AN: Thanks for your patience as I got my assignment done and the second half of Jared and Bella's Seattle trip planned out. I hope that this longer-than-usual chapter makes up for it. Thanks so much to Genesis26 for sharing what their Muse concert experience was like last weekend. I've been a little nervous about this one, especially with all the anticipation, so I really hope that this lives up to expectations.
Jared POV
"Happy half-birthday," Bella told me as she settled into the seat on my right side. I was confused. She knew as well as I did that my birthday was in November, two months after hers.
"Do schools not do that here?" she asked, picking up on my puzzlement. "Back in Phoenix, if a kid had a summer birthday, they could bring treats in to celebrate with their classmates on their half-birthday, the six-month mark between the official birthdays. This is your half-birthday, or close enough."
"Thank you for my present, then," I told her, and ignored our audience long enough to give her a thank-you kiss.
Drawing back, I took the opportunity to look around the arena. The stage was half-lit, enough to see the structures simulating a city skyline.
***
As the first notes of "Resistance" were played by the backup band, the arena lights abruptly went out and the stage went dark. The only illumination was on a staircase, down which white-clad figures were marching. As they started falling off the sides, I felt Bella gasp beside me in obvious concern. "They're wearing harnesses," I whispered, my keener eyesight able to catch what she couldn't. "They're fine." She relaxed in relief, only to focus again as three columns began to emerge from underneath the stage floor, each one carrying a member of Muse: lead singer Matthew Bellamy, guitarist Chris Wolstenholme, and drummer Dominic Howard.
Carried through the centuries
Secrets locked up and loaded on my back
Well it weighs me down
How true it was—the centuries of secrecy practiced by members of my tribe, ancestors in a physical or metaphysical sense. It was sobering to remember how lonely I had been before, having to abandon old friends and keep secrets from everyone including my own parents. Sure, gaining my pack brothers had been good; still, we'd definitely been set apart from everyone else. But Bella had changed so much for me; I now had someone I could tell anything to, someone who knew everything.
I was distracted from my reflections by a light, feathery touch to my arm. When I glanced down, I saw that Bella's right arm was stretched across her body and her fingers were lightly running up and down my arm. Her left hand was toying with the necklace I'd given her, unconsciously alternating between rubbing her thumb over the crest pendant and running the pendant itself along the silver chain. If her goal tonight was to drive me crazy, she was definitely well on her way to success. I was still as determined as ever to hold to my oft-repeated promise of not pushing past her comfort zone, but…I drew in a deep breath. She wasn't making it easy at all right now.
***
Bella POV
I lightly slid my fingertips along Jared's arm for the several-dozenth time, and valiantly bit the inside of my lip to hide a smirk as his muscles involuntarily contracted under my touch. As I neared his wrist again, his arm flipped over rapidly and his hand claimed mine, intertwining our fingers. I looked up at him unrepentantly and saw that him staring back at me, his dark eyes full of promise. I felt my stomach flutter in response. I remembered one of our early nights together…
(flashback)
"Does it bother you, that I affect you this way?" I asked.
"Does it bother you that you affect me this way?" he'd countered.
"It probably should, but honestly, I think I like it—more than I should."
Jared had groaned softly, and shifted to his back. "Bella, don't you know that you shouldn't say that to a hot-blooded 18-year-old male?"
"Really? Well, you are hot."
"Bella, can we please go to sleep, before I forget my good intentions where you've concerned?"
"Okay. I promise to stop teasing…for now," I had told him.
***
"I meant what I said before about liking that we affect each other physically, but I'm just not ready for going that far yet."
He nodded. "And I meant what I said about never wanting to push you farther than you want to go. If this is getting to be too much, we can back things down."
"Maybe we can just stay at this level for a while. And when I'm ready for more, I promise I'll let you know."
I'd promised him not to tease; was I breaking that now? No, I decided, I wasn't. I was…letting him know, just as I'd told him I would.
***
Draw another picture
Of the life you could have had
Follow your instincts
And choose the other path
You should never be afraid
You're protected from trouble and pain
My conversation with Jared at dinner tonight came back as I let the song's lyrics flow over me. The life I had once thought to lead was gone now, forever out of reach. But I wasn't devastated by that realization, as I once would have been. I'd been given a second chance, the opportunity to make different choices, to go a different way. Accepting Jared and the imprinting had been my act of choosing. With Jared, I didn't have to fear not being good enough for him, never fear that he would hurt me. I'd been honest with him: I didn't know why I'd been blessed with him, but I was deeply grateful. I leaned to the side, until I was close enough to kiss the shoulder of his shirt, just above the place where the tattoo marked his skin, just as it now marked my neck. I placed a kiss against his shirt, and then rested my head against his shoulder, savoring our closeness.
