Warning: Graphic violence, not for the faint of heart.
X-x-x-x-X
June 6
X-x-x-x-X
Seth follows Caius and Alec as they make their way out of the forest, blowing the storm clouds out of their way. The eagle flies at his side. When they climb into a black SUV which had been hidden on an old, abandoned logging road, loading Jasmine's unconscious wolf form into the back, he seriously considers tossing another lightning bolt at the car to disable it. But he has no way to kill the vampires in this form, while they have every ability to kill Jacob and Jasmine, so he restrains himself. Instead he follows, wishing he had a way to tell his brothers where he is. But he knows that if he returns to his body, he will lose track of them, and then they will be gone entirely.
Unfortunately, after about half an hour, he feels the invisible tether holding him to his body stretching to its limit. He struggles against it. The vampires have shown no signs of stopping, and he has no idea where they are going. And once he loses sight of the vehicle, he fears he will never find it again. He memorizes the license plate number and pushes himself as far as he is able.
Soon he can go no farther. Try as he might, his body calls him home. He finds himself yanked forcibly backward.
But in front of him, the eagle gives him hope. It does not call out, not wanting to attract attention to itself. But as he soars back toward his body, to his corporeal form, the eagle speeds on. It glances back just once, twisting in a single loop to acknowledge him, before continuing on.
He sits up in his body, shaking his head to clear it. He isn't where he thought he left his body, but instead is in the large clearing where the initial portion of the battle took place. He first spots Rosalie, who is wrapping a makeshift splint around Quil's arm. His other one already sits in a sling to accommodate his dislocated shoulder.
She nods at him. "Look, he's back."
"Good. What did you find out? Did you follow them?" He turns to his sister's voice and sees Sam stretched out on the ground several feet away, his head cradled in Leah's lap.
He is too confused by his sister's presence to answer her question. She is supposed to be in Seattle ensuring Rachel's safety. "What are you doing here? How did you get here?" Twisting about, he realizes the rest of the pack is gone. "Where is everyone else?"
"Who cares, I ran, and they're out looking for Jake and Jasmine. Did you find them?"
Seth nods breathlessly. "Kind of. They were loaded into a black SUV. They headed out of the park."
"They okay?"
"So far." He eyes Sam, who has now opened his eyes and turned toward Seth.
Rosalie catches them staring at each other. "He's going to be fine. Vocal cords got injured, so it's going to be at least a few hours before he can talk again. Alec crushed his airway and the circulation to the brain, but as soon as Alec let go, it started to heal. He'll be fine, thanks to Quil."
"CPR," explains Leah. "Get back to the point. Can you show the others where Jake is?"
"He's still moving southeast. They're driving fast. Really fast." Seth shakes his head. "I can't go that far. It's the only reason I came back already. But his eagle is with him. I think maybe once they stop, it'll come back and show us where he is."
"Thank god." Leah lets out a huge sigh. "Then we'll have some kind of a lead. Right now the guys are just chasing their tails. Can you phase and get them back here so we can regroup? I want us all to be ready when the eagle returns so we can go after them as soon as we know where we're going."
Seth turns to Rosalie. "Are they going to be okay for a hard run? I don't know how far we'll have to go."
"Quil here can't run right now," Rose answers.
Quil immediately contradicts her. "The hell I can't!"
"Fine. You can run on your human legs. But both of your arms will probably be useless until tomorrow. Even then, you shouldn't phase right away. The fractures will probably break all over again."
"So what? It didn't stop me just now, and it isn't going to."
"Can we argue about this later? Unless you can figure out how to get your wolf to sprint on just its hind legs, all you're going to do is slow them down." Rosalie scolds him. She turns back to Seth. "Anyway, the answer is yes. It'll hurt a bit, but yes. Except for these two."
Seth steps away to phase and call his brothers back, then returns to Leah, who is gently running her hand through Sam's hair. Sam's eyes are closed, but his breathing isn't even, and Seth knows he is awake. He asks his sister, "So what happened? What are you doing here?"
"Rachel couldn't stand waiting in Seattle. She wanted to be with the rest of the family, so she got someone to cover for her summer class, and I drove her back to the Rez. I sort of had half a mind to drop her off and then come help out, back you guys up, but when I we got there and I realized Jasmine had already bolted, I went after her. She had a serious head start on me. I told her to turn around and come home, but she wouldn't listen."
Rosalie fumes, "What the fuck was that stupid bitch thinking? Defying an Alpha order to protect her home? She ruined everything. If it weren't for her, Jake would be here and Alec and Caius would be dead."
"She was just trying to help!" Quil yells back.
"She did help! She helped them capture Jake!" Rosalie yells back.
Miserably, Quil tries to defend her. "It was an accident. She would never hurt him on purpose."
Softly, Leah snorts. "There's a lot of that going around, isn't there?"
