Chapter 3
Nov 30
In the little town of Forks, Washington, you can't tell the difference between sunrise or sunset. Both are a dark dreary grey with the sun hidden behind thick clouds that hardly ever dissipate.
But I have come to love the sky and the constant cover of clouds. There is nothing bright to hurt my eyes except new florescent lights at school. The gloomy quilt of fog has become like a security blanket to me, especially now sitting on the cliffs that over look the ocean, curled up into my best friends' warm body and a steaming cup of hot chocolate clutched between my freezing fingers.
After two weeks, everything has changed in my sanctuary except for Jake.
"Any word of Quil and Embry?" I ask.
"No Isa." He says softly. "They're still hanging out with that Sam guy and they keep avoiding me."
I sigh and snuggle deeper into his warmth. "It scares me." He admits. "They used to hate Sam and now they're following him around like he's a god? It just doesn't make sense! And they're always looking at me like they're already planning my funeral."
"What?" I ask sitting up straighter.
He shakes his head. "It's probably nothing. It's just that I feel like something bad is going to happen to me, and they already know what's going to happen."
"Have you told Billy?"
"The elders say that Sam is protecting the tribe. Protecting the tribe from what?!" He seethes, hands shaking slightly.
"Jay, can you promise me something?" I ask hesitantly.
"Anything." He says without hesitation.
"Promise me that you'll never leave me."
He takes me by my shoulders and looks me seriously in the eye. "I promise you Isa, that I will never hurt you like they did, and that I will never leave you."
"Good." I say sniffing. "Cause if you do, I'll miss my mountain."
"And I'd miss my pebble."
I laugh despite my tears and hug him tightly only to pull back soon after with a frown.
"Are you okay Jake, you're burning up." What I once thought to be a comfortable warmth, I now realize is unnaturally hot.
"I have been feeling a little weird all day." He shrugs. "But not bad."
"I think you should go home Jacob."
He sighs and hauls himself to his feet. "Fine, you coming too?"
"Naw." I say handing him my mostly empty mug. "I'll find my way back in a bit. Get some rest Jake, and call me when you feel better."
He nods. "And you don't go tripping off any cliffs while I'm gone."
"We'll see." I smile.
"Hmm." He disappears into the thick foliage.
Jake doesn't end up calling me the next few days and by the end of the third finds me calling him. It's Billy who picks up the phone, telling me that Jake is sick with pneumonia.
Another week passes with me calling at the end of everyday to check up, only to hang up with the same results as the day before. I almost drove down there a few times, only stopping when Billy forbade it.
Doctor said no visitors.
So I have to go a week and a half without my sun, and grips of the dark quickly take hold, restricting my breathing at times and I even have to pull over on the side of the road one time, to keep from crashing and hold my sides together to press the stabbing shards of my heart at bay.
I miss my sun, my best friend.
So on Friday after school, I drive straight down to the reservation and pull up to the house. Doctors be damned, I'm going to visit my best friend when he's sick.
He's probably board out of his mind; he could never sit still for long.
It's raining when I get out of my truck and I trudge my way up to the door, knocking loudly when I get there. The certain shifts and I see Billy's face as he looks out at me before he disappears once more.
He doesn't open the door, so after a long five minutes, I stomp back to my truck in the freezing cold and sit to wait.
I would wait all night if I had to; I wasn't leaving until I saw my Jay.
I pull out my Calculus homework to work on as I wait, somehow knowing that it would be a while. And I was right.
Hours had past by the time movement from the woods catch my attention.
And Jacob emerges, bare chested and stomping towards me. I scramble to get out of the truck and trip my way towards him at a faster pace than normal.
The rain had only gotten heavier during my wait so every step has me sliding and I have to shout over the loud roar.
"What the heck are you doing out here, I thought you have pneumonia?!" He stops five feet away and I also come to an abrupt stop when I notice his unfriendly stance. "Jake?"
