Chapter 21 - Revelations

"Thank you, for taking care of me tonight." Bella stood tiptoe on the highest step of Jacob's front porch with her small arms wrapped around his neck.

As he was leaving, Embry paused with one foot on the ground, the other on a wooden step, body half turned. Resting his hands firmly on her shoulders he looked into her eyes, hoping to lend her strength. "Don't forget what I told you. There doesn't always have to be a reason." Then, grasping her hand, he placed it her own heart. "You just have to feel it in here." Leaning down he whispered quietly in her ear, so quiet that Jacob wouldn't be able to hear. "Tell him, Bella. He needs to hear it from you. Close your eyes and take the leap."

Then in an instant, he was gone, melting seamlessly into the darkness like a child lost in the night.

The clock was striking two when she walked back inside, closing the door behind her tightly and leaning against it hoping to still her beating heart and catch her breath.

"Are you alright?"

Bella nodded her head slowly, swallowing back the urge to say the thousand and one things running through her mind. Tonight had been an exercise in humility and faith. When Jacob came running across the yard, exhausted and covered in dirt, the tension that had built in her shoulders eased. He had come back to her.

Standing near the patio door, she kept a silent vigil, listening intently to the wild howls echoing in the vast forest beyond sight. The storm had long since blown away, leaving behind a night filled with a thousand glittering stars, bathing the world in golden moonlight. When he emerged from the trees, Bella darted out of the house before Embry could protest.

The grass was cool and wet beneath her feet when she streaked across the yard, throwing herself into his arms. Jacob kissed her like a man possessed, bruising her lips with intensity of his devotion.

Behind them, Embry cleared his throat, smiling for all he was worth. "Sorry to interrupt."

Bella flushed hot with embarrassment, still feeling the tingle of Jacob's lips on hers. He, however, felt no such shame, barking out a laugh and kissing the top of her head. "Go on inside. I need to talk with Embry for a minute."

The two men headed for the cover of the trees, where Bella knew they would shift, allowing images to reveal all that transpired over the last several hours. When they'd come back in, Embry announced that he was going home, motioning for Bella to follow him out the door.

Now it was her turn for answers. Looking at Jacob expectantly, she asked him, "What happened out there tonight?"

He sighed heavily, as if the events of the night were wearing on him. "Bella, it's a long story. Wouldn't you rather let it keep until morning? You look wiped," he noted, hoping to just curl up beside her and forget the outside world if only for a few short hours until the dawn. Then he'd tell her. He swore it on his life- on the life he wanted to build with her.

Shaking her head with the firm resoluteness that often over the years had often been mistaken for obstinance, she responded firmly. "No, I've been pacing around this house like a lunatic for hours. Tell me what happened, Jake. I need to know."

"Come on, then." Jacob took her by the hand, led her to the couch and sat down. Bella waited patiently as he rested beside her, silently organizing his thoughts.

Finally he spoke, quietly and slowly, as if he were unsure of himself and maybe even the way she would perceive him when this was done. "I wanted tonight to be fun, everyone needed some time off and I was just so happy to be with you. Embry and Quil ran a perimeter check before we got there. I still felt edgy though. Like something was off. Maybe it was just from the storm earlier, I don't know..." he trailed off, reminding her of the odd sense of foreboding she had when they first arrived. "So, we went for a run, just to check things out. About the time those two little shitheads were laying into you..." Jacob turned to her with a look on his face which spoke volumes about their behavior, "and they're going to pay for by the way. Anyway we picked up a fresh trail."

Her eyes went wide with fright. Jacob had always been able to read her like an open book and it didn't take long to surmise what she was probably thinking. "No, it wasn't one of the Cullens. It wasn't him," he assured her. "Sam would have known right away, he can still remember what they smelled like. It's a scent we've found before." His nostrils flared with the lingering scent of rot and decay. "This was an old vamp. Really old."

A hundred scenarios passed through her mind, each one beginning and ending with that little girl on the freeway, bathed in blood and fear. Something was coming... she was sure of it and whatever it was could not possibly be good.

Jacob's brow furrowed, as if he were struggling to get the next part of the story out. "Bella, there's something I haven't told you yet. It's about the day Charlie was shot. I was there. We all were."

"Billy mentioned that the pack was close by that afternoon. It sounded like you guys saved his life." Bella shrugged, not yet understanding what that had to do with tonight.

"That afternoon, we were out patrolling. I was over on the far side of the reservation, working with some of the new wolves. Seth was the closest. He smelled something and followed it. I've never run so fast in my life. By the time I got there, Charlie was bleeding all over the place." Jacob began to shake with the memory, anger washing all over him again. "I nearly gutted the fucker. This guy, he was wearing a long overcoat. The official police report suggests he stole it, but the smell on it... it was the same as the trail Seth followed. He reeked of leech."

Bella flew off the couch in a panic, hugging her midsection as though she would be sick. "Please tell me this is a joke. Some kind of sick joke"

He looked at her sorrowfully. This was the conversation he'd dreaded for weeks. "I wish it were, Bells. Paul questioned him, but the guy was so screwed up. They're passing it off as drugs frying out his brain, but it's almost like someone messed with his mind. We can't get anything useful out of him."