Rosalie narrows her eyes. "But seriously. I want to know how she defied the order."
"It wasn't an Alpha order," Leah explains. "Jake gave us assignments, not Alpha orders. He didn't want anyone to be hampered by an Alpha order in case the situation changed and one of us needed to do something different than what we were told. In my case, it worked. If he had Alpha ordered me to stay in Seattle, I wouldn't have been here to help either."
"So tell us what happened when you got here?" Seth prompts.
"Ah. So I sprinted as fast as I could. I was watching it in the pack mind when she phased in. I guess once she found Jake, he told her to phase in and guard him, so she did. She just wasn't a match for Caius. She tried to get him away from Jake's body, but between not being that experienced, plus being so small, she just was struggling. He was still outside his body. Completely vulnerable. I told her I was coming, told her to hold him off for just another minute. But he got in a couple wicked blows to her head and knocked her out cold. Tossed her to the side. He had his hands on Jake when I got here. Was about to snap his neck. I got the drop on him and tackled him away. I tried to draw him away from Jake and Jasmine, but didn't get far. He's fierce, and he fights dirty, even for a leech."
Sam reaches up and traces his finger along Leah's arm with a small frown on his face. It, along with the rest of her skin, is covered in her own blood, but most of the claw marks that had slashed her skin open have closed. Leah tugs her arm back somewhat uncomfortably but doesn't move out from underneath Sam. "I'm okay, really." He insistently reaches for her hand and squeezes it, and she doesn't pull away. Instead she returns her attention to her brother. "I got a big hunk out of his side, and I thought I had him. Especially when Rose dropped from above us. Between the two of us, we'd have taken him down. But then the little one showed up. Held her at bay with his spell. Caius told me to stop and give him his, you know, the bite back." She points vaguely at her side. "Said Alec would decapitate Rose if I didn't back off. I think that's how he figured out how they could get out."
"Hostages," Seth nods.
"Right. Anyway, so he jammed the piece back into his side."
Rosalie fingers the spot in her arm where Tanya had torn a chunk out of her, now seamlessly integrated into her body again after she found it lying on the ground. "Me too," she murmurs.
Leah nods. "Convenient, I guess, huh? That's when the rest of you showed up, and well, you know the rest."
"Fuck," Quil mutters.
"What are we going to tell Billy? And Bella?" Seth asks. Leah just shakes her head, and they settle in to wait.
X-x-x-x-X
Neither Collin nor Brady has the heart to enter the Black house in the middle of the night to explain to the family what happened to Jacob and Jasmine. Brady stumbles to his own home, trembling and barely able to speak, and tells his mother the most basic version of the tale, terrified he will get in trouble for not preventing his cousin from running off. She just hugs her son tightly before calling Sue, who stops looking through her window to await the return of her children, instead curling up with Emmett's dog, who sympathetically nudges her hand with his muzzle. She understands that they will not return today. They are too busy searching for their packmates.
Instead, just before dawn, she heads to Billy's house, the dog trailing obediently behind her. Charlie throws open the door at her knock, his face visibly paling when he sees the expression on her face.
"Can I come in?" The dog darts in front of her, pushing its head into Charlie's hand to be petted.
Billy appears in the doorway of the kitchen, gripping the arms of his wheelchair tightly and staring at her with bloodshot eyes. Bella and Rachel stand in the hallway, each girl with a pillow clutched to her belly. Sue stares at the linens on the couch, Charlie's makeshift bed. She quietly closes the door behind her and turns to Billy, steeling herself. She has had to give bad news many times in her life, but never quite like this. She doesn't beat around the bush, knowing that any polite or delicate language will just make each of them imagine the very worst. "I don't know exactly what happened, but Jacob and Jasmine were taken. No one knows what has happened to them, but they were alive the last time they were seen."
Bella doesn't hear the rest of what Sue says after that. She sways in place, but Rachel grabs her arm, so she does not fall. She had been lying in Jacob's bed, half awake and half asleep, when she felt a momentary jolt of pain in her right leg. It was so surprising and excruciating that she cried out, drawing the rest of the family into her bedroom, but it was over as soon as it began. Terror overwhelmed her as Charlie and Billy questioned her. The abrupt end to the pain was more frightening than the pain itself. At least if she felt Jacob's pain, he was alive to feel it. This awful blankness was even worse, because she had no idea what it meant.
Rachel knelt down in front of her and demanded an explanation. She had none to give, so instead she lied and said she had a nightmare. She wasn't certain anyone believed her, but they left her alone after that.
She didn't fall asleep again. None of them did. She lay flat on her back and stared at Jacob's ceiling, fearful that she was about to feel searing pain again, but despairing that she might not. Her entire body hummed with anxiety. But she put her palm to her chest and felt her own heart beating. Surely if his were to stop, hers would as well?
