Chapter 4 Christmas Yet to Come

I set the phone back down for the tenth time and stared morosely out the frosted window watching the snow fall hypnotically. I’d sworn that I would never bother Bella again, vowed to let her live her life without my interference, and now, because of one uncouth ghost, I was inches from breaking that vow.

Was it wrong that I was both pleased and torn up that Bella still thought about me to such a degree, that she hadn’t moved on any more than I had? Instead of a bevy of nameless lovers she had one, but she felt no more for him than I did for the women I bedded.

No, I had to push all thoughts of her out of my mind. It never led to anything good. The last time I’d had a sliver of hope for us, I’d had it whisked away by Alice agreeing to turn Bella. That had been the darkest time of my existence.

The power flicked off leaving the darkened room aglow by my computer screen and then even it blanked out which shouldn’t have happened since it did have a battery.

I could hear the crackling sound of ice forming a thick coating across the window keeping even the dark night sky from filtering through.

I sat back down on the couch and crossed one ankle across my knee and waited for the last of my otherworldly visitors to reveal herself. “You guys really do have a flair for dramatics,” I said to my hidden visitor.

The fire in the fireplace roared to life and just as quickly snuffed itself out. From the smoke a woman clad in a floor length leather coat formed, her ghostly pale skin the only thing shining in a sea of darkness. Her mane of hair was barely perceptible even to my vampire eyes as it seemed made of the very darkness itself.

She looked down her straight nose, arrogance a cloak around her, and motioned me forward.

“What, no introductions?”

“To what point, Vampire? For the next few hours you are under my dominion. Do captors often make introductions? I see no point in such trivial niceties.”

She drew one hand from her pocket holding a black cigarette with a gold band and raised it to her dark lips. When she exhaled, everything vanished. Time lost all meaning as I plummeted through time and space. There was nothing to see or hear and it felt like days had passed when I finally crashed into frozen earth outside of a decrepit house. I managed to get to my feet and immediately recognized the house of an elderly couple. I was back in Forks.