A/N: Happy Halloween. =) Just a fun little one shot. Jacob/Bella if you squint.
Beta'd by: no-fry-left-behind - thank you for everything! x3
Disclaimer: Everything belongs to Stephenie Meyer, the creator of Twilight.
"Come on, man. Keep up!"
Jacob sighed and shook his head as he continued down the dark and dank hallway towards his friends in an unhurried pace.
Up ahead, Seth shone a flashlight around, showcasing the remains of the decrepit hospital they were currently exploring.
"What's the matter, Seth? You scared, bro?" Embry looked up from his video camera and smirked over at the younger wolf.
Seth frowned at the older boy and crossed his arms, waiting for Jacob to indeed catch up to them. "Of course not. It's just that it's a big place and we should all stick together." He gave Jacob an approving nod once his friend appeared alongside of him.
Quil and Embry looked at each other for a moment before breaking into hysterics.
"Poor Sethy is scurrrrred!" Quil howled.
Both Seth and Jacob exchanged glances and rolled their eyes.
"Don't worry, buddy, your Big Bad Alpha here won't let anything hurt you!" Embry snickered.
Jacob opened his mouth to tell them to shut the hell up but Seth spoke instead. "Oh, I'm not worried. But, you two should be."
Embry and Quil stopped laughing and settled their gazes on Seth who gave them a smug smirk and a cocky wink before continuing down the hall. Jake let out a quiet chuckle at his friends' wide-eyed expressions but it didn't last long since they broke up into laughter once again. Ahead, Jacob saw Seth shake his head and disappear around the corner. He couldn't agree more with his packmate. Embry and Quil were always good for a laugh but Jacob wanted to be done with this shit already and head out just like Seth did.
Seth would never admit it but this place did make him nervous. Jacob had other reasons entirely for wanting to be done. He and Emmett were planning on playing through the new Evil Dead 2 game that had just been released. One of the perks of living with his mortal enemies: they always had up-to-date gaming systems and the latest game releases, as well as a huge entertainment center in a room dedicated to one of Emmett's known passions: beating anyone who dared take him on. It had become one of the few experiences Jacob had come to enjoy in his newfound family along with the begrudging friendship that developed with the burly vampire, complete with a never ending stream of six-packs. Embry and Quil were due to join them in the fun tonight so he couldn't understand why they were dragging this shit out when Seth was trying to hurry them through each floor of the abandoned hospital.
Embry and Quil's laughter continued down the opposite direction Seth had gone in, the two other wolves obviously choosing to go on their own separate journey. Jake sighed angrily and headed after them. Nessie had demanded they keep a video camera with them at all times, to collect any evidence they could. So where the hell were those two dipshits going? He asked them to do this one thing for him, this one thing! Couldn't they at least listen to instructions? Then again, when it came to Quil and Embry, he should have known better.
Nessie's newest obsession was ghost shows. She loved them, watched them consistently. From Kindred Spirits to that Ghost Adventures show with that super douche guy with the glasses and an Ed Hardy shirt, to even fictional ghost shows such as the recent reboot of The Exorcist. Right underneath the large flat screen at the Cullens' were all of the Paranormal Activity movies, the dvds lined up neatly in a row in the entertainment center. Ghostober had become the bane of Jacob's existence.
So here he was with his packmates, trying to track down evidence of ghosts to satiate the curiosity of a three year-old. Or a three year-old who passed for a ten year old anyway. Nessie had wanted to go with them, but her parents used her technical age against her, insisting she was too young. When Nessie realized she couldn't change her parents' minds and that it would be impossible to sneak out from underneath a vampire coven's and werewolf pack's noses, she had turned to Jacob with a bright gleam in her chocolate eyes and a hopeful grin. It was then that Jacob knew he was screwed, and sure enough, here he was, worrying about the equipment being split up and missing anything that might make his imprint happy.
He was about to reach the archway they had disappeared through when he suddenly heard a sound that made him freeze. His head whipped to the right, seeing an open doorway leading to a room shrouded in darkness. He held his breath and listened intently.
There it is again!
He turned his flashlight on and shone the bright beam into the room, stepping into the inky blackness.