***
Jared POV
When Muse had done their final encore, the lights came up and the audience began to head for the exits. We stayed in our seats for a while, deeming it best to wait for the crowd to thin out a bit before trying to leave. "Thank you," I told her once again.
She giggled. "Are you ever going to stop thanking me for this weekend?"
"Not sure," I admitted. "Maybe I'll keep it up for as long as I can get away with it."
She rolled her eyes at me and I grinned back. Seeing that our section was clearing out, I pulled her to her feet and we headed up the steps to the concourse level. A quick stop in the restrooms, and we were ready to leave.
I was instantly on alert when the night air hit my nostrils. I reflexively gripped Bella's arm, bringing her to a halt.
"What is it?" she whispered, catching my level of tension.
"Vampire," I breathed, scanning around trying to pick up anything else.
"Where?" she was frozen at my side. "Is it her?"
"I'm not sure where exactly; somewhere close. But it isn't her—I'm sure of that. Or them either," I added as an afterthought. I let my senses expand as much as they could in human form, drawing in as much of the scent as I could, and straining my ears for any sound. Another part of my mind was frantically considering all my options: attack, retreat, run, hide. The stench was fading slightly, so I thought the leech responsible for it might have moved farther away. What would be the odds that a new bloodsucker would show up in Seattle on the one night Bella was here? Was it just a coincidence, or had she somehow pissed off another leech and just not told us?
A change in the wind's direction brought a sound over more clearly than before. It took a moment for me to place it as a siren, like on a cop car.
"Come on," I hissed, too worried now to care about being polite. Safety came first over manners right now. The part of me that was a protector of the innocent cringed at the thought that someone must have been hurt by that bloodsucking monster, but a larger part of me was simply grateful that it hadn't been my Bella.
Our rapid descent of the arena's outside stairs resulted in Bella stumbling at the bottom.
"Help me," she whispered, voice trembling with fear. I nodded and swung her up onto my back, much like an adult giving a child a piggy-back ride, and swiftly began to move down the street toward my car. Passing in front of an alley entrance halfway down the block, I jerked to a stop as a figure emerged from the shadows. Bella barely stifled a shriek before we both realized who it was: Paul.
"Damn it, Paul," I swore, "what the hell are you doing here?"
"Keeping an eye out," he answered, for once not reacting to being accused of something. "Sam's orders, man. He didn't want to take any chances. 'Sides, I was due for a field trip."
I wasn't amused by his fIippancy, but I somehow bit back the caustic comment I wanted to make about the chain of command and due notifications; it wasn't the right time, for one thing, and for the other, Paul wasn't the right recipient anyway. "Report," I commanded, and even though I wasn't beta anymore, I still outranked him and could do it.
"Leech—young guy, looked like. Jumped a girl a few blocks from here." He pointed in the direction he referred to, and my body tensed even further—if that was possible—when I realized that it was the same direction as the bookstore and restaurant—where Bella and I had spent hours earlier today.
"Is she…?" Bella managed a couple words before her voice faded.
Paul's face fell and he shook his head. "I was down here, closer to you two. Couldn't get up there in time to do anything—not sure what Sam expected me to do anyway if I had," he muttered. "Can't exactly phase in the middle of Seattle, can I?" he clearly didn't expect an answer.
I reached up to lightly squeeze Bella's arm in support, but she didn't lift her head from the crook of my neck where she'd dropped it at Paul's words. "Let's go," I said, and Paul joined us as we went the last half-block to the parking lot. I tossed him my keys after unlocking the car, and got in the back seat with Bella. I couldn't remember if he'd had his license six months yet or not, but I didn't care at the moment—there was no way I was letting go of Bella right now.
"One-o-one, or I-5?" he asked as we pulled out of the parking lot. I bit my lip—that was one of the things I'd been worrying about. Taking the 101 would get us back to Forks in just over three hours, but meant taking the Kingston-Edmonds ferry over Puget Sound, and leeches had the advantage in the water. Taking I-5 south would mean an extra hour of driving time and take us through both Tacoma and Olympia, but would put us into more isolated terrain surrounding the Olympic National Park, where the pack could offer support if necessary.
"Take I-5. It'll take us a bit longer to get back, but we'll be in range of the pack faster."
"On the way."