She tries to tune back in to what Sue is saying. "The pack is looking for them. Sam was injured badly. After I leave, I'm going to go with Brady to check on him, probably bring him home. Rosalie has been taking care of him. The others are okay except for broken bones."
"Jake broke his leg," Bella says quietly and without thought.
"What?" Charlie spins on his heel to look at her, hands on his hips. "What did you say?"
"When I yelled and woke you up. It was because he broke his leg," she explains.
Billy frowns at her. "Have they broken anything else since then? Is he hurting right now?"
She shakes her head and is unable to meet his eyes. "Not that I can feel."
"What do you feel?" Rachel demands. She is angry at Bella for withholding this information, but more than that, she wants to know everything Bella knows.
Bella can no longer hold back her tears. She stares at a childhood picture of Jacob and his two sisters on the mantle, unable to take her eyes off his bright white grin. "He's alive. I know he's alive."
"How can you tell?" Rachel presses her.
"Because I would know if he wasn't."
X-x-x-x-X
Jacob wakes up on a cold, concrete floor. It almost feels good against his overheated skin. He hears the thin, pinched voice of Caius alternating with the reedy, high pitched voice of Alec bouncing off the walls. They seem to be moving around, now above him, behind him, in front of him. He concentrates on keeping his breathing even and slow so that they do not realize he is awake, and tries to gather as much information as possible. He feels the heavy weight of manacles around both wrists and ankles, but he doesn't yet move. Hopefully he can snap these off. He lies on his left side, waiting patiently. They are arguing over who they think he is and what Jasmine might be.
Caius is saying, "These are unlike any Children of the Moon I have ever encountered. They don't even look the same."
"What were the other ones like?"
"Vicious and rabid. Strong but stupid. When in their wolf form, they lost all vestiges of their humanity, at least in their minds. They knew nothing but the desire to kill, to fight. They took no care to cover their tracks, to avoid over-hunting an area or keep from exposing themselves. They were senseless, base creatures, but dangerous nonetheless. The only human thing about them that remained when they turned were some basic physical characteristics. They didn't look like normal wolves, nor like these overgrown things. You could tell they were once men. They stood on their hind legs, not on all fours. They were closer to the size of tall men, not horses. These, these are something else altogether."
"Did they travel together, like these?"
Caius denies it. "Not in their animal form. Two males were as likely to kill each other as they were to kill a vampire, an animal, or a human. They were indiscriminate predators. In their human form, they hardly knew what they had done while they were animals, but if they discovered what they were, they were horrified. If they found one another as men, they might make attempts to assist each other. Say, lock one another up during a full moon. That was the only reason it took us so long to eradicate them. We couldn't find them all. And our kind were not always interested in hunting them down, and humans had no skill for it. They spread terror wherever they went. It was dangerous for us. First, because their claws and teeth were capable of penetrating our flesh, much like these, but moreover, because humans sometimes mistook their kills for ours. We were afraid they might expose us all. But I am certain we killed them off ages ago."
"I'm surprised we have heard nothing of these before. They have managed to stay quite well hidden," Alec mentions offhandedly.
"They are clearly much more intelligent, more coordinated. But perhaps the reason we have never heard of these is because they are new."
"New?"
"How is it that these creatures could have been here for centuries, and we know nothing of them? They are not the werewolves we know. That much is clear. Is the entire continent filled with them? Surely not. Again, we would know. Perhaps they are a creation of the shamans. Or summoned only when desired."
"What do you mean?"
"Tanya Denali gave no evidence that these things are men who can turn into wolves. She was half mad, and I am not convinced she really knew anything, although she spoke the truth when she claimed they were dangerous. I could wring her neck for not warning us about the fire and the lightning, were she not already dead. More likely that they are creatures summoned by, or perhaps even created by, their shamans, and then sent back from whence they came when they are not needed. After all, have you ever heard of a were-bear? It's preposterous."
"Whatever they are, wherever they came from, they are powerful."
Caius sounds absurdly pleased. "It has been a long time since I battled such a challenging foe. I rather missed it! Really, now that we know what they are capable of, it's a wonder that your sister survived her first meeting with them."
"But not the second." Alec sounds like an angry little boy. "And at any rate, she did not mention these at all. Just the other shaman."
"Don't worry." Jacob can hear Caius grinning. "You'll have your revenge." After a pause, he mutters, "Now that I've seen what they can do, I'm surprised that Edward Cullen was able to get close enough to bite the other shaman, although I suppose his talent must have made all the difference. And this one seems much more powerful than the one that died. Too bad your sister was gullible enough to believe that that was the last of their conjurers."
Defensively, Alec spits back, "Jane was many things, but she was not gullible."
