough to make them both stop hiking their legs in Bella's direction. After all, that was Edward's pissing territory. Edward shot me a warning glare at this thought to which I silently apologized. I wasn't normally this abrasive and I was more aware than anyone of Edward's feelings for Bella. So much, that on more than one occasion, I found myself having inappropriately passionate feelings about her, none of which were really my own . So I had no right to imply that his feelings were anything but genuine. He seemed a bit peeved about Bill's arrival, but I thought it was quite admirable of Bill to be there for Bella considering he'd only known her for a few short nights. Apparently, he became taken with her just like almost every other person in the cabin. Rosalie was the exception, but her attitude toward Bella wasn't because she didn't like her. It was simply jealously and the fact that she couldn't understand Bella's convoluted desire to be a blood draining monster instead of chasing after babies and churning her own butter.
Bill had been with us for a few hours when Alice had a vision of the other visitors we would soon be graced with and the sudden burst of undiluted fury that exuded from Edward made me want to decimate every individual in the room. Alice managed to get a handle on Edward quickly enough that I was able to come back to my senses and shoot him a potent wave of calm. It was the first time I'd been able to penetrate his intense emotional state for the past two days. It wasn't all due to the fact that he was feeling too strongly to dilute; a lot of it was because I was under such emotional stress that I couldn't seem to get a hold on myself enough to control that aspect of my ability. I had just enough working in my favor to occasionally send short bursts of tranquility to each of the members of my family intermittently, but not enough to affect their moods for long and every time I did it, I'd lose a little of the calm I had over myself. It all goes back to that boiling pot of freak the fuck out soup - I had to keep a lot of that peace for myself or I was going to explode on every creature on this boat. I felt selfish for a few moments for doing this, but then I realized that it was for everyone else's benefit as much as my own so it wasn't selfish at all to want to keep the lid on that particular delicacy. I was already a deadly motherfucker in my human life. Becoming a vampire had exponentially increased that specific craft, second only to my uncanny ability to both receive and manipulate the feelings of others.
Soon, Stefan and Elena joined us, both looking hesitant and feeling the same. Worry and regret charged throughout Stefan's demeanor and was echoed almost exactly by Elena. I wondered why Edward would be so upset about their arrival, but was quickly informed that theirs was not the visit Edward was so livid about. Alice filled us in on the details that Edward neglected to mention upon his return from the "run" he claimed he desperately needed earlier when he left the room so hastily. "Surely, you could have mentioned that you were planning on throwing that bastard through two floors of steel, stealing his sun-whatever-the-fuck ring and filling him with sparkle juice to me and Jazz? That's just too much fun to miss. Selfish," Emmett muttered, shaking his head in disappointment at Edward. That earned a scowl from Edward, Carlisle and Esme and a light chuckle from the rest of us. Even Jacob couldn't hold back a smirk.
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So there you have it.
I'm sure you all know who the visitors are :) Don't worry, I won't rehash everything that happened and make you read it all over again. We're just going to gloss over the details from Jasper's POV and then get to the good stuff. His POV adds a certain intensity to the whole thing I think. We'll find out whether or not you agree once the whole chapter is posted. Comments/reviews are always nice and make me want to write more which means you get faster updates so let me know what you think :)
Thanks for reading!
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