He glanced around, finding papers thrown messily about. Boxes of manila folders were tossed onto their sides, spilling their contents out onto the floor. A huge office desk was sitting in the corner tilted at a peculiar angle, looking as if it had been knocked onto its side. Everywhere he looked, Jacob could see paint chipping off the walls, some sections even missing where the carcass of ancient rusted pipes could be seen inside the plaster in their stead. Windows were broken, the jagged shards of glass sticking out angrily where someone had obviously thrown a heavy object through. One pass of the light showed the stony perpetrators on the dirt-caked, faded tile flooring.
The sound came again and Jacob snapped the light at the desk in the corner. Something was definitely moving but when he strained to listen with his supernatural sense of hearing, he could only pick up a light shuffling that soon stopped. Could it be an animal? He would hardly be surprised if a rat came running through based on the state of this room, never mind the rotting building it occupied. But the more he listened, he realized he didn't hear a heartbeat or even any breathing. Though, it definitely had some size to it. Was it possible that this could indeed be supernatural?
Jacob had never been one to believe in the paranormal, despite the irony of his life. As Blondie had pointed out, rolling her golden eyes as she did, how could he not believe in something like ghosts when he turned into a giant dog every day to annoy their vampire family with his disgusting stench? Besides making him want to knock the witch's head from her shoulders, it had made it even harder to try to dissuade Nessie from her idea of a fun ghost hunt for Halloween night.
The shuffling started up again, jarring him out of his thoughts, and he took two silent footsteps towards the desk. He slowly lifted his hand that held the small digital camera Nessie insisted he bring, and aimed the lens at the corner. Using his werewolf speed and stealth, he was behind the desk in seconds and took several pictures, the flash going off repeatedly.
Once the light cleared, his eyes surveyed the space he had been shooting and saw...nothing? Jacob frowned and lifted the camera screen to peruse the photos. The sound had stopped after he took the first picture so he knew he had caught whatever it was, animal or no, off guard. He quickly scanned the pictures but found no evidence of anything ever being back there. Not even one of those orb things that Nessie had been going on about when instructing him how to take the photos properly for an investigation.
Jacob shrugged and lowered the camera. He had warned the little girl that these kinds of things didn't exist; once you were dead, you were dead. He thought of Blondie and her coven of vamps just then. Well, most of us, anyway. And then you either went on to the spirit world, continuing on your journey like his people believed, like his father was convinced his mother had, or whatever, but that was it. You didn't hang around to jump out of dark corners and scare people.
The shuffling started up again, this time louder, and it sounded like it was now coming from the door that Jacob had initially entered. He whirled towards the sound and took a step forward, camera raised once again. However, the sound stopped once he moved and he froze. He shone his flashlight near the door, finding nothing as he expected. The shuffling began again, sounding closer to him as if it was coming right at him, but once he flashed the light down at the ground, it stopped again. He stayed still, eyes scanning everywhere until he heard a breath right behind him, feeling the icy air ghost across his ear. The hair on his arms stood up on end. How the hell had he been snuck up on? He hadn't sensed anyone at all!
Jacob, tense yet shaking, whirled around on his would-be attacker and came face to face with a figure of a young woman, whose long dark hair covered any facial features she might have had there not been a blackness engulfing them. "Jacob," she whispered, drawing out his name in a soft tone.
She reached out a pale hand to touch him and Jacob yelped in fright, dropping his flashlight and camera in shock, and jumped back ten feet. The telltale tremors were rocking through his body and snarls escaped his chest as he prepared to defend himself.
"Jacob," a musical voice called out to him that made him pause and snap his head up. There, standing where the girl had just been in front of him, was Bella with her hand outstretched to him, her expression full of worry. Her chestnut hair framed her face like soft curtains and he could see deep concern etched into her golden pupils. "Are you alright? It's me, Jacob."
Jacob let her image process for a moment and sure enough, her scent engulfed his senses, causing his nose to wrinkle. "Dammit, Bells," he growled. "I nearly killed you! What the hell were you thinking, sneaking up on me like that?" Bella's hand dropped as if she had been burned. He saw the hurt encompassing her features clear as day and then, with a lighter tone, "I'm sorry but...what the hell? I thought you weren't coming." She had been invited to tag along earlier but just as he knew she would, she had declined.
The vampire goddess-like shell that had once been his human best friend let out an unnecessary sigh of relief. "I wasn't going to but Renesmee insisted that we check on you."
"We?"
Bella nodded, biting her lip and looking away in a very self-conscious human way. "I volunteered to run here and make sure you were alright."
Jacob took a few deep breaths, his fists clenched at his sides, and worked to keep the oncoming phase at bay. "Jesus, Bells, you nearly gave me a heart attack there."