"Mmm. I suppose you're right," Caius murmurs. "The shamans obviously hold power over the animals around them. Perhaps they influenced her thoughts as well."
Both voices move behind Jacob as he lets relief wash over him. They do not seem to know that Bella is alive. Their ruse has held. Even if he never escapes, perhaps his Bells will still live a long, human life.
Jacob no longer hears the shuffling of feet, so he cautiously opens his eyes just a crack. He sees that the manacles around his wrists are chained to each other, as are the ones around his ankles. But he is otherwise unrestrained. Several feet away lies Jasmine. She appears to be unconscious as well, and she remains in wolf form. She, too, lies on her side. She is hogtied with thick chains, all four limbs bound together. Her fur is matted down with dark, dried blood in several places, but most of her wounds seem concentrated around her head. Her breathing is steady and slow, and otherwise she doesn't move at all. Beyond that, Jacob can only see blank, concrete walls. The door must be behind him. There are no windows. The ceiling is unfinished, piping and ductwork crisscrossing the space between the beams. He sees no furniture of any kind. They must be in a basement room somewhere. He sees nothing near him with which to attack the vampires.
He turns his attention back to his restraints. They look very thick, much more so than normal handcuffs. If these are made to contain vampires, he might not be able to free himself from them, particularly in his human form. He could try to phase; there is nothing stopping him. But if they do not break open when he phases, they will just slice into his flesh, possibly crippling him. He waits and listens, concentrating on listening beyond the walls of this room. But there is nothing. He hears no movement in the adjacent rooms, no voices or movement. He would listen for heartbeats or breathing, but amongst these enemies shall find none, not even if an army stands at attention just outside the doors.
Alec interrupts Caius's musings. "I had forgotten about the other animals. Do you think the bird was important?"
"What bird?"
"I saw an eagle circling the building when I got out of the car. There was an eagle flying over the battle, too."
Caius is silent for long seconds. "I don't know," he murmurs. "There's no way to know. It might belong to the shaman, or it might have just been a bird. There were probably a hundred birds we passed on the way."
"Perhaps," Alec answers skeptically. "It's probably nothing. But are we willing to take that chance?"
"No." Caius's voice is firm. "But we can't go anywhere now. The skies were clearing when we arrived, did you see? An uncommonly bright morning, and our windows aren't tinted. We can move when the cloud cover returns, or nightfall. Whichever comes sooner."
Jacob's hope rises and falls simultaneously. If his eagle did follow them, then the pack will have a chance to find them. But by the sound of it, they might leave before they have a chance to be found.
He could spirit walk right now, and they would not know it. He strains to see if there is anything in this room he could use to harm them. But there is no spark that he might turn into a flame to burn them, and by now they probably have no open wounds to fuel the fire. However, he is greatly tempted to spirit walk and find out exactly where he is, then go to fetch his pack. He should go now before they realize he is awake. But what he hears next stops him just as he is closing his eyes once more.
Alec's voice drops to a low hiss. "We should kill that one before it wakes. We don't need it. We have a shaman. Who cares about his mutt?"
Jacob forgets to breathe. He cannot leave Jasmine here if they are about to kill her.
"Not yet," Caius disagrees. "Death in its sleep is a kindness the bitch doesn't deserve. Besides. She may prove useful. We can pit one against the other. The animals backed off when they thought we would kill these two, did they not? Perhaps we can play them off each other."
"But they don't deserve to live!" Alec protests. "They killed my sister, they killed Chelsea. They've torn apart your kingdom. They deserve to die!"
"Of course they do!" Caius laughs. "You didn't think I was suggesting we let them live, did you? No. But I shall learn more from the dog alive than dead, and I think I will enjoy slicing it open to see what's inside, mmm? But that won't be any fun at all if it isn't awake to feel it!"
"What do you propose?"
"When they awaken, let's test their limits, shall we?"
"And the rest?"
Caius lowers his voice to a bare whisper. If Jacob did not have such an acute sense of hearing, he would never know what was said. "We'll get the information we want out of the shaman. You have my word on it. If we can learn the secret of controlling the beasts, imagine what power we could wield!"
Alec sounds like a whining child. "I don't want any pets. I want revenge!"
"And who was it who would not come and avenge your sister, hmm? Who sent her here without sufficient protection? Whose fault is it that she is gone?" When Alec doesn't respond, Caius continues, "He has made puppets of the two of you. He used Chelsea's powers to bind you to him. To bind me to him. He has made fools of us for centuries, keeping all the power for himself. We are birds in gilded cages, Alec, useful only insofar as we support him. How many times have you seen him cast aside a loyal servant when he has nothing more to steal from them? Does he support us? Or does he enslave us? I am not suggesting that we keep housepets. I am suggesting that we learn from what he has done to us for all these centuries. We enslave them for ourselves and use them to rid ourselves of the chains that he calls jewelry. And if they cannot be enslaved, then we kill them all."
