30 Days of Night
Disclaimer:
I own absolutely nothing. Twilight belongs to Stephenie Meyer and 30 Days of Night belongs to Steve Niles.
Notes:
I have to admit that I struggled valiantly with this chapter and it may have defeated me. It wanted to go in like eight different directions. Ultimately, I think it went in the most depressing direction of all of them. But that's okay. I threw in a little something for you guys at the very end. But don't get too excited. It's not all puppies and kittens.
Chapter 14: The Fight:
Bella POV
I instinctively crouched low and hissed when I saw Jasper and Rosalie sailing through the air toward me. The hissing thing was something I would have to get used to. Well, in truth, I would have to get used to pretty much everything. I honestly thought they were going to attack me. Maybe they thought I was a mistake. Maybe they didn't want me to be a vampire. Maybe there were rules about who could and could not become a vampire and I had somehow broken them. After all, I had done this to myself. Jasper landed on my right and Rosalie on my left. They were a few feet in front of me. I braced myself; I was so sure they were going to kill me. It was irrational really. They were my friends…well, maybe that wasn't quite right either. They had been the least friendly of all of the Cullens when it came to me. Maybe that was why I expected them to do something to me. Maybe it was just because most vampires don't inherently like to be around large groups of other vampires, especially when two of those vampires, say, jump at you. I don't know why I reacted the way I did, but suddenly I was growling at them, my red eyes flashing.
The hit from behind I hadn't been expecting. I stumbled forward, landing in Jasper's arms. He smiled at me a little, I think apologetically, and quickly shoved me to the side as he grabbed the vampire that had slammed into my back. And then the fight started. I fell into the snow, a tangled mess of limbs. Apparently, all it took for me to revert to clumsy Bella Swan was the sight of a Cullen. I would have been pissed at Jasper if it wasn't for the fact that, from my new position on the ground, I could see that the mob of vampires would be on Jasper and Rosalie in a second. A blur of shapes moved passed me and suddenly they were all there, standing over me, protecting me. Well, almost all. Emmett, Carlisle, Esme, Rosalie, Jasper, Alice, and five vampires I didn't know were about to be bulldozed by the vampires rushing toward us.
The sound was unlike anything I'd ever heard. A wall of rock hard vampires hitting another wall of rock hard vampires. It actually hurt my ears. It was like one of those medieval war movies where two armies of heavily armored men crash into each other. I cringed and scrambled to my feet. The vampires were swarming around the Cullens. We were so outnumbered it was ridiculous. Everyone was moving so fast. It seemed like in an instant the ground was stained with blood and venom. I could hear ripping and howls of pain. Two vampires came at me, one of them grabbing me around the waist. He picked me up and slammed me back down into the snow. My head hit so hard I actually cracked the ground beneath me. Kicking my legs furiously, I knocked him off and rolled out of the way as the other vampire stomped where my head had been. I grabbed the vampire on the ground by the feet and swung him around, knocking his friend over. Still holding onto his foot, I pushed myself to my feet and my back collided with something hard and cold.
Whipping my head around, I realized that I was standing back to back with Emmett. "Stick with me, little sister," I heard him yell over the tumult of voices, growls, high pitched whines, and snarls. "You're stronger than they are, but they've been fighting longer."
That was obvious. The vampire's whose foot I was holding started kicking at me and I twisted his leg around until it broke. He was lying on his stomach now, clawing at the ground as I kept twisting and twisting until the bones all snapped and his leg came loose in my arms. I tried not to think about that too much. The other vampire lunged at me then and I dropped the leg. He slammed into me, knocking me back onto the car that I had recently had my head pounded into. I landed on the hood again, not particularly pleased to be back in this position.
But all other thoughts flew out of my mind when the vampire pinned me down and ripped his teeth into my throat. I realized that if he got the chance to bite me again, he would rip my head off of my body. I struggled against him, but the moment his teeth left my throat, the burning started all over again. I gasped and screamed, all of my nerve endings on fire. Emmett ripped him off before he could bite me again. The fury on Emmett's face would have been priceless if I wasn't in so much pain. As it was, I could barely focus on not kicking Emmett with my thrashing legs as he easily dismembered the vampire that had bitten me. I groaned when he grabbed me and pulled me off of the car. I landed with an audible thump on the ground. He leaned me against the driver's door, blocking me with his body. We were hidden behind the car, shielded from the fight for a few, precious moments. "Shit!" I yelled, grabbing my neck. "That fucking hurts!"
