Chapter 7: Meadow
Bella felt desperate when she called the Black's house the next morning. Her body was cold, and she felt shivers overtake her repeatedly. She wanted to cry knowing that the nightmares and awful nosebleeds were back, and she hated that Charlie had woken her up with a knock at her door, and she wanted nothing more than to just make the dreams go away. The phone continued to ring until she got the automated voicemail. She hugged herself tightly to stop the awful pain in her chest. This isn't right, she thought.
Her dream last night, along with the one with the black wolf, had been incredibly vivid. Except, it was not the "vision" she was expecting. Things were supposed to be better when she's a vampire, not worse. Not with her head snapped off her neck.
She shivered at the memory.
Bella tried to reason that maybe since she'd seen the vampire in her dream, it wasn't the same thing. Actually, ever since the Port Angeles trip, she hadn't encountered any weird reflections or visions. Only the usual unusual dreams that she'd always had, even when the Cullens were in Forks.
She called the Black's house once more and left a message this time, hoping Jacob would call her back. If not, she'd make sure to go visit him in the evening after school. She was afraid of not being allowed to see Jacob -it made her nervous.
The day passed slowly. In fact, the more Bella thought about the time, the slower it seemed to go. By the time she was half way through her English class, Bella felt so antsy in her seat that even Jessica leaned over and asked her if she was okay. And Jessica never talked to Bella anymore.
Bella bolted out of the school as soon as she heard the bell and drove home in a frenzy that Charlie would have a fit about if he knew. As soon as she got inside, she went for the phone in the kitchen and redialed the number.
Her hand clutched the cord, fingers twirling it nervously.
"Hello?" Jacob's voice said hoarsely. The tension left her body immediately -it felt like she was deflating.
"Jake! I'm so happy to hear your voice. Are you okay? Billy said you weren't feeling well."
"I feel horrible," he whispered.
"I'm so sorry. Can I bring you something to eat? I can stop by at the pharmacy on the way."
"No," he said, an urgency in his voice. "You can't come here."
"Why?" she asked confused. "What's wrong with you?"
"Everything." A pause. "Everything hurts."
Bella's heart twisted. His pain in his voice sounded tangible.
"I'm sorry. Jake…please, if there's anything I can do –"
He ignored her. "I'll call you when I can. I gotta go."
She didn't want to let him go. She wanted to be selfish and ask him to stay on the phone just a little longer. She sighed heavily. "Okay, please call me when you feel better."
"Right," he said bitterly.
"Goodbye, Jacob."
"Bells," he whispered as he hung up the phone.
Jacob didn't call.
Bella promised herself to give it a couple weeks before she'd call him again. When she had tried calling him again the next morning, Charlie had told her not to make herself a pest and bother the poor boy if he's sick. She grumbled under her breath, earning her an eyebrow raise from her father.
The week was horrible. She didn't quite remember how to deal with true loneliness again and the difference in her day became jarring. She itched for a conversation she could invest in, even going as far as trying to strike up a conversation that Friday with Lauren Mallory about her new haircut but this seemed to be the worst topic Bella could have brought up. Lauren glared at her with furious eyes and said she didn't want to talk about it.
Angela seemed to somehow understand what Bella was trying to do and talked to her about her upcoming trip to Cyprus after graduation. Talk of graduation prompted Jessica to excitedly talk about her back and forth correspondence with Cornell. Although Bella was interested in Angela's and Jessica's plans, it only served to remind her that all her peers would graduate and move on to bigger and better things, even Jacob someday, while she was left behind.
It wasn't like she had big plans for herself after high school. She wasn't like Jessica, who used to shadow Carlisle religiously when he was still at the hospital in hopes to pursue medicine just like him. She wasn't like Mike, who always had his family business to take over if nothing else worked. And she wasn't like Angela, who would no doubt escape the little town and do something great with her life because that was the person she was -someone who made the effort.
Bella…well, the only thing Bella had on the roster was to wait. She would wait in Forks and wait for them. She would wait to be a vampire.
