30 Days of Night

Disclaimer:

I own absolutely nothing. Twilight belongs to Stephenie Meyer and 30 Days of Night belongs to Steve Niles .

Chapter Ten: Immersion into Darkness:

I tried to delay everyone as much as I could. I tried to give Alice enough time to get my message and prepare to come to Alaska. I didn't know where the Cullens were. I guess I had hoped that they were somewhere close. I remembered Edward talking about another clan similar to them that lived in Denali. I managed to stall our departure for a few hours. I convinced everyone to wait to see if the snow would pick up again before committing to the plan to split up and brave the night. But in the end, they all had their minds set on what they were doing. I think really that we all knew we were going to die and we all were just trying to figure out a way to do it on our own terms. Hovering in the background was the agreement to try to meet up at the Utilidor. That plan, which had once been our lifeline of hope, was just an empty promise now. We didn't really have control of anything. We hadn't since the thirty days of night began. That was the annoying thing about vampires. They always seemed to take control of everything. But it was almost as if making the decision to walk out of the general store, to try our luck, to do something active instead of passive, was our way of taking back the control. We all knew how it would end. At least it was an end that we had chosen.

Eben wasn't happy about any of it. He still thought that we could survive. He was like Charlie in that respect, very stubborn about things. Every second that ticked by I felt my anxiety growing. I wasn't sure how long I would have to wait to find out if Alice had gotten my message or not. But I felt that the longer I had to wait the more likely it was that she hadn't seen me. Finally, I couldn't stall anyone anymore. Doug was pacing around the store. He grabbed one of the bags of food and said, "That's it. I'm going. I can't stay here anymore. I'm sorry, Bella." He looked at me. "I don't want to wait any longer to see if another storm is trailing on the end of that one."

I didn't know where Doug was planning to go. Denise and Lucy were going to make a dash for the high school. It was a stepping stone on the way to the Utilidor and it was relatively safe. Plenty of places to hide. Beau had been right when he said that sticking together in a vampire attack probably wasn't the wisest idea. A clump of humans had to smell much stronger than individuals dispersed throughout the town. Still, I couldn't help but feel like I would never see most of these people again. Beau still hadn't made his plans known and I wondered at the pain I felt when I thought of him out there on his own somewhere. Eben and Stella gathered some supplies together. We were ready to try to get to the police station. I stood by the door waiting for everyone as Eben shook hands with the men and lightly hugged the women. Stella did the same. I was scanning the rooftops, trying to see if I could spot any vampires moving around. I couldn't.

I knew Beau was standing behind me. I could feel his shadow hulking over my tiny frame. But I didn't want to turn around. I knew I would start crying. Finally, he laid a hand on my shoulder and sighed. "Okay," he said. "I'll stick with you guys."

I turned sharply at that, looking up into his eyes. He smiled at me and I launched myself at him, hugging him tightly. It reminded me of one of Emmett's bear hugs. Beau wrapped his long, thick arms around me and rested his chin on my head. "I don't want you to be out there alone," I said, my words muffled in his jacket.

"And I don't trust Eben enough to keep you safe," Beau said, chuckling a little. "I don't really like people, Bella," he said as I pulled away. "I never really have. I've always been a loner. But there's just something about you. You remind me of the little sister I should have had."

I smiled and briefly wondered why every single man I ever met instinctively felt the need to protect me. Did I seriously look that weak? I had decapitated a vampire for God's sake. I wasn't just some little girl. Of course, I did have a bad track record. One moment of irrational courage didn't quite make up for that. Ultimately, I decided not to be offended. "Thanks," I said. He nodded and looked down at the floor, obviously uncomfortable with the intensity of the feelings we had been sharing.

The others joined us and we all split into groups. Eben opened the door slowly and poked his head out. A blast of cold air hit me and I zipped up my jacket again. "Looks clear," he muttered. That didn't mean it was. He didn't need to say that though. He left the store first, followed by Beau. Stella and I were behind him. Lucy and Denise trailed closely behind us, while Doug brought up the rear. The police station was in sight. We tried to stay low to the ground and move quickly. The group was about to disperse when I heard a scream pierce the air from behind me. I looked back and gasped. The vampires were lined up on the roof of the general store. They had been there the whole time. They had known that we were in the store and they had just been waiting. Playing with us. They weren't hungry anymore; no, they had eaten practically the entire town. Now they just wanted to have a little sport. They were waiting to see what we'd do. Realization dawned on me and I felt sick to my stomach. I gagged a little in my throat, clutching my stomach. I could barely breathe. We humans were such interesting little toys for them.