He saw the corner of her lips tilt up in a smug smile when her eyes turned back to his. "What's the matter, Jacob Black? Scared of a creaky old building?"
Jacob snorted at his words that he used on Nessie that she had just thrown back at him.
Nessie pouted at him, her arms wrapped around his neck as he lifted her up into his arms like he knew she wanted. "Pleeease" she begged.
Jacob sighed heavily, causing Nessie to grin in triumph, knowing she was getting her way. "Nessie, I've got to tell you, I don't think we're going to get anything. It's just a creaky old building. There are no such things as ghosts."
Nessie stuck her bottom lip out in another pout, this time in defiance. "There are too such things as ghosts. This hospital is listed as one of the most haunted buildings in the country. Every paranormal investigator group that hunts there always comes back with some kind of evidence. It's the perfect place to get our own. Please, it would be the best Halloween for me ever!" She had even given him the puppy dog eyes.
Jacob looked to Bella and Edward for help. When he received nothing but indulgent smiles in return, he turned back to his little imprint in defeat. "Alright."
"Yay!" She nearly blinded him with her smile.
"But," he warned. "We're not staying the whole night and don't be upset if we don't get anything."
Her teeth glittered brightly in her perfect grin. "I won't," she promised.
Jacob stood straighter, subconsciously puffing his chest out. "I'm not scared of shit. Inhaling all of this asbestos crap maybe, but I ain't 'fraid of no ghost."
Bella chuckled and he smirked, coming towards her to look for his tools that he had dropped. "So, Nessie sent you to check on us, huh?"
Bella shrugged her shoulders and held out the camera and flashlight she had snatched up in the blink of an eye. He gave her a grateful nod and took the proffered items, checking to make sure the camera still worked. Thankfully, it did; he didn't want to imagine the disappointment on his Nessie's face should he return to their house later with a broken camera.
"I think she just wants to make sure you're not possessed or swallowed up in some ghost world, or something." Bella's topaz eyes danced with amusement and Jake couldn't help but laugh.
"Yeah. No chance of that happening, trust me."
Bella's gaze dipped to the camera in his hand before lifting back to meet his. "Find anything?"
Jacob smirked. "Other than a pain in the ass vampire who enjoys scaring the crap out of unsuspecting werewolves? Nope."
Bella glared at him as expected. "I do not enjoy scaring you. And I certainly wasn't trying to sneak up on you. That was never my intention. Maybe you're just losing your senses."
Jacob snorted again before walking to the door. "Right. Oh, I did hear a noise, though. Was that you moving around this whole time?"
Bella appeared alongside him in a flash of a movement, making him shudder slightly. No matter how many years it had been, he would never get completely used to that. The crease appeared between her eyebrows like it did when she was puzzling over something. "Moving around? No. Wait...didn't you just hear me come into the room?"
Jacob now had a crease in his own forehead to match hers. "No, I… Huh, actually now that I think about it, I didn't smell you coming either."
Bella rolled her eyes and crossed her arms, offended. "Yeah, well, I smelled you. All the way from outside." She wrinkled her nose. "Can't miss that wet dog smell." When Jacob didn't respond to her teasing like he normally did, Bella's smile dropped. "Why, Jake? What is it?"
Jacob continued to stare at her but was lost in deep thought. Now that he was looking at Bella, really looking at her, he realized that she was not the girl that had originally reached out to him. He swallowed tightly and tenderly lifted Bella's chin to study her closely. Bella's eyes softened and she gently covered his hand with her own, not wincing at the familiar surge of icy flames coursing through her at the contact. "Jake?" She murmured.
He pulled her a little closer, noticing her eyes staring intently into his. "It's weird that you were this close to me but I didn't smell you at all. Even if you were downwind…" His narrowed gaze swept over her features, noticing how his nasal passages burned with her close proximity. Granted, it was a scent he was used to but still...he would have known…
Bella's thumb brushed softly over his hand encased in hers.
Jacob's eyes lifted to hers again, now just realizing how close they indeed were to each other. He released her and took half a step back, lifting the camera to go through the pictures again. "I must've caught something…"
He heard a small snort and he warily glanced up. "I thought you didn't believe in any of this ghost garbage."
He arched a brow at the annoyed woman in front of him. "I don't."
