AN: SM Owns it all. I'd like to thank JaspersDestiny, who, it turns out, offers a full menu of services above and beyond the call of Beta-duties...see note at the bottom...
Chapter 25
"Why do we need to buy more clothes again?" Bella asked as Jasper led her through the outdoor market, finally stopping in front of a stall that had stacks of hand knit wool sweaters displayed on tables. "And WHY do they have an outdoor market in the middle of winter?" She toyed with her hair, braided by Jasper earlier that morning, and looked around her curiously.
"Well, it's not the middle of winter, for one thing," Jasper said, glancing up from the sweaters he'd been looking at to smile at her, "and I was assured by the hotel clerk that the really authentic stuff could only be found here."
"It may not be the middle of winter, but even I can tell it's cold. These people must be FREEZING! Oh, my God – look at that! Are those FISH? You could KILL somebody if you hit them with one of those! And 'authentic' what? Why do we need 'authentic' anything?"
"I think these people are used to it, Bella. And if we are DRESSED right, we'll blend in more. Besides, it's much cooler than the stuff we... uh... got last night." He picked out a sweater and held it up for her approval.
"It's pretty," she admitted, stepping closer to examine it. "But I like the blue one better."
Jasper put the brick red one down and picked up the blue one. He knew she picked blue because Edward had always liked the color on her, but he didn't have it in his heart to mind. His brother had been right – she did look good in blue.
"What about me?" he said. "What color do you like on me?"
"Green," she said, without hesitating. "Green looks great with your hair and eyes."
He cocked an eyebrow at her. Alice had always preferred him in red. So, Bella liked green? Then green it would be...
He looked through the sweaters some more, speaking softly in Russian to the old woman who ran the stall. He finally found a green one that he liked and held it up for Bella's approval. She nodded and smiled. He handed the sweaters to the woman, along with some money, and she wrapped them up in brown paper for him.
Bella started laughing while she waited for Jasper.
"What's so funny?" he asked when he was done.
"Oh, I decided to try what Carlisle suggested last night - and I dropped my shield so Alice could see what we're buying..."
Jasper snorted. "Great. You've probably caused her to pass out. Well, let's hope Carlisle's little experiment worked."
After he'd finished speaking to the Cullens on the roof the previous night, Jasper had returned to the hotel room. Bella had decided that she really did want to try talking to them again, so he'd dialed Carlisle for the third time. He hoped calls weren't being tracked somehow. Emmett, Rose, and Alice had left to hunt, which made Jasper wonder what exactly was going on at home, but he didn't dare ask about it in front of Bella. Bella spoke briefly to Carlisle and Esme again, and Carlisle repeated his earlier request to Jasper – for her to drop her shield slightly during times of decision making. She'd been hesitant to agree at the time, but the rest of the conversation had gone well. Carlisle and Esme had both stuck to light conversation, and they finished up with reassurances of their love and their hope of seeing both Bella and Jasper soon.
Their next stop was at a boot shop. "These are 'valenki'," Jasper explained. "Look around – everyone wears them here - even in the bigger cities. It is said they are much warmer than synthetics, although I wouldn't know about that. They certainly are prettier."
Bella had to agree with him. She fingered the embroidered and beaded designs on the outside of the boots and stroked the fur softly. "I like them," she told Jasper. "A lot."
"Pick a pair."
"The black ones," she said. "With the silver fur."
The man selling them nodded in approval at the ones she indicated, taking them down and handing them to her. He indicated a bench for her to sit on and try them on.
"Shiver," Jasper whispered at her as she removed her man-made boots. "You should be cold without shoes."
Bella complied. The boots fit well – the man had a good eye. She stood up and walked a few feet back and forth in front of the shop, and he nodded and smiled, and then said something in Russian.
"What? What did he say?" she asked Jasper.
"He says they look beautiful on you," Jasper told her. "And he's right."
Jasper ended up taking a light brown pair with brindled fur that Bella said matched his hair. After the boots came the hats and gloves – again, made out of fur. Black wool coats and wool pants completed their purchases, and they headed back to their hotel.