"You didn't think I should know about this?" Bella was incredulous, indignant, but most of all angry and afraid. "He shot my father! A druggie who smells like a vampire shot my father and it didn't occur to anyone that I should know about this before now?"

"Bells, I was going to tell you. Hell, I tried to tell you earlier but then Quil and Embry came barging in and... that doesn't matter now."

"The hell it doesn't!"

"I know, I'm sorry. I screwed up. Then, tonight, we smelled it again. I panicked. All I could think of was getting to you. I sent Brady to your fathers house. We let out the warning howls, but I had to see you. I had to know you were alive. I ordered Embry to stay with you tonight while we hunted. Bella, we didn't catch him, but... but the man they arrested for shooting Charlie? They found him in his cell an hour ago. Dead. He managed to cut his wrists open on a sharp piece of metal from the cot."

"How could you keep something like this from me? Why?" Bella gasped, feeling a deep sense of betrayal. An outsider. That's what she was here. Nothing but a white girl who didn't belong. Brady and Collin were right after all. Scrambling to his feet, he was ready to wrap her in his arms, but Bella put hers out in return, rejecting all form of comfort.

"Honey, I was so afraid. I wanted to tell you this afternoon. I swear, I only wanted to protect you. We didn't know if it was random or not. I didn't want to worry you unless I had to."

"Take me home, Jacob." The undeniable hurt in her eyes was impossible to hide. All she wanted in this moment was to get away. To hide herself in the corner of her bedroom at Charlies. To cover her head with a blanket and keep the monsters at bay. "I want to go home."

"Bells, honey, please. I didn't mean to hurt you," he tried to explain, inching toward her cautiously and feeling miserable when she backed away. A move that never in their history together she had ever made before. "You've had so much to deal with. I didn't wanna add to it. Please, don't leave."

Jacob's fervent plea fell on deaf ears. Bella felt as though she'd been lied to. Tonights revelation had been more than she could bear. "If you don't take me home right now, I'm walking. I can't be around you right now. I need time to think."

Hanging his head in defeat, Jacob picked up his keys, trying not to weep when she didn't take his proffered hand.

Bella barely held onto him the entire trip back to her fathers house. With each mile of blacktop that passed beneath the tires, Jacob's heart broke a little bit more until he thought it might shatter completely on the cold, wet surface of the highway.

In the passing minutes, her mind reeled with the information. What if this thing was after her? What if shooting Charlie was a way to get to her? How could Jacob not tell me about this? That was the part that bothered her the most. Back when they were chasing Victoria, fucked up as she was, Jacob still talked to her about what was going on. He figured she had the right to know. Back then it was Sam who wanted to keep her in the dark. He and some of the others. They thought that she still had some kind of sick loyalty or fascination with the Cullen family. Talking had been Jacob's thing. Like her mother always said, 'tell the truth and shame the devil'. Never once had he hidden anything from her.

Bella remembered clearly those awful days as though they were a dream painted in technicolor. Jacob was always so worried about her back then. There were times he went without sleep, just so that she could close her own eyes and rest. So many times she woke up scared shitless from the vivid brutality of her own nightmares, only to find his warm, protective arms wrapped around her like a soft blanket. Yet, even then, whenever she looked into his eyes there was always something untouchable. A sort of hidden fear that one day she'd disappear into herself, never to return never to be found again.

But, he was wrong. Jacob Black was the one person she never shut out... until she did. Those wild months after she'd cut her flesh into ribbons, Bella abandoned both him and their friendship. In vain, she tried to tell herself that it was to protect him. He deserved better than a girl that was irresistible to vampires and easily consumed with her own madness. It was no better than a lie, bringing little comfort to the one who told it.

When they pulled to a halt in front of Charlie's house, Bella swung her legs off the bike silently. The look on his face was one of pure defeat. Jacob didn't try to stop her from going inside, not even bothering to cut the engine. Instead, he looked at her sadly, an aura of quiet desperation seeming to surround him, the last of his strength tossed by the wayside. Wordlessly, he turned the bike around, slowly pulling out into the deserted street.

Bella watched the glow of his taillights getting smaller as the distance grew between them. It wasn't until after he'd driven away that panic set in. Oh, god. What have I done?

Chasing down the road, she screamed his name loud enough to wake the neighbors. "Jacob! Jacob, wait!" she shouted, breathing a sigh of relief when the red brakes of the bike flickered like a candle in the dark. He was off the seat in an instant, running towards her until he had her back in his arms.

"I'm sorry, Bells. Please, don't leave me," he begged. "I'm so sorry." That's when it hit her. She'd made him feel like that vulnerable teen again. The same one who had suffered the death of his mother, the absence of his sisters, then had been abandoned by the girl he loved, by his best friend. She was responsible for the hurt in his eyes, only now the stakes were too high to screw up.

"I'm not. I swear I'm not. Take me home, Jake. Let's go home."

It was a long hard road that they climbed, but Bella knew she'd gladly make each and every mistake with him, so long as she could keep Jacob for her own.

Without realizing it, Bella had made a decision that would forever alter the course of her life. One that caused visions to assault two women, both miles away, bringing joy to one and to the other...

Madness.