Breaking Dawn

Chapter 6

Harry's POV

When does the goddamned sun set in this place? He checks the sun's progress - no different from twenty seconds ago - then studies his brother's tired visage.

"Haz, I can't convince Liam to give up on you, not when I won't," Zayn says. "Just cooperate with us. Life can be good again."

Zayn is much altered from how he'd been as a human. Back then, he'd been lighthearted. Women had found him charming, and he'd had few cares past servicing every pretty maid within a hundred-mile radius.

All I had was cares, no time for women, and a distinct lack of charm.

"Tell me what you've been doing these three hundred years. I haven't seen a glimpse of you since the night right after you died and rose."

He hates to be reminded of that. Swords in hand, he had been defending their four gravely ill sisters and father from marauding Russian soldiers. Two against battalions; they'd had no chance. Liam, Zayn, and Niall had returned home to find five dead from plague and him mortally wounded, barely clinging to life.

Unconscious, he hadn't been able to fight off Liam when he'd dripped his vampiric blood down his throat. He'd woken a monster.

He had not wanted to be turned, but then he'd had quite a bit more reason to resent the betrayal. Changed to the very thing I'd been conditioned to hate and trained to destroy...

"Don't want to tell me?" Zayn says. "Then I'll leave tonight to dig on my own, now that I know what you were - "

"What I am. I'm still a killer for hire."

"Look at yourself." Zayn seems to stifle his exasperation. "Who'd hire you? Your thought aren't even your own."

His face heats. "Fuck off, Zayn." His brother makes him sound like a washed-up failure. Which he doesn't give a damn about - except that he doesn't want the female to believe this. The one who isn't real. The one I'm about to see.

Almost sunset... any second now. At the window she flickers in the last of the muted light. He begins to make out a more distinct shape.

"Very well," Zayn says as he stands. "Haz, you can resist us because you hate what we are or because you resent our actions. But don't give up. Try to have clear thoughts that are your own." He gives a grin, a hint of the old Zayn. "What am I saying? If you don't try, we won't exceed." He traces out.

Shortly after, Niall enters and turns on the overhead light. The glare blazes, and she disappears.

"Turn it off!"

"What? Why?"

"My eyes pain me. Do it."

With a shrug, Niall flips off the switch, then sits with his long legs stretched out in front of him. "I understand the anger you feel for Liam and Zayn," Niall begins in a measured tone. "I hated them too, you know. For so long, I yearned for revenge when they turned me years before you. But life can be good again. Better than ever before."

"According to you? There's nothing wrong with my life." Everything's wrong with my life.... How much longer till I can see her?

"Then you'll like it even better sharing it with your fated Bride," Niall continues. "She'll calm you, and will help you find clarity. I was on the edge myself before I met mine. One day I had nothing, no real home, no friends, no family. Then as soon as I recognized her as mine, suddenly there was a possibility."