Something shifted within her. Bella went for the woman's face with her hands, but met her neck with her teeth. It wasn't flesh her jaws clamped onto, it was hard and textured like clay. One more snap, and teeth punctured the porcelain skin. Something vile poured onto her tongue: peppery, thick, sharp. Bella shook her head to spit out the substance, but in doing so took the woman's head clean off her shoulders. It fell into a puddle and sank face down.
The body continued with its attack: limbs flailed; fingers curled into claws, slashing through her skin. Bella whimpered, but her baby sister's presence behind her forced her to push forwards. An arm clattered away from them, followed by a leg. And then Charlotte began to snuffle.
Bella dropped the body and stood, holding it down. She turned to her sister and her eyes met the gaze of a gigantic, hairy beast. A La Push wolf, she decided; a member of the pack her parents cared for.
It seemed fairly friendly, chuffing into Charlotte's wispy hair, but wiping its jowls along her neck seemed a step too far. Bella decided not to trust it with the baby.
Another wolf darted from behind the house, and sniffed over the clay woman's discarded head. With one paw, it thumped at the body part, which bobbed and rolled in the deep puddle, face returning to the surface hissing and spitting. The body twitched almost instinctively, but Bella bounced it into submission. The wolves' heads swayed curiously.
And then the one beside her sister started to grow. Legs lengthened, and claws rounded into fingers. The pelt faded, replaced by skin. The great shaggy head became humanoid, snout shrinking and teeth conferring. It balanced on hind paws, and stood as if human. And then Bella realised, it was human. It was her Grandfather. She barked out a scream and stepped off the body.
The remaining arm and leg took this opportunity to struggle off towards the neglected head, but without words Grandfather drew a lighter and lobbed it at the torso. Flames licked along the ground, rendering all nearby limbs to blackened ash. He gestured Bella aside as though moving her away from his view of a television, and took out another lighter for the head.
The baby clapped her hands as if entertained by this horror. It must be the adrenaline, Bella thought, for she must be chilled now in the rain. Where previously the water butt had cleaned, now mud coated those tiny, fat features.
And Bella felt cold – achingly so.
Her Grandfather approached, and swept one of his big hands over her head.
"Hello cub."
He scratched her neck, and Bella thought how strange it was that it felt nice – comforting. She'd never had someone scratch her neck before.
"Let's get you back to human, eh?"
Bella stared at her Grandfather incomprehensibly. She was human. What else could she be but human?
"Just think of making a cup of tea with your hands, or eating sandwich. Or washing your hair, or tying shoe laces…" She must have focused on one of those ideas, for a moment later his hands were patting her shoulders in such encouragement that was knocked sideways into the dirt.
How strange, she thought, that my clothes have disappeared.
Her mind paused.
My clothes have disappeared!
"What did you do with my jeans, Grandfather?! Where is my t-shirt?" She regarded him with growing horror as she realised he too was lacking these basic amenities. "Why are you naked?"
To her confusion and embarrassment, her Grandfather recoiled, and told her "You're Bella!"
"Of course I am! Why are we naked?"
"You're Bella." He repeated, and then caught a garment the other wolf retrieved from the hedgerows and flung in their direction. "Wear that, it's long."
She pulled the sopping outfit over her head, and tucked it over her knees. One of Uncle Connor's favourite t-shirts. What was this doing in their driveway?
Grandfather shimmied into a pair of cargo pants, and attended now to Charlotte. She sneezed and coughed, and huddled into his bare chest with profoundly less compunctions than Bella.
"You're Bella." He huffed, "Too young to phase."
"Phase?" She shivered in the t-shirt, wondering how she could be so completely hot one minute and icy the next. The other wolf moved forwards, panting, and set its paw delicately over the hand that fisted in her borrowed t-shirt.
"Are you injured, Bella?"
"No." She didn't feel injured, she just felt cold.
"Let's get to Old Quil's place." He addressed the wolf this time.