A/N: Hello hello! And how are we all today? I present to you, another chapter of the story, in lightening speed and faster than Superman himself. Hope y'all will find it to your liking, and if not, feel free to say so!
Special thanks with strawberries in mascarpone cheese to: Kisbydog, Janna, bloftus, and Sherry80.
*Thanks heavens for the most loyal readers a writer could have*. Okay, babbling ending now. Have fun!
Disclaimer: I do not own anything Twilight.
Chapter 2: Running.
Bella's POV:
"Good work, Bella," Nathaniel said as we both haltered to a stop somewhere in the woods. Apparently, we were on Mercer Island, just a ferry away from Seattle. "If I hadn't known better, I would've thought you had a gift of fantastic speed," he said, and placed a finger under my chin, before I moved away from him. I was pretending to be friendly to him, not pretending to be friendly to him.
"You mean, a gift-gift? A talent?" I asked curiously as he sat down on the ground, sighing. I wanted to know if he meant something like Edward's ability, or Alice's.
"Yes, that is what I meant," he said as if reading my mind, looking forward.
"Do you know any vampires with such… gifts?" I asked, crossing my arms against my chest. He had already told me that he knew about Edward's ability to read minds, but I was curious about other vampires, ones I didn't know.
He laughed humorlessly, like he did often. "Several," was his only answer.
We had been practicing running for a couple of days now, Nathaniel more than happy to teach me how to maneuver the special traits that came with being a vampire. Inhuman speed. Inhuman strength. Inhuman concentration. Inhuman thirst – for humans. It was powerful, yes, but not something I couldn't conquer. It was actually easier than I'd expected.
"How come I'm not…" I tried thinking of ways to finish the sentence.
"Killing people with insane craving for their blood?" he asked, now looking at me. I nodded. "You're still full of your delectable human blood. You don't need to feed yet. But I'd be glad to teach you nonetheless, if you'd like."
He'd been going on and on about how delicious my blood was, ever since he transformed me. And I was doing all I could to make him think we were partners now, which included having to fake taking pleasure in his company. This made me especially cranky, which sometimes made me say cranky things – but he seemed to enjoy it.
"No, thank you," I said grimly. "When I absolutely need to hunt, I'll manage to hunt down some kind of animal."
"Veganism? Where the fuck is the fun in that?" he asked with a dark smirk.
"Don't be confused, Nathaniel. Just because I'm willing to kill for my revenge, doesn't mean I'm ready to murder the innocent for food, like you do," I said, sitting myself own on the ground as well, far away from him.
"My dear Bella – if you're not ready to kill people now, where do you get the confidence that you'll be able to kill when it matters the most?" he asked.
I pursed my lips. "Because after what he did to me… I want that son of a bitch dead – and this time really dead," I said, so convincingly that I even managed to scare myself.
He whistled, and smiled again. "I guess the old saying is correct. Hell hath no fury like a woman abandoned by her vampire," he said, and I was pleased that he seemed to have swallowed my bait.
We were silent for a few minutes longer, before he spoke again.
"Alright. I think you're ready," he said, making my head perk up in attention faster than I could a few days earlier. "Now come on, my little tracking device. You said you knew where our target might be. Where do we start?"
I pretended to be straining my brain, when in fact I had already come up with an answer for that, the day earlier. "I guess we should start in Alaska. Denali, to be exact."
"Why there?" he interrogated.
"Are you familiar with the Denali coven?"
"Vaguely," he answered.
"Edward is… friends, with one of the sisters. Tanya," I said, faking pure disgust. Edward had told me that on those first days, when he couldn't bear being next to me without trying to kill me, he fled to Denali, to see Tanya, who was an old friend. He told me that Tanya had tried to make a move on him in the past, and that he turned her down like a gentleman, and she got the point.
"And you think he might be with this… Tanya?" he raised an eyebrow.
"I saw the look in his eyes when he mentioned her. And all those times he would strangely disappear for a few days? I know they were meeting behind my back. Him and his whore," I muttered the complete lie. I had no idea where the hell any of that came from – I wasn't even the kind of person to regularly swear, but I was putting my best acting face on, for Edward and mine's sake.
He laughed heartily. "I must say I am enjoying your darker sides."
I bet you are.
I didn't respond. I couldn't wrap my mind around this creature. Although I was pretty positive that he was either a psychopath, or a sociopath. Probably both. What was the difference, again? I wondered if he was the same as a human, cruel and indifferent in the same package.
"We could kill her as well, if you'd like," he added.
"No!" I said immediately, and he narrowed his eyes in response. "If Edward isn't there, I don't want him to hear about it and be prepared for us," I hurried to correct myself. "I want him to be unsuspecting. He needs to think I'm on his side."
He stayed silent for the longest moment, making me wonder if he had bought my act. "Brilliant idea," he finally said. "He suspects nothing, until we rip him apart, piece by piece," he laughed.
I tried to hide my sudden shuddering. "Yes," I said confidently. "Which is why we need to be nothing but pleasant to his… mistress. At least until we find him and get him alone."