The first hour or so was silent, Bella clinging to me in quiet desperation. I'd called Jacob's place, only to get the answering machine. I'd left a vague message there, before trying the rest of the pack. I hadn't been able to connect with anyone and resolved to phase and send a mental message once we'd reached a place with enough privacy; I figured that where the metropolitan area ended just west of Olympia would work for that. It might end up working for another reason too: it was faint and sporadic, but I kept catching a hint of the same stench I'd found at the arena. We were being tracked. I met Paul's gaze in the rear-view mirror and he nodded acknowledgment: he'd caught it too. I glanced down at Bella, then back up into the mirror. Paul nodded again, in comprehension of my unspoken order: I would deal with this threat; he would keep Bella out of harm's way.
We'd just passed the edge of the city limits when the scent drifted in through the car's air vents more strongly than ever. Paul instantly wrenched the car over to the edge of the road and slammed on the brakes. The leech was close.
"Stay here! Lock the doors," I snapped out the orders as I bailed from the car and slammed the door behind me.
"Jared! No!" Bella screamed after me.
My clothes shredded as I phased and I instantly started tracking the scent back to its source. Anybody out there? I called mentally.
What's up? Embry answered.
Bella, Paul and I are just outside Olympia, and I'm tracking a leech's scent. Might be the same one that killed a girl near the arena we were at tonight. A little help would be great.
Oh sh— Embry bit off the rest. Okay, I'm on the way.
I caught the mental echo of him howling to get Quil's attention, but pushed him to the background to focus on the task at hand. In this form, my quarry's scent was even more obvious to me. He seemed to have overshot the car, and was a bit farther west. I launched myself forward, ears canted forward for the faintest sound of his movement. He slammed into me out of nowhere, the force of the impact sending me skidding across the forest floor. I was up in an instant, turning on him and swiping viciously with my claws. A screeching metallic sound marked the separation of part of his shoulder from his body. It didn't stop him lunging toward me, arms outstretched. Whatever he was planning, I probably wouldn't like, so I quickly twisted to one side, and he flew past me.
We circled one another, watching carefully for the slightest sign of weakness. Lunge was countered by evasion, thrust by counterthrust. Several of my blows tore off more chunks of his body; some of his moves impacted me, and I probably had at least one broken bone that the adrenaline wasn't letting me feel. Suddenly, he went flying as something crashed into him.
Got your back, bro, Embry told me before refocusing. We ganged up on him, one darting forward while the other cut off escape. We pushed him back, trying to get him as far away from Bella as possible. Working together, it wasn't long before we managed to completely rip him apart. Embry phased back, yanked on his shorts, and then pulled a lighter out of his ankle pouch. I phased back, too, wincing as my already-healing ribs protested. It did keep me from helping him gather the body parts for burning, though; a few more minutes, and I'd be fine. Embry was polite enough not to look at me or otherwise mention my lack of clothing. As he lit a handful of miraculously dry underbrush and dumped it on the corpse-pile, I reflected that it was fortunate we were so far from the highway; the foul purplish smoke of the fire we'd just lit wouldn't attract attention.
"How'd you get here so fast?" I asked him. "Not that I'm complaining, of course."
"I was out in the national park already, patrolling down this way. Not all that far to come."
"Thanks, man. Crap, he was strong. Fast, too."
"Did seem a bit tougher than the last one," he agreed. "Wonder what the difference was."
"I don't know, and I don't really care right now, to be honest."
This corpse burned as quickly as the last, and after kicking dirt over the remaining ashes to prevent a forest fire, we phased and headed back to the car.
***
Bella POV
"Let me go!" I screamed to Paul, as Jared burst into wolf form and disappeared into the forest. Paul didn't answer me right away, just stayed where he was, twisted around in the front seat, his arms wrapped around me, pinning me to the seatback.
"He'd kill me if anything happened to you, Bella," he finally told me in a quiet voice. "And I'd want him to. He can handle this—it's what we're born and bred to do. And he'll have called in the rest of the pack by now—he won't be in this alone. We just need to wait and let him do what he needs to do to protect you."
"But what if he—" I couldn't finish. I couldn't even think the rest of that thought. Losing Edward had almost destroyed me; losing Jared would certainly do it.
"He's a strong, skilled fighter," Paul tried to reassure me. "He knows what he's doing."
I sagged down in Paul's grasp, and he loosened his arms to let me sink back onto the rear seat. I couldn't help it as I curled up in a fetal ball, arms wrapped around myself, as I whispered, "Please be okay, please come back," over and over.
"Bella?" Paul's voice roused me. I looked up when the trunk popped open behind me, and saw Embry heading that way. A moment later, and the car door opened and Jared slid in next to me, wearing only a pair of shorts.