Bella ran a hand through her hair in another human gesture. "Then let's just tell Renesmee that you and the boys tried but nothing was found." She bit her lip again, staring over at him, a sense of pleading in her eyes. A pleading he could feel echoing in his own chest, one that he willingly tamped down and attempted to snuff out. One he had to ignore, no matter how much his heart rate had spiked for that one moment in time. "I honestly am not sure if it is wise to allow her to continue to entertain these notions of such strange phenomena."
"Says her vampire mother," Jacob snickered.
Bella's expression melted into one of a soft smile. A smile Jacob rarely got to see anymore.
She slowly approached him and took his hand in her own once more. Both of their eyes darted down to the source of the differing temperatures to each of them. "You know, we haven't really hung out in a while."
Jacob shrugged a shoulder. "Well, you've been busy, Bells. Between reading Carlisle's library twice, cooking for me and Seth, hunting, hanging upside down from the ceiling every night or whatever it is you and your bloodsuckers do at night." Bella shot him a deadly glare which lightened when she saw the teasing glint in his gaze. "You've been busy."
She intertwined their fingers. "I'm never too busy to spend some time with my best friend, Jake." She then covered their hands with her other one, slightly grimacing at the surge of ice and fire once again. "As long as you're never too busy to spend time with me." She glanced up at him from her lashes, a hopeful gleam in her topaz orbs.
He squeezed their fingers, offering her a bright smile which caused her to grin back at him. "Never too busy for you."
She moved further into him, laying her head down on his shoulder like she had once a long time ago. He wrapped his arm around her and kissed the top of her head. They stayed like that for a few minutes, letting their temperatures and scents acclimate to one another as they usually did.
"So," Bella's musical lilt interrupted a short time later. "Should we see if we can find some ghosts?"
"Sure, sure," Jacob murmured, kissing her head one more time, and then disentangling from her. She chuckled, making him grin. "But Bells, if you're going to make me start yelling out into this empty building like some of those idiots do on TV, expecting a response, then I'm quitting here and now whether Nessie's disappointed or not."
A full laugh escaped the woman who once upon a time he could have sworn had owned half of his soul. "Of course not. However," Bella pulled a device out of the pocket of her slacks and waved it at him. "Renesmee asked me to deliver this to you, convinced that you had forgotten it, so you will be asking the questions."
Jacob scowled at the EVP recorder. He had purposely left the offending piece of machinery behind. That was his one condition of this supposed ghost hunt. He would not be talking out loud to air like Nessie saw investigators do on TV. If she wanted that to be done, she could ask Seth. Seth had given Jake a glare at that statement but one privately hatched scheme later, the recorder had gone mysteriously missing from their supplies when they arrived at the hospital. Jacob should have known Nessie would find it, hidden in Carlisle's desk drawer in the blond doctor's office. Dammit.
A knowing smirk stared back at him. "You didn't forget it, did you?"
Jacob shrugged a shoulder and swiped the recorder from her hand. "Seth was supposed to hide it better but if you want something done right... I should've known she'd check up on me."
Bella snorted in amusement. "In more ways than one. She asked if I would bring back some initial video footage after I made sure you were alright."
Jacob rolled his eyes. "Man, she sure loves this crap."
Bella took the camera from him, scanning the pictures in two seconds, before handing it back. "She really does. Alright, where should we start?"
"So, you're not going to grab the video camera and run back?" Jacob asked disbelievingly.
"Of course not. I'm going to help you hunt. After all, it's what I do best." She winked, making Jacob snigger. "Besides, we haven't done this in ages. Remember that time we snuck into the Hellerman house?"
Jacob laughed, remembering back to that night that his friends were trying to show off their masculinity, Bella had been trying to show courage in the face of fear in response to the dare Embry and Quil had thrown her way, and Jacob had been trying to show Bella how comforting and nice his embrace really was when she would get scared as he knew she would. Needless to say, all of them were proven wrong that night. Embry and Quil had run like pansies at the first loud creak of a door moving, Bella was scared shitless, and she hadn't let him hold her once as they hurried back to the car. The old Hellerman house in Forks was legendary for being haunted but in the end, a draft and rusty pipes had been the ones to scare them off.
"Now I know where she gets all this crap from."
Bella scowled. "That's not true, Jake. I was never this into it."
Jacob turned his flashlight back on. "You still had the interest, though." He then smirked over at her. "Vampires and werewolves weren't enough for ya?"
