Midnight Sun (The Twilight Saga #5) - Stephenie Meyer Page 0,81

efficiently as I killed all the rest.

It might have gone differently if two of his victims had not been in that basement of horrors when I discovered him. Two young women, already badly injured. Though I carried them both to a hospital at the greatest speed I was capable of, only one survived.

I hadn’t had time to drink his blood. That didn’t matter. There were so many others who deserved to die.

Like this Lanny. He was an atrocity, too, but surely not worse than the one I’d remembered. Why did it feel right then, imperative, that he suffer so much more?

But first—

“Bella?” I asked through my teeth.

“Yes?” she responded huskily. She cleared her throat.

“Are you all right?” That was really the most important thing, the first priority. Retribution was secondary. I knew that, but my body was so filled with rage that it was hard to think.

“Yes.” Her voice was still thick—with fear, no doubt.

And so I could not leave her.

Even if she wasn’t at constant risk for some infuriating reason—some joke the universe was playing on me—even if I could be sure that she would be perfectly safe in my absence, I could not leave her alone in the dark.

She must be so frightened.

Yet I was in no condition to comfort her—even if I knew exactly how that was to be accomplished, which I did not. Surely she could feel the brutality radiating out of me, surely that much was obvious. I would frighten her even more if I could not calm the lust for slaughter boiling inside me.

I needed to think about something else.

“Distract me, please,” I pleaded.

“I’m sorry, what?”

I barely had enough control to try to explain what I needed.

“Just…” I couldn’t think of how to express it. I picked the closest word I could think of. “Prattle about something unimportant until I calm down.” It was a poor word choice, I realized as soon as it was out, but I couldn’t find much room to care. Only the fact that she needed me held me inside the car. I could hear the man’s thoughts, his disappointment and anger. I knew where to find him. I closed my eyes, wishing that I couldn’t see anyway.

“Um…” She hesitated—trying to make sense of my request, I imagined, or perhaps offended?—then she continued. “I’m going to run over Tyler Crowley tomorrow before school?” She said this like it was a question.

Yes—this was what I needed. Of course Bella would come up with something unexpected. As it had been before, the threat of violence coming through her lips was jarring, comical. If I had not been burning with the urge to kill, I would have laughed.

“Why?” I barked out, to force her to speak again.

“He’s telling everyone that he’s taking me to prom,” she said, her voice filled with outrage. “Either he’s insane or he’s still trying to make up for almost killing me last… well you remember it,” she inserted dryly. “And he thinks prom is somehow the correct way to do this. So I figure if I endanger his life, then we’re even, and he can’t keep trying to make amends. I don’t need enemies and maybe Lauren would back off if he left me alone. I might have to total his Sentra, though,” she went on, thoughtful now. “If he doesn’t have a ride, he can’t take anyone to prom.…”

It was encouraging to see that she sometimes got things wrong. Tyler’s persistence had nothing to do with the accident. She didn’t seem to understand the appeal she held for the human boys at the high school. Did she not see the appeal she had for me, either?

Ah, it was working. The baffling processes of her mind were always engrossing. I was beginning to gain control of myself, to see something beyond vengeance and slaughter.

“I heard about that,” I told her. She had stopped talking, and I needed her to continue.

“You did?” she asked incredulously. And then her voice was angrier than before. “If he’s paralyzed from the neck down, he can’t go to the prom, either.”

I wished there was some way I could ask her to continue with the threats of death and bodily harm without sounding insane. She couldn’t have picked a better way to calm me. And her words—just sarcasm in her case, hyperbole—were a reminder I dearly needed in this moment.

I sighed, and opened my eyes.

“Better?” she asked timidly.

“Not really.”

No, I was calmer, but not better. Because I’d just realized that I could not kill