Jacob is horrified. He should have seen this coming, should have figured out why Caius would leave the relative safety of Volterra, turn against Aro, to fly halfway around the world just for the chance to kill a werewolf. He may be sadistic enough to do it purely for the pleasure of the experience, but more than he wants to inflict pain, he wants power.
"I'm tired of waiting," Caius breathes. "Let's see what we can do to wake this one up." Jacob hears him moving across the floor and barely manages to close his eyes before Caius steps in view. He doesn't want them to know he has heard them.
But when he hears the slide of metal against metal, he cannot stop his heart rate from speeding up. The sound is unmistakable. Caius has a knife, and he has every intention of using it on Jasmine. He keeps his eyes closed and his breathing even, but there is no use.
"What's going on?" Alec asks.
He hears Caius kneel over him. The stench of the vampire's decayed breath washes across his face. "This one is..."
But before Caius can finish his sentence, Jacob leaps to his feet, his already-healing broken bone protesting in pain but not buckling beneath him. He cuffs Caius under the chin with his heavy shackles. The vampire's head snaps back, and Jacob notes with satisfaction a look of sheer surprise on his face at Jacob's blow. He jumps back, straining at his bonds, but they do not break. As he feared, they must be forged to restrain vampires.
Caius grins at him wickedly and leaps at him. He throws his arms up, catching Caius's neck with the chain, slowing him down. But Caius brings up his left fist to punch at Jacob's right arm, and it breaks with a hairline crack. The pain lasts only seconds, because the next thing he knows, he is enveloped in suffocating darkness. He can no longer feel the floor beneath his feet, the pain in his arm or leg, hear the sounds of his enemies' voices, or see anything except pitch black.
When the fog lifts, he finds himself chained to a large concrete support column in the middle of the room. His naked back faces out to the room, and his arms and legs are tethered around the concrete. His right forearm stings with a sharp pain, much worse than his leg. He looks around the column and sees Alec grinning at him. Jasmine is still unconscious on the floor.
Behind him, he hears a hum. "Mm. You've joined us again, I see? Very good. Where should we begin?" Jacob doesn't answer.
Caius speaks again. "Why don't I introduce myself and my companion. My name is Caius, and this is Alec. I don't believe we've had the pleasure."
"We've never had the displeasure," Jacob answers dryly.
"Aha! So it can talk! I was beginning to wonder if you would speak in the language of men or of beasts. May I ask, what is your name?"
"You can ask. You can ask anything you want."
"Will you answer?"
"What do you think?" Jacob snarls.
"I think you're going to be a lot of fun!"
"The feeling isn't mutual."
Caius moves into Jacob's line of view. His face is crossed with jagged black lines that make him look like his stone flesh is cracking. Jacob comforts himself with the knowledge that whatever happens, neither Alec nor Caius will be able to pass for human any longer. Caius wields a wicked-looking curved blade in one hand and a length of copper wire in the other. He speaks clearly and calmly as if he is just making idle conversation. "Don't you miss being away from home sometimes? Being away from your routine. Your favorite things. But sometimes, taking yourself out of your element can be a good thing. Make you get creative. Otherwise you can fall into the same old ruts all the time."
"I take it that isn't your favorite knife?"
"Oh, no. This is my very favorite," Caius shakes his head and lifts it up, holding it to the light and examining it closely. "Call it a security blanket, if you will. I always keep this close at hand. I never leave home without it." He thrusts it close to Jacob's face, just millimeters away. Jacob doesn't move. "It's a design of my own invention. Cuts through just about anything." He illustrates by pushing it into the concrete, where it chips away at the stone. "Which is useful for one such as myself. I tinkered for decades until I discovered just the right alloy. Our kind does not wound easily." He looks Jacob in the eye, amusement twinkling in his eye. "But you knew that already, didn't you?"
Jacob just looks back at him, his jaw tight. Caius stares at him for several seconds, unmoving and stony himself. But then he begins to pace back and forth in an exaggeratedly casual fashion, flipping his knife in the air and catching it deftly in his hand. "How many of my kind have you run across before?" He glances at Jacob, who says nothing. "How many have you killed?" Jacob continues to stare at him as Caius pauses in his walk, looming over Jasmine's body. Caius turns his attention back to Jacob.
"You're the strong, silent type, aren't you?"
Again, Jacob does not answer.
"So I suspected. So you're not going to tell me about these pets of yours? Not going to tell me where they came from? Are they your pets or your family?"
Caius continues pacing and flipping his knife, and Jacob continues watching him. "I liked your fireball trick. I know lots of people with lots of talents, but that one is new to me. And the lightning was impressive. I liked that quite a lot. I haven't seen that before either. I don't suppose you'd be willing to share your secret, would you?"