"Ghosts and hauntings are completely different," she sniffed at him, crossing her arms once more.
"Uh huh." Jacob held the camera up. "Okay, well, we're on the third floor so we should...oh crap."
Bella's head snapped towards him. "What?"
"Embry has the video camera still. They went back towards the second floor, I think. So why don't we-"
Suddenly, a loud scream could be heard. "JACOB!"
Bella and Jacob both froze, staring at each other, before taking off to find the young wolf calling out for him. With their supernatural speed, they made it to the sixth floor within seconds. There, they found Seth standing stock still, his back to them. Embry and Quil arrived moments after they did.
"Seth, what the hell?" Jacob yelled.
Seth didn't say anything, only stared straight ahead. Jacob was about to give him one hell of a tongue lashing for scaring the hell out of him and Bella when he noticed the two younger wolves in front of Seth, paler than he had ever seen them. They were shaking and both eyes were wide in fear. Colin was trying unsuccessfully to step back, pulling Brady by his sleeve, but the latter was freaking out.
Embry and Quil who normally would be making fun of the boys were statues as well, both of their eyes as big as dinner plates. Incredibly, Embry somehow had the presence of mind to lift his video camera and continue shooting footage. Bella let out a small gasp, making Jacob glance over at her, finding her staring in the same direction as the wolves. Only then did he look to see what everyone was staring at. What he saw made his own jaw drop.
A figure of a woman was standing at the end of the hallway, near a window. She stared back at them, a menacing scowl on her lovely face. An old nurse's uniform adorned her figure and a tiny white hat sat on her head.
Even though they were a good fifty feet away from her, they could all see her clearly with their supernatural eyesight and hear her with their attuned hearing. The problem was that no heart beats or breath sounds were heard. No diamond like shell sat in place of her skin even though her outfit was outdated by at least a century, if not more. She didn't make a sound. But even all of that would not have induced the chills wracking through Jacob at that very moment. Not even when Bella grabbed his hand in her own shock. No, what caused them all to pause in terror was the beam of moonlight shining through the window next to the unknown woman. The beam that passed right through where her hips and legs should be. They saw her blurry outline but they knew it wasn't due to phasing. She was completely see through, having no solid outline.
"Who are you?" Brady squeaked out.
The woman smiled, a smile without any warmth, and nodded her head once before vanishing right before their eyes. Brady and Colin were spooked and booked it out of there, not stopping at Jacob's yelling of their names. Seth let out a breath and turned to face them, his eyes still wide and his face pale just as the younger boys had been. Quil and Embry stared at each other. "Holy shit, dude," Quil whispered.
Still frozen in shock, no one moved a muscle, unsure of what they had just seen. "D-Did you get that?" Seth rasped out.
Embry was still shooting down the hallway though not paying attention, still taken aback himself. "Uh, yeah...I think so."
They all glanced back and forth at each other for a moment. Nobody seemed to know what to say, or do.
Jacob was about to suggest they get the hell out of there when he heard the familiar shuffling sound from before. Everyone stopped and he realized they all heard it, too. They all turned in the direction of the sound, Quil unthinkingly shining his flashlight in its direction. What they saw horrified them more than the ghostly woman had.
Crawling along the wall was a black shadow figure, moving quickly onto the ceiling to avoid the beam of Quil's flashlight. It moved at a terrifying speed towards them, twisting and turning in unnatural ways that they all had never seen. A shriek sounded next to them and Quil dropped his light, running for the staircase. A foul smell accompanied his departure and through his horror, Jacob recognized the scent, wrinkling his nose. Not that he could blame his old friend, he was pretty close to doing that himself. Especially, when the shadow figure twisted, ran down the wall and landed on the floor, hurrying towards them in the creepiest movement Jacob had ever seen. And he had fought a lot of leeches, tearing their heads from their bodies which continued to wriggle around until being dismembered and burned to ashes.
Seth was a white streak that was gone within seconds. Embry followed in his wake down the staircase, camera forgotten on the floor where he had dropped it.
"Jake," Bella whimpered.
He turned wide eyes onto the vampire on his right who was grabbing at his hand, terrified and frozen in fear, surprising him. If she was scared…
Jacob gripped her hand tightly and turned them back to the staircase, intent on getting them out of there and ignoring the shuffling sound right behind them. He stopped again, seeing the girl from the room downstairs that he he had seen earlier, blocking their escape. She reached out her hand, though this time, her features were clear as day. Her face was gnarled as if she had been in some great accident, her hair parting to show the wide jagged teeth in her malicious grin. When her expression began to vibrate and morph as she rushed towards him, when Bella's loud gasp sounded, Jacob didn't wait to see what her face would change into.