He stands ridged as a board, hands trembling terribly, though not in fear. He's angry- no, furious. At me.
"Get out of here Bella, you shouldn't have come." I flinch. He hardly ever calls me Bella anymore; to him I'm always his Isa, and he's my Jay. What happened to him?
"Jay, what's wrong, what's going on? You shouldn't be out here dressed like that, it's freezing."
"Bella." He says sternly. "Go home." The forest ripples with life and four more figures emerge, two of them very familiar yet so different than I last saw them. Embry and Quil flank Sam with another monstrous boy, one that I know to be named Paul.
I whip my head back to Jacob, finally noticing a major difference that makes this Jacob, not my Jay.
His beautiful hair has been cut short, looking like it had been hacked off with a knife. His beautiful hair that he used to take so much pride in. His beautiful hair that I used to play with on lazy days where we would just sit in front of the tv and eat pizza.
All of what made Jacob my Jay, was gone. His kindness, his warm smile, his hair, even his clumsiness was all gone.
I turn to Sam, ignoring the strange rumbles that come from Paul and march forward to jab him in the chest. "What did you do to him?! What did you do to Quil and Embry?!"
"This is not Sam's fault Bella, now you need to leave." Jake says, pulling me back from the eerily calm older boy.
"I am not leaving you alone with him." I spit. "You're my friend and so are they," I jab my fingers at my other best friends, " -and there's no way in hell that I'm leaving you guys with that self-centered prick of a man-"
"Bella!" He shouts so loud that it startles me into silence. Both his arms are shaking in repressed anger and he looks so scary at that moment that I can't help but take a step back.
He takes a deep calming breath and the quivering subsides slightly. He stares at me with a level gaze. "I don't think it's best if we are friends anymore."
My legs give out beneath me before the words even process in my brain.
"We're leaving."
"When?" I ask.
"Right now." He replies, face void of emotion.
"Okay." I sigh. "I figured it would be soon, but I was hoping to have a little bit more time..." I hesitate at the strange expression on his face. "Unless by we you mean..."
"Me and my family."
I feel my heart plummet into my stomach, on the verge of shattering completely.
No." I whisper. "You can't mean that; please tell me you don't mean that." I look desperately at his face, begging silently with my eyes for him to take it back and then magically change back into my Jay... But he remains silent.
"You don't... want me?" I ask. And he says the one word that breaks me completely.
"No."
"You promised." I croak, tears mixing with the steady buckets of rain that plaster my cloths to my body and my hair to my cheeks. "You promised you would never hurt me, but you lied! It's happening again and your leaving me just like them!" I scream.
Despair over takes his face and he reaches forward as if to comfort me, but he quickly thinks better of it and draws back.
My throat is tight and thick with bile like I might throw up any minute. This wasn't supposed to happen, Jake wasn't supposed to leave me.
"Go home Bella." He says and a sob escapes my lips.
I struggle to my feet and start to run to the safety of my truck, tripping and sliding with every step and he calls out to me. "Stay safe Isa. Don't do anything stupid.
He hesitates as he's about to leave and I know right then that I'd do anything to make him stay.
"Promise me something."
"Anything." I say.
"Don't do anything reckless." And then he's gone with only a slight breeze to let me know that he was ever there at all.
"Like you care." I hiss over my shoulder at him.
I scramble into my truck, key still dangling from the ignition, and it roars to life. Right then, I didn't care that I was soaking the leather seats and mud was getting everywhere, I just had to get away.
I tear out of the reservation and make it just past the border before I have to pull over to the side of the road as I double over, sobs raking my body.
I always thought that Jacob was plugging up the hole that Edward had left, but it turns out that he was slowly chisling his own. The only good that they do is intensify the pain of the other.
Eventually, I stop crying, not because the pain had diminished any, but because I was physically not able to shed another tear.
By then, then the rain had faded to a drizzle and the sky was pitch black, no moon or stars to give any light.