"We're lucky it wasn't any colder today," Jasper said as they were returning to their room. "I just realized we might have a potential problem on our hands, if we want to blend in this far north."
"What is it?" Bella asked, looking down at herself, then eyeing him up and down.
"Our breath – the air we're moving in and out doesn't warm up. We can fake the motions, but you can't see our breath. It'll be noticed if we're outside too much. And if it gets any much colder, people's breath will actually freeze on their hair, their eyelashes, their scarves... We'll need to limit our outside activities."
"Its always something, isn't it?" Bella asked, sighing. "Here we are, far enough north that we can avoid a lot of sunlight during the winter, but there's another hazzard we need to avoid."
She fell silent, and they didn't speak the rest of the way back to the hotel. It suddenly seemed safer that way.
"I need to find us transportation," Jasper told her, once they were back in the room. "I'd rather not run, even if it would be faster. And we need to leave as soon as possible. We only have only three days until the full moon."
"Can we fly out?"
He shook his head. "No. Unfortunately. I found out today while listening to people talk in the market that we shouldn't even BE here. You have to get special permission to enter this part of Russia. A regular visa to Russia isn't enough. So if someone were to ask for our papers, we'd be in a bind."
"But they rented us a room..." Bella said.
"Of course. It would be impossible for us to have gotten here without the proper documentation, you see? The difficulty is leaving through regular channels, such as flying. But now that it is winter, and the roads and rivers have frozen over, highway traffic is more common. Perhaps we can get a snowmobile..."
"That would be fun," she said enthusiastically.
He laughed. "Yes, it would be, wouldn't it? Shall we go get ourselves a snowmobile?"
"Can we buy one, just like that?"
"Probably not," Jasper admitted. "Let me rephrase...shall we go see where we are going to steal a snowmobile from tonight?"
Bella hesitated. "Actually," she said slowly, "can you go without me?"
"Why. What is wrong?" he asked sharply.
"All these people..." she whispered. "I'm not used to it. There are so many of them. This morning in the market...it was really hard, Jasper. I don't want to go out again, if I don't have to. I'll just wait here for you, I promise."
He searched her face. "Your eyes are fine – you're not hungry, are you?"
"No, it's not thirst – although they DO smell good. Especially that man at the boot shop... But it's not the thirst. It's the noise, I think. I'm just not used to the noise. All the bodies, all the talking...I just want to be alone."
"I understand. I hate to leave you alone, though..." He was torn. He needed to find them transportation. He didn't want them on foot. Those wolves up on the tundra had been fast - as fast as he and Bella. Maybe faster. A snowmobile couldn't go faster than them, but it might confuse their trail...maybe. He really didn't have a good answer for their problem. Hell, he didn't even know if they HAD a problem.
"Just go, Jasper," she said, giving him a little shove towards the door. "The sooner you go, the sooner you'll be back." She leaned up to kiss him quickly, and then shoved him out the door, shutting it in his face.
"Right," he whispered, touching his fingers to his lips where her scent lingered. "Right."
It took him almost an hour to locate some snowmobiles. He finally found a shop on the west side of town that sold them. Incredibly expensive, and out of the price range of most natives, the shop had about 10 models on site. The man in charge was more than happy to talk to Jasper, hoping for a sale. Jasper turned on his charm - 'dazzling' the man, as Bella would say - and poured on his own power. He gave the story that he worked for a tour company looking to replace their machines in the coming winter. Evidently this was a believable cover story because the man just nodded and continued to smile. The man even allowed him to take one of the models for a test drive, following him down the street on another machine. Jasper was glad the man hadn't insisted on riding pillion – that would have been totally unacceptable. When they were done, Jasper thanked the man and promised to return after he had spoken with his employer. He carefully made note of where the keys were kept, and then left the building, heading quickly back to the city center and Bella.
He was only a few block from the hotel when a familiar figure stepped out from a cafe and blocked his way on the sidewalk. Jasper fought to stop the growl in his throat.
"Mstislav," he hissed. "What brings you to Yakutsk? Not following me, are you?"
