Leather and Lace
Terrified
The squealing metallic keening was what woke me up from the Jasper-induced sleep, and I shot up as straight as I could get. The only reason I didn't sit straight up was because Jasper was holding on to me protectively. I narrowed my eyes in the general direction of where the windshield should be, but it wasn't there.
"Um. Peter, dude, I don't normally complain about the way you drive, but I'm pretty sure that there's supposed to be a piece of glass separating the driver and passenger from the hood of the truck. Where'd it go?" Charlotte cracked up, Peter's shoulders were shaking in his desperate attempt at remaining silent, and even the stoic Major Whitlock—Jasper, I corrected mentally—was laughing. "What? It's a valid point!" I protested.
"Well, I guess I could say we hit a tree, but trees don't make a keenin' sound like what you heard. So… well, Peter tried to run Alice and Edward over, and the truck was on the losin' side." Charlotte explained, and I started laughing.
"You'd think a vampire would know…mmph!" Jasper's hand gently clamped down over my mouth, efficiently shutting me up, and I stared with shock as Edward and Alice seemed to materialize on the hood of the truck.
"That was rude," Alice said, and suddenly I realized that she was probably scanning through the future and showing the possible outcomes of whatever it was that they wanted to achieve. No! If she does that, she's going to hurt my family! A huge wave of protectiveness crashed down on me, and then something in me just kind of snapped outward, a lot like a rubber band that had been held in one place for too long that was finally released. Frustration suddenly clouded Edward's face, and Alice seemed to be in a state of shock.
"They disappeared," she muttered, "And I can't see anything about them. Edward, can you read them?"
"No." His flat reply gave away how hard he was trying to read the minds of my family. At that moment, I didn't really care about how it was that they couldn't do anything to us; I was just pleased that my family was protected from them.
"Why are you here, Alice?" Jasper snarled, and I scooted in closer to him. His maroon eyes were flickering with a dangerous light, and I seriously didn't want to be in Alice's place ever if the two were in a face-off ever again.
Alice started pouting. "Well, I saw that you were going to go all human-eating again, and I thought that I'd save you from yourself, Jazzy."
I bit my lip to stop myself from snickering at the very inappropriate nickname. The Major sure wasn't going to like that one bit.
Rage raced out from Jasper in waves, and it hit Alice like a brick. Her face twisted into confusion, and I momentarily wondered why I wasn't getting crazily pissed off. "Who the fuck are you callin' Jazzy?" The Major boomed, and Alice shuddered. "I am Major Jasper Whitlock, ma'am, and you can call me Major, or sir."
Suddenly, I wasn't cradled against Jasper's side. I was outside of the car, in very familiar and unwanted arms. "Come back with me, Bella," Edward whispered, and his velvety voice sounded rough in my ears. I'd gotten used to the husky Southern accent that coated my family's voices, and the sweet sound that was Jasper's voice. I didn't want to go anywhere with Edward Cullen.
"Let me go!" I screamed, and my coven evacuated the truck like it was about to explode in that instant. Jasper's upper lip was curled high above his teeth in a feral snarl, Peter's grinning red eyes weren't so red anymore, and Charlotte's eyes held a faint trace of fear.
"Let her go."
The terrifying growl came from Jasper, and I looked at his eyes to see pitch-black darkness. And yet, it wasn't Jasper that terrified me.
It was Edward, the fact that he was holding me, and the fact that he could do just about anything to me then.