Emmett had been growling fiercely, but when he heard me cussing like that, he choked a little on his own growl and it turned into a low chuckle. "Where did you get that dirty mouth from, Bella Swan?" He asked. "Surely your mother didn't teach you to talk like that."
"Actually, I don't think Renee would have cared," I murmured as the burning started to lessen. The pain abated and my mind was free to think about something else again. Emmett chuckled again and looked back at me.
"You okay?" He asked. "Bites hurt, whether you're a vampire or a human."
I nodded. I took a few moments to survey the fight as I sat in the snow behind Emmett, my body still recovering from the paralyzing pain of having been bitten…again. When I looked out at the Cullens, all bravely gathered together, fighting for me, fighting against such horrible odds, I felt sick to my stomach. We weren't losing, but we weren't winning either. The Cullens, save Emmett, who was shielding me, and the other five vampires were packed tightly together, leaving virtually no space between them, forcing the vampires to come at them one at a time. My eyes widened a little in shock. I had never seen Esme fight before. She was absolutely ferocious. It blew my mind. She thrashed and kicked and lunged and snapped her teeth at anything that came too close to her.
Carlisle seemed to fight with one eye trained on her. I noticed immediately that the vampires were trying to avoid one of the women I didn't recognize. While I was watching her, one of them strayed too close. She reached her hand out in a fast blur and just barely touched him. But he was down on the ground shaking as though he had been electrocuted. Pieces of skin and body parts littered the ground. They rained down on us. Rosalie, Jasper, and Alice were all clumped together, their backs touching, trying to fight off six or seven vampires that were lashing out at them. Despite their rock hard skin, all of them were sliced open and wounded in several places. "We need to help them," I said to Emmett, noticing right away the desperation in Rosalie's eyes.
He dragged me to my feet, throwing both of us back into the fray. I was feeling a little dizzy and incredibly weak. Emmett tucked me between Alice and Rosalie, both of whom clustered around me like I was the Holy Grail or something. The vampires we were fighting couldn't even get close to me, which was fine with me. I was feeling weaker with each second that passed. I hadn't fed yet and I knew that I needed to. I would have been dead ten times over by now if the Cullens hadn't of showed up. One of the vampires grabbed Rosalie and tried to yank her forward. But I pulled her back, locking my arms around her waist as I swiveled on my hips and struck my foot out, kicking the vampire in the chest.
"Thanks," Rosalie said breathlessly when I released my grip on her. She flashed me a grateful smile, possibly the first real smile she had ever given me.
I hadn't seen the black liquid slowly moving toward us. No one had. Not until it was too late. But I heard Stella shout to me suddenly. She and the others were perched up on the roof of one of the buildings, the one safe place for them to be at the moment. The vampires had forgotten them. "Bella!" She yelled and the desperation in her voice made me turn toward her. That was when I saw it. But I didn't know what it was at first. Something in the way it crept toward us, slinking over the snow, staining everything it touched inky black, was terrifying. It was so close, the nearest edge of the pooling black liquid was only a few feet from me. "They cut the pipeline!" Stella shouted. "You have to"-
I didn't hear the rest of what she was saying because all of the sudden the liquid lit up into a bright wall of fire. I felt the flames licking against my skin before I could move. A high pitched scream next to me ripped me from my own pain and I saw that Rosalie was on fire. Grabbing her, I threw both of us as far from the conflagration as I could. We landed in the snow, tangled up together, both of us burning. I clawed into the ground, grabbing clumps of snow and throwing them on her to douse the flames. I didn't even care that I was on fire. I couldn't let Rosalie die. She didn't even like me and here she was, fighting to save me, dying to save me. The burning was surrounding me and then, suddenly, it stopped.