One of the vampires jumped from the roof and landed on Doug. But he didn't bite him. He just slashed him with his sharp fingernails. The other vampires hooted with laughter when Doug yelped and fell backwards. Half of Doug's face was covered with blood. Then the other vampires started jumping down, surrounding him. It was a little like something you would see on the Discovery Channel. The lions had taken down the elk and now they were circling it, toying with it a little, like cats do with birds, before they were going to eat it. I'm not sure how it happened really. But Stella grabbed my hand and we started running. I think we were all running in the same direction when we started, but then we weren't anymore. I didn't know where I was going. I was just stumbling along behind Stella as she pulled me.

We got separated from Eben and Beau. Lucy and Denise were right behind us. Somehow they kept up with us even though Stella ran like an Olympic sprinter. She would have been much faster too without me dragging her down. I almost dripped her several times. I don't know how I kept my footing. I'm not even sure my feet touched the ground that often. I felt like I was sailing behind her. Stella stopped suddenly and I smashed into her. I think she realized then that Eben and Beau weren't with us anymore. She had been running away from the police station toward the Utilidor. But Eben and Beau had branched off the other way. They had to have known what they were doing. They had to have known that they were going to lose us in the fray. Then it dawned on me that maybe they wanted to. Stella searched for Eben, her eyes wild.

I think she realized the same thing because her mouth settled into a hard line when she finally spotted him. He and Beau were running the opposite way, toward the ditch driller. They weren't running to try to get away from the vampires. No, they were running toward the one thing that could sufficiently distract them enough to allow us to get away. They were going to sacrifice themselves so that we could escape The vampires were still making sport of Doug, not even remotely concerned with us. They slashed at him, laughing when his blood spurted out against the snow. It looked so bright against the white, almost like it wasn't real. He was kneeling on the ground, doubled over in pain, making noises no human being should ever have to make. I knew in that moment that the vampires would let us get away again, just to give us a little hope only to tear it away. That was so much more fun than just draining every person in sight. With their thirst satiated, they were even more depraved. All that time we thought we had been clever hiding in the attic. I was beginning to think that they had known we were there the whole time.

"Eben!" Stella yelled. The vampires were making so much noise and Doug was screaming so loudly, that her words seemed to be lost. But Eben heard her.

He turned around, smiling at her, his eyes crinkling like Charlie's. He was smiling at her as though it would be the last time he did and then he yelled back, "You know the plan. Go!"

Stella hesitated for a moment. I pulled on her hand. If they were going to sacrifice themselves for us I was going to make damn sure it wasn't for nothing. "Come on!" I said, pulling her along now. I dragged her several feet before she came to herself again. Then she started running and I was once again being dragged by her. She still hadn't let go of my hand. Denise and Lucy followed behind us. No one dared say anything. No one dared breathe really. I could see the Utilidor peaking up over a snowy hill, but I didn't know how far away it was. I tripped several times, but each time Lucy helped me to my feet again. No one looked back. We didn't want to see if we were being followed. We didn't want to see if the vampires had Eben or Beau. We heard the ditch driller rumble to life at one point. I was tempted to turn around, just to peek, but I knew I wouldn't survive it if I saw the vampires tearing into either one of them. So I ran. I ran until my lungs burned and legs felt wobbly and weak. And even though I was moving pretty fast for me, I knew that I was crawling in comparison to how fast the vampires could run. I remembered how fast Edward could run, how the world seemed to blend together while I clung to his back. No matter how fast I ran, I could never match that.

It was good that I didn't peek. If I had, I would have seen the vampire that broke away from the group and trotted slowly after us, discreetly following us, all the way to the Utilidor. And I didn't need to see that. I didn't need to know. When death finally found me, I wanted it to catch me so off guard I wouldn't even see it coming. We arrived at the rather imposing steel structure, all of us shaking from the physical exertion of the run. We hadn't eaten much in the past few days and what we had been eating didn't have much in the way of nutritional value. The generator at the Utilidor was still running. It had enough gas to last the month, another security precaution – it was the town's emergency shelter. Stella knew the code for the door and got it open for us. She hadn't said anything yet since leaving Eben behind. But I knew that she was hurting. She closed the door and locked it, even though the lock wouldn't stop a vampire, and silently led us down several long hallways until we reached the trash compactor. There was an office on the other side of the room and we all went in there. Through the window in the office, we could see the town.