"You don't actually think I'm going to answer, do you?" Jacob rolls his eyes.
Caius stops in his tracks and grins. "Of course not. In fact, I'd rather you didn't. Not yet, anyway. Make me work for my answers, will you? Anyway, as I was saying earlier, I have none of my favorite things, except this." He holds up the knife again. "So I have to make do here. Let me know if it works, would you?"
And abruptly, he flashes to stand behind Jacob. In the corner of his eye, Jacob sees not the knife, but the copper wire. A millisecond later, he feels it bite into his skin, slashing across his flank like a whip. He sucks in a quick breath, but says nothing.
Caius leans around to face Jacob and says conversationally, "Well, this works rather well, does it not? I was wandering around while you were here with Alec, and I decided that I needed it more than the electrical system. I rather prefer my own whip collection. I've made a few cat o' nine tails and tipped them with little barbs of my alloy. I even have a mace made of the same stuff. And those shackles are made of it as well. But apparently, I don't need to use something quite so sophisticated for you, mmm?"
Alec, now standing behind Jacob, gestures to Caius. "Wait. Come here."
"Don't interrupt me, boy!" Caius hisses.
"No, come here. You want to see this. Didn't you leave a mark? You hit him hard enough."
"Of course I did. Not enough to break the skin, though." Caius leans back again and frowns at Jacob's back, which now looks entirely unblemished. "Let me try again." And pain lashes across Jacob's back again, causing him to gasp in pain. This time the slash is deep enough to bleed. "There, of course it would work. He is made of flesh. Not stone." But before Caius says anything more, he sees the wound start to knit together. "What?" He flicks out his makeshift whip again four times in rapid succession, leaving a criss cross pattern across Jacob's back. And within a minute, each wound is closed. "Marvelous!" he cries happily.
He walks around the pole to grin gleefully at Jacob, whose teeth are grit together from the stinging across his back and the pain of his fractured bones. "You're just full of surprises, aren't you! I have never met anyone like you. This is going to be so much fun!" And then he flashes behind Jacob again.
The next minutes feels like an hour as Caius flays Jacob's back with the copper wire. He can no longer hold in his cries, choking as agony licks across his back. He grips the column in front of him to stay upright, pressing his forehead into the cool stone as tears smear across his cheeks. Caius makes dozens of slices before settling back to watch the healing process. "Fascinating!" he exclaims.
As soon as the skin is healed over, which takes several minutes due to the extent of the injuries he inflicted, Caius asks Jacob, "What happens if you keep the wound open? Do you know? Have you ever tried?"
Jacob doesn't even open his eyes to look at Caius's face. The stench of his breath is enough to make him nauseated. He doesn't need to look at the the vampire's glee. He knows that Caius no longer even cares about the pack, his powers, or how he could use Jacob to gain power. His only goal, for the moment, is to inflict pain and test the limits of Jacob's body. "Let's find out, shall we?"
He grabs the wire in both hands, leaving about two feet between his fists, and firmly presses the wire into Jacob's flesh, sawing back and forth to break the skin. "Alec, it's like a cheese cutter!" he crows.
Jacob pants against the column, face contorted in a grimace. He grunts low in his throat to keep from screaming. The wire digs deep, biting through skin and muscle. Caius holds it firmly embedded in his flesh as he continues, "This is wonderful. I so rarely get to torture humans in this fashion. My own gluttony, I suppose. If only I could restrain my hunger long enough. But the smell of their blood is too tantalizing, while yours is just repulsive. And I could never do this with another vampire. Not even with my alloy."
Jacob can feel his body trying to expel the metal. But Caius keeps it in place. He itches and burns, struggling against his shackles in futility. They, too, dig into his flesh.
"Look!" Alec whispers, enthralled. "The skin is trying to heal over the metal!"
"Fascinating! Here, take this end." Jacob hears shuffling behind him, and Caius appears on the other side of the column. He ties the copper wire tightly around Jacob and the column, pulling it tightly so that it digs into his vertebrae. "We're doing a little experiment. I hope you don't mind."
Then he steps back to watch. Jacob strains harder against his bonds, but stops when he realizes that all he is doing is embedding the wire further. A few minutes later, he hears Caius explain, "In case you're interested, your skin has closed over the wire! It's bright red, and there is a little bleeding at the edges, but it's almost healed. Did you know that would happen?"
Jacob doesn't answer.
"Alec, I want to try something else. Do you mind?"
"Certainly." And for several blissful minutes, Jacob feels nothing.
When the mist lifts, he has been flipped over. His back is now pressed against the column, his wrists and ankles shackled behind him and around the concrete. He is pulled taut, the only movement possible his ability to turn his head. Caius has apparently cut both ends of the copper wire, but it remains lodged in his back. The vampire appears in front of him wielding his wicked-looking knife. "You've got a rather... large... chest. Quite a lot of room to write. Let's see if my alloy leaves a mark, shall we?"
