The Rosetta Stone to my incomprehensible babble: Bloodredfirefly!
Disclaimer: 'Fanfiction'... We use that word a lot. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Chapter Ten: Sandcastle Under Tempest
Jacob Black and I eventually decided that the best course of action would not be to speed off without any idea of where to go. Unfortunately, this required asking for help. This conclusion, of course, was only accepted after a long period of mutual grimacing and fruitless brainstorming. The best alternative plan we could think of was tuning into police broadcasts— which neither of us knew how to do. (The worst part was that it was my idea and, being Charlie's daughter, I should have known.)
"Okay, well, who do you think she would have been with before she went missing?"
"Uh..." He kicked aimlessly at his bike tire. "I don't know, I guess her brother or her dad."
"We are not calling Seth."
"Right, forgot you were a runaway."
Even though it was the exact term I had mentally used for myself, I still scowled. "I was just dropped off there, Charlie didn't say I had to stay. Besides, Seth's just a kid. It's not like he was in charge of me."
"Sure, sure. If that's how it is, you shouldn't be worried after all. Want to call him? Or how about your dad? I bet he'd be real helpful."
"Fine, okay, you win. Can you think of anyone else... please?"
He sighed. "I don't know, I mean... Oh, wait. Do you think I should try calling Sam?"
I stared at him blankly. "I've been in Forks for one day, for the first time in two years. I don't know who that is."
He raised his eyebrows. "Damn, I forgot about that. Some first day back."
"You're telling me."
"Well anyway, Sam is her boyfriend. She's not in school anymore, so it wouldn't surprise me if she was at his place at some point tonight." He looked up at the sky. "Or last night, I guess."
"Do you think it might be a false alarm? Or maybe he was the one who..."
"Nah, their parents know all about them— and they're totally psyched about it. Important family unions and all that jazz, probably already naming their future kids for them..." He trailed off, and we were quiet for a moment. I tried not to think about what Leah's future might look like now.
"Okay, so this Sam could have noticed her missing and called the police."
Jacob perked up slightly. "Well, yeah! Hey, you know, your cops aren't really supposed to get involved with what happens on our land. So if he called, he probably thought she could be in town. If that's right, then we're at least headed in the right direction. Or at least I was, until I found you."
"In that case, maybe the fires aren't a distraction. Maybe she's out there, and..."
There was another dejected silence; it was several minutes before Jake spoke up. "Still, it'd be worth it to call Sam. I bet he's looking for her too. Heck, almost definitely him and all our friends— I knew I should have checked in, but I thought they might... Ugh, I'm such a dumb-ass. But you know, when my dad told me about her going missing, he was complaining about not being able to help search..." He saw my confusion. "Well, how did you think I found out about it in the first place? Man, it took forever for me to get away, too. He stayed up way too late; I bet he knew what I was thinking. Had to sneak through my bedroom window and roll my bike a mile down the road so he wouldn't hear the engine and wake up. I'm just lucky nobody else caught me leaving."
"So you're a runaway, too."
"Didn't say I had a problem with runaways." He broke into a cheeky grin, and for the first time in a while, I laughed— and began to feel hopeful.
"Okay, so we either just head toward the fires, or call Sam. We'll find her in no-time, either way. Piece of cake!"
"Damn straight!" He clapped a hand on my shoulder. "Heck, I'm just surprised neither of us ran into the Rez search party when we ran off. If nobody's caught him yet, then that kidnapping douche-nozzle is in for a hell of a surprise! That's what he gets for messing with werewolves!"
He froze and stared at me in absolute horror. I stared back in utter confusion.
"... What."
"But you shouldn't have been physically able to tell her!" shouted the lanky one, Paul.
We had moved into the forest at this point. Jake was hunched forward, leaning against his bike, gripping at his hair. I stood across from him, my back against a tree. We were surrounded by... werewolves.
"You think I don't know that?" Jake snapped.
"Well, maybe she's one of us," said the stocky one, Quil. "Hey, d'you think her mom might've, you know, strayed?"
Before, when Jake initially let the word "werewolf" slip, he ignored my questions and began to tremble violently. His pupils shrank into pinpricks, and every muscle in his body tensed, seeming to lengthen and bulge outward. His lips pulled past his teeth in a snarl (Good God, are his teeth growing or his gums receding?), and his pupils dilated again impossibly, fully filling his irises...
"No way," Jared laughed. "She's pale as a sheet."
...His snarl had scared me; I took a quick step back. Everything from the set of his face (it was like his muscles or bones had shifted to the wrong places) to his posture (can wolves actually stand like that? Can anything?) seemed completely and utterly wrong. For the longest time, he just stood and stared at me. Moments after I finally had enough control over myself to tell him 'Hey, you don't actually look like much of a proper werewolf,' the others had arrived. I later came to learn that werewolves could somehow hear each other's thoughts from a distance; so as soon as Jake transformed, they were able to find us...