"Why, Jasper, I'm surprised! Who wouldn't want to visit this fine city? After all – you are here, are you not?"
"So you just happened to be in town?" Jasper asked sarcastically.
"Actually, I did indeed follow you. It was not difficult – especially with the help of those clothes you and your 'sister' left behind with my...cousin."
"Cousin?" Jasper asked, truly surprised.
"Of sorts. You'll find that we are a little more...integrated...into human society here, than you vampires tend to be."
"How does that work out for you, when you try to eat grandma every time the moon is full?"
"There are ways...it really is none of your business. But she knew what you were as soon as she saw you, and she took your clothes for the scent. She sent a message to me – it seems she didn't feel comfortable at the thought of you and the female taking up residence in her part of the forest, and asked that I get rid of you. How ironic is that? It might have taken me a bit longer to find you, otherwise."
"Huh." Jasper filed that bit of information away for examining later. "So, are you going to tell me what you want, or are we just going to stand here making polite conversation?"
"I'm surprised at you, Jasper. And more than a little angry."
"I can guess why you're angry. But why are you surprised?"
"Those were my children, Jasper," Mstislav said, shaking his head. "Truly impressive - one against eight. I'm assuming your...'sister'...had no part in it. But my children, nonetheless. I loved them all dearly."
"I'm sure you did," Jasper spat. He didn't bother telling the werewolf that two of the eight had evidently taken themselves out of the picture before he did any killing of his own. "If you loved them so much, perhaps you should have kept them close to you instead of running around playing dangerous games...with dangerous vampires. You didn't teach them very well, Mstislav."
"I taught them fine," Mstislav said, keeping his tone polite. "Come. Walk with me, Jasper. We attract attention standing here like this. And believe me, attention in this town is something neither of us want."
Jasper hesitated for a moment, and then nodded quickly. As long as they stayed where there were witnesses. He turned the corner and started walking in the opposite direction. When Mstislav didn't follow, he stopped and raised an eyebrow in question.
"But your hotel is this way, is it not?" Mstislav asked, gesturing down the other street. "Your sister is no doubt awaiting your return quite anxiously, don't you think?"
Jasper's gut clenched. He knew. He knew where they were...and where Bella was. Where Bella was alone. Oh, God, had he already been there? Jasper began to growl, unable to stop himself.
"Relax, my friend. I have not touched her. Yet."
Jasper's growl deepened, and several people walking by looked at him, and then quickly stepped out of his way.
"No," Mstislav continued, ignoring Jasper's growling and speaking as if they were having a conversation after church, "I'm surprised you are only in Yakutsk. I would have thought with your speed you would be long out of the country."
"We were in no particular hurry," Jasper said shortly.
"Ah, yes...the hot springs... Did you have a nice visit there, with your 'sister'? How does your 'mate' back home feel about that? You DID tell me you have a 'mate', did you not? Strange ways, even for a vampire..."
Jasper ignored this.
"At any rate, I would have thought the need to return to your coven would have been stronger than that, especially given the danger you are in...here in my part of the world. To spend time dallying at the bottom of a pool of water, no matter how great the pleasure, seems foolhardy, to say the least."
"We WOULD have been long gone, if your 'children' had let us return to the coast two months ago," Jasper told him, staring straight ahead as they walked toward the hotel.
"Ah, yes, but I'm afraid I don't WANT you to get to the coast, Jasper," Mstislav said, shaking his head. "I TOLD you I wanted you to deliver a message to your master."
"I serve no master," Jasper hissed.
"I'm beginning to realize that," Mstislav said, nodding. "But you'll do as a messenger, just the same."
"And what makes you think I would want to deliver this message anyway?"
Mstislav shrugged. "I think I can convince you it is in your best interests."
"How, exactly, do you intend to do that?"
"I only need one messenger. If you don't cooperate, I will kill your mate. And I do not speak of the faceless female across the water."
Jasper stiffened and stopped walking, swinging around to glare at the man and not caring who saw it. "You think you can hurt her?" he hissed. "I killed six of you for daring to touch her. You think you can use that as a threat?"