Stella immediately grabbed a pair of high powered binoculars from off of the desk, went to the window, and put them to her eyes. While Lucy and Denise searched the room for anything that would be useful, I leaned against the wall next to Stella. Denise went back out into the main room, hoping to find something useful in among the things waiting to be compacted. "See anything?" I asked, still breathless from the run. We were all beyond being relieved that we had escaped the vampires. I think we all knew that we hadn't really escaped them. I think we all knew now that whatever illusion we'd had of control was really just that – an illusion. We had never been in control. We had only escaped the vampires in town because they wanted us to escape. They wanted to hunt us down again. It was so much more fun that way. Like James had said in the ballet studio, it had been too easy for him to get me there. He needed more entertainment. Vampires were so easily distracted after all.

And we would remain alive in the Utilidor for as long as they wanted us to. When they decided that we had grown to boring, they would just kill us like Doug and move on again to the next person or the next town. Whatever their plan was. The only glimmer of hope left was that Alice and the Cullens would find us before the vampires got bored enough to want to kill us instead of torturing us. "I see him," Stella said suddenly, breaking the silence.

"You see who?" I asked, dragged too suddenly from my thoughts to understand what she was talking about.

"Eben, I see him. And Beau," she declared. I grabbed the binoculars from her and trained them to where she was pointing. They had run the ditch driller into the crowd of vampires evidently. Then they had crashed it into a building. The vampires looked pissed. Doug was lying dead in the snow now. I could see Eben and Beau hiding underneath of a wreck on the side of the road. Two cars had run into each other and both were flipped upside down. One of them had landed on top of a little indentation in the snow. Beau and Eben were resting in that. The vampires were all around them, but for some reason, they didn't seem to notice them. It was almost like they couldn't smell them.

"What the hell," I muttered. "They're going right by them."

Stella took the binoculars back. "I know," she said excitedly.

"Why can't they smell them?" I asked, more to myself than her. She shrugged.

"I have no idea," she said.

"How long can they stay out there?" I asked. "I mean, how long can they survive in the cold like that with no shelter to block the wind and snow?"

"Not long," Stella said, her excitement visibly lessening. "But they're alive for now."

For now. "Come on, Alice," I whispered to myself. "Where are you?"

A scream ripped through the Utilidor and we all froze. "Where's Denise?" Stella asked, glancing around the room.

"She went out there," Lucy said, her eyes wide as she nodded toward the door that led back to the trash compactor. We all stared at it. Another scream.

"Shit," I said, moving over to the door.

"What are you doing?" Stella asked, grabbing my hand as it landed on the door handle.

"I'm going out there," I replied as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"To do what?" Stella asked.

"I don't know," I replied, yanking the door open. "But we're dead if we go out there and we're dead if we stay in here, so I'm going to meet my death head on."

As it turned out, I didn't have to. A vampire, the one that I hadn't seen so stealthily following us from town, had grabbed Denise and was biting her from behind. Blood was streaming from the wound on her neck. She stared at me with pleading eyes, her hands wrapped around the vampire's arm. But she couldn't shake his grip on her. Then something in her eyes changed. She tried to say something, but I couldn't understand her at first. She started thrashing wildly, she and the vampire feeding on her tumbling dangerously close to the garbage compactor. Then I realized what she wanted.

I looked behind me and saw a red switch on the wall. I wondered if the machine still worked, if the generator had enough power to turn it on. Denise nodded at me when she saw me look at the switch. The light was starting to go out of her eyes. He was draining her. Reaching back, I hit the switch. The machine whirred to life. With the last of her energy, Denise threw herself at the whirring, crunching teeth of the compactor. The vampire, so distracted by the warm blood flowing into his mouth, didn't notice, not until his legs hit the side of the machine and he started tumbling toward it. Denise went in head first, the vampire following after her. He managed to grab the side of the machine, but he couldn't stop the momentum of his body. The steel teeth ripped into him like they ripped into Denise. I had to close my eyes. It was the most gruesome thing I had ever seen.

I didn't open my eyes again until the machine stopped. Throwing it into operation like that had drained the generator of the rest of its gas reserves. The sudden silence was completely overwhelming. Stella and Lucy were standing behind me, having watched the whole scene. They looked green. I probably looked green too. There was so much blood. The vampire had been ripped in half, most of him chewed up by the steel teeth and deposited wherever the stuff went that got thrown in the compactor. The other half had slipped to the ground and was twitching a little bit. That was also completely disturbing. Lucy turned away and started throwing up in the other room. Stella laid a hand on my shoulder. "I'm gonna need some serious counseling," she muttered, pinching the bridge of her nose as she closed her eyes.