I blinked a couple of times, lying on my back. I could see the stars above me, but they were quickly being obscured by the black smoke from the fires. I was having a hard time seeing anything out of my right eye and that was a bit disconcerting. The snow was seeping in through my shirt. I was totally wet. Carlisle had grabbed me and rolled me away from Rosalie, through the snow, to put out the flames eating into my right side. I was vaguely aware that I was having a hard time feeling my right arm and leg. Then I tried to move my arm and the pain that shot through me was unlike anything I had ever felt. I heard a gut wrenching scream and I thought it was Rosalie, but when Carlisle started trying to comfort me, I realized that it was me.
"It's okay," he was saying over and over, trying to keep me still, trying to keep me from hurting myself, even though he didn't want to touch me because he knew that would hurt me too much. "It's okay. You're okay. Just stop thrashing around. You're going to hurt yourself. Bella, please!" He said, his heart breaking a little in his eyes. "Please! You have to calm down."
I couldn't say anything. I couldn't even nod really. But I tried to stop moving and that was harder than I thought it would be. My body just wanted to flail around. It wanted to do anything it could to try to relieve the pain. I felt like my mind was starting to disconnect from everything around me. I struggled so hard to hold on. I didn't want to lose sight of Carlisle. He looked like an angel leaning over me. His blonde hair looked a little singed and his face was covered with dirt, or ash, or both. But he was still an angel. "Shhh," he said, running a comforting hand through my hair. "It's okay."
Slowly, I came back to myself. I became aware that I could hear footsteps running away. I could hear the fires crackling and whooshing as they consumed the buildings that made up what little there was of Barrow's Main Street. I could hear heartbeats. I looked around, desperate to see Eben, Stella, Beau, and Lucy. Esme had helped them off of the roof. They were standing away from the fire, away from the fight. They looked absolutely horrified. I realized then that there wasn't a fight anymore. I couldn't hear the sounds of fighting. All I could hear was the fire. "What…," I began, trailing off as another wave of pain hit me. "What's going on?" I asked, my words coming out in a gasp.
"They broke open the oil pipeline as a last resort. It didn't take them long to realize that they wouldn't be able to kill us. They had us outnumbered, but we're too strong when we're together. They lit the oil as a diversion so they could escape. I'm going to have to move you now, okay?" He said. He looked extremely apologetic when he said this. I didn't understand why until I felt him lift my body from the ground and the pain shot through me as though I had been lit on fire again. I knew I was screaming this time. But I also heard another scream. Turning my head, I saw Emmett cradling Rosalie. He was lifting her from the ground as well. The side of her body facing me was singed black. My eyes met his and he nodded a little. She was still alive.
Thank God. Relief flooded through me. I tried to count everyone to make sure they were all there as Carlisle carried me away from Main Street, but I couldn't make out all of the faces. Blackness was starting to creep into the edges of my consciousness again. I didn't know if vampires could pass out. But I had a feeling that blackness wasn't a good thing. So I fought against it. I made myself focus on the pain because it kept me alert. I heard someone say, "The roads are all closed." Then I heard someone else say, "It doesn't matter. We can see perfectly in the dark. We can't run with them like this. And if the wheels get stuck in the snow, we'll just push the damn car."
There was a long time in which we were waiting for something. Carlisle was still holding me. Then a warm hand slipped into mine. I hadn't even realized that my eyes were closed until I had to force myself to open them. Stella was standing over me. She was smiling a little, but tears were running down her cheeks, dripping on my skin. It hurt when they dripped onto the burned parts, but I didn't have the heart to tell her. She looked so sad. "You did it, Bella," she whispered to me softly, stroking my hair as she held my hand. "You got them here. We're safe now."
She held my hand until a big truck pulled up in front of us. Jasper was driving it. Carlisle laid me down in the bed of the truck and, instantly, cool arms were wrapped around me. I looked up and saw Alice smiling down at me. She looked so sad too. I reached up to touch her face with the hand the "alpha" vampire had mangled, but she caught it with her own and brought it to her lips. She gently kissed my knuckles. "The ride will be a little bumpy," she declared. "But I'll hold onto you. You'll be okay."
