~Hey guys! The Collision is back in business now that my computers fixed. :) Enjoy! ~
The car ride was spent in stifling silence. The whole way, I continued to try and wrap my mind around what was so important about these girls. I knew that I didn't really have much seniority over them in the first place because they practically looked like they were my age to begin with.
I guess it was what the Abe guy had said on the phone that unnerved me. He'd threatened Edward – my Edward – into doing something that he was obviously not so keen on doing to begin with. And one of them, being a queen? Neither one looked old enough to have graduated high school, let alone run a nation. And what nation was it exactly? You'd think that I would have heard of some newly elected queen.
I stopped myself from continuing that thought.
Was she really as young as I'd initially thought? I rolled my eyes. I was being a hypocrite! Here I was, mentally complaining about girls who looked 17, being too young to rule as a queen, yet I myself hadn't aged a day for the last half year.
I knew that I'd smelled blood on the blond one, the moment I'd stepped into that airport. It had made my throat burn slightly. Heck, being around humans in general made my throat burn, but it seemed more potent. It'd reminded me of when Emmet would come home after hunting with blood all over his clothes – he wasn't the neatest. But even that wasn't as potent as what I'd smelled on this blond girl. I had smelled freshly spilled human blood.
I sighed, and Edward glanced over at me from the steering wheel. My heightened sight let me see his wandering eyes through his sun glasses. He had no need to constantly watch the road ahead of us because his reflexes were fast enough to see any oncoming traffic in a moment's notice.
He cocked an eyebrow at me. Since I'd stepped out of the airport, I'd let my gifted shield sling back up into place to keep him from hearing my storming thoughts. I was quickly becoming so in touch with it, I barely even had to bat an eyelash to control it now. The whole, shutting my eyes and breathing thing in the airport was just for show.
I bit my lip and made the smallest eye movement from the visiting girls, back to Edward. He seemed to get the message and heaved a long sigh as well before he rolled his eyes and shrugged. His right hand stretched over and held onto mine. He was trying to hint things to me without anyone catching on, that much was obvious. His index finger twitched slightly upward and that caught my attention. I let a question mark show on my face as I still looked straight ahead.
Edward shook his head slightly and let go of my hand. He brought it up and tapped his forehead. I guess in a way, it could have been considered a scratch? When I didn't respond, he tapped it again.
Oh!
I hid my understanding from my face. In the rearview mirror, I could see Alice and Jasper with worry written all over their faces.
I laughed internally.
I forgot that the two of them would have been picking up on every microscopic gesture me and Edward were exchanging. There really wasn't much else to do in this car. Alice met my gaze in the mirror and she raised an eyebrow. I rolled my eyes, flashed a smile, and looked away.
Switching back to Edward, I lifted the shield that surrounded my mind. When I'd first begun practicing with the shield, it's felt like I was tearing something away from myself, but now that I'd spent enough time on it, it just felt like a light switch.
In the back, I heard the brown haired girl sigh with what sounded like relief. I ignored it and directed my thoughts towards Edward.
"What are they?" I asked.
His lips fell into a straight line and he breathed in a long breath of air. It seemed like a kind of I'll tell you later, sort of thing.
"Well how old are they?"
He shrugged and gestured back to the two with his head as if saying, Why don't you ask them. I gave him a desperate look and he chuckled, knowing that I'd never do that.
I heard a laugh from the back "Say it out loud, won't you?" mused Alice.
The two girls flinched.
I quickly realized that they would have never noticed our little transaction and that what Alice had said was the first actual spoken words for the last half hour. "The rest of us are dying to know what Zmey has to do with these two refugees. So just spill it." I felt like I could laugh. I don't think that I'd ever seen Alice this irritable. But I guess if you were dragged along on a car ride for two hours without much warning, she had a reason to be.
The shorter girl laughed.
"Yeah?" she slouched forward and gave Alice a know-it-all look. "And what do you guys know about Zmey?"
Alice scoffed, "I know enough. You can trust me on that." Jasper gave her a sly smile. It was one that he only reserved for her when she surprised him. And it was enough to make her smile back at him.
"Oh, I'd love to test you on that," the girl shot back. The blond one gave her a disapproving look, but smiled anyway. The two of them seemed to have the same sort of communication that me and Edward had. It was the kind of communication where the smallest movement could speak paragraphs.
"Soo," I began slowly. I already knew that I didn't want the first girl to be on my bad side. "How old are you two exactly?" I'd played with the thought of them being vampires, hence the smell of the spilled human blood, but quickly ruled it out. They didn't smell or act like any vampires I'd ever met. And I could hear their heartbeats from here. Of course, Renesmee's heartbeat was the loudest and fastest out of all three.
"Old enough," the first girl shot back. The second one just rolled her eyes and met my eyes in the mirror.
"We're eighteen," she began, "I was just elected queen last month so not much has sunken in yet." She gave her friend a sidelong look. "To either of us."
"Oh," I said coolie. "Yeah, I know how that feels." Know how that feels? That in itself was an understatement. Having to hunt wild animals to quench the burning thirst in my throat was hard to sink in. Next to that, being eighteen was a breeze.
I turned myself between the two front seats to get a better view of the two girls. As if on cue, the brunette shot me a hated look that reminded me of something a child would give a parent when they were forced to do something. There was something about her that unnerved me; aside from the fact that she'd made it clear she'd kill me if given the chance. I suppose that it was the way she carried herself around us.
And the fact that every now and then, she would shoot Renesmee a look that made me want to rip her limb from limb. I thought that I was done with people giving her that look after the Vulturi left.
"Okay," the brunette leaned forward. "I'm not beating around the bush here. So how about you just drop-"
The blond girls hand shot forward and she tugged her friends shoulder. "Rose," she hissed, "just forget it. They're going to help us." Rose's eyes flared slightly. I thought she was going to blow up at her friend when I saw Jasper's head tilt to the side quickly. In moments, the fire left her glare and she just shook her head. "I mean," continued the blonde, "are we really going to be taking shifts on being overly paranoid." Suddenly, the heat was back again and before Jasper could interfere, she snapped.
"Liss!" she shouted over, "Will you just shut up? I'm not going to calm down or 'forget it' until I figure out why Abe had the audacity to send us into a house full of Strigoi that are willing to kidnap a ten year old just to uphold this little illusion of a happy household. It's just sick!" Rose turned her attention back to me. "Oh, you and your little 'husband' here can drop the act too. We both know that you're probably dying to. Because Strigoi can't love! I know firsthand that they can't. Save the romance shit for someone who's willing to believe it." When she finished, she shrunk back into the seat and crossed her arms over her chest.
Alice hissed.
"Bitch."
~I'm really having fun with this because I can portray Alice's irritable side which is almost never in Twilight. I hope you like reading it. ;) Please review and tell me what you think! ~