Twilight (Twilight, #1)

by Stephenie Meyer

And then his cold, marble lips pressed very softly against mine. What neither of us was prepared for was my response. Blood boiled under my skin, burned in my lips. My breath came in a wild gasp. My fingers knotted in his hair, clutching him to me. My lips parted as I breathed in his heady scent.

“You’re intoxicated by my very presence.”

There was no way around it; I couldn’t resist him in anything.

“I was born in Chicago in 1901.”

“Carlisle found me in a hospital in the summer of 1918. I was seventeen, and dying of the Spanish influenza.”

“I don’t remember it well—it was a very long time ago, and human memories fade.”

“I do remember how it felt, when Carlisle saved me. It’s not an easy thing, not something you could forget.” “Your parents?”

“They had already died from the disease. I was alone. That was why he chose me. In all the chaos of the epidemic, no o...

“How did he… sa...

“It was difficult. Not many of us have the restraint necessary to accomplish it. But Carlisle has always been the most humane, the most compassionate of us.… I don’t think you could find his equal throughout all of history.”

“For me, it was merely very, very painful.”

“Carlisle brought Rosalie to our family next. I didn’t realize till much later that he was hoping she would be to me what Esme was to him—he was careful with his thoughts around me.” He

“But she was never more than a sister. It was only two years later that she found Emmett. She was hunting—we were in Appalachia at the time—and found a bear about to finish him off. She carried him back to Carlisle, more than a hundred miles, afraid she wouldn’t be able to do it herself. I’m only beginning to guess how difficult that journey was for her.”

“Alice and Jasper are two very rare creatures. They both developed a conscience, as we refer to it, with no outside guidance. Jasper belonged to another… family, a very different kind of family. He became depressed, and he wandered on his own. Alice found him. Like me, she has certain gifts above and beyond the norm for our kind.”

“Really?”

“But you said you were the only one who could hear people’s thoughts.” “That’s true. She knows other things. She sees things—things that might happen, things that are coming. But it’s very subje...

“What kinds of things does she see?” “She saw Jasper and knew that he was looking for her before he knew it himself. She saw Carlisle and our family, and they came together to find us. She’s most sensitive to non-humans. She always sees, for example, when another group of our kind is coming near. And any threat they may pose.”

“And Alice came from another family, like Jasper?” “No, and that is a mystery. Alice doesn’t remember her human life at all. And she doesn’t know who created her. She awoke alone. Whoever made her walked away, and none of us understand why, or how, he could. If she hadn’t had that other sense, if she hadn’t seen Jasper and Carlisle and known that she would someday become one of us, she probably would have turned into a total savage.”

“Don’t be self-conscious,”

“If I could dream at all, it would be about you. And I’m not ashamed of it.”

“For almost ninety years I’ve walked among my kind, and yours… all the time thinking I was complete in myself, not realizing what I was seeking. And not finding anything, because you weren’t alive yet.”

“Why can you read minds—why only you? And Alice, seeing the future… why does that happen?”

“We don’t really know. Carlisle has a theory… he believes that we all bring something of our strongest human traits with us into the next life, where they are intensified—like our minds, and our senses. He thinks that I must have already been very sensitive to the thoughts of those around me. And that Alice had some precognition, wherever she was.”

“What did he bring into the next life, and the others?” “Carlisle brought his compassion. Esme brought her ability to love passionately. Emmett brought his strength, Rosalie her...

“Jasper is very interesting. He was quite charismatic in his first life, able to influence those around him to see things his way. Now he is able to manipulate the emotions of those around him—calm down a room of angry people, for example, o...

“I love you,” I whispered. “You are my life now,” he answered simply.

remembered all my human frailties. So I clutched my throat with both hands and stared at him with wide eyes. Shock crossed his face. “Kidding!” I snickered. “And you said I couldn’t act!” He frowned in disgust. “That wasn’t funny.”

“I’m not afraid of them,” I explained. “I’m afraid they won’t… like me. Won’t they be, well, surprised that you would bring someone… like me… home to meet them? Do they know that I know about them?”

“Are you going to tell Charlie I’m your boyfriend or not?”

“Will you be?”

“Will you really be here?”

“As long as you w...

“I’ll always wa...

“Fore...

“You… made… me… faint,” I accused him dizzily.

“No—that wasn’t the same kind of fainting at all. I don’t know what happened.” I shook my head apologetically. “I think I forgot to breathe.”

He measured my expression for a moment. “I’m very partial to that color with your skin,” he offered unexpectedly. I flushed with pleasure, and looked away.

I’d seen Dr. Cullen before, of course, yet I couldn’t help but be struck again by his youth, his outrageous perfection. At his side was Esme, I assumed, the only one of the family I’d never seen before. She had the same pale, beautiful features as the rest of them. Something about her heart-shaped face, her billows of soft, caramel-colored hair, reminded me of the ingenues of the silent-movie era. She was small, slender, yet less angular, more rounded than the others. They were both dressed casually, in light colors that matched the inside of the house. They smiled in welcome, but made no move to approach us. Trying not to frighten me, I guessed.

“It’s so light… so open.”

“It’s the one place we never have to hide.”

“Carlisle was born in London, in the sixteen-forties, he believes. Time wasn’t marked as accurately then, for the common people anyway. It was just before Cromwell’s rule, though.”

“He was the only son of an Anglican pastor. His mother died giving birth to him. His father was an intolerant man. As the Protestants came into power, he was enthusiastic in his persecution of Roman Catholics and other religions. He also believed very strongly in the reality of evil. He led hunts for witches, werewolves… and vampires.”

“When he knew what he had become,”

“he rebelled against it. He tried to destroy himself. But that’s not easily done.”

“...

“He jumped from great...

“He tried to drown himself in the ocean… but he was young to the new life, and very strong. It is amazing that he was able to resist… feeding… while he was still so new. The instinct is more powerful then, it takes over everything. But he was so repelled by him...

“So he grew very hungry, and eventually weak. He strayed as far as he could from the human populace, recognizing that his willpower was weakening, too. For months he wandered by night, seeking the loneliest places, loathing himself. “One night, a herd of deer passed his hiding place. He was so wild with thirst that he attacked without a thought. His strength returned and he realized there was an alternative to being the vile monster he feared. Had he not eaten venison in his former life? Over the next months his new philosophy was born. He could exist without being a demon. He found himself again. “He began to make better use of his time. He’d always been intelligent, eager to learn. Now he had unlimited time before him. He studied by night, planned by day. He swam to France and—”

“You will be watching,” Edward clarified. “We will be playing baseball.” I rolled my eyes. “Vampires like baseball?” “It’s the American pastime,” he said with mock solemnity.

The beautiful one, the godlike one…