"Who are these Cullens?" Jasper asked for what seemed like the hundredth time. He heard the soft the soft noise of fabric touching the floor and turned away quickly. Alice changed quickly behind him into a pair of his own trousers and shirt. She sighed heavily as she rolled up the pant legs (obviously too tall) and tucked in the shirt as far as it would go. The shirt hung loosely around her body, and as much as he didn't appreciate not being able to enjoy seeing her, she looked more like a young boy. She preferred to wander the streets this way than have to worry about people wondering about a ghost like girl floating through the streets.
Alice brushed past Jasper, rolling up the sleeves to the white shirt and fastening the middle button on her flat stomach. "They are other vampires who live like I do."
Jasper stared, confused. "How do they live? Stealing clothes from friends?" Alice shut
the window on the other side of the room, obviously ignoring his teasing comment, and Jasper watched as her hands met the sunlight. With a dazzling light, Alice's hands looked like tiny diamond facets in her skin, and they threw rainbows in different directions. It was beautiful and supernatural, and Jasper held his breath.
Alice huffed. "They live only off the blood of animals," Jasper sneered at her words "and their eyes are gold. There are five of them. Carlisle created them, he's the oldest. He created his 'son', Edward, later. Then he changed his wife, Esme." Alice hurried around my room, tidying up. We would be leaving to go hunting, and Alice would show me animal blood. "Carlisle saved Rosalie, his daughter." Alice smiled, knowing something I obviously didn't. "And Rosalie brought her husband, Emmett, to him to be changed. Everyone is paired except for Edward."
Jasper pondered as Alice flitted here and there, tucking this in, straightening that, dusting there. Five vampires…together? Jasper was hardly comfortable with two (besides Alice's company). He silently congratulated the unknown vampires for their patience to put up with immortal beings, all who carried different personalities. Jasper admitted he had a hard time being with Alice. He was the brooding type; he dwelled over his problems. Alice was the bubbly, optimistic butterfly that didn't dwell much. You run into a wilting flower, she moves on to the next, in other words.
His red eyes followed Alice around the room until she was happy with the results of her cleaning. "Ready?" She asked, her voice trilling with excitement. Jasper nodded once, and Alice shot forward, taking his large hand and dashing through the hallways of the creaky two-story hotel.
"We're almost there, Jazz." Alice had resorted to using the short version of Jasper's name. It was as if she believed that if she didn't get the words out quick enough, he'd leap outward onto the pavement and attack a passerby. It irked him, quite frankly. Alice's emotions were nervous and tense, and it made him even more jumpy. Her hands were locked around his arm, and his fists were clenched to where the tendons jutted out unhandsomely. Alice and Jasper were buzzing through the street to the outskirts of town. They darted through shadowed alleyways and under the shadow of large hotels and diners. They reached the outskirts of town in twenty minutes, for they were forced to walk at human pace. Alice may not know much about their kind, but she wasn't stupid. Any human that saw them in their normal form would result in their deaths and their own.
He was pulled from his thoughts when we met the edge of town. The worn cobblestone had merged into dirt, and a forest bordered the slim road as far as their eyes could see. Thick brush and tangled brambles were forming the canopy, along with ashen trunks of trees and leafless branches. This was a more familiar forest to Jasper. Now that Alice and Jasper had made our way back to Texas for his sake, Jasper felt more at home. He knew what made its home here.
He could hear in the distance the sound of the town. Horses, buzzing voices, bells of shop doors being opened. But when Jasper turned his head, the noises of the countryside forest greeted his ears like a familiar song, or a reunion. Alice and Jasper walked silently, hand in hand, down the road. Mockingbirds sang beside them on their right, and he heard the scuttle of a jackrabbit through the ashy leaves. Far in the distance, Jasper heard a stag scraping his antlers on the trunk of a tree.
He was so tuned into the sounds of nature that he almost forgot their purpose here. "I don't know this place very well," Alice admitted, her voice a whisper, "but I know you do. You'll be able to find some sort of food here. Just hunt as you would do normally; humans don't wander out here. They'd either get tangled in the bramble and cacti, or get bitten by a rattler." He looked over at her. She was sparkling in the sunlight. Jasper nodded once. He looked at the ashen trunks beside him, suddenly realizing that he would be the monster in this wood.