The vampire hums, squinting and staring at his skin, tapping at his chin with one finger. "Aha! I have it." Jacob closes his eyes. He gains nothing by watching Caius work. At first, all he feels is Caius's finger on his skin. But then, pain. He stiffens, his entire body screaming at him to phase and resist. But he feels the strength of his shackles. They will not open when he phases, the metal will just bite into his flesh the way the copper wire is already embedded into his skin. It might slice through the tendons in his wrists and ankles, crippling him. And the pain, agonizing though it is, is only pain.
"Stop squirming!" Caius sounds like a scolding schoolteacher. "Hold still, will you?"
Jacob sweats and strains against the slashing in his skin, hissing and groaning low in his throat. He can't breathe, the pain overwhelming his most basic drives. The iron scent of his own blood mingles with the burning acid scent in his nose. Caius draws the tip of his blade in loops from one side to the other, then steps back.
"Clever," Alec chuckles, reading the words. "Dolor et gaudium. Pain and joy."
"Ah," Caius sighs in disappointment. "But look, the flesh heals already."
"But look at the blood. Beautiful."
"Si. Bellitudo." Caius waits until the skin has healed, walking in circles around the column, contemplating what to try next. Jacob's head drops forward in exhaustion. "Do you suppose all his injuries heal so quickly?"
"Why don't we find out?" Alec answers smugly.
"Let's," Caius replies. And without hesitation, he slams his fist into the hairline fracture in Jacob's right arm, snapping it cleanly as he screams in pain.
The awful sound pulls Jasmine from unconsciousness. The small orange wolf lifts her head, howling and snarling her protest, struggling against her chains. But they do not bend, and as she realizes that all four of her limbs are bound together, she shifts back to her human form, screaming. "Stop it! You bastards, get your hands off him! Don't touch him!"
Caius and Alec stare at her in astonishment. Although they had suspected she was a werewolf and not just a monstrous animal under Jacob's control, neither had ever encountered a shifter, and they did not expect her to be able to phase at will. Caius's only experience was with werewolves who phased involuntarily during the full moon, and he had never seen a werewolf shift into a naked, lovely young woman.
Their surprise gives her the opportunity to pull at her wrists and legs. The chains are loose around her more slender human limbs, and she slips out of them as they watch her. She springs to her feet and phases back to her wolven form, leaping forward to protect Jacob. But Caius's startled paralysis is over. He plants his feet and braces himself for her attack. She manages to slash a deep gash into his face before he lands a punch to her sternum, sending her reeling backward and slamming into the wall. Alec throws his mist over her before she can rush them again, and she drops back in blind confusion.
Caius hastily retrieves more shackles and hands them to Alec. He then steps close to Jacob, pressing the tip of his blade into his neck and drawing blood. "Lift it," he commands.
Alec raises his mist, and as soon as Jasmine comes to awareness, ready to jump, he shoves the knife deeper into Jacob's neck. Blood seeps from the wound. "Ah, ah, ah. Not so fast. Turn back. I'd like to talk to the girl, please."
Jasmine turns her panicked eyes to Jacob, who shakes his head. He starts to yell an Alpha order for her to stop, but before he can get out the first word, Caius clamps his hand over his mouth. The movement opens the wound further, and appalled, she shifts back into her human form.
She immediately reaches for the dress tied around her neck, but Caius stops her. "Not so fast. I rather like you this way. Much prettier than all the fur. Alec?" The mist returns, and Alec takes advantage of her complete disorientation to shackle her wrists and ankles tightly. He shoves her to the ground, where she lands with a thud of her skull against the concrete floor. "Wrap chains around her legs. I don't want her to be able to move." Alec obliges, then the mist disappears again.
Caius continues speaking to Jasmine. "I was wondering what the ridiculous necktie was all about. A wolf with a kerchief. You look absurd. But this, this is rather fetching!" He turns back to Jacob. "So these aren't just animals, mmm? Are you a wolf as well? Or perhaps a bear, as we saw in the battle?" Jacob doesn't answer. "That's allright. I'll find out eventually. I have a different question," he murmurs, pressing the knife more deeply into Jacob's neck. Jasmine cries out when she sees the tears dripping from Jacob's eyes. "Does she heal as quickly as you?"
"Don't touch her!" Jacob growls.
"That's fine too. I'm not done with you yet." He turns back to Jasmine. "Tell me, my dear. If I slice through his carotid artery, will he heal that before he dies?"
"Please, no," she weeps. "Don't hurt him!"
"How do you plan to stop me?"
"I'll do anything!"
Caius's eyebrow quirks up. "Anything?"
She nods vigorously. "Just stop hurting him!"
"In that case, tell me. How many of you are there?"