A quick glance to his left showed another window.
"Jacob!" Bella shrieked behind him. He felt her hands clawing at his in fright and instinctively, Jacob changed course and led them right through the window, not caring one bit about the glass. During the free fall, he released Bella's hand and phased. In seconds, Bella landed on her feet while he landed on all fours next to her, glass shards raining down all around them. A growl rumbled out of his chest, Bella hissed and leaned into a crouch, and they both turned to stare up at the hole they had just created, ready to face whatever came after them.
When nothing did, when nothing showed itself, Bella eased into a standing position, still staring. The other wolves, already in wolf form, burst out of the building and took off, almost as if hell hounds were nipping at their feet as they went. Jacob turned his massive head to see the dark streaks disappear over the hill and into the surrounding woods.
"What the hell did we just see, Jake?"
Surprised at the rare curse emitting from Bella's lips, Jacob glanced over at her, ears flattened against his head. She seemed just as terrified as he was. He couldn't be sure what they had seen but he knew he'd rather not have witnessed it. From the look on Bella's face, he was pretty sure she echoed that sentiment.
Before he could snuffle at her in response, a loud screaming wail sounded from the building they had just escaped. One exchanged look between the vampire and werewolf resulted in them both turning and running far away from that damned place, never to return.
"Are you sure you didn't get anything?" Renesmee whined.
Bella sat still as a statue on the expensive leather couch, her hand firmly in Jacob's, the latter's thumb brushing over her skin reassuringly.
"Renesmee," Edward softly admonished. "The pack did as you asked. That should be enough." His gaze was glued to his wife who had burst into the house earlier, sat down, and hadn't moved since. Jacob, after hurrying to phase and dress in the extra clothes left lying around the property for the pack, raced in after her. Jacob plopped down next to Bella, taking her hand, and stayed like that with her the entire time they had been back. Bella hadn't said a word or moved a muscle. She just stared straight ahead, unseeing.
Edward began to demand an explanation to Bella's catatonic state but once Jacob thought some images of their experience straight at him, the vampire relented. Truth be told, he wasn't quite sure what to make of any of it either. He had been around for more than a century and yet he had never come across any true evidence of an afterlife existing. Until now.
He had tried once to move towards her, wanting to give her the solace she seemed to desperately need, but instead she stiffened and moved closer to Jacob. The latter gave him a sheepish smile and Edward recoiled, hurt, and failing to understand why the dog needed to be the one she sought comfort from.
She's just freaked out. I don't really understand any of it, either, but give her some time, Ed. She'll come around.
Edward gave an imperceptible nod and took a seat on a chair, still keeping his gaze trained on his frozen wife.
"But Daddy, look." Renesmee rewound the footage that Bella had miraculously retrieved before her harrowing escape with Jacob. On the television screen, an empty hallway stared back at them and Brady's squeak of "Who are you?" could be heard. Right before the two young wolves turned tail and ran. Quil whispered something off screen, Seth and Embry both murmured to each other, and then the camera dropped to the ground, the images immediately disappearing and turning black. "Nothing."
She rewound the footage back again, this time going further to show Quil messing around on camera and Embry talking to him from offscreen.
"Em, Em! Get my side profile!" Quil turned his face in what he obviously assumed was a striking tilt of his head.
Embry zoomed into his right nostril instead where a little something could just be seen, poking out. "Oh yeah, that's very sexy. Girls will be all over this once I show 'em. In fact," Embry said in a sarcastic tone. "Can't wait to show this to Clairebear in a few years."
"Eat shit and die," Quil threw back at him, turning to walk away and making Embry snicker.
"See? All they did was make fun of each other. They didn't get anything! They didn't even use my EVP recorder." Renesmee tossed the remote away and huffed back into her chair, her arms crossed.
Edward went to reprimand her again when Jacob cleared his throat. "Nessie." The little girl turned her pout up at her wolf. "We tried our best. I told you, these things don't exist."
Edward's eyes snapped to Jacob. Surprisingly, so did Bella's.
Jacob's gaze settled on the little girl. "Brady got scared because he thought he saw something. The rest of us didn't and we were all in the room with him."