"It's the only way." She murmured, her fingers lingering lightly on his arm for half a second. She sighed and turned swiftly and expertly into the woods. Jasper looked back to his left, and stalked stealthily into the canopy of wiry branches and flitting birds. Jasper briefly took in his surroundings. He could sense the cache of animals lurking around, minding their own business.
A mockingbird sang above him, flying so close to the tops of the branches that he dusted it with his tail feathers. A field mouse scuttled somewhere by his feet. Jasper closed his eyes. A breeze stirred up the scents of a small herd of deer. Jasper's eyes snapped open. He turned north, choosing to sprint soundlessly through the leaves towards the source of the scent. As he neared the deer, he could hear the wet pulsing of the small herbivores heartbeats. Through a gap in the trees, he caught a glimpse of two white-tailed deer. A small buck was grazing next to a timid doe with big brown eyes. Jasper swallowed the venom welling in his mouth and focused on the single point where the blood pulsed loudly in the thin sinewy layer of the buck's neck. He took one step sideways onto a twig, which cracked loudly. The doe's head jerked upward, her too-large ears swiveling around her. The buck copied her movements. His ears pointed towards Jasper, and Jasper knew the deer would spot him in a matter of seconds. This was his chance. With a growl deep in his chest, Jasper lunged forward onto the buck. The doe took off sprinting, her tail up, and Jasper saw briefly the grey color of her pelt blending into the forest in front of him, leaving only the buck -which now lay paralyzed beneath his bone crushing grip- and himself in the small five foot wide clearing. Jasper, utterly repulsed by the thought of having to drink animal blood after already tasting human blood, reluctantly placed his lips upon the buck's neck and drank in its thin blood.
Jasper was not satisfied with his catch. Not only was his shirt soiled with dust and some animal blood, but the burn remained in his throat. The buck could not quench the burning pain.
Jasper continued on, feeling alone. Alice hadn't left his side for all the weeks they'd spent together. They spent their days talking, and then continue to spend their nights talking. The only change was that they were free to wander the streets at that time. She told him that she planned to go to the Cullens, after already seeing herself in their family.
"Why just you?" Jasper had asked. Alice then shrugged, her expression honestly confused.
"My visions are subjective. I guess you haven't completely decided if you want to live with Carlisle and his family or not." Jasper didn't know how Alice could use their names like she knew them already. They were oblivious to her watching them.
Jasper looked about the edge of the forest, hearing distant and uninviting heartbeats. He continued on through the open field, crunching through the poor soil and long, sun bleached grass. He didn't know how far he walked like that. He only knew he had passed through the meadow and into more of a rocky slope. The scent around him hadn't changed much. Just stale scents of deer and birds and lost humans had remained.
He hadn't traveled far up the slope before he sensed a loud heartbeat around him. It was wet, and the blood was thick and pulsed slowly through the creature's veins. Venom pooled in Jasper's mouth, and he swallowed it. He closed his eyes, breathing in deeply. The mountain lion was very close to him, about fifty feet away, hidden in a thick cluster of yellow buckeye trees. The trees itself confused him; he hadn't realized he'd traveled so far out towards Edward's Plateau, which was five miles away from where the dirt road was. Focusing again, he opened his eyes and peered through the yellow blossoms on the shrub. He crept forward, knowing from the lion's deep and steady breathing that it was in slumber.
Jasper lunged, not afraid of the branches of the shrub. It wouldn't hurt him. It would just startle the lion to a point where it would retreat out of its minimum shade. The lion growled and darted out, its thick heavy paws meeting the gravely earth as it bounded up the trail. Jasper followed, his feet quickly carrying him with blinding speed behind it. Jasper caught up with the lion, his hands grasping it's sides, instantly throwing both of them onto the ground in a struggle. Claws raked down Jasper's chest, and the loud tearing of fabric and grunting and growling was all you could hear. The lion was nothing compared to Jasper, but it was putting up a fight. The cat's attacks could have been playful nips for all Jasper knew. He felt no pain, just raw ambition and thirst. With a quick movement, Jasper bit down onto the lion's neck, his teeth cutting through the layers of the fur and fat liked biting into a soft piece of bread. He drank in the thick warm blood until he was so full that the blood sloshed uncomfortably in his stomach. Jasper stood up, discarding the remnants of what was once his shirt, and taking off down the trail towards the spot where he knew Alice was waiting.