"Yeah, but my mom used to know her mom— I've seen photos. Her mom's so white she's practically an albino. Might've been enough to even out?"
...While not being proper werewolves, being surrounded by tall, twisted, muscular men who were growling and snarling was rather discomposing. It was even worse when, one by one, they started to... come down from it. It looked like they were making a physical effort to unclench their muscles, the strange, jutting aberrations in their faces sinking away. Their pupils flickered rapidly between the pinpricks and dilation for a long while, even when their body structures and expressions went back to normal. That was disturbing, to say the least. Even worse was when they started asking what the heck Jacob was thinking, and what the flying... crap I was doing there.
"Really?" Jared seemed thoughtful.
"Hey, Bella, do you think you're a half-albino werewolf?" asked the tall one, Embry, amiably.
"Will you guys knock it off?" Jake said.
"No," I broke in. "I look too much like my dad, sorry." ...Really though, after so many shocks in one day, you get to the point where you can think, Telepathic fur-less werewolves? Well, why not. Might as well roll with it. At one point I vaguely began to wonder if I really was a fairy princess, like I thought at age seven. Clearly gone off the deep-end. Ha. Ha. Ha.
"This is bogus," Paul scoffed, leaning against a chain-link fence.
"Great, not only do I end up surrounded by non-werewolves, they're non-werewolves that are stuck in the nineties," I said. A few of the boys rolled their eyes at the sarcasm. Really though, why couldn't it have been an eighties Goblin King?
"Speaking of being stuck in the nineties," Quil said, "Could you try calling Sam's cell, Jake? You're the only one who has a cell phone, and none of us could remember his new number. We haven't heard him while in phase, and we couldn't reach his home phone before we left."
"Wouldn't that make sense?" I asked. "I mean, it seems like he'd know about her before anyone else, so it's unlikely he'd still be at home. If you can't, uh, hear him, he must be out searching... 'on foot'."
"Yeah, and Jake, man, and you've got a lot of explaining to do," Embry started ticking on his fingers. "Going on a search when you're grounded from pack activity without informing the Alpha, driving a motorcycle off-territory without a license, dragging a teenage girl along with you (with only one helmet, might I add), proceeding to share the secret with her..."
Jake ignored him. "Geez, you guys need to get phones with a damn contact list! You're all hopeless. And Quil, I'd already exposed us at that point, of course I thought phasing would be easier. What does Sam think he's doing? There's no point in him going out 'on foot'."
"Maybe he thought driving would be easier?"
"Don't be stupid, he wouldn't be able to catch her scent like that."
"Well duh, he'd roll the windows down!"
"Oh you idiot, we can barely smell better than normal people when we're out of phase!"
"What did you just say?!"
The wolf boys continued arguing for a while longer; I tuned them out. This was just way too much. Could all of this actually be real? Was I going to wake up any second? Am I in a hospital somewhere, finally overcome by my unwillingness to participate in the real world? Was I staring at a ceiling miles away, unseeing, lost completely to my fantasies?
But what if this was all real? I wondered what my mom would think. Would she have been excited? She loved fantasy stories, I knew. Then again... she was still a mom. She'd probably haul my butt down to Florida without a second thought.
I tried not to think of what Charlie would say. I tried not to think about my dad at all because then my stomach would squirm and the smell of fire would seem to get stronger and... and werewolves existed and Leah was out there somewhere and... It's all just too much.
The tears came suddenly, quietly. I slid down to sit and rested my face on my knees, trying to pass it off so it looked like I was just sleepy; I didn't want the boys to notice. They surely must have though, because they stopped shouting after that, reducing their arguments in volume if not in strength. They shifted a few feet further away from me, perhaps so I couldn't hear them, or just to give me space. Grateful for the gesture either way, I allowed my feelings to wash through me. It was the first time I'd cried in front of anyone but my Father in two years— the first time I'd cried in front of anyone outside my family since the day I was born. This time, just this time, I wouldn't allow myself to consider it weakness. It's okay. It'll all be okay. The tears poured down my face like a fresh rain in spring. I could feel the frozen stiffness in my face melting away; exposed. Somehow, even with periodic hiccups and sniffling, I'd never felt cleaner or more relaxed.
SOMEWHERE IN WASHINGTON
I slowly ran my whip down the spine of the cowering figure that lay below me, enjoying the shudders rippling down their back.
"I will only say this one last time. Be silent. Submit."
"Y-yes..."
The phone chose that moment to ring.
"Oh dear," I said. "It's your cell. Persistent, aren't they?"
With much difficulty and creative squirming, the figure rolled to face up with a sigh. "Damn. You'd think after disconnecting the landline they'd take a hint. Can you grab it real quick?"