"But-"
"No one saw anything." He leveled his stare at her, willing her to hear him, but also squeezed Bella's hand in his. He had already used the alpha command on the wolves, instructing them to never tell Nessie what happened in the abandoned hospital. The guys' embarrassment at a strong pack of werewolves having fled the scene along with Quil's mortification that Embry would make sure to never let him live down for years, they had all willingly submitted to the command. "We didn't hear, see, or experience anything. They don't exist, Nessie."
She harrumphed and got to her feet, stomping out of the room. Edward gave Jacob an understanding nod, let his eyes linger on Bella a moment longer, and then followed after his daughter. Edward understood Jacob's reason for the deception and supported it. He had wanted this current fad for paranormal investigating that Renesmee seemed so engaged in to be over with even before reading Jacob's disturbing thoughts tonight. He was tired of what he considered to be the low quality programming his daughter subjected herself and the rest of their family to on a daily basis. She had vampire parents and werewolf friends, wasn't that enough supernatural for her? At times, she reminded him so much of her mother…
Once they were the only two in the room, Jacob squeezed Bella's hand again. "You know why, right?"
Bella's eyes narrowed before turning to stare at the black television screen. "She doesn't belong there."
Jacob arched a brow at Bella's odd response but then nodded in agreement. Had Nessie heard that they had indeed seen something but didn't have evidence, she would push to go back. And unless they all banded together and kept insisting it was a dead end, no pun intended, Nessie would soon want to search any reported haunted locations herself. It was best to put the pin in this grenade now.
He sighed tiredly, continuing to brush his thumb over the back of Bella's hand soothingly. He had also asked Edward through his thoughts to tell Emmett that The Evil Dead 2 could wait. Truthfully, Jacob wasn't sure he would ever be able to enjoy supernatural horror games the same way he had in the past. Not after tonight. The monsters were all too real. It turned out that vampires and werewolves weren't the only paranormal creatures to exist in the world. What was next, witches? Jacob was in no hurry to find out.
They could hear the faint cajoling Edward murmured to Renesmee, persuading his daughter to run with him to join their family hunting, thus giving her mother some time to herself. The little girl begrudgingly agreed and in a whisper of movement, they were gone. And Jacob and Bella were alone. Again.
Jacob let out his heaviest sigh yet, choosing to lay his head back against the cushion, and turning to look at Bella. "Bells, y'okay?"
"I'm fine," she stated.
"You know we're safe now, right? We're back home, and none of that shit is going to happen to us again. You know that, right?" When she didn't respond, Jacob slowly lifted his head up, his brows furrowing. "Bells?"
Still no response.
"Honey?" He whispered to her, rubbing the backs of his fingers across her cheek tenderly.
It was then that Bella's eyes snapped to his, making him tense. Her brilliant gold was gone, replaced by a darker color that he had never seen before. The corner of her mouth tilted up in an eerie grin that made warning bells go off in his head. "You're right, Jacob. We are home," she spoke in what sounded like three different voices of all possible ranges at the same time. She reached out a hand to him and within seconds, her features swam and morphed into the girl he had seen at the hospital, her mouth opening impossibly wide and her body twisting in an unnatural way and trying to climb onto him. She growled and struck at him as a snake would, almost if she were trying to swallow him whole.
Jacob screamed and jumped back, knocking the couch over. The lights flickered and objects flew through the air, smashing into the walls. Jacob could hear a loud roar surrounding them that suddenly shattered all of the windows. The floor rumbled beneath him and he struggled to stand his ground. In the midst of this tornado of chaos, while he tried to dodge vases and picture frames in flight, he could see Bella slowly get to her feet, her gaze still trained on him. She reached out a hand and began to move towards him, her fearsome grin still in place. Jacob backed up only to feel icy breath in his ear once again. He pivoted and came face to face with the ancient nurse whose mouth opened in a banshee scream that left Jacob yelling in pain and covering his ears.
Jacob immediately phased inside the house and burst through the front door, not caring as the wood and plaster exploded into the air and rained large splinters down all around his large body. Maniacal laughter sounded from the house and Jacob pushed himself to run faster, faster than he ever had before in his life.
Just before he was out of earshot, however, he could've sworn he heard one last phrase from that horrible mix of voices over the chaos inside the house: "Are you sure we're not real?"
Jacob raced deeper into the trees. He'd come back for Bella once he was able to stop shaking and call a priest.