But before Jasmine can answer, Jacob barks an Alpha order. "Don't way a word!"
And Jasmine lets out a strangled whimper, her voice choked off by his command.
"Well then," Caius grins, not realizing what just happened. "We'll just do this the hard way. Or the fun way, as I like to call it." And he shoves the blade another centimeter into Jacob's neck, nicking the artery and trachea. Blood fountains across the room, hitting the floor and the opposite wall.
Jasmine wails a wordless cry as Caius yanks out the blade and steps back. A spurt of blood splashes across his face, and he wipes it away with his nose wrinkled in distaste. He steps out of the way of the splatter, crosses his arms and watches Jacob, who coughs and sputters up blood. With each beat of his heart, red spray soaks the concrete. Jacob's eyes roll back in his head before his lids drop shut, and his head lolls forward. But soon, the spray slows down to a trickle, and the wound closes. But Jacob does not stop breathing, and his heart still beats.
Jasmine weeps in terror and relief. Caius breathes, "Remarkable." Then he gleefully turns his back on Jacob and faces Alec. "He isn't dead! Amazing! I was hoping that we would..."
His words are cut off by a roar. Jacob, dizzy with blood loss and pain but only feigning unconsciousness, phases where he stands. As he expected, his shackles slice painfully into his flesh, but not so deeply as to tear through his tendons. And in his wolf form he is his strongest. He yanks at his chains until they both snap at their weakest link, and he flies at Caius, who blocks his way to Alec, clamping his jaws around the vampire's head and tearing it off.
And as Jasmine screams, Alec flings out his arms out and throws his mist over Jacob and Caius. Jacob slumps to the ground, blinking and shaking his head but unable to see, feel, or hear anything. As Jasmine weeps, Alec calmly drags Caius out of the fog, reattaches his head, and says, "You're welcome." Then he sweeps his mist over Jasmine as well, and she knows no more.
X-x-x-x-X
The sun has been up for hours when Jared jumps to his feet and points to the southeast. "There! Let's go!"
He is the only member of the pack who can see the eagle speeding toward them. But not only do his brothers and sister trust his eyesight, they cannot bear waiting any longer. In seconds, they are all sprinting to the southeast with Jared in the lead.
Within minutes, every one of them can see the eagle. Leah pushes her way to the front. Seth and Jared flank her. Embry sprints behind, the pain in his broken ribs barely registering in his mind. Paul's abdominal flesh wounds have healed entirely, and he gallops alongside Embry. Emmett and Rosalie sprint in formation with them. Brady brings up the rear and with him, Sam. He is still mute, his vocal cords not recovered in the least, his neck still throbbing with pain, and his strength depleted from blood loss. But he refuses to return to La Push when Jacob and Jasmine are alive and need him, and it isn't as if he needs his voice to communicate with his pack. So he runs.
They run for hours. They do not stop for food, water, or rest.
And in the mid afternoon, Leah is the first to approach the outskirts of a small town. Her speed has pulled her away from the pack. The faint stench of vampire blows over her with a shift in the wind, and she stops just inside the cover of the forest. The eagle lands on the roof of an large but otherwise unremarkable grey brick building. There are almost no windows, and only two cars in the parking lot by its front office. Leah circles the building until she sees the a sign that reads, "Store-House Units: Starting at $40/mo".
She says to her brothers, I don't see the car. But I smell them. It's fresh.
How do you want to play this? Jared asks her.
I'm going in to look for them.
Absolutely not! Sam retorts. Jared and Seth are only a few minutes behind you. Wait for backup.
Leah bites back, Every second we waste is too much! We can't leave them in there, not when I'm right here! I'm going in.
Wait! Seth yells. I can go in without being seen. They can't touch me in spirit form. Let me. And before Leah can refuse him, he winks out of the pack mind. A minute later, Leah looks up to see her brother's transparent form pass above her head.
Seth does not possess Jacob's ability to see the bright lights at the center of living things, but he can easily walk through walls. So he quickly dips down into the building and flies through it. He moves through darkened rooms, his supernatural senses allowing him to peer through the gloom. He walks through boxes piled from floor to ceiling, furniture haphazardly tossed into the units, bags of old clothes, broken appliances, two pianos, and even a taxidermied elk. But he finds nothing on the first floor. The basement reveals as much, and he despairs until he lowers himself into the sub basement.
And in the third room, he wishes he had found nothing. The room is twenty feet long and ten feet wide. A single, wide, circular concrete column stands in the center. It's surface is smeared with dark red. The same viscous liquid pools on the floor and paints the opposite wall in splashes reminiscent of a Jackson Pollock painting.
The room is empty, but for the streaks and pools of blood.
X-x-x-x-X
A/N: As always, thanks to my wonderful beta, Babs81410. Next update will be on Monday.