"Bella…" Jared's voice was agonized as he saw what I had to look like. He pulled me onto his lap and wrapped his arms around me. "I love you, I'm fine, we're fine, it's okay, I'm here, I love you…" he told me. We sat there for a long time, completely ignoring Paul and Embry up front. I really didn't even register it when Paul started the car again and pulled back onto the road.
"I was so scared you'd get hurt," I whispered.
"He did get one of my ribs before we took him down," he admitted, "but it's already healed up. I'm fine."
The reassurance didn't stop me from scooting away far enough to run my hands over his chest and sides, checking for damage. He squirmed, and grabbed my hands, bringing them up to his lips to kiss. "I'm fine," he repeated. "Are you okay, Bella-love? I'm sorry for leaving like I did, but I couldn't take time to explain. I just couldn't let him get any closer to you than he already was." I knew he wasn't apologizing for what he'd done, but rather for how it had affected me. Now that he was with me again, and I was able to think, I realized that he had only done what he had to do. He'd promised to protect me, and to come back to me; he'd done both. He tenderly kissed me, wiping away my fear with his touch. I closed my eyes, breathing in his rich musky scent. Then he looked to the front seat.
"Something going on back home?" Jared asked Embry. "I called Jake's place and the others, but only got the machine." Embry flinched.
"Yeah," he admitted. "Sam and Billy are at the hospital." Everyone's full attention was immediately on him. "Harry Clearwater had a heart attack tonight, right after he got back from his fishing trip. He was still alive, last I heard, but…it doesn't look good."
"Is Jake there, too?" I asked. "Or on patrol with Quil?" They were the only two pack members not accounted for.
Embry winced. "No," he said, an answer the others found as unacceptable as I did.
"Then where is he?" Jared demanded.
"Harry's heart attack…" Embry seemed at a loss for words.
"Seth phased, didn't he?" Jared surmised. "Guess he was closer than I thought."
"Oh, Seth phased alright, but that's only the half of it."
I looked between the three of them. Paul and Jared were just as confused as I was. What was going on that had Embry this bothered?
"So what's the other half then?" Paul wanted to know.
"They don't think the heart attack was caused by Seth's phasing—I mean, they knew it was coming and all. They think it was because Seth wasn't the only one to phase." Embry took a deep breath, and got the last of it out. "So did his sister."
A deafening silence enveloped the car. "What?" we all breathed.
Embry nodded. "Leah phased too. We now have a new sister."
"That's not possible," Jared shook his head in denial.
"That's what everyone thought, but I saw her myself. She's a wolf."
The car fell silent as everyone considered this latest development. For myself, I thought of Charlie. Harry had been one of his best friends for years; they were about the same age, and had similar lifestyles. I couldn't imagine how he must be feeling, as his friend fought for his life.
"Hey, Paul, pull over and let me out, okay? I ought to go fill Jake, and Sam, too, in on what happened tonight," Embry said.
"Sure. I'll come with you. Have my own report to give. Plus, we ought to see what the word is on Harry," Paul brought the car to a stop and left the keys in the ignition when he and Embry got out.
"What is it?" Jared asked, as we got out to move to the front seats.
"Charlie…he must be so worried about Harry."
"He's at the hospital," Embry offered, before he and Paul turned and started for the trees.
"You probably ought to call him," Jared suggested. "We're going to be later than expected getting back."
I struggled to pull my cell phone out of my purse and then dialed as soon as I'd gotten my seatbelt buckled.
"Dad?" I said when he answered.
"Bella? What's wrong?" Charlie's voice was full of stress.
"Nothing, I'm fine. Jared just heard from a friend about Harry, so I decided to call you. How is he?"
Charlie was silent for a moment. "He didn't make it, Bells. He's gone."
"Oh, dad, I'm so sorry." And I was. This was so sad and terrible for everyone.
"I'm going to be here at the hospital for a while with Sue. She's got so much to deal with right now."
So much more than you know about, I thought.
"Are you almost home?" he asked next.
"Not yet. We didn't get out of Seattle as quickly as we thought we would. Dad…I think I'm going to stay down at La Push tonight. I want you to do whatever you can to help Sue, but I don't want to be home by myself."
"Okay, Bells, that's probably a good idea." I was relieved when he didn't ask for more information, but figured he had too much else on his mind. "I'll see you tomorrow, then, Bella."
"See you then, dad." As I ended the call, I dropped my phone onto the floor as I focused on the guy next to me. His eyes were even darker than before, and I figured he'd gotten the message.
"Bella?" he asked, searching my eyes intently.
I nodded. "I told you I'd let you know."