"They were young... very young. Not all my children are so young, or so foolish. My older children are much more...focused...on the task at hand. And right now, Jasper, the task at hand is making sure YOU return to Italy to deliver my message. Really, I am quite thankful you came along. I must admit I did not have all that much faith in that female to deliver the message. But she was all I had to work with...and she seemed fairly intent on going to Italy, anyway, for her own reasons..."
"How do you know about that?" Jasper asked. He did not wish to have this conversation, but he needed to obtain information. And if information was what this thing had, then it was too good to pass up.
"She talks in her sleep," he said, smirking. "Mikhail may be an idiot, and his English leaves something to be desired, but he heard quite a bit from her and I picked it out of his mind."
"Vampires don't sleep."
"No, they don't. But your mate? She is crazy. She sits and stares, and she never moves. And she talks to herself. You have not noticed this? She is a gold mine of information, that one. Quite helpful to my cause. But I am done with her now, and I will not hesitate to kill her if you do not head west."
"I am not afraid of you."
"I'm sure you are not," Mstislav said agreeably. "I feel we would be quite evenly matched, should it come to that. But I think you will find that perhaps you and I are not necessarily on opposite sides of the fight. You and I have a common enemy, Jasper, whether you know it or not. Ask your mate."
Jasper was silent for a moment. He turned and started walking again. "That is no reason at all for me to do your bidding."
"It is every reason, Jasper. I am not alone in this city, and by this time tomorrow night we will be much more dangerous - dangerous AND unable to control ourselves. Civilized conversation such as this will be impossible. We will kill you on sight, and that would be such a pity after I've put so much effort into cultivating our friendship."
Jasper stopped again. "You know what? You are one crazy motherfucker. You haven't even told me what this damn message is that you want me to deliver – or who to deliver it to!"
Mstislav smiled a triumphant smile, which Jasper despised.
"I want you to tell Caius of the Volturi that I am coming for him. I am coming for him, and I will kill him when I get there."
"Get up," Jasper said, as he barged into the room. "Get up. We are going."
"What? What happened? What do you mean?" Bella asked, hopping up from the bed. "What's happened – what's changed?"
"I ran into an old friend."
"What?"
"I ran into Mstislav on the street, coming back from looking at snowmobiles."
"Mstislav? Here? In town?" Bella cried, beginning to panic.
"Yes, here. In town. And he made it quite clear that he was NOT alone, and even clearer that we needed to leave town now if we wanted to leave at all."
"But Jasper," Bella said, pulling on her boots and coat. "You killed six of them..."
Jasper stopped stuffing gear into the backpack and looked at her. "I have been ASSURED," he told her, "that that was a fluke. That those were...the equivalent of newborns. And since I have no way of knowing for sure, I'm not willing to take a chance with our lives. It has been implied that if we head west now, and don't stop, that they will leave us alone."
"But why?" she asked, puzzled. "Is it a territory thing? I mean, we were trying to get away before, but that didn't stop them from trying to kill us."
"Apparently we need to make our exit Stage West," Jasper said, closing the bag and throwing it on his back before pulling his coat back on. He walked to the window and pulled the curtains aside. "It's almost dark now. We should be good to go in an hour or so..."
"Stage West?" Bella joined him at the window, fully dressed. "I don't understand, Jasper."
He looked down at her. She looked scared and it broke his heart. He pulled her close and kissed her. The kiss quickly deepened into something else, and he had to force himself to pull away, regretting there wasn't more time.
"Mstislav is insistent about his damn 'message' that he wants delivered. By me. He's going to continue to force us westward."
"But we're going that way anyway."
"Not fast enough for him, apparently. I found out some more about werewolves from him. Apparently, they have no control when they are in their wolf form – which we already suspected. They will hunt us out of instinct, and he wants us alive," or at least me, he thought to himself, but refrained from saying that to Bella. "So he wants us to leave now. He's giving us a head start, Bella. And I, for one, am not ashamed to beat a hasty retreat. I have better things to do with myself than play the doomed hero against an unknown enemy for no reason."
"No, you're right, of course. We need to go, but...you said message. What message? Did he finally tell you what the message is?"