"God, we're all gonna die," Lucy moaned from the other room. "There's nothing we can do. We're all gonna die."

I frowned a little, my eyes glued to the still twitching vampire. And I suddenly knew. Just like that. Lucy was right. We all were going to die. But we didn't have to. Not all of us anyway. Some of us could survive. All it would take was one little sacrifice. And it wasn't that much of a sacrifice at all. Not really. Because it was something that I had wanted ever since I found out about the Cullens. Eternity. Vampires had venomous body fluids. All I would need was a little. I shrugged out of Stella's grasp and went back into the other room. I knew I had seen a medical kit somewhere. I found it in an open locker in the corner of the room and pulled it out. Yanking open the lid, I rummaged through the supplies until my eyes landed on exactly what I had been searching for. A needle.

Lucy was eyeing me warily. Stella was staring at me from the doorway, not entirely sure what to make of my actions. I'm not sure I really knew what I was doing at that moment. All I could think about was Eben and Beau lying under the wreck outside, waiting for the vampires to find them, and Stella and Lucy and I trapped in the Utilidor, waiting for the vampires to find us. Maybe Alice was coming to Barrow. Maybe she wasn't. But if she was, I was going to try to buy her some more time. I pushed passed Stella, slipping on the blood on the floor as I advanced toward the garbage compactor. I had grown so used to the smell of blood by now that it didn't even bother me anymore. There was a time when I would have been passed out on the floor from it. Finally, Stella found her voice, "What are you doing?" She asked wildly.

"Something very, very irrational," I said. I kneeled down in the blood next to the vampire. I didn't care that the blood was getting all over me. Nothing really mattered anymore. The needle wouldn't pierce the vampire's skin, but it didn't have to. The vampire's body had been shorn in half and all I had to do was stick the needle into the gore to get some of the vampire's venomous blood out. It filled the needle and I felt a strange sense of anticipation fill me. I didn't quite know what to expect of all of this. I didn't know how long it would take or what I would be like afterward. I didn't really know if it would work.

"Bella," Stella said placatingly, like she was speaking to a lunatic. She moved toward me, her hand outstretched in front of her. "You better stop right now if you're doing what I think you're doing."

"We don't have another choice," I said, looking up at her defiantly. I was holding the needle in one hand, my other hand on my hip. I tried to look tough and confident, but inside I was really just quaking with fear.

"Sure we do," Stella said, but even she knew that wasn't true. Her words rang hollow.

"We're too weak," I argued. "Too human. We can't fight them. But that's our only chance. If I do this," I said, motioning to the needle. "I'll be strong enough."

"It's someone else's blood, Bella," Stella replied. "You could catch something. You don't even know if it'll work."

"We have to try something," I said. "Eben and Beau are sitting ducks out there. I can save them," I said, my voice taking on a hysterical edge. I was starting to lose it a little. Maybe I was crazy. Maybe I always had been. Maybe that was why I was so good at accepting things normal people wouldn't accept.

Stella sighed and folded her arms across her chest. "And what happens if it works and you wake up wanting to kill us?"

"I won't," I promised.

"You don't know that," Stella countered.

"It's too late," I shook my head. "I've made up my mind."

She looked at me quietly for a few moments. Then her eyes softened. "Do you want me to leave while you do it?" She asked.

"No," I said, shaking my head. "Just stay with me. But don't get too close." I sat down on the other side of the room from her, my back to the wall. I shrugged off my jacket and rolled up my shirt sleeve. She sat down, mimicking my position and watched me, her eyes never leaving my face. I think a part of her thought it should have been her doing what I was doing. But we both knew that I was the one without anything to lose. I was the one who already felt dead inside anyway. Stella had a husband, a life. I had nothing left.

So here I was, dying in the place of someone I loved…again. Only this time, I'd had a choice in the matter and I'd made it. Agonizing over decisions had always been the most difficult part for me. But I'd made my choice now. I could relax and, for a few moments, I could indulge in a little mental montage of my life – short as it'd been. I was eighteen years old. I'd only ever been in love once, with a vampire of all people. A vampire who'd left me. Of course, I'd hoped my mental montage would be a little more positive than this, but all I could think about was Edward.

Edward staring at me blackly my first day of biology at Forks High School, as I knew now, desperately trying not to drain me dry in front of the entire class.