That evening, Bella went to the library and began her college research.
The dreams of the catfish and the moon returned in full swing. She would lean down to kiss the catfish except the catfish wasn't truly there. His form was ethereal and there was a glow with his eyes. She was pulling him out of the water and could feel the crackle of energy around her. A tall man appeared for a second before a tear in the space in front of her opened in front of her and she saw the light.
Then it was darkness. Bella walked through a dense forest, seeing nothing past her searching hands, only feeling the thick undergrowth beneath her boots. Her fingertips eventually collided with something warm and smooth. Skin. She hesitantly touched the body -her hands were searching broad shoulders, just kissing over the collarbones up to a heated neck. She could feel the heartbeat thrumming under her fingers. It all seemed so familiar. Bella stepped closer expecting to see Jacob's sunny face grinning down at her. She wanted to see him. She missed him so much.
She recoiled violently, her heart caught in her throat.
She was looking at the solemn face of Sam Uley. His eyes bored into hers, looking utterly emotionless. His hands snaked around her waist to bring her back to him.
Bella backed away in horror into the darkness, not wanting to see him any longer. This wasn't right. She ran blindly the other way, trying to get as far away from him as possible, tumbling repeatedly. The abuse to her palms and knees felt real whenever she hit the ground.
"Belle," she heard him call out before she fell again but this time onto a woman, identical to her but with shorter, lighter hair, wearing the orange and white robes she had seen before in her mirror. The woman helped her stand, resting her hands gently on Bella's elbows. The woman searched her face carefully, concern lacing her features. She brought her hands up to cup Bella's face.
"Have you found him?"
"Who?" Bella whispered.
"My sweet catfish. I've been looking for some time." A tear rolled down the woman's cheek as she closed her eyes. Her fingers tightened around Bella's face. She tried desperately to pull away, clawing at the woman's hands but the woman didn't loosen her grip. A burning sensation filled her body, like waves of electricity were traveling through her and she found herself lying on the ground, looking up at her body dangling in the woman's hands. There were perforations in their surroundings, as if they were in surrounded by ripped canvases. The holes in the forest background was filled with bright, white light.
The woman said something in a foreign language, but Bella understood her clearly before her body was thrown into one of the bright vortexes.
"To my love, I give you the world, and all shall love you."
Bella woke up to Charlie shaking her shoulders vigorously, a scream dying at her lips. She stared up at him dumfounded.
"Bella, you're okay, you were just having a nightmare," he said. His eyes widened for a second as Bella felt the familiar wetness under her nose. Charlie reached over her nightstand to grab the tissue box she had left there for nights like these. "I didn't realize you were still getting those."
"I wasn't." Not since Jacob. She wiped the blood away and carefully examined his face. The frown lines on his forehead were deeper and she could see wisps of grey in his hair and mustache. The bags under his eyes were darker and heavier. When did he age so much?
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
"Nothin' you have to be sorry about, kiddo." He looked off at her window in apprehension. "It's been a while since you've had any nightmares." He looked back at her. She could see it in his eyes: I thought you were getting better.
"Sorry," she repeated, a thick lump in her throat.
"Don't be," Charlie said. He cleared his throat and sat on the edge of her bed. Bella glanced at her alarm clock -6 AM. "Are you seeing Jacob today?" He sounded so hopeful.
Charlie had always been adamant that she and Jacob had the makings of a good couple, lightly dropping comments about how much time they spent together and how much more she smiled when Jacob was around. She had seen how happy he had gotten when he saw the candy hearts.
Bella shrugged. "Depends on what Harry said about him." She had made Charlie call Harry as soon as he got home from work a couple nights ago since she couldn't seem to get a hold of Billy, and even if she did, getting a straight answer from him was like pulling teeth.
"Well, Billy took Jake to the doctor -looks like the kid's got some virus. Maybe the flu." After saying that, Charlie paused to think. "Maybe it's best if you don't go today. I don't want you getting sick too."
"C'mon, dad," she demanded in disbelief.
Charlie raised an eyebrow.
