Chapter Twenty-One
The Retreating Figure
"I'm going," Bella demanded. It was unimportant what was occurring outside - the thing that she was too weak to hear but sent Jasper halfway to the door. She wanted to help.
"You'll be no use to us, Bella. You'll get in the way."
"But -"
He kissed her on her lips, twice on her cheek. "Stay here. I'll be up soon, darling."
She blinked, the door slammed, and that was it. He was gone. She ran (falling only once) to the window. She shoved the curtain out of her way and anxiously searched below but the light of the room casted her reflection.
She raced to the door switching the lights off. On her way back she stumped her toe on the couch, twirled, and landed on her back. Although it was painful it was more irritating. It was not the time to be her clumsy self...
Hurriedly, Bella jumped to her feet ignoring the stabbing and flaring of her tail bone and toe. Through the window she could see down to a corner of the parking lot, shadows slinking out of the harsh street lamps.
Between a garbage dump and a wooden fence separating a fast food restaurant was an overly large animal and a woman with wild hair. Before it registered in her brain there was a third being, and she knew it to be Jasper.
To the untrained eye they appeared to be dancing, but she knew better. They were fighting. She remembered how vampires fought, she vaguely recalled how Jasper and Emmett killed James on her behalf.
She ran to the door, to the elevator. She waited impatiently, bouncing on the balls of her feet. It was too slow and she abandoned it taking the staircase. She slowed significantly. Tumbling again and obtaining a concussion would not help anyone. That was if she knew how she was going to help. She had to do something, she couldn't sit in that room worrying about them.
The hallways she moved down were drabbed in dizzying diamond patterns of a scratchy carpet material. The low lights did not help their cause, the walls looking more washed out than they actually were.
However, she once fell asleep in her home at Phoenix with the television on. When she woke there was a documentary about the germs in Hotels, so the walls could very well be worse, and in opposition the horrible lights were helping.
Glowing red caught her eye reading, "exit." The warm air swept by her as she ran out the door. Her bare feet pounded, stray pebbles poking her. She prayed that she didn't bleed. There would be no way for her to get out alive, and Jacob coming to her rescue would only get him killed too. It was too late for second thoughts though, to turn around and escape from the scene even if she wanted to, and she didn't.
If anything happened to either of them... She would never forgive herself. It's because of her, she just knew it. She was willing to bet all of the Cullen's money that they never had any problems before she came into their lives.
Victoria looked her way then, but in a flash of her arm Jacob was thrown crashing through the fence into the next property. There was a sound, what would have been a howl, but cut short, and she dearly hoped it wasn't what she was fearing.
Jasper lunged at Victoria and the rest Bella missed, running harder, faster, needing to be there before anything else bad happened, but her toe caught in a gauged hole halfway to her destination. There was that familiar tug on her stomach as she tumbled down.
It could've been the rip in her jeans or the snarl from a vampire. All she knew was that she was as good as dead. She had at most two more seconds to her life, because a warmness trickled over her knee. She was bleeding and with that she signed her death sentence. Signing in blood suddenly made more sense.
In those two seconds she saw Jasper. His smiling face appeared behind her lids and she mentally kissed him goodbye.
***
Bella laid sprawled in the middle of the parking lot. From there he could smell her divine blood pumping through her frantic heart. It became fresher the moment he pinned Victoria, his right arm at her throat, his teeth bared ready to severe. Hesitation was all she needed and he foolishly gave that to her glimpsing to the dotted red moisture on Bella's skinned knee and he was knocked backwards.
The sound of what happened next was deafening. They would have severe problems if any humans woke and saw. Like the soldier he instantly calculated in his head how many rooms and at most how many people would occupy them. Could they stage a fire? It would upset Bella, but if he took her away... Would she understand when he told her? Could she understand the strategy that some deaths were necessary?
He thought all of it at warp speed, and then the dumpster gave out under the force, and the unforgiving hardness of his body, ringing in the night air. It tipped upwards and sideways flailing him to the ground. All the while Bella's blood stayed fresh in his nasal cavity, a horrible torture. He kept his sights on Victoria, watching her movements with ultimate caution, not wanting to see what he knew was there.
The distracted woman leapt to her feet. She was halfway towards her, Bella's eyes were closed, readying for the assault she didn't want to witness. She was allowing it, and he knew better than to think she gave up, she was too stubborn for that. She was giving herself over, because she thought it was her fault.
Something inside of him yelled for her to get up and run. None of which wouldn't had done any good, even if by some miracle she didn't trip again.
He was pushing himself upright when a sleek black vehicle screeched to a stop ahead of them. He felt them, their haste, and the passenger side door was flung open and Edward was running to Victoria, grabbing her head and throwing her to the side like an unwanted doll.
Alice was waiting by the car with unbridled anticipation to the body coming her way, similar to a child on Christmas morning. It was broken when Jacob bounded out, racing at Victoria, his jaw latching onto her throat. In one easy twist she was jerked back down, grating stone not loud enough to drown her screams. They were quickly stifled as Alice covered her mouth.
Jasper turned back to Bella, sweeping her up in his arms before Edward could touch her. She moaned cupping her knee worriedly.
"No, Jasper. I'm bleeding."
Edward offered his arms. "Let me take her, Jazz. I can handle it."
"So can I," he snapped, and he could. Once more, Bella almost lost her life. The mere thought of it being taken, of her being gone gave him strength against his thirst that he didn't know he had. There was nothing he couldn't handle. In a finality that he thought his brother should have, he said, "she's not yours, Edward."
He flinched, but lowered his arms allowing Jasper to walk by. Only he was stopped in his tracks by the most unusual scene he'd ever witnessed.
Twenty feet from him was a pile of ash, Alice on her knees in front of the wolf. Jacob bowed, his eyes sparkling. A love, unchangeable, equitable, and great emitted from both of them. It was hardly love in its normal devalued self, it was connected, from one to the other.
Alice raked her fingers through the dark fur at the sides of his face and pressed her forehead to his muzzle. They froze like a grand sculpture.
No one noticed Edward's retreating frame in the blackness of the night.