"Good. It seems you have thought of all the details, so I don't have to bother myself with the more tedious aspects of retaliation," he said. "Let us go."
God forbid you should bother yourself with the tedious parts of killing my boyfriend, you freaking lunatic.
It took us a few days to get to Alaska. If anyone ever told me I would run for days without getting tired – or injured, for that matter – I would probably laugh in his face, while holding onto my stomach, until I would fall down on the floor laughing, and injure myself.
We ran through the thick snow, and I never slipped once. I never even felt cold. At times, I got the feeling as if I was cold, like I wanted to cover myself up. They say when a person loses his hand, or his leg, he can still feel it as though it was still there in reality. I guess my humanity was my Phantom Limb now.
We traveled out of the sight of the civilians, so we wouldn't have to account for exceptionally red eyes. I don't think anyone would believe it was just a really bad infection.
At some point, the lunatic broke into a department store at night, and got us two pairs of sunglasses, and some clothes to change, which was probably a good idea – since I was still in my PJ's. And the perv wanted to look while I was changing, as if that was going to happen. Thank god I managed to regain some control in this situation, which made it much less of a hostage situation.
We finally saw the Denali, just as we came out of the thick forest. There was a long plain surface of snow on the way to the large house, and he slowed down to a slower pace, like a human's. I did the same. I assumed that he didn't want to risk them panicking when they see us come running.
I hoped to god Edward wasn't there.
Alice's POV:
Things have been… strange.
Ever since my idiot of a brother, Edward, decided we should all just up and leave Forks, life have been strange. And if he had bothered to warn us that a week after we leave he was going to go on his own and "think", we would probably just stay in Forks and say we shipped him off to military school or something.
Jasper didn't mean to attack Bella on her birthday. It's his gift. It makes him feel his own thirst for blood, and everyone else's, at the same time – only making it all the more powerful, harder to resist. He was still agonizing with guilt, but now he was also feeling guilty because Edward and Bella were apart.
And it didn't help that while he was here, Edward was being mean to everybody, constantly snapping at us. How annoying it was. He actually told me to stop drinking rabbit blood before he would tape my pixie mouth shut. Was he suggesting that I was talking too much? Yes. Was he right? Perhaps. Was he doing it nicely? Definitely. Not.
But the worst thing was, I'd never seen Edward this torn before. He was taking the breakup really hard, for someone who initiated it. It actually scared me – not only seeing him walk around without purpose, with a lifeless expression (well, more lifeless than the usual). I was also getting visions of him.
He kept changing his mind about what he was going to do. Some of the visions I saw were of him going back to Forks, which was probably the right thing to do, but some of those visions included not-so-happy endings – ones that worried me. At least he would always take it back. And I knew that as long as Bella existed, he would never act on his impulses to try and take his own death.
Since he'd left us, though, I wasn't able to see what his exact intentions were.
I could see where he was – which right now was Denali, Alaska, for some reason, and getting ready to leave. And I could see where he was headed, but I couldn't see why, and it drove me crazy. What the hell was up with my brooding brother?
Bella was just as bad, of course. She was sinking into depression, I could see it. That is, I was able to see it, until two weeks ago. At first I thought I couldn't see anything because there was no news, but two weeks were way too long to see nothing involving Bella.
Well, anyway. As the only one of my siblings who was actually able and willing to socialize with the humans of Forks, I wisely decided to leave myself an open channel of information. Just so I could keep an eye on what was going in Forks – especially in cases like these. Holes in my vision. It's happened before. It was far from flawless, after all.
So I picked up the phone and called my "open channel". It just so happened to be the biggest gossip in Forks high, and one of Bella's friends, Jessica. It wasn't long before she answered, which didn't surprise me since she was constantly glued to her phone. Not that I wasn't. Plus, I had an extra telepathic phone in my head.
"Hello?" she answered, sounding strange.
"Hey Jess," I said. "How've you been?"
"Oh, Alice," she said, and then paused. Next, I heard a strangled sob from the other side of the phone.
"What's wrong? Are you okay?" I asked. I just hoped to God that Mike didn't dump her, cause I'd be hearing about it for the next few hours if he did.
"I'm fine. It's… It's… Bella," she said through her sobbing, and my heart sank. On second thought, I would had rather it to be about Mike. "I'm so… sorry I didn't call to tell you. I know you asked me to let you know if something happened. But it was just so awful, I…"
"Jess, calm down," I said, ordering myself to stay calm, too. I sat down on my unnecessary bed and inhaled deeply. "Tell me what happened."
Oh, damn it. Why can't I see anything related to Bella?
"Someone…" she took a deep sulky breath, "someone broke into her house. And he…" she started crying hysterically again, "killed her parents. Her mom was there. He killed them both really brutally. And the worst… thing is, nobody knows what he did with…" she said, but couldn't finish the sentence.
Oh my god. No, it's not possible. I would've seen it. I would've seen Victoria or Laurent, I would've seen it.
Would you?
"Bella's… gone?" I asked silently.