She sighed heavily. "How about I call later this morning and see if I can at least take them some food? I'll have almost zero contact with Jacob."
He seemed to accept this easily. With one more glance at the clock, he said, "No point going back to sleep now. I'm going to make some coffee. Want some?"
Bella shook her head but sat up straighter in her bed when he left the room. She grabbed the Book from her nightstand and flipped to the page of the painting.
The catfish. She couldn't, for the life of her, understand what was so important about a catfish. Her fingers traced the albino fish's long body, wrapped tightly around the man with bull-helmet. Who was he?
She tried to remember the woman from the dream, the one who had asked about the catfish. She was almost identical to Bella, except that she looked a few years older and her features weren't the exact same. The woman's eyes were a different color and her nose and lips were thinner and sharper. Bella closed her eyes to remember her dream. If she had to guess, it was the woman who played the role of the moon goddess in her catfish dreams. She had assumed for the last few months that it was herself.
Bella stopped herself.
It was herself…right? The vampire, the moon-goddess, the younger girl: they were all her, weren't they? They looked like her. Except, her brain kept refusing to believe that. None of those women were her, they were like separate, categorized beings that she felt strongly about, but couldn't quite believe were actually her.
Bella groaned loudly and shimmied back under the covers to stop her mind from racing a million miles per hour.
Spending time with Jacob had stopped the catfish dreams. Sure, she still had some unusual dreams, but they weren't enough to drive her insane the next morning while she tried to decipher them. She didn't like the kind of dependence she was having on Jacob. He didn't need this.
After napping for another hour, Bella finally got out of bed and tried to keep herself busy. She cooked breakfast for herself and Charlie and began prepping for lunch before Charlie told her he'd be fishing with Harry that afternoon. She tried to distract herself with homework, but the ticking clock seemed to distract her just enough.
It was Saturday, and Bella's two weeks off from the phone was up. As soon as the clock hit 10 o' clock, she quickly redialed the memorized number and she mused that the key pads were probably permanently pushed in a few millimeters because of her.
She expected to hear the dial tone again but was surprised when she heard Billy's voice after the second ring.
"Hello?"
Bella cut to the chase. "Billy, it's Bella. I heard Jake's still sick. Is he up for visitors? I was thinking about dropping by –"
"I'm sorry, Bella," Billy interrupted, but not unkindly. He sounded distracted, though, and Bella wondered if he was watching TV while he talked to her. "He's not in."
Bella mouth opened a little. "Oh. So…he's feeling better?"
"Yeah." He hesitated for too long. "False alarm. He went out with some friends -double feature in Port Angeles.
Jacob was better, but not enough to call her. Her heart squeezed painfully. She'd sat at home the last week and a half, worried sick about him, hoping he'd call her like he promised. Had he really taken what she said to heart? Did he finally realize that she wasn't worth the trouble? But no matter how many times she thought that, it didn't sound like Jacob. He'd always been straightforward. And she couldn't imagine that he would want to throw three months of friendship away over something like that.
Last night's dream zipped through her mind. The phone nearly slipped from her hand.
Sam.
"I'm glad he's feeling well enough to go out." Her voice sounded terribly phony and she hoped Billy wouldn't notice. "Is he out with anyone I know? Quil?"
"No," he said slowly. "Not Quil."
"Embry?" Bella's voice wavered.
Billy seemed happier to answer that. "Yeah, Embry."
Oh no.
He waited for Bella to respond but she couldn't get her mouth to say anymore saccharine words. "Is there anything else you wanted?" Billy sounded impatient this time.
"No," Bella breathed. "Just let him know I called." She knew he wasn't going to call back.
"Will do. Take care, Bella." Click.
Bella breathed deeply a few times, trying her best not to panic. Sam Uley had somehow convinced Jacob to join his gang. Somehow, he had something over Jacob that pushed aside his fears enough for him to ignore her. She remembered Embry's sheared off hair and the large tattoo sporting on his arm. She shivered and waited at the stairs for Charlie to come down. If she couldn't do anything, Charlie definitely could.