"Yes, sweetie." I walked over to his coat, and after a little rummaging, found the offending cellphone. "It's Jacob Black."
"The hell's he want? I'm sorry Emily, could you hand me the phone, please?" He finally seemed to recall his manners; he wasn't exactly in a place to be rude.
I hid a smile, opened the phone, and placed it in his still-bound hands. He fumbled for a moment, eventually managing to hit the call button with his nose. "What do you want? I'm busy."
Sam must have accidentally activated the speakerphone; Jake's voice was clearly audible. "Yeah, I know man, but this is important."
"Nothing can possibly be more important than what I'm doing right now," he snapped.
"Yeah, I know, I know, and I'm sorry. I'm looking for her too, but I need to know where to look."
He furrowed his eyebrows. "What?" He looked to me, but I could only shrug.
Jake's voice hissed out more loudly from the speaker. "Hey, I know you think I'm just a punk kid, but I'm as worried about Leah as you are, all right? She's basically family!"
"Leah? What the hell are you talking about?"
There was a pause, and I felt myself beginning to tremble. I started untying the bonds, just to give my hands something to do. What's wrong? I didn't want to think about Leah right now, I'd already hurt her so much...
"Dude! What gives? Leah's been kidnapped! Weren't you the one who reported it? Didn't anyone tell you?"
Sam jolted upright at the waist. "What?"
"The whole pack's out, we're all running blind trying to look for her! I'm headed out toward town myself! Heck, I've even got... Where is she though? How couldn't you have known?"
"How am I supposed to know? How was I supposed to have known? I— I didn't have my landline plugged in!"
"She's your girlfriend, isn't she? I mean-"
"We broke up!" I finally had both his hands unbound; he started to throw on his pants. "If you actually phased now and then, you'd have known that!"
"You're one to talk, and you're the fucking pack leader! I don't care if you're not dating her! And why the hell did you unplug your phone?"
My trembling increased the more Sam became agitated. He was shaking so hard now that the whole bed was. I quickly sprang up and quietly got dressed, trying not to think about her, trying not to be afraid of him. 'It's not his fault!' I wanted to whimper, or maybe shout.
As suddenly as he had begun panicking, Sam reflexively cocked his head to the side, and became very still. "Jake, who is that? I hear someone... crying? That's not one of the boys. It sounds like a— Oh, rather, who is she? Did you manage to imprint without me hearing about it, too? If that's the case, you can't just drag her around on pack business, you should have talked to me about-"
"Uh, yeah... about that. About her. Uh, she's not an imprint. It's a long, weird story. Look, can you just go out and phase? I've already talked to everyone else, and we could really use a pack leader right about-"
"She's not an... Wait, what?"
I shuffled out into the kitchen, putting on a pot of tea. The stove hadn't been lit for ten seconds before Sam ran through, still shirtless, half transformed, and tore through the front door.
Sighing, I got myself a mug and stared at the splintered frame; this time it would take a lot more work before the door could be refitted.
A cold breeze flitted through the room. It can wait until after the tea.
SOMEWHERE (ELSE) IN WASHINGTON
[And quite a few hours ago]
It was the only thing she could do— she ran. No matter the fires, no matter how his plans might have changed, or what else went awry— she would still act as she had long since decided. There was still a small and dimly beating hope that she'd be able to keep his plans from reaching fruition.
She would have to find them, and she would have to help her.
As for finding them, it was honest-to-goodness the last thing in the world she would have ever wanted to do. That pale, sickly skin, those creepy glowing eyes, and that stench. It seemed to wrap around everything within reach; a cloying, rotting perfume... Fortunately, she wouldn't have to deal with them immediately. The girl was more important.
The girl. How strange that she had come think of her in that way. Was it from the many months under that madman's care; had she simply adopted his heartless title? Or was it she herself who changed? To be sure, she'd had to shield everything she loved, to lock away all her lifetime of feelings. So many people she'd had to leave behind, so many more she'd had to pretend to hate... So worth it, so infinitely worth it to protect them.
Her mind felt more free then ever; she could let the loneliness show on her face, let the rage sweep her up— such sweet bliss, such release, when she began to shake! She let the anger consume her; for the first time, she gladly accepted the wolf's mind— accepted with her whole body. This was who she was. She understood now, and this was how she could protect what was rightfully hers. He would not get in her way.
Such a vile, disrespectful, misogynistic, idiotic man! He thought so very well of himself; so very clever! Yes, yes, he saw himself as a deity among mortals, didn't he? What a savior, what a martyr, oh please. It was people like him, people who trusted so blindly in what they thought was true— she hated that the most. He had never for a second thought to question himself, to think, to try to find out more. His disdainful conceit had become her blessing; it kept her secret, her weapon.
She could not, would not help him. She was the exception: a wolf in sheep's clothing.
A/N: Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries! Now go review, or I shall taunt you a second time. [/MontyPython]