I nodded and let myself relax in her arms. I heard another truck pull up beside the one I was lying in. Esme and two of the vampires I didn't know climbed in the back with me. Esme sat next to me and leaned down, lightly brushing her lips against my forehead. "Stella and Eben are in front with Jasper," she said softly.
"Is that a good idea?" I asked, my voice a low mumble.
She laughed a little. "He'll be fine," she promised. "Lucy and Beau are riding in the other truck with Carlisle."
I nodded again and let my thoughts drift as the truck lurched forward. Pain shot through me again, but I gritted my teeth against it and held back the scream this time. I could feel the wind blowing through the back of the truck, but Alice was blocking most of it. The little bit that managed to bite against my skin only served to aggravate my wounds even more. I wondered if I would have any scars. I wondered if Rosalie would. She always prided herself on her beauty. I thought she would kill me if the burns left any scars on her flawless skin. I didn't really care about how I looked. I had only ever wanted to look good for Edward. I wasn't sure what hurt more, the pain of being jostled around as the Jasper struggled to get the truck through the snow covered, icy roads, or the knowledge that Edward hadn't come when everyone else had.
I don't remember much about the journey out of Barrow. Just that it seemed to take forever. My whole body ached and burned at the same time. I wanted nothing more than to go to sleep, but I couldn't, not anymore. My mind, able to comprehend so much at the same time, was able to feel every little facet of the pain I was experiencing. It was excruciating. But Esme and Alice were there, both comforting me, both whispering into my ear that everything would be okay. I didn't feel like it would be okay. And I think I accused them of lying to me at one point, though I don't really remember doing it, because Alice suddenly said, "Bella Swan! You know better than that. I would never lie to you." I don't think she emphasized the word "I" to suggest that Esme would, but I really didn't know what she was trying to imply. At one point, Alice's phone rang and she spoke so lowly into it that I couldn't hear anything she said, even with my new and improved vampire hearing.
Eventually, I noticed the sky lightening. The farther from Barrow we got, the closer we came to seeing the sun again. It never actually came out. It remained blanketed behind a thick cover of gray clouds. But it was nice to be able to see without straining, at least, out of my left eye. My right eye was still a little obscured. I don't know how long we had been driving. I think we stopped for gas a few times. I don't really remember. Finally, we pulled into the parking lot of a hotel and Alice told me that we were in Fairbanks, which as it turned out, was a hell of a long way from Barrow.
Alice carried me into a room and laid me down on one of the two full beds sitting side by side. The bedspread scratched against my burns and I groaned. Alice was back at my side in less than a second, scooping me up and discarding the offending material. The sheets were softer and I settled into them when Alice set me down again. Before I closed my eyes, I saw Emmett carrying Rosalie into the room. He laid her down on the bed next to mine. I knew I couldn't go to sleep, but I wanted to check out mentally for a little while. I let my mind go, wandering where it would. I could hear heartbeats in the room next door and I knew from how they were breathing that Eben, Stella, Lucy, and Beau were asleep.
I was vaguely aware of people coming in and out of the room. I heard Carlisle ask me some questions, but I couldn't really understand what he was saying and I didn't have the strength to answer him. I think that alarmed him, but I didn't really care. I was having a hard time caring about much of anything. I heard the hotel room door open and the sudden silence and stillness in the room startled me a little. Until then, I had heard the others moving about, talking to each other in low voices. But this quiet, it meant something. I struggled a little to come back to myself when I felt cold hands cupping my cheeks.
And then I smelled him. Honey, lilac, and sunshine. It was the most amazing smell. I blinked a couple of times, trying to fight through the haziness in my right eye. He was leaning over me, his face only six inches from mine. And he was staring at me, just staring at me, like he was memorizing me. I couldn't read anything in his face. His eyes were the rich topaz color that I remembered. That meant he had fed recently, so he was in a good mood. He didn't speak. He breathed over me and I felt the burning stop. His breath was like a cooling balm. I could barely speak, but when I did, I could only say one word. "Edward."