"Dad, I'm really worried about Jake," she started as soon as she saw him on the stairs. "I think something going on at the reservation. Jake was telling me that some strange stuff was happening with the other boys and now he's acting the same way."
Charlie zipped up his vest. "What kind of stuff?" he asked, surprised.
"He was telling me about this gang, and he's avoiding me, and now I'm scared Sam Uley and his gang got to him."
"Sam Uley?" Charlie repeated, surprised again. He looked visibly relaxed. "He's a great kid -a man now, really. I wouldn't worry about Jacob hanging out with him. He's been a great asset to community." Bella knew immediately that she had said the wrong thing. Just like Jacob had said, in the adults' eyes, Sam Uley could do no wrong. "Jake probably just had the wrong idea about him. I know I did when I first saw him."
"But right before Jacob got 'sick' he was telling me how scared he was and how Sam and those other thugs were watching him. Why would he suddenly go from scared to hanging out with them the next day? I think Sam's up to something."
He cut her off by quietly mumbling, "He saved you, Bells." That was enough for Bella to tighten her lips shut. She remembered his face through foggy vision, concern bleeding through his stoic features. It didn't make sense -she had thought that then too, she remembered -who was he that he saved her one day and then took away her best friend the next?
"What are you doing today?" Charlie asked, changing the subject. He had his gear ready in hand.
"I might hang out with Jess or Angela," Bella made up. She had anticipated hanging out with Jacob today but now she knew that was not going to happen.
"Alright, well whatever you girls do, promise me you won't hang around near the woods for too long. We've had a couple of missing hikers last week and we're getting reports of a large number of grizzlies too." He gave her a pointed look. "I don't want you girls to be on the missing posters next."
"Sure, I promise."
Bella twisted the compass in her hand carefully. Still North.
It felt like she'd been walking for hours though her watch told her it had only been forty-five minutes. She tried to think about how long it usually took Edward to take her to the meadow and calculate the distance against his speed in her mind, but the numbers jumbled in her bed and she'd look again at her surroundings and only see unfamiliarity.
It was a terrible idea in a clearly terrible time considering apparent large bears and missing hikers. But she couldn't hole up in the house all day with nothing to do but let her mind run at the endless ways that Sam got a hold of Jacob. She wanted to cry when her mind crossed to the possibility that Jacob was hooked on drugs.
The forest was perfectly entertaining. It was full of life with little woodland creatures chirping high in the trees and little field mice scurrying into shrubs. There was an endless serenade of insects buzzing around. She was a conductor, dictating when the insects would start and stop with the sound of her noisy steps.
Although everything looked like fairytale, something gnawed at her. Maybe it Charlie's warnings about the missing hikes. Maybe it was her dream about the woods making her wary of her surroundings.
And then, with an abruptness that disoriented her, she walked through an arch made by two maple vines into the meadow.
The yellow grass crackled beneath her boots and each broken stem seemed to chip away and create another crack in the gaping hole in her chest. Bella gasped from the hollow feeling and crouched down to tighten her arms around her middle. Tears threatened to escape her eyes as she stared at what once had been a meadow that came from a dream. She couldn't fathom that Edward had been the one to destroy their meadow just to help her forget his existence. But the pale-yellow field betrayed her trust a little.
Bella finally knelt down in emotional exhaustion and noticed a small puddle in front of her. Ordinarily, she wouldn't have glanced twice at a puddle, especially in a town like rainy Forks, but when she saw her face reflecting back crystal clear with no hint of murkiness, she drew in closer. The puddle, without a second look, could have passed off as a mirror. She peered closer; it looked like something was swimming in it.
Her eyes snapped up when she heard the crunch of the grass ahead of her. A tall, dark man stood at the other end of the meadow, long dreads brushing past his elbows.
"Laurent!" she exclaimed with pleasure. Something about seeing him filled her with elation. It was proof. Proof that she hadn't imagined the whole thing -vampires really did exist. They existed. She wasn't alone anymore.