It took her a minute to stop crying and get herself together. "They looked for her at first, but since it's been two weeks and they couldn't find her anywhere, they just gave up. They said she 'most likely to have not survived'. Like, what the hell is that supposed to mean, right?" she said with a shaky voice.
"Oh my god," I whispered, and my mind was suddenly working overtime. "I'll, I'll talk to you later," I said and hung up, without waiting an answer.
This couldn't be. Bella could not be dead. She had to be somewhere, just somewhere out of their reach. And her parents… well, her parents were probably identified by the police. Poor Charlie and Renee.
Killed brutally.
There was more than one way to be killed brutally, but I knew at least one way that made sense, concerning my kind. Could I really take it for a coincidence and believe that Bella's parents were killed brutally by a human, just a short while after she was involved in the death of a vampire? After the only protection she had, left?
As for Bella herself… I wasn't ready, or willing, to accept that she was dead. Just because she wasn't found by the police, it doesn't mean she can't be found by a vampire. By me. Someone had taken her somewhere, and I had to find out where before it was too late.
I decided to keep this to myself in the meantime, and drive from Seattle to Forks alone, to do a little sleuthing.
I went to the downstairs floor of our new house, knowing Jasper and Emmett would be in the living room, playing some sort of video game. If Jasper realized something was wrong, he wouldn't let me go.
Okay. Think happy thoughts. Anything but Bella. Think about Gucci. Better yet. Think about Pucci.
It only did the trick when I thought about my family. This one, the real one.
I took a deep breath and took the last few steps down, smiling brightly to the boys. I might as well have been thinking about mass murders and the holocaust, because they were paying zero attention to me, so caught up in the game. I frowned.
Boys.
I grabbed my keys quickly, and went outside and into my loyal Audi TT.
It took me less than two hours to get to Forks, since I decided to drive like Edward usually does – like a maniac. This was important. I had a lost sister-in-law to save, who was most definitely still walking this earth. I could feel it.
Once I reached the small, familiar house, I parked the car and went outside.
I hesitated. I thought I had picked up a recognizable scent besides Bella's.
She was definitely taken somewhere, because her smell was still all over the driveway, but her parents' wasn't. I decided to go inside, even though I had to do a little breaking and entering.
Dry blood. One spot in the kitchen, like a person hitting the floor – by the smell of it, it was Charlie. That's where I picked up that scent again, one that tickled my brain and made me want to remember something I couldn't. I followed it to one of the rooms. More dry blood. The bed looked like it had been colored in deep red.
I approached it, and took another deep breath, straining to recognize…
Oh no, I thought in horror. Not again. Please, not again.
I would have collapsed on the floor, if it wasn't for my every instinct screaming at me to get the hell out of that house. Get away.
At speed only my own kind could render, I ran out of the house and got in my car, squeezing the gas paddle to the max. Thank god for the split-screen option our brains had, or I would've undoubtedly caused an accident.
This couldn't be.
It has to be. You smelled it.
I knew it would happen eventually. I knew that at some point, no matter how much I ran away from my past, it would catch up to me. He would catch up to me.
I felt a cold, petrifying chill running down my spine as I steered the car with effort, obviously unnerved by the thought.
This was it. Bella had been taken by the only vampire to ever really make my skin and flesh crawl.
I was a coward. I could not even try to follow the trail of Bella's scent to try and find out where he had taken her. I needed my family for this – but first they needed to hear the truth. The whole truth.
I shivered.
Edward's POV:
I ran alone, knowing it would take me a while to get to my destination. But since I wasn't in any particular hurry, I let myself take breaks. Not that I needed to rest – I needed something else entirely. I would get a hotel room tonight, so I can do a little more wallowing. Yes, that's how pathetic I was. I needed to wallow in self pity, let out some of the pain, so I could somehow go on living a life without Bella.
At least, for now.
Because every day it got a little bit worse. Every day, I would think of another part of Bella that I had to live without but couldn't, and I would think of another excuse why I definitely should go back to Forks.
I had to leave after what happened. How could I had stayed when I knew my very presence was endangering Bella? I knew this would happen eventually, after she almost got killed in the James incident. And it only went downhill from there, when one of my own family members attacked her because of a fucking paper cut.
I'd left Denali a couple of days ago, after Tanya explained to me where I needed to go.
I had to be smart about it, though, and I'd already figured out a way around Alice's visions; I just made my decisions very carefully, only deciding on the place I was headed, the route I was taking, but by no means was I thinking of the final objective. If Alice knew, they would just get in the way.
My family. The Cullens. I'd grown to love each of them – even Rosalie, despite the fact that she was an absolute bitch – but I had to say goodbye now. First, because I realized I couldn't be in their lives without depressing them with my sorry brooding ass. And now, because I had a newfound goal, one that wouldn't allow me to stay with them any longer.
But this was a good thing, or at least in my opinion it was. I'm sure my family wouldn't approve. Well, perhaps just Rosalie.
Either way, I was doing this, whether people liked it or not.