Not being able to stand being cramped up in the small space any longer, I shove my way out the truck door and stumble into the street.
Nothing reckless huh?
I turn to the woods and march into them, in search of something that I hadn't seen in months, however unlikely it is that I could ever stumble upon it.
But I do, in the wee hours of the morning, the sun just beginning to give a soft grey glow. It's just how I remembered it.
Lush green grass and purple and pink flowers dotting the field in the shape of a perfect circle. The Meadow.
It turns out that I did still have tears left in me because I crumble again right there, a few more salty drops squeezing themselves from my swollen, puffy, eyes.
"Well, well, well, what do we have here." A soft tinkling laugh breaks through the silence and I slowly look up into the eyes of someone I never thought I'd see again.
Her beautiful face hasn't changed at all and I smile slightly. I struggle to my feet, body feeling terribly heavy.
"Victoria." I greet as if an old friend, no fear humming anywhere in my veins.
My heart is still as steady and full of heartbreak as ever.
"Where are the Cullen's hmm? I've been to their house, but no one has been there for months. I'm surprised they left their little pet behind; they seemed rather fond of you."
"They never cared for me, no more than you ever did. I was just something to pass eternity until they got board." I tell her, bitterness clearly in my voice. "It seems that it's like that for everyone with me."
"Oh, you poor thing." She cooes. "I suppose killing you wouldn't be very good revenge then."
"Nope." I say.
"But you would be quit tasty." She grins.
I shrug, my indifferent mask having found its place on my face with little to no thought. There was no way I could out run her or fight her off, so there is no sense in working myself up before my death. If I'm going to die, I'm going to die. Nothing can change that. But that also brings the question: Do I want to live?
"I've been told that my blood is mouthwatering, you'd be the first to get a real taste."
Her smile drops to a disbelieving frown. "Do you really not care if you live?"
"All I feel is pain." I answer with a resentful smile.
"Then I shall make you feel so much pain that you'll wish you had the other when I'm through with you. Think of it as a favor."
She's gone by the time I blink and suddenly a pale limb is back handing me across my face. I hear a terrible crunch two seconds before pain bursts through my nerve cells. I slam hard into the tree ten feet behind my previous standing spot, and a second snapping is heard.
I can immediately tell that my jaw had been shattered and I feel blood streaming down my back from where a branch had pierced my liver. The blinding pain makes my vision go black but I am torturously aware of everything around me. I can feel blood trickling from my face, it already swelling and I feel paralyzed in my legs.
Through spots in my vision I see red flaming hair reach down to grasp my leg, mimicking the injury that her mate had inflicted upon me last year.
I hear the crunch but the pain is nonexistent as I can feel nothing below my waist.
Her face appears in front of me, grabbing my agonized face in one cold hand, forcing me to look into her obsidian eyes.
"I'm surprised you're still awake. My, my, you really are strong." She drags one fingernail down the good side of my face, letting me feel the sting as she draws blood.
She brings my wrist to her mouth, kissing the scar her mate had left in the form of a crescent moon. I feel her razor sharp teeth grazing along my wrist just soft enough to not break skin.
During all of this, I had not mad a single sound, but I could feel the life draining from me quickly. At this rate, I'd be dead in seconds.
A thudding and trampling of something big causes Victoria to pull back and suddenly there is a loud yowl-like screech and the vampire disappears by being tackled by something huge and black.
It sounds like metal grinding against each other and I'm vaguely aware of the stench of smoke.
Then there is arguing and shouts, panicked voices as multiple people surround me.
I hear the word 'bite' before I fully lose consciousness. Then there is a awful pain in my shoulder, even more so than my previously sustained injuries and everything is just gone.
A/N: I must admit, this is starting to sound like a story I read. My plot is nowhere near as fantastic or complicated though and I don't mean for it to seem the same.
If you are wondering which story I'm talking about, read XPaige TurnerX's Instinct. Let me know if it seems similar please; I really don't mean it to be.
Please review!
~Silver~