The vampire slithered closer without a sound. Bella thought that he probably had purposely made sound to catch her attention. "Curious," he said. "Very curious."
Bella stood still and fought the urge to step back away from him. "What?"
"You," he said, his eyebrows drew together. "Three months ago, I saw you."
"Were you in Forks? I thought you were supposed to be in Alaska with another coven." Bella shrugged. Unless he was in Forks over the summer and the Cullens had never considered to bring it up to her, she didn't know anything about it.
"I saw you on the Canadian border," he said, as if she said nothing. "But you were a vampire. I had expected the Cullen family to be with you, but they were nowhere to be found. And you didn't bother saying hello."
Bella blinked once. Then she snorted out a laugh. "I wish," she said, still laughing. "I'm still as human as they come." Her laugh melted into an uncomfortable grimace. "What are you doing here? Did you ever find Victoria?"
A small smile creeped onto the vampire's face. "Ah, my dear friend Victoria. I'm actually here as a favor to her." He took a few more steps towards. He glanced at the rows of trees to his left for a few seconds before looking back at her. "Unfortunately, she won't be very happy about what I'm about to do." His red eyes narrowed as he watched her. "And I saw that the Cullens are not home."
Bella breathed shakily and stumbled backwards. "What do you mean?" She tried to keep her voice lighthearted, but her jackhammer heart betrayed her, and she knew he could hear it.
"Stop moving and lie to him." Bella stopped short and tried to listen to the voice again. It was the same voice she heard in Port Angeles. She looked down at the puddle and saw her vampiric self, glaring up at her.
"The C-Cullens are on a hunting trip." Bella's heart squeezed tightly when she said the name. "They will be back soon and…and Alice is watching me with her abilities."
Laurent smiled at her and Bella was immediately dazzled by his angelic beauty. "Bella," he crooned, "we both know that isn't true. The Cullens haven't been here for a long time -they have abandoned their little pet. You will thank me for what I'm about to do. Victoria…well, she would not make this as quick as I would."
Bella's breathing quickened and she was hit with a dizzy spell. A great need to turn and run the direction she came from filled her gut. "What does Victoria want with me?" she cried.
"Relax and don't move and keep lying." She wanted to scream at the vampire -it didn't make sense what she was telling herself. Stay still for a hungry, human-drinking vampire? That didn't exactly sound like the wisest decision.
"An eye for an eye. Your Edward took her mate; now, she wants his." Laurent said, his expression bemused. He strolled towards her casually just as she took a few steps back.
She shook her head vehemently. "I'm not his mate. It's like you said, I'm their pet. She wouldn't be hurting them at all by killing me." As soon as the words left her mouth, Bella tightened her lips in dismay.
"Stupid."
Laurent's smile widened, revealing sparkling white teeth and two extended canines. "Really? Then I don't suppose they would care very much if I fed from you. I'm sure they would understand -I'm very thirsty."
At that moment, all Bella could think of was how incredibly happy she was that Jacob had chosen this time to ignore her calls and messages. Once they grew tired of the bikes, hiking to the meadow would have been her next plan for the two of them before he abruptly began ignoring her. The thought that his death would partially be her fault would hurt more than any vampire bite.
Laurent was close enough for her to touch. His eyes shone blood-red and parts of his face glittered under the few rays of sun that escaped through the thick clouds. He lifted his hand to touch her cheek but stopped. With his hand still raised, he looked again to his left, deep into the trees. Bella refused to take her eyes off of him in fear that this was some ploy of his to distract her before he took her life without any warning. But when he whispered, "I don't believe it," and began running away from her, her eyes snapped to meet the edge of the meadow where a large black animal emerged from the forest.
She couldn't tell what those animals were at first, thinking they were large, funny-looking bears, but when all five animals, standing in a V-formation stood in the meadow, she realized they were wolves. Incredibly, large wolves. Bella couldn't even believe her eyes. How did they get so big?