Edward pulling me out of the way of Tyler's van with that slightly terrified look in his eyes like all the sudden he knew his life was over.

Edward standing in the sunlight in the meadow with millions of tiny diamonds reflecting off of his skin. Beautiful.

Our first kiss. My reaction to our first kiss. I could still feel a wave of desire roll over me. Every kiss afterward, how badly I wanted him, how badly I wanted to be like him.

I tried not to remember the pain. After all, my last moments montage was supposed to be pleasant and all that. But remembering the good moments always made me think of the bad.

Edward telling me he didn't want me anymore and, just like that, they were gone. Alice, Jasper, Rosalie, Emmett, Esme, Carlisle. My entire family, just gone.

Every second – every excruciating second after – when all I felt was that someone was ripping me apart inch by inch until I had a hole in my chest that constantly oozed pain.

Dying in the place of someone I loved, well, that was the easy part. The hard part was what would come after. I looked up into Stella's eyes and I knew that I had to do this. It was the only way. They would kill all of us and no one would ever know what had happened here. It would be like Barrow, Alaska had just disappeared off of the map. Someone had to live, if only that the rest of us wouldn't be forgotten.

Charlie. The thought of my father made me hesitate. I didn't know what would happen after this, but I knew that I would probably never see him again. I hadn't even gotten a chance to say good-bye. I would never graduate high school. He would never walk me down the aisle at my wedding. I would never be a mother. And though all of those things made me incredibly sad, I knew that I was making the right decision. "If this doesn't go right, tell my father I love him," I said to her. She nodded. "Tell him anything. Just don't tell him what really happened."

I plunged the needle into my arm and watched as the red liquid shot into my veins. And that's when the burning started.

…………………………….

Alice POV

We were on our way to Alaska, six of us piled into a tiny private plane, speeding along above the ground. I had left so many messages for Edward I'd lost track of how many times I'd called him. But he never picked up his phone. He only spoke to any of us when he wanted to and apparently he didn't want to now. Jasper kept sending me waves of calm. Well, he was sending them to everyone in the plane. We were all panicking. Emmett was sitting next to the pilot, an extremely nervous man who kept glancing over at him out of the corner of his eye. I didn't blame the poor, little human. Emmett was rather imposing. Especially with his face set in that determined and menacing glare. If I had been in a better mood, I would have chuckled at that. Emmett wanted to rip the vampires who had dared to try to kill his little sister to pieces. We all still viewed Bella that way – as our family.

Rosalie sat next to him. Her leg was bouncing anxiously. She had never liked Bella for whatever reason. But she had seen what Bella's absence did to our family. Bella's death would truly rip us apart. We were all only barely holding on as it was. We were just the façade of what we had been. Carlisle sat behind the pilot. He was on the plane's phone. He had been talking to Tanya ever seen we left the house. The Denali clan had agreed to help us rescue Bella. They didn't care so much about Edward's mate as they did about vampires so blatantly destroying a town in their own state. They had been living in Denali for so long they didn't want anything to threaten their happy home. Carlisle was finalizing the details with Tanya. They were going to meet us just outside of Barrow.

Esme sat next to Carlisle. Her hands were folded in her lap and her eyes were closed. She was perhaps the most anxious of all of us. She loved Bella like a daughter. We had all only agreed to leave Bella so suddenly, without even so much as a proper good-bye, because Edward had thought it would be best – safest. Esme was regretting that decision now that she realized, like the rest of us, that Bella would never be safe as long as she was a human. Jasper sat next to me, holding my hand. I could barely sit in my seat. I knew all of the emotions swirling around the tiny plane were too much for him. He looked like he wanted to throw himself out of the emergency door. I smiled weakly to him and gripped his hand a little tighter. I had to work on calming down.

I had just closed my eyes to try to meditate when another vision assaulted me. I gasped, my mind blanking out as the images flashed before me. I saw Bella injecting something into her arm. I saw the pain on her face. No, not pain – agony. Burning agony. I saw her lying on the floor, her eyes glassy, her heart stopping. She was dead. Just before the vision faded, I saw one more thing that would have chilled me to the bone had I not already been so cold. Bella blinking those dead, glassy eyes and, when she opened them again, they were red. "No!" I cried as the vision dispelled and I was thrust back into reality. The pilot jerked a little and the plane swerved.

"Is she alright?" He asked, looking over at Emmett.

"She's fine," Emmett said without turning his head. "Just fly the fucking plane."

"What is it?" Jasper asked, gently caressing my face.

I shook my head. "We're going to be too late."