Jasper looked at her. "Don't you know?'
She looked at him and shook her head in confusion. "No...no, I don't. Should I?"
"I don't know – he seemed to imply that he had given YOU the message to deliver first. Then, when I came along he decided I was the better choice for a messenger."
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
Jasper laughed.
"What's so funny?" she asked, annoyed.
"Well, he DOES keep calling you crazy."
"What the hell does that mean? Do YOU think I'm crazy?" She was indignant. "Is THAT what you talked to Carlisle about last night? About me being CRAZY?"
"No, Bella." He held out his hands, palms towards her, trying to calm her down. "I DON'T think you're crazy. But I do think you are not behaving like a normal vampire. The werewolf said he gave you a message to deliver to Caius, but you say you don't remember anything about it. And I didn't get the feeling he was lying. Vampires don't forget things, Bella..."
"Caius..." she whispered, stepping away from both the window and Jasper. There was fear in her voice. "Caius...I do remember someone telling me to tell Caius something..." She screwed up her face, clearly trying to locate the lost conversation. "Jasper, why can't I remember?"
Jasper grabbed her face with of both his hands. "I don't know, Bella. I have NO idea. We'll figure it out. I promise we'll figure it out. But right now, it's time to go."
An hour later they were flying westward out of town on a snowmobile. The one Jasper had selected had a storage rack on the back that was capable of holding additional gas cans. He estimated that they could go two or three hundred miles before they needed more gas. At that point, if they hadn't found more, they could abandon the vehicle and run. It would still give them a good head start.
"I don't understand," Bella said again, as they roared through the outskirts of town, shouting over the roar of the machine they rode. "If he wants us to deliver the message, why is he going to be chasing us?"
"Instinct," Jasper told her, once again. "He's going to be running on instinct. I think it's a catch 22 for him, actually. He NEEDS this messaged delivered by us, but on the other hand, he has no choice but to hunt us down and kill us. So we run." Jasper tried not to think too much about how that made him feel like a coward. Some situations called for retreat, and this was definitely, in his book, one such situation.
"Are you going to deliver the message?" she asked, whispering in his ear as the snowmobile flew through the night in the snow along the road.
"I am," he said.
"Why?"
"Because I believe at least one thing he said. We DO have a common enemy. Something is rotten in Italy, Bella, and it's affecting our entire family. Edward was just the beginning. Alice and I...what Chelsea did...that is part of it, too. Whatever is going on, it's not going to stop until Carlisle's entire coven is destroyed. So, it's war. And if we pull into Volterra with an army of werewolves on our tail? Well, that is not a bad thing. It may not destroy them, but it will certainly distract them, and take their minds off the Cullen's for a while."
"And if we're caught in the middle?" she asked.
He didn't ask what he really wanted to ask, which was why she would care, since they appeared to be on a suicide mission of their – her – own. "If it means the rest of our family is safe because of it? Absolutely. I can't ask that of you, though..."
"You don't have to ask," Bella said. "I have an appointment with them, too, remember?"
"I thought so," Jasper said, saddened by her wordless confirmation of his fears.
A/N: So, a link for what J&B saw at the market for those of you who are into that sort of thing (getting a feel for what I was looking at when I wrote it – get your minds out of the gutter, people) Remove the spaces, etc. Somebody let me know if it doesn't work.: http://www .independent .co. uk/travel/europe/yakutsk-journey-to-the-coldest-city-on-earth-771503. html
Don't forget to go vote at at "Everything's Bigger in Texas" over at Jaspersdarlins – voting is still open - http://jaspersdarlins(dot)blogspot(dot)com
Once again I didn't thank all the wonderful reviewers - and I feel really bad. Again. I read them all, and there were more of them than ever! You are all wonderful, and I love you SO much! But Real Life kicked my ass this week. Thankfully, Real Life finished the week with a 100 Monkey's concert. And thanks to JaspersDestiny, Beta and Pimp extraordinaire, who hooked me up, via mrsalreyami, with BamaBabe for the concert - so I didn't have to fangirl it by myself.