The one on the outer flank with rich, russet colored fur was close enough to her that she could reach out and run her fingers through its fur. Not that she would. At this point, she would rather choose death by vampire than ripped to pieces by a pack of wolves. She tried to stop breathing so shallowly as to keep any attention off herself but wished that Laurent would just get rid of the wolves, so he can kill her and get it over with. When she heard a deep growl emanate from the chest of the black wolf at the center of the V, Bella gasped and jumped back, and she cursed herself mentally repeatedly for drawing attention to herself.
Through the freezing terror running through her veins, she felt a tug in her chest. Something about these animals felt familiar to her. Especially the black and russet ones. With startling certainty, she realized they were the ones she'd encountered in her dreams. The image of her vampiric head removed from the rest of her body flashed through her mind. Laurent's not going to make it…and neither am I.
She nervously fingered the end of her sleeve as her eyes darted back and forth between the two predators when the russet wolf turned its large head in her direction. The sound of something akin to static reached her ears. She perked her ears a little to listen -a faint, familiar voice -Jacob's voice -said with determination, "Bella." Paralyzed, she looked into its coal-black eyes, the sleeve clutched tightly in her fingers, until she felt something warm drip down her nose. Her fingers automatically went to the space beneath her nostrils and her hand came back covered with blood.
She immediately looked at Laurent, and found his gaze locked on her. "I'm sorry," she gasped. Laurent lunged to his right, away from the animals, towards her, just as the wolves jumped towards him. "No!" she screamed, her arms in front of her to shield herself uselessly, eyes shut, her mind ready to die.
When nothing happened, she peeled one eyelid open and saw what looked like a large curved mirror in front of her, erupting from the floor. But the mirror wavered and moved like a sheet and looked…alive. Bella turned around her and saw only blank white. Panicked, she looked back at the mirror, her own face reflecting back, wide-eyed and quick shallow breaths escaping her slightly open mouth. The glass in front of her rippled and cracked. From the corner of her eye, she could see the end of the mirror fold around her until it concealed the whiteness. Bella slowly stepped away from her fragmented reflection, unable to comprehend what was happening in front of her, until her back hit the glass. She quickly turned around to see the mirror behind her, fragmented the same way until all she saw were infinite reflections of herself. Bella tried to catch her breath and stay calm -think through what was happening. She watched her own reflections, eyes filled with terror and confusion, millions of them following her movements…
….until one reflection of herself hundreds of feet away, the one of her back, stepped out of the line and turned to look at her.
Bella screamed when she saw red eyes looking back at her. Her body froze where it stood, paralyzed in fear. It had been one thing to see the betrayal of Laurent with his red eyes, but to see her own, marble-white face, no older than she was now, felt like ice water down her spine. The vampire looked at her with confusion and began to stalk forward towards her when she suddenly stopped. She turned to her right interestedly until one more reflection stepped out of line. A younger Bella, no more than fourteen of fifteen, with short hair that only reached her shoulders, stood with hands in tight little fists at her chest. She was the one Bella had seen in Port Angeles. She glanced between the vampire and the older Bella and her hands shook. Both Bellas looked past her to the curved mirror behind her. Bella slowly turned to see one more reflection step out, this time looking a bit older than the rest of them, a little bit haggard and thin, with dark circles under her eyes wearing white and orange robes.
"What-" Bella began, but not another word escaped her mouth when things went south.
The mirrors cracked from the center, mazing through the circle like vines until every reflection was split a million more times. The three Bellas that had been in the mirrors were gone, leaving her alone in the center of broken glass. Bella spun around in the little circle of mirrors, trying to see a way out when suddenly, the shards of glass reached out and grabbed her from behind and pulled her into it.
"Please, find him."
END OF PART ONE
A/N: Thanks for reading! The last part of this chapter was actually the first chapter I wrote for this story so it was really fun writing around this scene.
If you have the time, please leave a review! I would love to hear your thoughts about the story so far and if you guys think there are areas that I did well in or could improve upon. Thanks, again!
Warning for the next chapter: things do change drastically. It may or may not be the kind of story you came to read. Let me know your thoughts!
